Refocusing Priorities

One important aspect of generative AI is that it requires companies to refocus and rethink their priorities. Leaders need to move away from a hyper growth mindset and start thinking about ways in which they can grow strategically, at scale and need solutions that will be able to grow with them. These solutions need not be complex. On the contrary, they should be as simple as possible for them to deploy, as well as compatible with any existing systems in use (CRM, etc.).

In addition, companies are learning about and adopting technologies at a much faster pace – what previously took months or weeks to learn, now takes mere weeks. For example, according to OpenAI, ChatGPT acquired 1 million users within just 5 days after launching in November 2022, whereas it took Instagram over 2 months and Netflix even over 3 years. This proves how important it is for companies (and their employees) to be able to stay on top of these developments and trends.

Your Personal (AI) Assistant

Luckily, generative AI is there to help get the job done. According to a recent study by McKinsey, current generative AI and other technologies have the potential to automate work activities that absorb 60 to 70 percent of employees’ time today. What this means is that once the new technological models have been adopted, generative AI has the possibility of taking over mundane tasks and enhancing productivity. Monotonous and tedious tasks are completed by AI, allowing teams to work more strategically and efficiently – almost like giving each individual employee a dedicated personal assistant.

Now, imagine what that could mean in the long-term. Let’s take sales representatives – who will most likely argue never to have enough hours in the day to adhere to all the tasks on their to-do lists. If they had their very own personal assistant, that takes meeting minutes, generates emails, analyses calls and also reminds them when to follow up on a previous communication. When all these aspects of the job are being done automatically, the sales representatives will be able to spend more time focusing on building the relationship with existing customers, building relationships with new ones, as well as on things that truly make an impact. 

If you still aren’t convinced of the power of AI – consider this: AI leads to better business outcomes by reducing costs and increasing revenue. 44% of businesses that have incorporated AI tools into their processes reported reduced costs, and 63% have experienced an increase in revenue.

How Seismic can Help

Here at Seismic, we are able to help you do all of the above. In the Seismic Enablement Cloud^TM, users can find, create, edit and share content all in one place, as well as make sure that what is available, is always up to date. Furthermore, the solution integrates with other programmes, such as Salesforce, Dynamics, Outlook, Powerpoint and even your internet browser, making Seismic available wherever, whenever. The best thing being that it is scalable to businesses of any size and can grow at the same time the business does.

Furthermore, over the past couple of years, Seismic has made a strategic commitment to investing in AI/ML capabilities. As a part of this, we have introduced Seismic Knowledge, a just-in-time enablement solution that provides teams with faster access to answers, documentation, and assets right within the flow of work and tools they already use. By leveraging Knowledge, users can connect various systems to create one searchable source of truth so reps are confident they have the right information.

Seismic Knowledge extends and optimises the capabilities of your enablement function by providing teammates with fast, accurate support when they need it. This frees up valuable resources that enablement teams can use on large initiatives rather than answering questions and pointing reps to relevant documents. As a result, organisations reduce knowledge silos, boost productivity, improve the employee experience, deliver better support to customers, and close deals faster. 
If you’d like to learn more about Seismic Knowledge or other intelligent features of the Seismic Enablement Cloud^TM, get a demo today.

The post A new kind of Productivity: Generative AI in Sales Enablement appeared first on Seismic.

But why is personalisation important in a sales context? According to Salesforce, while 66% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs, only 34% of companies actually do, which means there is a disconnect between customer expectations and sales representatives’ offers, resulting in outcomes remaining unmet. In this article, we will discuss the role of personalisation within sales enablement and how, if done correctly, it can deliver positive business outcomes, including go-to-market (GTM) efficiency, an improved customer experience, as well as operational optimisation. 

Customer Experience

During a recent talk I attended, I heard someone say: “It doesn’t matter if everyone knows about you, if you’re not reaching the right people” and it stuck with me. It is not a complex statement, but holds a lot of truth – especially when thinking about it from a sales enablement perspective. With the rapid growth of hybrid-selling (meaning a mixed approach of digital and in-person sales), it has become increasingly more important to know your customers, and to know them well. Recent research by McKinsey shows that 71% of buyers expect companies to deliver personalised interactions. And 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen. 

