Gartner defines enablement as “the activities, systems, processes, and information that support and promote knowledge-based sales interactions with clients and prospects.” Similarly, the definition of sales enablement is the strategic approach to provide client-facing teams with the right resources, content, training, processes, and tools needed to effectively engage with current and prospective clients.  

These strategies have become even more important in this challenging economic environment, where every firm is expected to do more to win and retain business. Accomplishing all of this is even more complex when trust needs to be restored. The recent failure of Silicon Valley Bank and the government-brokered takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS have caused many individuals and businesses to lose confidence in the financial services industry.  

In response, firms are looking for their client-facing teams to engage meaningfully with their clients and prospects during this critical time and offer deeper levels of counsel and expertise.  

How enablement benefits firms 

This is where a modern approach to enablement comes into play. Client-facing teams need access to a single destination so they can easily source and personalize content, activate campaigns across digital channels, and streamline manual tasks, including compliance requirements and access learning programs.  

In addition to supporting the important needs of client-facing teams, enablement technology offers leaders other benefits like better team alignment, reduced time to market and real-time refinement of sales approaches. These benefits all play a role in supporting some of the most critical initiatives of financial services firms including growth and diversification of revenue, increased value from their technology investments, and introduction of new products and services.

The financial services firms that successfully adopt the use of enablement technology to address their top pain points and support their most important goals will differentiate themselves and successfully compete in a highly competitive marketplace. 

It’s time to invest in modern enablement 

The Seismic Enablement Cloud is purpose-built with financial services firms in mind. More than 315 banks and financial services firms worldwide trust Seismic’s platform to digitize core business functions, increase productivity, and drive meaningful client relationships. Interested in learning more? Visit our Financial Services hub or schedule a demo today.  

The post The value of modern enablement in financial services appeared first on Seismic.

However, many client-facing teams spend too much time navigating complex workflows and disjointed systems. Between searching for the right content, updating assets, and jumping from tool to tool, it’s difficult to provide clients with content in an efficient and thoughtful way. 

This is why sales enablement tools are so beneficial to the financial services industry. In this post, we’ll take a look at three ways a modern sales content management system can help firms improve operational effectiveness and client engagement. 

1. Boost productivity with AI-driven recommendations 

Today’s clients are demanding more from their financial services firms and the individuals they work with. Not only do they expect a steady stream of helpful information, but they also want it to be relevant, engaging, and useful for their unique financial needs. To meet this demand, client-facing professionals need to find and share the right content at the right time. This is easier said than done because most of the content is stored across a number of different systems or managed by different departments. In fact, 60% of firms still have disjointed tools across marketing, sales, and service teams, which creates a complex and frustrating workflow for everyone involved.

While we know that sales content management systems are a great way for firms to create and organize their sales content library, the most powerful and modern tools take this accessibility one step further. Because sales content management software can fully integrate with other tools in the tech stack, such as a CRM, it allows users to leverage AI for even greater productivity. AI draws on other sales-related data to provide real-time content suggestions. For example, a client-facing professional can instantly surface helpful competitive intel or a case study that was beneficial in a similar situation with another client. By creating a unified source of truth for client-facing professionals, they can tap into helpful data and content to deliver a personalized experience in a matter of minutes. 

2. Improve operational efficiency with automatic content 

Client-facing teams also struggle to generate content that’s unique and personalized for each of their clients. But, customizing every pitchbook and one-pager is inefficient and takes up precious time. Additionally, it’s not realistic to ask marketing teams to create and review brand-new sales enablement materials for each and every client. 

Rather than trying to manually update every item in your firm’s content library, sales enablement software gives client-facing professionals access to dynamic templates. These templates include sections that automatically populate with the most up-to-date information for great personalization. Whether it be a pitch deck, case study, or proposal, there’s no need for client-facing professionals to download a piece of content and manually update it. Instead, the entire process takes place within the platform. Furthermore, a tool that includes a guided assembly feature leads users through the asset creation process and automatically populates parts of the content based on pre-built questions that are answered throughout the process assembly process. As an end result, client-facing professionals can quickly and easily produce targeted and personalized content in a matter of a few clicks for increased operational efficiency.

3. Measure content effectiveness 

Marketing teams spend a lot of time producing and updating content to support their client-facing teammates. And while delivering that content to clients is important, both marketing and enablement teams need a clear understanding of how and when that content is used. Critical data, such as what asset was sent, in what stage of a deal it was sent, and how the client engaged with that asset are important to track.

