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Brainshark to Present New Sales Onboarding Strategies at Gartner Sales & Marketing Conference 2018

Brainshark, Inc., delivering SaaS-based sales enablement and readiness solutions, will present new approaches and insights to improve sales onboarding at the Gartner Sales & Marketing Conference 2018, Oct. 9-11, at the ARIA Las Vegas. More than 1,000 sales and marketing leaders will attend the event – focused on helping B2B professionals maximize their sales talent, overcome sales productivity and competitive challenges, and improve their sales enablement initiatives.

Among the salient obstacles sales organizations face today is how to get new reps ready – and keep them ready – to sell. The status quo isn’t working. In fact, for more than 60 percent of firms, sales onboarding programs are not meeting management expectations, according to the Sales Management Association.

Brainshark’s chief readiness officer, Jim Ninivaggi, will present a new methodology to help companies structure sales onboarding programs that foster knowledge retention, and improve reps’ time-to-productivity and results. Session details include:

Title: “The Agile Sales Onboarding Methodology: An Introduction”

When: Oct. 9, from 11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. PDT

Highlights: Whether they’re blasted by the proverbial fire hose at boot camp, or learning as they go, sellers often get rushed into the field before they’re truly ready to sell – resulting in lost deals, damage to the brand, and frustration for both buyers and sellers. Ninivaggi will describe a fresh and effective approach, which he recently detailed in a Forbesarticle. Borrowing from agile software development principles (no coding involved!), sales organizations can create onboarding programs that are flexible and responsive, and enable reps to achieve key milestones quickly – so they’re ready to close more deals. Ninivaggi will also discuss how technology can help power and measure the agile onboarding process.

“Sales onboarding is typically the top priority for any sales enablement leader – but for far too long, the programs haven’t driven the desired results,” Ninivaggi said. “It’s time for a change, and there are terrific parallels between what works in software development and in sales onboarding. With agile sales onboarding, reps develop skills – mapped chronologically to key activities – and companies can measure what matters. The result is a better-trained sales force that’s maximally prepared to capitalize on all buyer interactions.”

Brainshark Demonstrations
At the Gartner Sales & Marketing Conference, Brainshark will also demonstrate its full suite of award-winning sales readiness solutions from booth #209. Recently named “Best Sales Enablement Software for Enterprises” in the inaugural MarTech Breakthrough Awards, Brainshark provides solutions for sales content authoring, training, coachingand more. Attendees can also see, in action, Brainshark’s new Machine Analysis offering – an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered engine that improves sales coaching and earned a gold Stevie® Award in The 2018 International Business Awards®.

For more information on Brainshark’s acclaimed sales readiness solutions, please see www.brainshark.com.

To learn more about how to ramp up reps – faster and better – with an agile approach to sales onboarding, please see:

About Brainshark 
Brainshark sales readiness software equips businesses with the training, coaching and content needed to prepare salespeople when, where and how they work. With Brainshark, companies can: enable sales teams with on-demand training that accelerates onboarding and keeps reps up-to-speed; validate readiness with sales coaching and practice that ensures reps master your message; and empower sales organizations with rich, dynamic content that can be created quickly, updated easily, and accessed anywhere. Thousands of companies – including more than half of the Fortune 100 – rely on Brainshark to identify and close performance gaps, and get better results from their sales enablement initiatives. Learn more at www.brainshark.com.

Media Contact:
Brendan Cournoyer
Email: press@brainshark.com 
Phone: 781.370.8255

SOURCE Brainshark, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.brainshark.com

SOURCE URL : https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/brainshark-to-present-new-sales-onboarding-strategies-at-gartner-sales–marketing-conference-2018-300709612.html

Also Read –Peak Launches AI Platform-as-a-Service to Improve Enterprise AI Deployment Success Rates

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 Sales & Marketing

LeadMD & Drift Reveal Surprising Findings with Sales & Marketing

Joint research gives business leaders actionable insights into alignment creation and performance impact

LeadMD, the world’s leading performance marketing consultancy, today announces the results of its Sales & Marketing Alignment Report (SMAR). The report was conducted in partnership with the leading conversational marketing platform Drift and leveraged hundreds of executives’ feedback in order to produce a study focused on quantifying the term “sales and marketing alignment” and distilling the concept down into actionable tactics.