This suggests that content personalisation isn’t happening, or if it is, it isn’t reaching the right people at the right time. But by using the correct technology, analysing the data that is collected, as well as applying the appropriate  training and coaching programmes, personalisation can and will deliver the desired outcome. With the right technology, Digital Sales Rooms (DSR) for example, sales reps are able to share targeted content, tailored to their customers needs and interests for every buyer interaction. Furthermore, once the DSR has been created, the sales rep is able to analyse whether the content was actually viewed, which documents resonated well and even who the content was viewed by or shared with. 

Sharing content through technologies, such as DSRs is not only useful for the sales reps sending the content out, but also for the buyers receiving it on the other side. It is a single source of truth, holding all of the information necessary, enabling timely collaboration between team members – and if there is something missing, it can simply be added at a later stage. This results in a memorable experience for the buyer and ensures they are staying engaged throughout the hybrid selling process – while consuming content that is only relevant to them. 

Training & Coaching

None of the above, however, would be possible without the effective training and coaching of the sales representatives. Having and building on the relevant skills is essential in delivering personalised content successfully – it’s where it all starts. Training & coaching can also be tailored to the individual needs and levels of expertise of the sales rep. By using tools that are enabled by insights and data, companies can ensure that employees receive appropriate training and interactive coaching, continuously improving their skills, enhacing their knowledge, and making them adaptable to change, which is key for the current competitive business environment. 

Companies today are learning about and adopting technologies at a much faster pace – what previously took months or weeks to learn, now takes mere weeks. For example, according to OpenAI, ChatGPT acquired 1 million users within just 5 days after launching in November 2022, whereas it took Instagram over 2 months and Netflix even over 3 years. This proves how important it is for companies (and their employees) to be able to stay on top of these developments and trends. Being able to navigate through these ever changing environments, and upskilling employees to be able to do the same, will also result in a better buyer experience.

How Seismic can Help

In our recent report “The Personalisation Payoff”, we found that personalisation usage skyrocketed – and in tandem, buyer engagement increased as well. Not only did our customers leverage personalisation to an astonishing degree, but the correlated buyer engagement they saw was similarly dramatic.

With Seismic, a piece of content can be shared through what’s called a LiveSend link that captures engagement data, including how long the recipient spent consuming the content, even down to the individual page level. This data is important for our customers to understand what truly resonates with their buyers. From 2021 through 2022, LiveSend link generation increased by 58%, indicating our customers not only saw a greater need to communicate with buyers  digitally but also saw a greater need to gain insights about them. During that same time, overall buyer engagement (measured in views) increased by 46%.

Another feature that Seismic offers, and that has been mentioned above, are the Digital Sales Rooms. By collating all relevant information in one central location, DSRs allow sales reps to enable B2B buyers. This has the ability to quickly add value to the buying journey by simplifying the content experience for prospects. It also creates a unique experience for the buyer and builds trust, which is essential to closing deals at the end of the buying journey. 
If you’d like to learn more about Seismic Knowledge or other intelligent features of the Seismic Enablement Cloud^TM, get a demo today.

The post Getting Personal: Why Personalisation Matters to B2B Sales appeared first on Seismic.

If you’re like most sellers, it probably didn’t go perfectly as you had hoped. But that’s to be expected for new sellers. Like anything in life, it takes intentionality and plenty of practice to become an expert in your craft. There are plenty of skills, best practices and cutting-edge strategies that sales pros have to stay on top of. And, that can be quite the challenge. 

So, how can organisations create a sales-ready workforce? And, how can leaders ensure that sales reps are performing at an expert-level status as early and often as possible? In short, the answer can be boiled down to two words: sales-readiness.

A quick refresher on sales readiness 

Sales readiness is an ongoing process that equips sales teams with the right skills and knowledge they need to be an effective seller. Not to be confused with sales enablement, sales readiness includes sales training, intentional practice and personalised coaching that reinforces knowledge and skills for high-performing sales teams. It also includes ongoing assessments to ensure that sellers remain sales-ready over time. 