A modern enablement platform allows client-facing professionals to share content via links rather than attachments so it’s easier to track these key metrics. This gives everyone the ability to see whether a client opened the content they received, how often they opened it, and how long they spent engaging with it. Client-facing professionals can use these insights to better understand their clients while identifying the next best route to take during an interaction. Additionally, teams can identify what content is the most and least effective so they can improve their content strategy in the future. 

A modern sales content management system for modern firms 

By investing in a sales content management system, financial services firms can unlock the true potential of their content, reduce operational friction, and produce personalized content at scale. The Seismic Enablement Cloud features powerful AI-guided technology that’s trusted by more than 400 financial institutions to improve productivity and drive better client engagement at scale. Want to see it in action? Click here to watch a quick video!

The post 3 ways to unlock the power of a sales content management system appeared first on Seismic.

What is sales enablement for financial services?

Sales enablement unites sales, marketing, and operations teams around the common goal to provide client-facing professionals with the right resources, content, processes, and technology needed to engage with their clients.

In the financial services world, enablement helps client-facing teams streamline content management, personalization and automation, and deliver training and upskilling for continued growth. As the financial services industry continues to leverage digital channels and technology to meet evolving client needs, enablement plays an important role in supporting these changes so firms can maximize business success. 

Let’s take a closer look at four ways sales enablement can help financial institutions overcome some common business challenges they’re currently facing. 

Improve efficiency and effectiveness 

Today’s clients have access to more information at their fingertips. So when it comes to working with an advisor, banker, agent, or relationship manager they expect them to share helpful information and relevant content on the topic at hand. The good news is that many financial services firms have content for client-facing teams to use. However, because it’s created by various teams, it’s often housed in a variety of disparate systems. This makes it difficult for client-facing professionals to source and share the right content at the right time. 

By using a modern enablement platform, users can quickly find the content they need through user-friendly search, filtering, and navigation features. This also helps ensure that client-facing teams have access to consistent, up-to-date materials. Content management platforms can also be integrated with other tools that empower users can quickly find, access, and share content so that they can spend more time focusing on the task that matters most — interacting with clients.

Provide personalized client experiences

Sharing the right content with clients is only half the challenge. That content also needs to be personalized and unique to each and every client for it to truly be valuable. However, a client-facing professional can’t efficiently update every pitch deck or report for every client. After all, this takes up even more time that could be used to interact with new clients and deepen relationships with existing ones. 

Sales enablement automation tools provide client-facing employees with access to dynamic and engaging content that they can edit and personalize at scale. This also gives employees the chance to integrate useful data from a CRM and other sources for even more customization. As an end result, client-facing professionals can quickly produce highly relevant and personalized content in just a few clicks for increased productivity.

Ensure content is compliant and on brand

Client-facing employees are also likely to follow the path of least resistance to get deals across the finish line. If they don’t have the right materials to send to clients, they’ll likely resort to creating their own materials or repurposing old content. But, in a highly-regulated industry like financial services, presenting outdated or incorrect information can be costly. Since marketing teams also don’t have the bandwidth to ensure piece after piece is correct, firms need a scalable solution that provides up-to-date materials while ensuring brand standards and industry regulations are met.

An enablement platform gives marketing teams the opportunity to create branded templates and collateral while determining how much flexibility employees have to customize content before sending it to their clients. Additionally, it can help firms create a streamlined content auditing process to ensure brand consistency across all client-facing materials. This gives organizations peace of mind knowing that team members are sending personalized content that still meets industry standards. 

Simplify and scale learning

The financial services industry is a perfect storm of learning and development challenges — rapid change, complex information, hybrid workforces — the list goes on. In order to close deals faster, both new and experienced client-facing employees need ongoing training on updated products, industry developments, new content, and client engagement best practices. But being able to deliver this training for hundreds or thousands of employees at scale can take a lot of time, energy, and resources if it’s not done correctly. 

Instead of relying on outdated, unengaging, and costly in-person training, modern sales enablement provides financial institutions with a single, integrated online learning environment. 

Online learning makes it easier to create, edit, and deliver lessons that client-facing employees can take when and where it’s best for them. And, at a time when 62% of financial leaders are focusing on upskilling their employees, online training is a great way for new and experienced client-facing employees to hone their skills while staying up-to-date with business and industry trends. 

These are just a few reasons why sales enablement is a must-have for today’s financial services industry. Interested in learning more? Check out our newest guide, Growing Client Trust and Revenue with Modern Enablement, here.  