The report provides insight into the actions, techniques and tactics used by high performing and highly aligned sales and marketing teams versus low performing teams. The research consisted of two cohorts, one in sales and one in marketing. Each cohort consisted of 350 senior to C-level professionals of companies with a minimum annual revenue of $25 million. The findings are notable and lend insight into this previously nebulous concept.

“We hear all the time about sales and marketing alignment, but there hasn’t yet been a universal definition around it or a clear conclusion as to whether it truly impacts business outcomes,” says Justin Gray, CEO of LeadMD. “After conducting this survey, we can say with certainty that sales and marketing alignment – real alignment around the right things, like the customer – absolutely does improve business outcomes. We were also surprised by some of our findings as they refute a lot of the so-called ‘best practices’ which have become prevalent in B2B. Now we have a baseline we can benchmark against annually, to continue to learn more about the role alignment plays in revenue growth, and how businesses should be executing in order to be successful.”

The report introduces two success vectors which are irrefutable: Pipeline Creation and Revenue Performance. By comparing alignment perceptions, activities and tactics against these performance vectors, the results are anchored in real tangible outcomes. As a result, LeadMD is announcing a new index called the Sales and Marketing Alignment Index (SMAX). This index is also now available to the market at large as a means of continuing data collection; with the output serving as an actionable roadmap for businesses that desire to achieve alignment in their go-to-market teams.

The research found that leaders in sales and marketing alignment shared six primary focuses that fall into two categories:

  1. Customer Centricity – By setting key performance indicators (KPIs) around customer retention/satisfaction and new bookings, and performing joint customer visits, the top performers’ sales and marketing teams all united around the customer first.
  2. Internal Alignment – The leaders in interdepartmental alignment also devoted significant effort to creating and maintaining shared goals and outputs. They prioritized physical proximity between sales and marketing teams and engaged in joint storytelling, joint in-person strategy & planning sessions and joint budgeting & hiring.

Conversely, laggards in sales and marketing alignment repeatedly demonstrated two behaviors:

  1. They didn’t share technology and its underlying data.
  2. Their KPIs were not customer-centric.

“While many sales and marketing teams believe their teams are aligned, our data proves otherwise,” says Mark Kilens, VP of Content and Community at Drift. “Bringing this to light is the first step in ensuring true alignment, and I’m excited to see what publishing these findings can do to help.”

Surprisingly, the construction industry led the pack in sales and marketing alignment, while less surprisingly, healthcare lagged at the back of the pack.

This survey ultimately exposed a few final takeaways:

  • Alignment perception is unreliable – and alignment itself shouldn’t be the goal; tangible results should be. (i.e. performance in both pipeline creation and revenue conversion)
  • Effective alignment focuses both on the customer and intentional internal collaboration

To learn more about what constitutes true sales and marketing alignment, and how to use it to your business’ advantage, download the full report.

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 Sales & Marketing

Premiere Digital Expands Sales & Marketing Team and Hires EMEA Exec for Global Business

The LA-based Media Services, Distribution and Technology Solutions Company hires a number of seasoned media execs and builds out Growth and Support teams as digital media consumption continues to be on the rise.

Premiere Digital, the media services, distribution and technology solutions company officially announced today, the expansion of the organization in Sales & Marketing and emergence into the UK. Seasoned industry executives have been hired to grow, market and build the company on a global basis. Michele Edelman has been hired as Head of Growth; Jeff Goldman, US-based has been promoted to SVP of Growth and Development and Abigail Hughes has been hired in the UK and will be overseeing the EMEA as VP of Growth.