When it comes to sales readiness, there are four critical phases, or pillars, that prepare sales reps for their jobs. 

1. Foundational
2. Continuous 
3. Transformational
4. Reactive

In this post, we’ll take a closer look at how each sales readiness pillar helps organisations create expert sellers. 

1. Accelerate ramp time 

Experts aren’t born overnight. They must first learn basic information and skills, and then build off of those over time. This is why foundational readiness is extremely important. Foundational readiness focuses on creating an effective onboarding plan for every role within your sales team. 

The overall goal is to accelerate a new rep’s time to productivity and improve knowledge retention. To do this effectively, identify the foundational sales competencies and skills they need to know to hit the ground running. Then, create a structured learning path that addresses each area of your sales readiness checklist. It’s also helpful to track training progress to confirm that new sellers comprehend what they’re learning. A sales readiness assessment can help sales leaders and trainers ensure that reps have mastered foundational skills before moving to the next phase of readiness.

2. Equip reps for any sales situation

Learning isn’t over once reps complete foundational readiness. After all, onboarding can’t cover everything that sellers need to know over time. They need to be sales-ready and prepared for any type of interaction they could have with buyers throughout the sales process. 

Continuous readiness provides sellers with ongoing training that enables them to stay up-to-date on product releases, best practices, market insights and more. Remember, the objective isn’t to ensure that reps simply complete training. Instead, they need to show they understand newly learned information and can apply it to their roles. That’s why the best sales organisations use sales readiness tools to deliver ongoing training courses and assessments over time. A sales readiness platform also helps leaders understand where each seller stands with various skills and competencies and provide additional learning and coaching opportunities to continuously grow.

3. Empower sellers during change

Expert-level sellers also know how to manage large, and sometimes unexpected, changes. That’s why transformational readiness enables an entire sales force when a substantial change takes place. Transformational readiness is also known as change management because it empowers sellers to understand and navigate changes so they can up-level their skills and knowledge accordingly. 

Effective, transformational readiness starts at the sales leadership level. They’re responsible for leading the charge and creating a plan to effectively train an entire team without disrupting performance and productivity. Transformational readiness can take a lot of time and effort to get reps up-to-speed on major changes, so it’s a good idea to update your sales readiness checklist first. This will help you identify key areas where sales enablement and training are needed most. Then, use a sales-readiness platform to quickly deliver training that addresses the changes sellers need to know. 

4. Keep reps in the know

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Sales is ever-changing. Reps need to be ready to pivot in a matter of minutes if something big happens. This includes things like a merger, competitor or marketplace change, economic downturn or worldwide pandemic that could change the state of any sales organisation. 

That’s why the final stage of sales readiness is reactive readiness. Speed is critical at this stage, and leaders need to build and deliver content in a matter of hours. Ideally, your sales enablement team should have a plan for significant events that would require reactive readiness. This includes an execution plan and tools that will empower your organisation to move quickly. This is also when a sales readiness tool proves to be extremely beneficial since it makes it easy to create and deliver essential communication at scale. 

Get reps sales-ready with Seismic

Any organisation can quickly build a team of sales-ready reps through effective sales-readiness. Interested in learning more? Read how one customer ramps new sellers 5x faster than before with the help of our sales readiness tool. Or, get a demo and see Seismic in action today.

The post 4 ways to unlock sales success with sales readiness appeared first on Seismic.

And, if you’re a revenue team leader, we’re guessing you often find yourself repeatedly fielding and answering the same questions from your team. Whether it’s a ping in Slack from a new seller about messaging or a shoulder tap from a veteran support agent who needs clarification on a new product, it’s inefficient to answer their questions in a moment of need. 

If this sounds familiar — you aren’t alone. A study from McKinsey and Company found that revenue teams actually waste 20% of their time looking for answers to help them close deals and support customers. To put that into perspective, that’s an entire day’s worth of work that could be used engaging customers and prospects, wasted. 

Enablement and the power of knowledge management

To ease this problem, sales enablement teams work hard to ramp team members and equip them with the right information to support deals and customers. This structured enablement process, which largely focuses on centralising enablement content, isn’t enough anymore. 

