B2B sales industry is in a dramatic state of flux, amidst exciting news of partnerships, acquisitions, funding, and rebranding. In the latest announcement related to B2B sales enablement industry, Seismic announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire SAVO Group. Following the announcement, we sat down with Seismic’s founder and CEO, Doug Winter to drill into the current state of B2B Sales Enablement and how SAVO group would benefit customers on a global scale.
Acquisition of SAVO Group Impacts Dynamic of B2B Sales Enablement in 2018
Doug said, “It’s certainly been very busy, but we are more excited than ever about having SAVO join our team. Everything we have seen from their employees and customers has reinforced the fact that this is an incredibly exciting time for both Seismic and sales enablement, and one of the major milestones in our company’s history.”
Delving more details about the current state of B2B Sales Enablement, Doug added, “Sales enablement is one of the fastest growing practices in sales and marketing today. SiriusDecisions found that 74% of enterprises increased their sales enablement budget in 2017. The reason why is because it works. By aligning marketing and sales teams to ensure that sellers have all the content, information, and training they need to be the best they can be at their jobs, collaboration increases, sales cycles decrease, and both teams can pinpoint their impact on the bottom line.”
SAVO Group Empowers Seismic Customers to Meet Sales Enablement Goals
We asked Doug about the benefits and potential disruptions in the B2B Sales Enablement industry, following SAVO’s entry as a Seismic company. Doug said, “With SAVO joining Seismic, we are giving our customers unprecedented levels of resources to be leaders in this exciting space and in this exciting time, redefining the potential of sales and marketing in their respective regions and industries. SAVO was the first sales enablement provider and the industry originator. They bring an incredible level of expertise that will be a huge boon to our customers’ sales enablement goals.”
Adding more details and context to Seismic’s latest acquisition to fortify its hold as a B2B Sales Enablement leader, company’s CEO said, “Prior to the acquisition, Seismic already had more than 150 employees in product and engineering alone, larger than any of competitors’ total headcount. By joining forces with SAVO Group, we are now roughly three times the size of our next largest competitor in the space.”
Doug added, “For customers, this means an even faster rate at which we can innovate our industry-leading product and respond to customer feedback. It means an unprecedented level of customer support that will help them exceed their enablement goals. The SAVO and Seismic customer bases are also remarkably complementary. We are going to take full advantage of that and find even more ways for them to help each other and provide each other with new sales enablement best practices.”
The Convergence of Sales Intelligence and Sales Enablement Technologies
A majority of marketing and sales leaders in the B2B tech industry see a rampaging trend in the intelligence and enablement tools unifying to deliver better, refined context along the seller’s journey. Doug defines this approaching trend with better clarity. He said, “Ultimately, sales intelligence is about the accumulation and analysis of data to help sellers have more productive conversations with buyers. In this sense, we already consider Seismic an incredibly intelligent platform. Our customers are able to take data from essentially any other source and use it to make smarter recommendations as to what pieces of content and information are most relevant for sellers in any situation they are in with a buyer, at any stage of the sales cycle.”
He added, “When it comes to leveraging data integration and machine learning algorithms to equip sellers with what they need to win, we see Seismic as being by far the smartest sales enablement platform available.”
Empowering Customers to Sync Data Insights for Better Sales Enablement
Doug said, “Every employee using the Seismic platform—whether they’re a marketer or a sales rep–has the ability to become smarter and more effective in their jobs through Seismic’s data insights. As I mentioned earlier, it is through data analysis from a host of sources—whether that is a CRM, marketing automation platform, or any other third-party data source—that the most relevant content is distributed to the most relevant seller for upcoming interactions with buyers.”
Sellers can use Seismic’s LiveSend technology to see exactly how a buyer interacts with a piece of content, including how long they looked at each individual page and whether they shared it with others, helping produce more relevant and beneficial future conversations.
Doug added, “Marketers and sales managers can look at content performance data in aggregate to both make the right improvements to content and more intelligently coach other sales reps about how top performers are using content to accelerate sales cycles.”
Focal Point: Seismic’s Road Map for Sales Technologies in 2018-2019
We will continue to invest heavily in product innovation, and the SAVO acquisition will help us do that. Customers can look forward to Seismic even further leveraging data insights and analytics to help their sales team be the best they can be and marketers to truly make an impact on the bottom line. We have some exciting new features in the roadmap that we can’t wait to start showing off.
AI and Machine Learning Shaping the Destiny of Sales Enablement
When it comes to our platform, we look at emerging technologies as helping in one of two ways: they can help automate previously manual and repetitive tasks for our customers, or they can make our customers even smarter than they are today. Machine learning and AI have already proven to be particularly effective for us in both those ways, and that’s viewpoint through which we will evaluate other technologies going forward.