Michele Edelman is an experienced sales and marketing professional with over 20 years in the Digital Media Distribution and Entertainment industry. She has been involved in ground-breaking initiatives that shaped the digital landscape and drove rapid growth at a global level. In her newly created sales and marketing role, Michele is responsible for the company’s mission and vision as well as positioning them for the ongoing future of digital distribution and media services. She will execute and contribute to leveraging the company’s core competencies driven around their successful media services, distribution, and supply chain SaaS tools and technology, STOREFRONT and PDX. Michele joins Premiere Digital from Vubiquity. Prior to this, she was a long-time executive at Warner Bros. in Home Entertainment and Digital Distribution. Edelman will oversee the Sales and Marketing teams and report directly to Steve Rosenberg, Chief Commercial Officer.

Jeff Goldman has been in television and film sales for over 10 years, most recently with 3 Ball Entertainment as Chief Business Officer, and Eyeworks, now a part of WB International Television, where he rose to Managing Director responsible for multiple business tracks. Jeff’s knowledge and experience in IP, Rights, Distribution and Marketing made him the perfect fit to oversee all the 16 Eyeworks International territories. Jeff ‘knows’ television and thrives in the day-to-day deal-making with content owners and digital video platforms of all sizes. Whether it be standard distribution or strategic aggregations deals that offer the ability to earn revenue outside traditional models, Jeff is industrious. Prior to his TV sales days, he spent some time at William Morris in the Scripted TV department.

Abigail Hughes demonstrates the strides Premiere Digital is taking into global expansion with her addition as VP of Growth, EMEA. Abigail is a well-respected global supply chain and operations expert with significant experience at top entertainment companies, working with Sales teams and customers to optimize end-to-end content distribution. Her career includes BBC Studios, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Endemol Shine. In this newly created position, she will lead Premiere Digital’s global expansion in Europe, working from Cambridge, England, one of the world’s most important technology centers.

“Knowing our products were well received in the market with customers was our priority, so Premiere has been on the ‘silent’ rise. Now is the right time to expand the organization and make this announcement. I want to congratulate everyone stepping in and taking on new roles,” said CEO Mark Lazar.

“With the rapid growth of our supply chain products, we realized a world-class team to develop, market and sell them on a global scale is what we needed,” said CCO, Steve Rosenberg. “We’ve brought together collective knowledge and years of combined experience into one place, and I’m excited for what comes next.”

The addition of these seasoned executives will position Premiere Digital at a significant advantage during this time of growth and transformation for the company as it remains on the forefront of product innovation and digital distribution.

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 Sales & Marketing

Rackspace & Google Cloud deliver retail sales & marketing efficiency

ackspace Technology™ (NASDAQ:RXT) has expanded its support and services for Eagle Eye, by migrating the retail SaaS technology firm’s digital marketing platform, Eagle Eye AIR, to Google Cloud, resulting in a 30% improvement in speed for point of sales transactions.

Eagle Eye AIR powers some of the world’s largest customer loyalty and marketing promotion programmes. The platform integrates several business management and sales systems to help retailers deploy hyper-personalized campaigns to drive customer acquisition and retention.

The expanded relationship between Eagle Eye and Rackspace Technology comes at a time when retail is under great pressure due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. The ability to manage promotions during the pandemic has been critical to Eagle Eye’s support of retailers, especially during times of panic buying and stock level depletion, when it was important that promotions didn’t exacerbate the problem.

Rackspace Technology expertise and management allowed Eagle Eye to quickly migrate to Google Cloud. From there, Eagle Eye enabled retailers to oversee and manage their promotions in real time. In addition, Eagle Eye has adopted a more cloud native IT model, adding Google BigQuery and Datastore to its current cloud environment. As a result, Eagle Eye reports higher up time, availability and response times, leading to a 40% decrease in support calls.