After all, there will always be more questions. As organisations grow and develop, they naturally collect a wide array of information that’s found across disparate systems, documents, and with different employees. Information lives virtually anywhere, and it’s time-consuming to look for the right answers. Reps bounce back and forth searching for answers or take the path of least resistance and ask their colleagues. This type of context-switching results in lost focus and productivity for everyone involved. And because enablement teams can’t be everywhere at once, it’s difficult to capture what information is needed and provide relevant answers in addition to supporting other strategic initiatives. 

This is why knowledge management is critical to the enablement success of every organisation. Knowledge management is the process of harnessing information, organising it, and sharing it across the team. And, over the years, we’ve found that even if companies deliver great enablement programmes, they still have a ton of decentralised or unstructured information that they have yet to organise. That’s why we’re excited to announce the newest product of the Seismic Enablement Cloud, Seismic Knowledge, to provide teams with just-in-time enablement.

Let’s dive into some of the features and capabilities. 

What’s included in Seismic Knowledge  

Seismic Knowledge is a just-in-time enablement solution that provides teams with faster access to answers, documentation, and assets right within the flow of work and tools they already use. By leveraging Knowledge, users can connect various systems to create one searchable source of truth so reps are confident they have the right information. With Seismic Knowledge, teams can:

• Access knowledge: Knowledge integrates with Seismic and allows reps to access FAQs through Seismic search. It also integrates with Lessonly so users can surface both Seismic content and Lessonly training by directly chatting with the Seismic Slack bot. This allows users to ask the Seismic Slack bot questions privately, or get AI-recommended answers when asking questions in specific channels. Additionally, the Chrome extension provides instant, ongoing access to answers, lessons, and docs – no matter what application they’re working in, like a CRM or email. 

• Capture knowledge: Knowledge surfaces most answers in two bite-sized formats — FAQs or Guides. FAQs are quick snippets of information that directly answer common questions. This saves reps the time and frustration of reading through lengthy documents to find answers. When more context or instruction is needed to effectively answer questions, Knowledge will provide users a Guide. Regardless of the format, all of the answers benefit from crowdsourcing and expert verification capabilities. Users can upvote, downvote, and recommend answers. Then, experts like product managers or enablement leaders can verify that information. 

• Gain insights: Knowledge also gives access to insights that wouldn’t exist without it. Users can monitor frequently asked questions and easily identify unanswered questions. This helps teams uncover and plan new enablement opportunities that can include new content, training, or additional knowledge information. It’s also just as easy to fill these knowledge gaps with a centralised requests management hub where teams can update and enter new answers in an instant. 

“Seismic Knowledge truly is a first-of-its-kind, self-service enablement solution,” explains Chris Buttenham, Senior Product Manager at Seismic. “No other platform gives organisations the ability to cover both structured and unstructured enablement efforts, and we’re excited to help our customers enable a culture of knowledge sharing with this product.”

Seismic Knowledge extends and optimises the capabilities of your enablement function by providing teammates with fast, accurate support when they need it. This frees up valuable resources that enablement teams can use on large initiatives rather than answering questions and pointing reps to relevant documents. As a result, organisations reduce knowledge silos, boost productivity, improve the employee experience, deliver better support to customers, and close deals faster. 

Extend the power of your enablement team

When employees are empowered to be great at their jobs, magic happens. With Seismic Knowledge, revenue teams can get access to answers at their point of need, in the flow of work, and at scale. If you’re an existing customer who would like to learn more about Knowledge, please reach out to your account manager. Or, if you’d like to learn more about the Seismic Enablement Cloud, including Knowledge, get a demo. 

The post Introducing Seismic Knowledge for just-in-time enablement appeared first on Seismic.

Seismic Enablement Cloud

When we launched the Enablement Cloud, we understood that digital-first and hybrid sales were here to stay. And the numbers bear it out – McKinsey recently conducted a survey of 2,500 sales organisations which found that 90% of buyers are willing to spend more than $50,000 in a single remote or digital self-service model. 