It’s time to invest in a modern solution 

Financial institutions that invest in a modern enablement tool can ensure their client-facing teams create and share successful content, stay up-to-date with industry standards, and improve their knowledge and skills. And that’s why Seismic’s Enablement Cloud is purpose-built for financial firms in mind. If you’d like to see how we help more than 250 financial services institutions upskill teams, deepen client relationships, and increase revenue, visit our Financial Services hub.

The post Why sales enablement is a game-changer for financial services appeared first on Seismic.

Seismic’s AI-powered platform surfaces hyper-relevant content you can use to connect with prospects, and when combined with the HubSpot CRM, reduces time spent on sales activities and research. 

Sales organizations that use CRMs see increased sales, revenue, and productivity when used effectively and regularly. And they’re even more advantageous to teams with CRMs and integrations across both sales and marketing.

Here’s how B2B organizations, sales teams, marketing teams, and sales enablement teams in industries like tech, financial services, and manufacturing can use the Seismic Integration with HubSpot to close deals up to 60% faster. 

Benefits of using AI-powered sales enablement tools with the HubSpot CRM

AI is designed to help improve automated processes, anticipate needs, solve challenges, and save overall time and effort. For rapidly growing companies, there comes a point where systems need to scale up to accommodate the quantity of data they are processing. 

Finding AI-powered sales enablement tools like Seismic leaves sales and marketing teams to think, “Why weren’t we doing this before?”

How AI-Powered sales enablement tools benefit sales and marketing teams

Seismic recommends content based on HubSpot data such as where the buyer is in the sales cycle, which products they use, industry data, and competitor information. When the content recommendations can be reviewed, sent, tracked, and followed up all right in HubSpot, it reduces clicks and manual time spent searching for the perfect conversation starter. 

Here are a few ways that Seismic can help sales and marketing teams automate and scale their workflows.

Boost sales team efficiency

With data-powered content recommendations right in the CRM, sellers have all the tools they need to conduct prospect research and outreach right in HubSpot, saving them time. 

Accelerate sales pipelines

Using Seismic and HubSpot, sales reps can quickly verify that it’s relevant and send it to the prospect, then track engagement in real-time. Sellers can store content, then access it in HubSpot when it’s the right time for the prospect to receive it. When content is hyper-personalized and sent at the right time in the buyer’s journey, it increases buyer and prospect engagement.

Increase marketing and enablement effectiveness

With a singular location for sales content, marketing teams can provide new content that aligns with the overall company strategy, and update it over time without having to chase down every sales representative individually. Reporting dashboards make it easier to understand how content is performing and optimize content strategy and creation to align with sales teams’ needs. 

3 ways to use Seismic sales content tools with the HubSpot CRM to scale sales enablement

Teams that prioritize sales enablement see better results. 65% of sales leaders who exceeded revenue goals in 2020 report having a dedicated sales enablement strategy. 

An effective sales enablement strategy pulls in the most effective marketing and sales tactics and is geared toward the prospect experience. With less time spent identifying the best content for an opportunity, sellers can gain up to 35% more time to focus on selling.

Here’s how CRM tools like the Seismic Integration with HubSpot can help sales and marketing teams achieve sales success. 

1. Increase sales productivity

Seismic automatically surfaces predictive content recommendations within Deals, Contacts, Leads, and Accounts in HubSpot, recommending the right content at the right time. The Seismic integration increases user adoption and engagement with easy-to-use tools built into the HubSpot CRM. Out-of-the-box dashboards and analytics show time spent looking at documents, which content prospects view, and more.

Seismic LiveDocs Personalization also provides the ability to automate and personalize sales content at scale, removing 80% of the resources required to create materials.

2. Accelerate sales cycles

The integration gives sellers insight into which content buyers engage with to enable more relevant and personalized follow-up throughout the buyer journey. By delivering personalized and relevant conversations, sellers are able to accelerate sales progress and close deals up to 60% faster.

The Seismic NewsCenter offers a curated collection of articles that sales professionals can access on the go-to guide conversations with prospects. Marketing teams can customize the news content and update it regularly to ensure sales content aligns with brand guidelines.

3. Enable data-backed marketing decisions

The integration enables marketers to make data-backed decisions about

content development and management. Marketers are able to align ROI to content performance, see what content is driving revenue, and identify content that needs to be refreshed or removed. Sales enablement content can include content playbooks, videos, or other strategic sales enablement data, and can be personalized to your organization’s product or service.

Sales enablement tools that integrate with powerful CRMs like HubSpot represent a huge opportunity for marketers. Marketing teams have insight into what content is being used and how that content is resonating with viewers. Go to the source and discover what content is leading to deals, then replicate that content and open more conversations with the sales team to learn what they want next. 

