Tell us a little about your inclination towards Sales Technology. What made Mediafly the right fit to acquire Alinean?
Unlike other Sales Technology, that focused on readying sales reps for client engagements back-office, Mediafly was very focused on how to best empower the “moment of truth,” reshaping how a seller engaged with a prospect.
At Alinean, we had created a methodology for better communicating your value story and platform to develop and deliver interactive tools, both designed to reshape the prospect engagement, so the fit was perfect. We are now able to work with prospects on refining their value storytelling and leveraging data and analytics to quantify business outcomes and TCO advantages, all within the context of, with Mediafly, Sales Content Management and CRM.
What role does customer engagement play in sales today and how is Mediafly changing the sales Industry?
Today’s buyer is struggling with a buying journey involving more players, taking twice as long as expected, and often, after all the hard work, resulting in no decision. Sellers who can help buyers navigate the ever more complex and frustrating journey will be the winners.
Mediafly has tools that turn a good seller into an excellent concierge, required by today’s buyer, helping sellers get the right content to the buyer to keep the decision process moving forward with all the decision makers. But this isn’t enough. Mediafly goes one step further, combining data and analytics with interactive tools (via Alinean acquisition) to help co-create content, recommendations, solutions and value.
Diagnostics help uncover issues and benchmark for priority. ROI tools help quantify the cost of do nothing and value of change. TCO tools quantify savings versus the legacy status quo and competitive alternatives.
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How do you perceive the differences between MarTech and SalesTech?
Marketing and Sales need to be coordinated and work together. Marketing Technology is typically focused on top of the funnel — how to identify, target, generate and nurture leads. Sales Technology is focused more on bottom of the funnel, helping sellers to better engage with buyers.
What is the hardest part of being a technology evangelist?
I am more than a technology evangelist, in that we have developed an approach — Evolved Selling, a method for reshaping and empowering sales and buyer enablement, and it is this that I am evangelizing.
The hard part of being an evangelist is getting prospects to sometimes think beyond just an immediate solution and RFP process, and to think bigger. It’s not about Sales Technology, but how that technology can reshape the buyer engagement, and in this, technology is an essential component, but part of a bigger method and change.
In order to help with this, we offer Reimagine workshops, onsite immersive Design Think sessions with prospects and existing customers, where we co-create a new approach and interactive tools, building rapid prototypes in order to show the “art of the possible”.
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What trends are you currently exploring in the Sales Technology landscape?
One of the elements we are working on is Content Scoring, a structured method to understand which content is not just being used the most, but how it is consumed and drives better outcomes. With this Content Scoring and Machine Learning, we are able to better recommend adjacent and the next step content to help enable the buyer’s journey and get from “Do Nothing” to “Yes” faster and more effectively.
Could you name some tools that Mediafly’s products can integrate with?
Sales Technology cannot be an island, so integrations are key.
We announced a partnership recently with Lessonly in sales readiness, to help improve the capability, credibility and confidence of sellers with customer engagements and content. For example, assuring that lessons or certifications are leveraged prior to using certain presentations, content or tools. In sales readiness, we also integrate with another leader, MindTickle.
CRM integrations are vital, in order to tie the use of content, tools, sharing and collaboration into the sales process, forecasting and outcome measurement. We integrate with SAP, Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics to share account and opportunity data, activity, discovery benchmarks, analysis reports and outcomes. Based on this data, activities can be better captured and tracked, next best content can be recommended, and intelligence can tie activity, content and tools back to outcomes.
How do enterprises such as yours infuse AI in Sales Technology?
AI and Machine Learning is starting to play a role in Sales Technology, and will only get better. It is important that you begin experimenting and leveraging it today in order to keep your sellers and sales enablement from being disrupted.
Some ways we leverage AI:
Sellers are not great at entering data into their CRM system. Mediafly provides an AI that examines the sellers’ calendar and CRM client records, automatically recording the client meeting in CRM, along with the content that was used and consumed by the client. This can help with improved forecasting, validating meetings activity and completeness of the engagement, and content scoring, further leveraging machine learning for best next step recommendations.
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As a business leader, do you think AI is the future of Sales Technology?
Yes and no.
AI will play a critical role in better logging activities, content usage and sharing, improving understanding and leveraging this intelligence to drive outcomes. Efficiency and effectiveness can be improved.
No in that there is talk of AI replacing sales reps altogether, and we view the death of a sales rep as highly overrated. Think of a real estate agent and Zillow. There was talk of the intelligence of Zillow replacing real estate agents. Instead, there are now more agents than ever before. Collaboration and co-creation of value with a seller as key that AI cannot replace.
Could you name some apps/tools that you use in your day-to-day life?
I use our Mediafly platform every day to engage with and collaborate with prospects and customers.
Google docs and mail. Zoom meetings. Slack for collaboration. LinkedIn for social.
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If not into Sales Technology, what would be your alternate career choice?
I love neuroscience and how we can leverage knowledge of the brain and decision making to drive outcomes and performance.
We leverage this in our approach for selling, but I would pivot this for personal improvement and performance coach, leveraging the power of mind, body and spirit to drive improvements in our professional and personal lives every day.
Whose answers to these questions would like to read (from the industry)?
Thank You, Tom, for answering all our questions. We hope to see you again, soon.