Fewer and fewer buyers are opting for in-person meetings. Sellers who can engage and build relationships with buyers in digital channels will be best positioned to win new business. 

In order to effectively connect with this new generation of digital-first and hybrid buyers, organisations need technology that enables their sellers to engage buyers in an omnichannel landscape. The latest innovation and updates within the Seismic Enablement Cloud empower organisations to do just that.

Read on to learn more about the latest features and capabilities!

What’s new and available today

As part of our Spring 2022 Release, there are several new features that are available today. These product enhancements provide sellers with new and updated capabilities that empower them to tailor their buyer engagement, data and analytics and skills development. 

Buyer Engagement

Email Blast enhancements

Email Blast empowers sellers to engage their buyers at scale. Our new Simple Email Editor helps sellers quickly build and personalise emails and provides marketers with more flexibility in template formatting options. Now, sellers also have the ability to add inline images and gifs to every email, so they can stand out from the crowd and drive higher engagement.

LiveSocial integration

Sellers need to use a variety of channels to engage buyers – social media is one of the most important. Updates to Seismic LiveSocial enable users to share content to Social, SMS and other digital channels from a single location. Integrated reporting provides a holistic view of buyer engagement across channels, so you can make smarter, data-driven decisions and uncover more opportunities to engage.

Learning & Coaching

Automated coaching

Automated coaching supports managers by providing a real-time evaluation of practice sessions to sellers. This capability helps build high-performing teams through practice sessions that provide real-time feedback on filler word usage, keyword accuracy, speaking pace and more.

Enhanced data & analytics

The new training overview dashboard provides managers and enablement leaders with actionable insights on their teams’ training performance such as overdue lessons, average scores, grading statistics and responses to assessments. The dashboard allows them to quickly identify opportunities for further coaching and development and surfaces high performers.

Learning data via Snowflake 

Combine data sources to gain deeper insights and a holistic view of your business. Enhancements to Seismic’s Snowflake integration help teams achieve greater flexibility in aligning learning data to unique business goals with a direct import from Snowflake Data Marketplace into a dashboard of your choice.​

Sales Content Management

Content notifications

Sellers have to keep track of a LOT of information, so we’re making it easier for them to see when their favourite content is changed or when new content is added – at their preferred frequency and channel. They can select how frequently they wish to receive updates and where they’d like to receive notifications – on Slack, Teams or within Seismic. Never miss an update to your pricing sheet or go-to one-pager again!

What’s next?

We’re excited to keep elevating the user experience for the Seismic Enablement Cloud. We believe that these product enhancements will continue to empower our customers to win and grow. But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what Seismic customer Deluxe has to say about the Enablement Cloud: 

“We call Seismic SELL (Sales Enablement Learning and Library) which is Seismic, Lessonly and LiveSocial all integrated to be our centralised platform. The intent is to increase the productivity of our sellers, drive exceptional effectiveness of our sales organisation and ultimately lead to better customer engagement and experiences.”

If you’re interested in learning more about any of the capabilities that we announced today, please reach out to your account manager or get a demo.

The post Spring 2022 Release: Enhancements to the Seismic Enablement Cloud™ appeared first on Seismic.

There are countless ways that effective sellers make an impression and stand out from their competitors. Maybe they demonstrated a deep understanding of your unique use case or followed up with the right information at just the right time to help you make a well-informed decision. But it likely wasn’t a matter of luck – it was because they had the right skills, content and knowledge to help you navigate your purchasing journey. 

Getting that engagement right at scale requires effective enablement. In fact, enablement is becoming a C-Level imperative within organisations as they seek to drive consistency and predictability when it comes to winning and retaining business. That’s why we’re excited to introduce the Seismic Enablement Cloud to empower GTM teams with the right content, skills, tools and insights to effectively engage customers and drive growth, built on a unified, enterprise-grade, AI-powered platform.  

The Seismic Enablement Cloud

Just as sales and marketing clouds have brought together several complementary products and solutions to address the needs of their respective teams, we see a similar need and opportunity for the enablement cloud – a dedicated platform purpose-built to empower enablement and GTM teams to deliver exceptional end-to-end buyer experiences. 