HubSpot and Seismic are helping over 3,500 HubSpot Sales team members achieve their sales goals. Start empowering your go-to-market (GTM) teams to approach sales enablement content marketing differently, and leverage the power of AI as a key sales and marketing tool with the Seismic Integration with HubSpot. 

The post Improving sales enablement with Seismic’s AI-Powered technology and HubSpot appeared first on Seismic.

A buyer in 2021 starts their day at a desk, most likely in their home office. They’ve also been working remotely for the past 18 months. A buyer journey that previously started at an industry conference now begins on LinkedIn and consists of review site searches and case studies. 

The sales process has changed significantly for buyers and sellers over the last two years. Both parties have adapted to digital-first sales motions and it’s clear that remote sales journeys are here to stay. 

Digital sales processes have given buyers a newfound advantage: they’re in control of their own research into companies and products, as well as how and when they prefer to interact with sellers.

In this post, we’ll look at changes in buyer behavior over the past 18 months and explore how sellers can adapt to these new trends.

Be knowledgeable, available, and transparent

The average buyer has 27 information-gathering interactions before they ever talk to a salesperson. By the time a buyer speaks with your sales rep, they already have a fundamental understanding of your business and its products, as well as your competitors.

Buyers don’t want to be sold. Instead, they want to build a relationship with a trusted guide. In order to win business with well-informed buyers, sellers need to be available, informative, and honest:

• Available – In the LinkedIn State of Sales 2021 report, only 28% of buyers indicated that sellers remain engaged after the sale to ensure value delivery. Sellers can create value by identifying buyer’s needs early in the sales cycle and helping right-size a solution up until and after a deal is closed.

• Informative – Sellers are the subject matter experts for the buyer. Buyers have done their research, but 44% of buyers note that they prefer well-informed sellers who can become a resource that guides them through the buyer journey. 43% of buyers said that a seller who doesn’t know their own product or service would be a deal-killer.

• Honest – Buyers are navigating the sales process with several vendors, products, and pricing models, yet only 30% of buyers felt that sellers were transparent about pricing.

Selling is no longer transactional. Buyers need sellers who empathize, build relationships, and use their conversations to add value through intelligent recommendations. Sales reps need to become even more agile because they no longer work with an individual buyer. The buyer pool is also expanding.

Sales is no longer one-to-one, it’s one-to-many

Multiple stakeholders are included in the product evaluation process. As solutions increasingly touch many functions within an organization, more members of a buying team need to validate a solution. For example, a CMO, CTO, VP of Marketing, and Content Marketing Manager may all be included in the product evaluation process for a content marketing solution. 

According to Forrester’s research, 63% of purchases have more than four people involved. Each of these personas has different roles as buyers, ranging from champions or influencers to decision-makers and users.

Each of these roles has unique considerations. Sellers often address their unique needs through content. Content helps sellers advance the conversation with the buying team and ensure that their needs are met. However, the number of interactions has grown exponentially. During the pandemic, buyer interactions have grown from 17 per deal cycle to 27.

Sellers need access to the right content, at the right time, in order to make the most of each interaction. Quickly responding to the right buyer persona on the right channel helps differentiate sellers from their competitors.

And this is important because buyers are present in more places than ever before.

Buyers are engaging everywhere online

With fewer places to engage in person, buyers have turned to digital channels. And the buying journey is no longer linear. Throughout the sales cycle, buyers will loop or return to content in different channels as a way to validate and build consensus.  A conversation that starts on LinkedIn may eventually transition to email, text, or even digital sales rooms. 

Social media platforms have become social selling channels. More than 50% of buyers noted that they leverage social media to find content. LinkedIn, in particular, stands out for sellers with more than 70% noting that they are committed to expanding their network. 

Change is good

Digital-first sales are transforming the way that sellers and buyers interact, creating opportunities for stronger long-term relationships that can eventually become upsell opportunities. 

Buyers are willing to spend money on digital self-serve because it’s convenient. 70 percent of B2B decision-makers told McKinsey that they’re open to making new, fully self-serve or remote purchases in excess of $50,000, and 27 percent would spend more than $500,000. 

Organizations need to empower sellers to engage buyers on their terms in this digital-first world. Seismic offers tools for sellers to engage buyers using highly intelligent insights-driven tools that connect buyers with the right resources on the right channel. 

Download our eBook, Rewriting the Rules of Engagement to learn how Seismic can help your organization win new business in the new sales landscape. 

The post How buyer behavior has evolved and what it means for sales appeared first on Seismic.