As a leading global multicloud expert, serving customers in 120 countries worldwide, Rackspace Technology has supported Eagle Eye’s ambitions for international growth. Rackspace Technology is able to provide identical capabilities, technology and availability in all markets where it operates, providing Eagle Eye with a consistent user experience. Eagle Eye recently won its first United States client, Southeastern Grocers, along with a retailer in New Zealand, which were both deployed rapidly due to the ability to automate the build of cloud environments, providing consistency in user experience globally.

“It’s never been more important for retailers to use technology solutions such as Eagle Eye AIR to delight their customers and to foster loyalty. Thanks to Rackspace Technology, we migrated our platform to Google Cloud in a matter of months rather than years and have increased our global footprint dramatically saving us millions of pounds in our ambition to become cloud native,” said Steve Rothwell, Founder and CTO, Eagle Eye. “We no longer need to manage hardware and data centres and so have embraced the world of DevOps and agile platform management to run a truly 24/7 global operations.”

“During the global pandemic businesses are putting their resources under a microscope, which is accelerating the need for digital transformations. Retailers are facing heightened pressure to deliver compelling digital experiences, and to do that they are turning to providers like Google Cloud,” said Mahesh Desai, Chief Relationship Officer, Rackspace Technology. “Our cloud expertise has enabled Eagle Eye to keep its focus on its customers whilst we accelerate their cloud journey.”

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 B2B Commerce

Oracle Helps Organizations Tackle B2B Omnichannel Sales and Commerce Challenges

By Katrina Gosek, vice president of product portfolio strategy, Oracle CX Sales & Commerce

Sales and digital commerce leaders from across industries are not just asking how to better connect sales and purchasing processes in the current environment – they are also asking about how new approaches can give them a long-term competitive advantage.

The need to rethink existing approaches was underlined in our recent study with Denis Pombriant, a well-known CRM analyst. The study, “Getting Past the Breaking Point,” found that traditional CRM systems are simply not working and are seen more like a burden than a resource. And with findings such as 66% of sellers would rather clean the bathroom or stand in line at the DMV than updating their CRM system; it’s no wonder something is broken.

The problems with traditional CRM systems are only one component of today’s complex sales and commerce challenges, but the results do point to the need for a more connected omnichannel sales relationship for businesses. At the heart of this approach lies the need to bring front-office channels and back-office applications together on a unified platform that can provide one view of the customer and business. This not only helps direct sales teams move the right opportunities forward and close deals faster but also helps connect buyers more closely to the sales experience online.

With this in mind, we have introduced a number of new sales and commerce innovations within Oracle Fusion Cloud Customer Experience to improve the virtual selling and buying experience.

Improved Virtual Selling Experience

  • Predictive Lead Scoring: Helps sellers focus their efforts on the strongest opportunities and where they will have the most impact. It does this by using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate a probability score that shows a seller how likely a lead will close based on first-party and historic lead data such as past interactions, product purchases, and account profile data.
  • New User Experience: Helps sellers improve efficiency and accelerate sales cycles with a new user experience that adapts to the seller’s role and gives action-driven prompts to focus the seller and remove the guesswork. The new CX Sales Mobile application showcases Oracle’s Redwood UX design philosophy for natural, intelligent interactions on-to-go.
  • Streamlined Sales Processes: A new integration between Microsoft Teams and Oracle CX Sales lets sellers work in familiar collaboration tools without worrying about data loss or duplication. In addition, we continue to build on the integration between CX Sales and Oracle CPQ to give sellers the ability to start, search for, and finish quotes and proposals within the Oracle CX Sales user interface.
  • Advanced Sales Forecasting: A new sales planning dashboard helps sellers make better decisions with views of evolving forecast trends and complete revenue models. The dashboard helps provide a level of accuracy and predictability to the sales planning and forecasting with data sourced from ERP actuals and real-time CRM pipeline.

