SalesTechStar Interview with Mark Magnacca, President and Co-founder at Allego

Mark Magnacca, President and Co-founder at Allego, a leading sales training software provider shares more about the company’s latest Allego 6 release while diving into a few effective sales and marketing alignment tips in this chat:

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Hi Mark, welcome to this chat! Tell us about your journey through the years…we’d love to especially hear about Allego 6…

I’ve been in sales and sales training for over 20 years now. I worked as a sales coach, author and was the president and founder of Insight Development, a sales and presentation training firm for the financial services industry, where I quickly discovered that video was a powerful tool to improve product knowledge for better competency and consistency. The problem was, existing mobile and video technology was clunky and didn’t allow an easy way to share. To solve this gap, I approached my co-founder Yuchun Lee, a well-respected technology leader and entrepreneur in 2013, and from there the concept of Allego was born.

Our most recent release, Allego 6, is an evolution of that initial concept. With a new modern interface and more comprehensive features, we’ve made sales enablement easier, more intuitive and data-driven. 

The newest capabilities focus on training and onboarding in the virtual world, making it easier than ever for distributed teams to quickly learn critical skills and find the most relevant content at the moment of need. The redesigned platform is an all-in-one solution for learning, content and collaboration, so sales enablement teams who previously managed multiple systems now have one go-to platform to manage all of their needs.

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How are you seeing sales / sales tech platforms in the marketplace innovating their offerings to align with marketing-sales needs as one?

Sales and marketing alignment is critical for any organization, and many sales tech platforms are making it easier to meet the needs of both teams. 

This is especially true when it comes to sales enablement and sales content management. For example, marketing teams need to make sure the content they generate is not only discoverable, but useful to sales teams. Many platforms today allow sales managers, sales enablement pros and marketers to gather and mine analytics from coaching, collateral usage, and call performance metrics to tie actions with outcomes. They can also gain insight into which sales content pieces are moving the needle, as well as which sales conversation topics, learning content, and exercises are correlated with success. 

Once you know what content is working— and what’s not —you can make sales collateral even more effective and stop wasting time on activities that don’t get results.

A few predictions on how you feel the martech and salestech market is set to shape up and more so, a few key highlights from key innovations you’ve come across from the global marketplace?

As remote work has become the norm, virtual selling is here to stay. With teams working remotely comes a greater need for easily accessible and universal tools that can provide reps with new information. This may be content for internal use and education, or compelling collateral that can be personalized and shared with prospects . 

As sales managers or enablement leads work with their virtual teams, the approach to coaching will need to change as well, whether that be peer-to-peer coaching or manager-to-rep. No longer will companies be able to rely on manual call recordings or walking the sales floor for one-off feedback as this simply doesn’t scale.

AI can play a key role in these processes, but intelligent technology isn’t limited to these use-cases. From small uses such as chatbot and schedule planners to larger, conglomerated uses like digital call centers, AI will soon become the backbone of organizations that will push us toward a new, positive direction.

Outside of AI, however, the tech stacks organizations are using will also change over the next decade. Analyst Josh Bersin reported that on average, organizations today are using 23 different learning tools and platforms, double what we saw a decade ago. Much of these may have been running on the promise of problem-solving and productivity boosts, but when sales and marketing teams are bouncing from dashboard to dashboard, how much efficiency gains are companies actually realizing? Consolidation is on the horizon, and the tools that clearly solve revenue-generating problems will remain. 

A little change of pace…how have sales processes been for Allego’s team through this pandemic and a few key sales learnings you’d like to share with us during this time?

We’re fortunate that our own platform keeps our sales and marketing teams connected and productive, especially while we’ve all been working remotely. We were already using Allego pre-pandemic to share customer win stories, competitive insights and best practices as part of everyday informal learning and collaboration. Now, we not only rely on Allego for peer-learning, but the asynchronous video sharing capability gives us a welcome break from countless Zoom calls. 

We’re also using asynchronous video to engage with customers and prospects. Using short videos to set the stage for an upcoming meeting, or follow up with requested information reduces Zoom fatigue and maximizes time spent together on scheduled calls. While live video conferences are a good substitution for in-person meetings, mixing it up with an old-fashioned phone call or sharing a recorded video on occasion is a welcome change of pace. 

Can you throw light on what it really takes to improve and shorten the typical B2B sales cycle in today’s remote selling world? And a few sales technologies you feel help most?

Having the right sales enablement tools gives your sellers access to the right resources and processes to help them sell more effectively. It also maximizes every point of engagement with buyers and improves the buying experience. Part of that improved experience involves content that is tailored and personalized for the buyer, which can lead to reduced sales cycles.  

When it comes to keeping track of information while you’re working a deal, it helps to set up a virtual salesroom and give the customer or prospect access. You can store meeting recordings, demos, collateral, sales decks and more. With deals being done virtually today, the concept of a virtual salesroom helps manage the relationship and can also help shorten the sales. 

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A few must-dos that every C-level executive/CEO in SaaS should follow through 2021?

Start by documenting what you have learned that has helped you and be prepared for the next unexpected thing. We all learned how to be agile and pivot our businesses to survive and thrive in 2020. Now that we’ve adapted to the new normal, 2021 will be about continued growth, which is only achieved when you’re able to adapt to your customers’ needs and the business climate around you.