The average buyer journey takes place across multiple digital channels, includes multiple stakeholders, and has more interactions than ever before. In this post, we’ll explain digital sales rooms in detail, as well as how your organization can use them to personalize the virtual buying experience and improve buyer engagement.

What is a digital sales room?

A digital sales room is a centralized location or microsite where sales reps and buyers can collaborate and access content that is relevant to the deal cycle. Digital sales rooms are a secure environment where sellers can create differentiated stories and personalized interactions that support buyers throughout their decision-making process. 

Digital sales rooms simplify the seller and buyer experience with a centralized location for easy access to content, stakeholders, and communications related to a deal cycle that drives more effective buyer engagements. 

Sellers can use digital sales rooms to share content with buyers that is relevant to their deal. The environment can be used to continue conversations and collaborate with stakeholders as they navigate the sales process. Most importantly, digital sales rooms give buyers a single location that they can return to throughout the deal cycle. 

Why should I use a digital sales room?

Buyer behavior is evolving and traditional in-person selling is no longer the norm. According to research conducted by McKinsey, 70 percent of business decision-makers are open to fully self-serve or remote purchases in excess of $50,000, and 27 percent would spend more than $500,000.

Buying teams are not only making remote purchases—they’re also researching products digitally. Before a buyer first interacts with a salesperson, in most cases, they’ve already had 27 information-gathering interactions. 

Sellers need to make the most of their interactions with buyers early in the sales process. They do this by creating personalized, differentiated experiences for buyers. 

Digital sales rooms are effective because they align with the way buyers interact throughout the sales cycle. According to Gartner, buyers often engage in ‘looping,’ or the act of visiting channels several times throughout their buyer journey. Digital sales rooms simplify this scattered experience by creating a dedicated environment for buyers to find the content they need, when they need it. 

What are best practices for using digital sales rooms?

Since buyers are interacting with more content prior to first calls, they’re entering their first conversation more informed than ever. Well-informed buyers want to identify the vendor that has the best solution, who can answer their questions, and build a long-term relationship. 

Answering the buyer’s questions should be the top priority for sellers. Content supports sales reps as they follow up on questions from their conversations with buyers. Digital sales rooms give buyers and sellers an environment where they can continue their conversation. 

Sellers should ensure that digital sales rooms feature content that is relevant to each of the stakeholders on the buying team. Ensure that the digital sales room is always up-to-date by uploading new content as conversations progress with the buying team. 

And, always be available to the buyer. As they engage with new content they’re likely to have questions, and digital sales rooms are an excellent environment for sellers to respond to or collaborate with buyers. 

A good digital sales room is an environment where sellers can: 

• Share hyper-relevant deal related content
• Capture buyer engagement insights
• Collaborate with stakeholders
• Provide a single source of truth throughout the entire sales cycle

How does Seismic help?

Seismic is the global leader in sales enablement. The Seismic platform is purpose-built to support sales organizations across the full sales lifecycle.

Seismic’s digital sales room solution offers templates and tools to personalize virtual selling. Our digital sales rooms help sellers to: 

• Personalize – Seismic’s digital sales room allows sellers to customize templates to co-brand with a specific opportunity. Drag n’ drop tools allow sellers to quickly and easily update digital sales rooms with the right content and organize it in a way that’s intuitive for buyers. 
• Communicate and collaborate – Buyers and sellers can engage with each other throughout the deal cycle through 1:1 conversations, tagging, and commenting capabilities. 
• Share and analyze – Understand which content resonates with buyers through content analytics and insights throughout the deal cycle. 

If you’d like to learn more about Seismic’s digital sales rooms, please visit the Buyer Engagement content hub or request a demo.

The post What Is a Digital Sales Room? appeared first on Seismic.

Sales has always been hard, but over the past eighteen months, it’s become even harder. Prospects increasingly rely on digital channels for information gathering, often from multiple sources. Sellers are interacting with customers almost exclusively via digital channels and it’s more important than ever to create meaningful interactions that add value to customers.

The modern buyer seeks information from a variety of sources. They engage across a variety of channels, including social media, email, phone, and even text. They browse websites, analyst reports, and review sites to research companies and their products, all before they ever interact with a salesperson. Today, buyers are nearly 50-60% through the buyer’s journey before they engage with a sales team.

Sellers need to engage effectively with customers across a variety of channels. Rather than acting as sellers, buyers need sales reps to act as trusted guides who work to understand their unique needs and add value at every touchpoint. That means understanding how and when to engage buyers with content experiences that result in deals won.