The Seismic Enablement Cloud redefines enablement by bringing together historically siloed systems for sales content management, learning & coaching, strategy & planning, content automation, buyer engagement and enablement intelligence into one enterprise-grade platform that supports end-to-end workflows for GTM teams. With the Seismic Enablement Cloud, companies:

• Reduce tool fatigue by powering seamless workflows for users. Go-to-market teams lose valuable time when they have to jump between disparate systems to access the tools and information they need. Combining everything from content management to personalisation to training & coaching to multi-channel engagement in a single location makes sellers’ lives easier because they have access to the tools they need in one place.
• Future-proof your investment as your teams grow and company strategy evolves. What your team needs today may not be the same tomorrow or years from now. The Enablement Cloud is built to scale with your organisation as it grows, all on the same platform – no need to switch or re-implement. This means your team can start with the capabilities it needs to solve its immediate needs and easily expand as your needs evolve.
• Drive a data-driven enablement strategy with a 360-degree view of the performance of your GTM teams and the impact of your enablement programs. The Enablement Cloud brings together insights from across content, training, coaching, engagement and CRM. More than ever before, enablement teams need intelligent insights that allow them to get enablement right. It’s almost impossible to understand what does and doesn’t work when critical data is stored in separate systems. For example, if you see that your pitch deck has a dip in engagement, without training & coaching data, you might first think it’s an issue with the content. But when you can drill into how engagement compares among certified and uncertified reps, you might see your organisation has training opportunities – not that your deck needs to be revamped. And with the Enablement Cloud, you can activate that plan all within Seismic.

What’s in the Seismic Enablement Cloud

The Seismic Enablement Cloud delivers powerful functionality that is greater than the sum of its parts. In total, it brings together six applications that help teams get enablement right, including: 

• Sales Content Management: Build, maintain, activate and govern  content in a scalable platform that makes it easy to organise, find and share differentiated assets.  ​
• Learning & Coaching: Lessonly by Seismic is the powerfully simple solution for learning, coaching and skills development for customer-facing teams. Onboard new hires, continuously train and improve the performance of your team. ​
• Strategy & Planning: Enablement Planner (Coming Soon) is the first and only hub for enablement teams to define and implement programmes and content strategies. Plan, execute, measure and iterate in one coordinated, streamlined workflow.
• Content Automation: Produce targeted content through quick assembly, reusable components and dynamic templates or streamline mass production of materials, even those that require data integrations.​
• Buyer Engagement: Seismic’s buyer engagement capabilities allow teams to create memorable experiences and interact effectively across all touchpoints and channels to deepen relationships and move deals forward. ​
• Enablement Intelligence: Seismic’s enablement intelligence equips leaders to improve performance with insights into the behaviours, activities and content that deliver the best outcomes. It combines human-centred and automated analytics to help increase productivity and repeat success.​

A unified platform for everything enablement 

Enablement software is mission-critical for many of the customers that use Seismic and is becoming a core part of GTM workflows and tech stacks. More than 2,000 customers and millions of users choose Seismic to help them practise smarter enablement. That’s why we’ve invested in our enterprise-grade platform. This includes a global cloud infrastructure with unmatched availability and speed, open and extensible APIs to integrate into your workflows, stringent security and controls to meet your growing compliance requirements, AI & machine learning to drive intelligent decision making and an extensive data infrastructure to scale what works.

We are very excited about bringing the Seismic Enablement Cloud to you all – the next chapter in defining the future of enablement and sales. We can’t wait to see how all of you will leverage its capabilities to transform your GTM teams and activities.

If you’d like to learn more about the Seismic Enablement Cloud, download our eBook, The Enablement Cloud: A Unified Platform for Engagement & Growth. 

The post Introducing the Seismic Enablement Cloud™ 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 organisations 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 organisations, 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 and then access it in HubSpot when it’s the right time for the prospect to receive it. When content is hyper-personalised 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 optimise 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 prioritise 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 Personalisation also provides the ability to automate and personalise 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 personalised follow-up throughout the buyer journey. By delivering personalised 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 customise 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 personalised to your organisation’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.

