Sales enablement is an umbrella term that describes a range of tools and methods that are used to increase the effectiveness of sales representatives and sales organizations. We evaluated a range of software solutions that help streamline the process, to bring you this list of the top 10 sales enablement tools to help you enable your sales team.
What Are Sales Enablement Tools?
A sales enablement is a software system or platform that provides visibility across the sales content lifecycle. With powerful scoring, search, and syncing, a sales enablement tool closes the loop between sales, marketing, and customers and also helps teams to track content performance from publication to pitch.
The sales enablement tools did not always take the form as they do now. And it took many iterations for these tools to evolve from a centralized sales portals to end-to-end sales solution, and finally into the closed-loop solution of today’s modern sales enablement tools.
These modern sales enablement tools take the idea of end-to-end much further and close the loop across sales, marketing, and the customer. Now, just one tool provides total visibility into the complete lifecycle of sales content, tracking what happens to items from the moment they are published. Analytics answers all of the key business questions about the effectiveness of the content, showing which items are available, how the content is being used, whether they are being found by the sales team, how customers engage with them, and which items are being sent to customers. The tools connect content usage with the performance of every deal, tracking which items are touched by every customer and when.
Now, let’s talk about sales.
Is your sales team ready? And before you say “yes”, just stop and think about it again. Have you done everything possible to make your sales team enabled, mobile, and prepared from the competitive marketplace of 21st century.
Consider the following;
- It takes at least 10 months for a new sales representative to become truly productive.
- 65% of sales representative can’t find content to send to their prospects.
- 90% of sales representative avoid using content because it’s outdated and/or not customizable.
- Organizations using sales enablement tools have cut their sales cycle by 18%.
- 95% of consumers buy from a sales representative that provides relevant content at each stage of the sales funnel.
But the good news is that you can reduce, reverse, or even remove those challenges with a comprehensive sales enablement tool.
How We Evaluated the Best Sales Enablement Software
We considered many factors that make sales enablement tool highly useful for the sales representatives and the sales teams, including how these tools can help to eliminate redundant steps or move the sales process forward. We also considered factors like ease of use, pricing, and what integrations are available to connect your overall sales process.
Some of the specific factors we looked at are the following:
- Ease of use: In order for these tools to help enable your complete sales process, it has to be something you’ll really use, so we evaluated the overall ease of use along with how simple the tool is to set up.
- Price and affordability: Because the overall price is a factor in terms of the ROI in any tool, we evaluated the monthly and/or any setup costs involved with each of these tools.
- Integrations: While not every sales enablement tool has to integrate with other business applications, but the most useful tools are the ones that work effectively with your existing set of sales management and customer relationship management (CRM) software.
- Overall features and functionality: Finally, we evaluated how each tool helps enable your sales team to perform better on a daily basis as a result of the features and functionality built into each software solution.
- Customer Support: When you rely on software solutions to help you make more sales, it’s better to know that someone will be behind it and provide help when something goes wrong. So, we evaluated each tool’s overall customer support and training options.
Guru
Guru is a sales enablement software solution that helps to activate your organization’s collective intelligence by providing knowledge before you have to search for it. Hence, it helps sales representatives close the deals quickly, save tie, and make smarter decisions.
Guru also features an extension for Google Chrome browser and slack integration that makes it simple to easily access your company’s information, even when you’re busy getting the work done. This helps to enable sales teams as it puts the standard operating procedures (SOPs) and best practices within reach while your sales team is working on creating new relationships with your customers in more meaningful ways.
Pros:
- Cards are an intuitive knowledge-management technique
- Seamlessly integrates within organizations
- Gives the team access to additional information
- Adopts company-wide with maximum efficacy
Cons:
- Sometimes too many competing voices
- It can be time-intensive to verify cards
- The cards can contain incorrect information if improperly managed
- The web version of the platform has UI issues
Pricing:
Key Sales Enablement Features:
- Cataloguing and categorization
- Collaboration
- Discussion boards
- Content management
- A self-service portal
Highspot
Highspot provides a suite of advanced sales enablement software solutions that helps to improve marketing effectiveness while they increase the effectiveness of sales. This software solution has very positive reviews on a range of platforms, and it also boasts one of the highest adoption rates for sales representatives.
The sales teams using Highspot can quickly find the best-performing content and customize it for each opportunity, and marketers gain insights on content effectiveness and use to develop a data-driven strategy. Highspot has global support in 125 countries, 90% average monthly recurring usage, and is also a very trusted solution for sales enablement.
Pros:
- Easy to organize
- Is intuitive and simple to use
- Has great search functionality
- Can integrate with Salesforce
Cons:
- A lack of analytical capabilities
- A mobile platform that’s not user-friendly
- The ability to easily contribute files and ideas that create too much noise
- Outdated troubleshooting content
Key Sales Enablement Features:
- Lead management
- Collaboration
- Contact management
- Presentation management
Veelo
Veelo is a sales enablement software solution that increases the sales performance by predicatively guiding sellers on what to say, know, and do. This software solution puts the right knowledge pieces in front of the sales teams to empower them to sell more.
Pros:
- Intuitive and simple to use
- Makes it easy for sales teams to access key information
- Great integration with Salesforce
- Share documents both internally and externally
Cons:
- A few erroneous steps in terms of uploading documents
- The search functionality has some bugs
- Sometimes difficult to locate important content
- The tool can be somewhat expensive for some teams
Pricing:
Key sales enablement features:
- Collaboration
- Presentation management
- Content management
- Training management
Membrain
Membrain is a sales enablement software solution that integrates collateral, information, and guides within the sales process to help sales representatives achieve constant growth. And this helps the sales representative to be more effective while cutting the costs of their sales training.