Let’s get down to the details!

A single location for digital-first engagement

With fewer in-person interactions, sellers need a place to keep in touch with buyers. If a buyer first engages with content on LinkedIn, sellers need to keep them engaged beyond the first touchpoint. 

Digital sales rooms provide sellers an environment to recreate the face-to-face experience in a digital channel. For example, after a first call where a prospect expressed interest in learning more about a specific product or service, digital sales rooms give sellers an environment to share additional content and continue the conversation. 

Two-way communication and collaboration features ensure that sellers and prospects remain engaged throughout the buying process. Content analytics give sellers insight into the content that buyers interact with and enable more informed conversations. 

When multiple members of the buying team need role-specific content, sellers can tag content based on specific personas or collaborators to ensure that everyone has access to the content they need to make a purchasing decision.

Delivering differentiated experiences

In addition to digital sales rooms, the Fall 2021 Release includes new capabilities that enable differentiated experiences. Aura, Seismic’s AI engine powers the engagement tools that sellers use and ensures that the right content reaches the right buyer, in the right channel. 

The following capabilities ensure that sellers have the tools they need to engage buyers on their terms: 

SMS – a new 1:1 solution that enables sellers to communicate directly with buyers who prefer to chat by text. 

Email blasts – Engage buyers by email through dynamic, customizable email templates that enable contact and personalization at scale. 

LiveSocial – Enable sellers with third-party content to build authenticity and engage buyers throughout every stage of the buying journey. 

Ensuring that every seller is empowered to use all of the above capabilities just got a lot easier. With Lessonly by Seismic, your enablement team can ensure that sellers have the sales training and coaching they need to make the most out of every buyer engagement. 

Seismic integration with HubSpot Sales Hub

Seismic now also integrates with HubSpot Sales Hub. The integration surfaces smart content recommendations and targeted playbooks, using data from HubSpot and Seismic to personalize interactions with customers. Seismic is one of the only sales enablement platforms with an out-of-the-box integration for HubSpot CRM.

Request a Demo

Seismic enables sellers to create memorable and meaningful engagements with their buyers, across all interactions in every channel. 

If you’d like to learn more about the new capabilities included in our Fall 2021 Release, please reach out to your account executive or request a demo. You can also visit our Buyer Engagement content hub to see how buyers are rewriting the rules of engagement.

The post Fall 2021 Release: Rewriting the rules of buyer engagement appeared first on Seismic.

That was easy. But it’s not how quarterly commentary reviews typically go. Perhaps this looks more familiar? 

Your data team collects the metrics for the previous quarter. Everything looks great (great!). They route the data to the product management team and here’s where things get shaky. They can’t validate the data. So it’s back to the data team, then back to product marketing which eventually validates the data. At this point, you’re four business days into the process and teams haven’t seen the final data or written a word. The tedious back and forth dance that is Quarterly Commentary has begun. And, so it goes.

What if your organization could reduce or eliminate delays during its quarterly commentary creation process? By reducing bottlenecks in the review cycle, your organization can expedite the approval and delivery of commentary so that everyone has what they need, faster. 

How Seismic helps simplify commentary

Our team has worked with more than 300 financial organizations to simplify their content and automation processes. We’ve listened to the stories of the frustration associated with commentary and collaborated with financial clients to simplify and automate their processes. 

Seismic helps financial firms address the core issues of quarterly commentary. We simplify commentary review cycles by starting with a single source of truth. Here’s how we help: 

• Integration – a central location for the full commentary creating, editing, and approval process eliminates bottlenecks that cause friction and stress. 
• Visibility – The integration ensures that stakeholders across data management, product management, investment management, marketing, and compliance have continuous access to each quarterly commentary. At each stage, stakeholders will know the status and what’s next. 
• Speed – As soon as performance and product data is available it is integrated into your template with the existing commentary text for quicker updating
• Preview – Stakeholders can always view the working version, as well as the final version before it is approved. 

And while we can’t guarantee that quarterly commentary will be your favorite time of the year, we know it will be far less stressful with Seismic. 

In such a competitive industry, speed to market is everything. And, especially when you have great news to share. If you’d like to learn how Seismic’s solution will simplify your quarterly commentary process, please request a demo. 

The post How to simplify quarterly commentary appeared first on Seismic.

The Enableship program is launching at a time of rapid growth within the field of enablement. Between May and June 2021, employers on LinkedIn posted nearly 16,000 open enablement roles. Yet, enablement—like many other careers in the tech sector—lacks talent from diverse backgrounds. 