• Do I really have to update our decks with new employee stats every time we hire a new person?
• How do I make sure advisors’ bios stay up to date, while ensuring they are compliant and approved?
• I want to create targeted messaging to show the value of a webinar to customers across different industries. Is there a way to do it where I don’t have to manage 15 different invitations?

If any of these sound familiar, you’ve most likely found a strong use case to automate content using LiveDocs!

What are some common LiveDocs use cases?

LiveDocs reliably save time and energy across marketing teams while providing sales an easy way to customise specific information. LiveDocs functionality offers the full range of customisation: Sales reps can perform simple tasks such as selecting slides, as well as more complex tasks like automated decks that dynamically update based on data from an external source (like a CRM).

To help sales reps get started, Seismic highlights standard LiveDoc use cases. While some may be industry-specific, most apply to any company or industry (including financial services, software, manufacturing, and healthcare, just to name a few). Select use cases include:

• Fact sheets (financial services specific)
• Pitchbooks
• Meeting templates
• Account review or QBR decks
• Overview and top-of-funnel presentations

But you don’t have to limit LiveDocs functionality to the “standard” use cases. With some creativity, LiveDocs can open a world of opportunity across different assets used by your sales and marketing teams.

How to do even more with LiveDocs

Seismic’s Solution Consulting team works closely with customers and prospects to manage use cases. For more complex scenarios, our team follows a set of guiding principles to determine if LiveDocs is a good fit. We typically ask ourselves the following:

• Is there a base template that marketing adjusts based on the audience?
• Does the document customise specific sales or customer information?
• Do document managers manually copy and paste data from excel into the document?

With these principles in mind, Seismic consulting has partnered with clients across industries to build LiveDocs that save time and create personalized content at scale. The following examples highlight some unique LiveDocs use cases that address real marketing pain points and provide value across sales and marketing organizations:

1. A manufacturing and a software company both integrated LiveDocs with their CRM data to automate the creation of customer case studies, saving marketing time that would otherwise be spent formatting and copying and pasting in information from the CRM.

2. A telecommunications company created a LiveDoc that sellers use to track and understand which promotions apply to their customers based on certain qualifications, like time period and company size.

3. A financial services company leverages Seismic lists (a built-in Seismic database) and LiveDocs to help advisors update their bio information so that presentations are always up to date and compliance approved.

4. A software company built out a LiveDoc template for an invitation to a marketing event, which allowed sellers to customise the text and messaging based on the recipient’s persona and industry, creating more targeted messaging about the value of the event.

The above use cases leverage the same core LiveDocs functionality, but by identifying key pain points for sellers and marketers, the marketing teams used data from their tech stack to develop creative solutions alongside the Seismic team.

If you’re interested in learning how you can leverage LiveDocs in your organisation, customers can reach out to their Customer Success Manager (CSM) or check out our customer community to see examples of other customer use cases. If you’re not a customer, but would like to learn more, speak to an expert.

The post LiveDocs use cases: Thinking beyond traditional presentations appeared first on Seismic.

Human interaction and in-person relationship building will always have their place. But with multiple wholesalers competing for a financial adviser’s attention, differentiation is even more important. 

So, how do wholesalers leave an impression that lasts longer than a quarterly in-person visit? In this post, I’ll share tips that wholesalers can use to create meaningful digital experiences to grow their relationships with financial advisers. 

In-person activities should influence digital communication

In-person client engagement was never going away fully. They were placed on ice for the past year and a half. During that time off, agents have learned new ways to engage clients using digital engagement tools. 

The return to in-person activities like dinners and golf outings is on the horizon. Even still, digital outreach will remain a staple in a wholesaler’s toolkit. In-person outings establish authentic human connections, but digital engagements can help you stay top-of-mind. 

Think of in-person and digital engagements as two complementary activities. In-person interactions are opportunities to ask questions, listen and learn. The details that surface in these conversations give insights into your adviser’s objectives. 

When done well, in-person insights translate into meaningful digital outreach. Well-maintained content management systems give wholesalers easily accessible and relevant content at their fingertips. Providing personalised content keeps you top-of-mind with financial advisers because they are valuable resources to meet goals. 