Pros:
- A robust support system for sales
- Consistent and useful updates
- Brings together details and critical information
- A simple user interface
Cons:
- Reporting metrics can be difficult to establish
- A lack of email customization options
- Cleaning data can be problematic and time-consuming
- The price is steep for most organizations
Pricing:
The basic pricing starts at $89/month for a contract period of one year. And their add-ons are as follows;
- Dynamic process tools- $20/per user
- Prospecting campaigns- $20/per user
- Sales analytics+ – $10/per user
- Content hub- $20/per user
- The clearpath promise- $5000 one-time fee/per team
- API- $500/per month
Key sales enablement features:
- Collaboration
- Goals/quote management
- Content management
- Territory management
Outreach
Outreach is a sales enablement software solution that helps the sales representatives to drive growth with every single interaction. Outreach empowers sales professionals to optimize the customer lifecycle, collaborate at scale make sales representatives more productive.
Pros:
- Boosts productivity throughout the team
- The ability to order prospects into sequences
- Makes it simple to schedule emails
- Sophisticated analytics
Cons:
- Some features lack full functionality
- There are some UI and UX issues
- The price is inhibitive for some companies
- New users will see a somewhat intimidating learning curve
Key sales enablement features:
- Collaboration
- Lead management
- Content management
- Meeting management
- Document management
Mindmatrix
Mindmatrix provides a suite of sales enablement software solutions from within a single platform. Mindmatrix sales enablement software solution provides a wide range of functionality to help the sales team members effectively manage their assets and build deep connections with their prospects.
Mindmatrix provides channel marketing, Partner Relationship Management, asset management, sales enablement, and marketing automation. Mindmatrix platform enables sales representatives to engage, identify, nurture, and convert prospects from just one central dashboard. With sales training and on-boarding, asset recommendations, mobile accessibility, playbooks, sales reports, detailed prospect view and analytics, personalized sales asset generation, social selling, and contract e-signing, Mindmatrix equips the sales teams with everything they need and much more. Make smarter decisions, build smarter teams, and sell faster and smarter than ever before.
Pros:
- Increases productivity and improves results
- Makes it easy to find assets
- Easy to use with great customization
- Responsive customer support
Cons:
- There is some difficulty importing uncleaned data
- Some reports of difficulty emailing certain providers
- A steep learning curve for admins
- A lack of customization options
Key sales enablement features:
- Sales asset management
- Training and onboarding
- Social selling
- Sales playbooks
- Proposal/presentation creation
GetAccept
GetAccept is a sales enablement software solution that provides sales representatives with total control over their documents to reach the customers at the right time. GetAccept puts a wide range of features at the disposal of sales representatives like live chat, video, document tracking, proposal design, and much more.
Pros:
- Fast and performant
- Demonstrable impact on increased revenues
- Easy to use with a soft learning curve
- Helps to close more deals
Cons:
- Limited lack of milestone updates
- Some confusion when it comes to integrations
- Clients sometimes misunderstand the platform
- The platform has the potential to send too many notifications
Pricing:
Key sales enablement features:
- Auto reminders
- Document analytics
- Customizable templates
- Task progress tracking
ClearSlide
ClearSlide is a complete sales enablement and engagement software solution that helps to integrate communications, content, and actionable insights. ClearSlide helps sales representatives to make each interaction count and create great customer experiences.
Pros:
- Read receipts and analytics
- Uploading presentations is simple
- The ability to create more targeted emails
- Access to presentations is easy
Cons:
- The process of creating invitation links is tiresome
- A three month notice period is required to end a contract
- Some difficulties when it comes to repurposing original materials
- Time outs happen occasionally
Pricing:
Key sales enablement features:
- Collaboration
- Document management
- Content management
- Meeting management
SoloFire
SoloFire is a sales enablement software solution that provides sales representatives the ability to unlock their potential and maximize content. SoloFire software solution is aimed at field-based sales representatives and helps them to send the right content at the right time.
Pros:
- Access marketing tools anywhere on any device
- Sophisticated and comprehensible analytics
- Track the activity of prospects
- Content can be updated in the platform
Cons:
- Lots of notifications
- Not the clearest experience for customers
- A lack of integrations
- Some key metrics are missing
Pricing:
The basic pricing is $500 per month for a team of 20 members. You can contact them for detailed pricing.
Key sales enablement features:
- Instant lead creation and content sharing
- Sophisticated agenda creation
- Content discovery functionality
- The ability to customize and adjust the tool
(H2)Seismic:
Seismic is a sales enablement software solution that helps leading enterprise-grade teams to properly optimize the sales process and find the right sales content. Specifically, it helps sales representatives to focus more on closing bigger deals and on spending more time with customers.
Pros:
- A strong community feature
- A high-quality and intuitive design
- Sophisticated analytics
- A gentle learning curve
Cons:
- Some technical glitches
- Limited integration
- Challenging scaling process
- Sometimes formatting errors when emailing
Key Sales Enablement Features:
- Content management
- Proposal management
- Document management
- Meeting management
- Presentation management
Conclusion:
Giving your sales teams the tools that they need perform their best is one of the most critical aspects of sales enablement. The software solution in this blog post provides the feature that you need to improve effectiveness and efficiency at each stage of your sales process, which results in increased sales revenue and more conversions.