Why we’re launching Enableship

We’re on our own journey to become a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive company, and we’d like to work together with the wider enablement community to do the same. With the support of our executive leadership team, we decided to champion a program that will promote diversity and inclusion in the enablement industry, and help close the income inequality and wealth gap. 

We believe that Enableship is an opportunity to ensure that the pipeline of future enablement talent is diverse, inclusive, and reflective of the evolving American population. 

Partnering with Sales Enablement Society and SV Academy

SV Academy has a mission to empower one million underrepresented job-seekers to forge career paths in the tech industry. They’ve been recognized by Fast Company as the #2 Most Innovative Education Company in the World for 2020, and our partnership with SV Academy gives us the best opportunity to tear down barriers to entry into sales enablement careers. This isn’t about philanthropy — it’s about equitable access to jobs, opportunities, and wage expansion.

Students at the SV Academy are already building the skills they need to jumpstart careers in the tech industry. Through our partnership, students who attend SV Academy will have an opportunity to specialize in sales enablement. 

Sales Enablement Society (SES) is the flagship organization for sales enablement professionals. It is the largest global nonprofit organization for sales enablement and the most active network of sales enablement professionals. As a founding partner, SES will support the program’s mission by validating content, connecting mentors and employers to the program, and ensuring Enableship is truly an industry-wide program available to all who want to participate. 

Democratizing opportunity through learning and mentorship

Entry-level enablement roles, while historically rare, are now increasing in popularity. Sales and marketing are typical feeder pools, but these career functions also struggle with diversity. We have a unique opportunity to change this cycle at a time when the demand for entry-level candidates is accelerating.

The goal of Enableship is to offer training, coaching, mentorship, and a community network to help underrepresented candidates begin their enablement careers.

The program includes training in the competencies needed for an entry-level enablement associate role. SV Academy offers its students 300 hours of technical skills and leadership training. Through Enableship, learners will have an opportunity to specialize in enablement. Program graduates will have the opportunity to apply for paid apprenticeships and full-time roles with employer partners. Upon placement, graduates will have access to 12 months of coaching.

How to participate in Enableship

Candidates who are interested in participating in Enableship can apply today. Seismic, Sales Enablement Society, and SV Academy are looking forward to welcoming the initial cohort soon. 

The post Enableship: Training underrepresented candidates for careers in enablement appeared first on Seismic.

Sales training and coaching can benefit your organization in a number of ways, most importantly: they help ensure that your sales reps hit their number. 

No matter where your organization is on its enablement journey, sales training and sales coaching are a resource to continuously improve your sales activities. In this post, we’ll define sales training and coaching, as well as the how’s and why’s of implementing best practices. 

Let’s get started!

What is sales training?

While related, sales training is slightly different from coaching. Sales training ensures that every seller in your sales force has the skills they need to contribute to the team and grow their career. Training educates your sellers on the techniques they need to be most successful when selling your company’s products, services, or solutions. 

What is sales coaching?

Every sales organization has a goal or quota. To reach these numbers, sales leaders have the experience and knowledge to encourage, empower, and enable their teams with the practice, guidance, feedback, and tools to succeed in their engagements with buyers. 

Sales coaching enables every sales rep to meet their goal, as well as those of the greater sales organization. To be effective, sales coaching needs to be continuous and customized in a way that it focuses on skills and reinforces great sales behavior. 

What is the difference between sales training and sales coaching?

On the surface, sales training and coaching can sound like the same thing. They’re peas in a pod—maybe even cousins! In short, they’re related. 

To differentiate, it’s most simple to view training as the foundation upon which everything is built. Your sellers can’t sell until they have the training to do so. In effect, training is the activities an organization uses to ensure that its sellers understand the basics of how to sell a product. 

If you build another layer on top of training, you get coaching. Sales coaching includes continuous activities or lessons that are customized to focus on specific skills and reinforce great sales behavior. 

So, to make matters simple: sales training gives sales reps a baseline understanding of how to sell a product, whereas sales coaching offers sellers an ongoing opportunity to improve their skills and reach their goals. 

Why are sales training and sales coaching so important?

At almost every organization, sales is responsible for generating revenue. And sales is becoming more difficult as the buyer’s journey evolves. 

As organizations transitioned to digital-first sales, everything changed. Buyer preferences changed, buyer engagement changed, and suddenly, everything went online. 

How were sales organizations able to pivot quickly to adapt to these changes? Sales training and coaching! Enablement leaders embraced sales training and coaching solutions to ensure that their sellers had the skills to sell in a digital environment, and coaching programs to practice how to pitch, cold call, or simply improve. 