Making digital engagement impactful boils down to one question: how will it help my advisers build their relationships with their clients?

Scale relationships with your client base 

The return to the road is an opportunity to strengthen relationships. But a day here and a day there isn’t enough time to build trust and rapport with financial advisers. 

The modern wholesaler will rely on digital engagement to scale their business. Identifying opportunities to connect with advisers outside of the quarterly visit nurtures relationships. 

Begin to think of the similarities across your client base. Maybe you work with a cluster of clients in a region; or advisers who specialise in a specific product or solution. Curating content experiences for financial advisers with similar profiles or interests can help scale your digital engagements. 

Digital engagements also offer something that print and in-person may not: data. Every email or social media post you share generates data. Understanding what content is open or resonates with your advisers can help you optimise your digital engagement and strengthen relationships over time. 

Find the best digital engagement tool to complement your in-person activities

The vehicles you use to reach your advisers between visits will vary depending on your organisation. Whether it’s email or social media, determine the best channel for connecting with your financial advisers online. 

Wherever you conduct digital outreach, remember to prioritise value. The most important differentiator is creating business value for an adviser. Whether you’re sharing third-party content on social media or company content in an email, make sure it helps your financial advisers advance their goals. 

Many of the digital-first tactics that wholesalers developed over the course of 2020 will retain relevance this year and beyond. As in-person meetings return, find the opportunities to strengthen digital engagement and stay top-of-mind all year round. 

If you’d like to learn more about combining in-person and digital engagement, join us for our upcoming webinar, Merging Best Practices: The Intersection of In-Person and Virtual Selling. 

The post The convergence of in-person and virtual sales in financial services appeared first on Seismic.

Welcome letter to new employees

One of the most intimate ways to make your new employee feel welcome in their new work environment is to write a welcome letter. A welcome new employee letter does not have to be sappy—but it should convey that you are excited for their arrival and that you’re confident in the results he or she will bring to the company.

A special touch for a welcome letter for your new hire is to have either the person’s boss, an executive, or even the entire company (if company size allows) sign the letter. This will show the individual that they are not only entering an environment with a welcoming manager, but also a welcoming team.

New employee welcome email

In order to make your employee feel personally connected to the company and get them used to the email communication channel of your company, a great first email to receive is a welcome letter from the person who hired them, an executive, or someone else that would seem significant. A welcome on board new employee email should include a personal touch while reflecting your company’s culture.

An interesting twist to sending just one welcome email for each new employee is to have everyone on the team email the new hire. This welcome email and new employee announcement will be a memorable moment in the new person’s career at your company and will set a precedent for their expectations of your organization’s warmth.

New employee announcement to the company

Once a new employee has been welcomed into a company on a personal level, it’s important to make sure they have been announced to and welcomed by the entire company. The next step (which is sometimes done even before a new hire starts) is to create a new hire introduction note for the other team members.

Consider including the following items in the message:

• Full name
• Location
• Team
• Role
• Key initiatives and items they’ll be working on
• Previous experience
• Ways to connect with the new hire

New employee announcement letter to customers or clients

If the new hire will be client-facing and/or have a key role that affects your company’s deliverables, be sure to send a new employee announcement letter to customer and clients once your company is made aware of the new hire. Sending a new employee announcement letter to customers is a great way to set expectations of the potential changes that could be coming to their service.

We believe that communicating this type of hire early and often is a great way to show your clients that you care about them and are constantly trying to improve your company to improve their level of service. This type of new employee announcement to customers should be sent for other key individuals as well, such as executives and board members because of their principal direction to the company. In the same way, changes in the form of departing employee announcements, employee promotion announcements, and even employee death announcements in some key roles should also be included in customer communication so that they stay abreast of what’s going on behind the scenes at your company.

Regardless of what medium you use for your new employee introductions, it will be something that your employee remembers if done right. Use the sample letter of announcement of new employee ideas above to understand what guidelines should be used to announce a new employee well. This will get your new employee integrated into your company much faster and better than not having an announcement message.

The post Free new employee announcement templates appeared first on Seismic.