Now, let’s get down to brass tacks: sales reps who receive dedicated sales coaching see 16.7% higher revenue growth over teams who don’t receive sales performance coaching. It’s safe to assume that sales reps are happier when they hit their numbers and, as a result, feel fulfilled in their roles. 

Successful sales reps lift up the team around them. When sellers win more deals, it’s clear that they’re doing something right. Their best practices can be shared across the sales organization. Consistent sales coaching ensures that these winning tactics find their way to every seller in the organization.

Sales training and coaching are better together because consistent sales coaching enables better training. Remember, sales training is about giving your sellers the skills they need to grow and advance in their careers. And with that growth comes more confidence. Confident sellers are better positioned to win more deals and contribute to your business’ bottom line. 

How do organizations use sales coaching and training?

There are a number of ways organizations can use sales training and coaching to enable their sales organization. In order to be successful, every seller needs to know industry specifics, key data, product details, value propositions, and more. 

Consistent training and coaching programs ensure that sellers develop these skills before they start selling. Many organizations use their programs to develop skills across the following areas: 

Sales calls: Conversations with customers and prospects are a seller’s bread and butter. Before sellers can close a deal, they first need to be effective in their calls with buyers. Sales coaching gives sellers an environment where they can practice “mock conversations” with specific buying scenarios. This gives sellers an opportunity to explore buyer needs by use case and develop talking points to navigate real-world situations. 

New product messaging: Before organizations go to market with new products, sellers need to understand what they’re selling and how to do so effectively. When combined with sales call coaching, training educates sellers on the product and allows them to test their knowledge based on what they’ve just learned. Once they’ve built confidence with a new offering, they can test it against a practice call or a simulated customer email. 

Pipeline generation: Winning new business begins with identifying new opportunities. Sales training educates sellers on the market, use cases, and pain points they can research in order to find new prospects. 

These are just a few ways that your organization can implement sales training and coaching programs. Successful programs identify best practices and scale what works. 

What are some best practices?

How do enablement leaders know what is and isn’t working? Data is their best friend. Data tells the story of who’s completing lessons and coaching sessions, how well they performed, and whether it translates into new opportunities and new business. 

If training and coaching activities aren’t contributing to a successful pursuit of business objectives, enablement leaders can identify potential gaps and optimize the program to achieve their goals. 

It’s also important to understand that everyone learns differently. Data can be used to tell a story of how different people respond or perform under specific training models and coaching styles. By identifying these differences, leaders can find new and creative ways to engage and elevate performance across a diverse sales organization. 

Giving your sellers a chance to practice together strengthens the whole team. Every seller has their own strengths and areas of opportunity—peer-to-peer opportunities are a transfer of best practices that help sellers develop new tools.

How can Seismic help?

Seismic is the global leader in sales enablement. The Seismic platform is purpose-built to support sales organizations across the full sales lifecycle. 

Lessonly by Seismic ensures that sellers have access to the sales training and coaching they need to be successful in any scenario. Lessonly by Seismic customers have leveraged the solution across a variety of scenarios to much success. 

Most notably, Seismic customer Deluxe deployed Lessonly to enable sellers during their transition to digital-first selling. To reach their sellers at home, Deluxe’s Director of Sales Readiness built a self-guided training and coaching program to help sellers digitally transform the way the company sells. 

Deluxe launched an 8-week program for their sellers that consisted of one 10-15 minute lesson a week to transform sales tactics and improve technology adoption among their sellers. The best part? Sellers could access their sales enablement content and Lessonly training modules from a single environment. 

“We use Seismic pages as our go-to hub for everything on communications. It’s well organized. We pull in and integrate our lesson content [from Lessonly], our tools, and our timelines. That way when a seller says, hey, I have no idea what you’re talking about, we can pull them into Seismic and say everything’s in one spot for you and it’s really easy to find.”

Megan Friedrich | Director of Sales Readiness | Deluxe

With easy-to-find training content, sellers quickly learned how specific thought leadership content was relevant and applicable to their opportunities. Their training program included practice exercises to test sellers on what they learned. Most importantly, 99.5% of their sellers report that they feel more prepared to sell in a virtual environment.

Lessonly by Seismic is the leading sales coaching and training solution on the market. With the addition of Lessonly, Seismic is delivering the most powerful and comprehensive enablement platform on the market today.

If you’d like to learn more, visit our Lessonly by Seismic product page. 

The post Sales Training vs. Sales Coaching: What’s the Difference? appeared first on Seismic.