Improved Virtual Buying Experience

  • New Customer Intelligence Capabilities: New integrations between CX Commerce and Unity, our Customer Data Platform, help businesses leverage online purchasing behavior and data through the rest of the customer journey with other types of data (demographic, IoT, 3rd party enrichment). CX Commerce also now connects natively to Oracle’s Customer Data Management system linking online sales to a customer’s master record for automated data profiling and enrichment across channels. Finally, new AI capabilities within Oracle CX Commerce improve the customer buying experience with optimized and embedded recommendations and search.
  • Streamlined Configuration Management Capabilities: Help businesses make even the most complex goods and services available for online purchasing giving B2B buyers the ability to configure their own packages and services online. In addition, proposals started online can be seamlessly passed to direct sellers if ahigh-touch engagement is required.
  • New Subscription Management Capabilities: Help businesses quickly and easily launch subscription business models and make revenue more predictable by bringing together Oracle CX Commerce, CPQ, and Subscription Management.

New Commerce and Content Capabilities: A new integration between Oracle CX Commerce and Oracle CX Content gives buyers the product content and information they need to guide and enrich self-service purchasing decisions.

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 B2B Commerce

B2B Ecommerce Platform Znode Launches the Sales Enablement Console

The Sales Enablement Console provides sales people with ecommerce purchase data to better manage the customer relationship. This product release also updates the native B2B theme for ADA Compliance.

Znode, an enterprise B2B ecommerce platform and product of Amla Commerce, has released its 9.6.3 platform update. This update focuses on empowering salespeople with a new console for customer, quote and order data that brings insights to the fingertips of those directly engaging customers. The key features introduced in Znode 9.6.3 include:

Sales Enablement Console:
As more sales move through ecommerce and highly trained sales people are required to work remote, the demand for web-based sales enablement tools has grown. Znode now solves sales enablement for specific representative roles by territory and account assignment. Within the console sales representatives can see quotes, orders and user data associated with their user providing them with insights into customer shopping and ordering patterns and analysis opportunities to ensure customers are receiving the correct information therefore enabling sales people to play the role of consultant and assist in increasing sales transactions. Additional functionality sales representatives gain includes the ability to view and manage users, orders, quotes and returns as well as the ability to create orders and quotes within the console providing a deeper level of customer relationship management. The console is web-based and does not require the sales person to use a VPN for access ensuring a more productive sales team during remote work.

CardConnect Payment Gateway Integration:
An integration to CardConnect has been built as a punchout/iframe method. This integration path provides the opportunity to maintain a consistent user experience, opposed to an off-domain conversion point, as well as the ability to retain full user conversion analytics tracking. This integration is available natively with pre-built API endpoints for quick connection to customers looking to utilize CardConnect as their payment gateway. This payment gateway meets PCI Level 1 Compliance.

Additionally, the Znode 9.6.3 update enhanced a number of existing features including:

Native B2B Theme is now ADA Compliant:
The native B2B theme available in Znode is now Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant at the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Level A, thus providing users with disabilities the ability to use a website built utilizing the theme. Complying at a certain level of accessibility is part of the implementation process and maintained after the store goes live.

Znode is a headless ecommerce platform allowing these updates to be consumed by customers without the need for an expensive upgrade process.

“We’re excited to release the Sales Enablement Console as it originated from customer feedback and was engineered into the Znode product in a matter of months,” says Rupesh Agrawal, President and CEO of Amla Commerce, parent company of Znode. “The speed at which the Znode team was able to design and release the new native Znode offering displays the flexibility of the API first architecture. Our customers should also benefit from the increased focus on compliance mandates with the ADA compliant B2B theme update and now PCI compliant CardConnect payment gateway integration.”

Check Out The New Martech Cube Podcast. For more such updates follow us on Google News Martech News

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 B2B Commerce

Flex Your B2B Commerce Superpowers

Are you ready to become the digital hero of your B2B organization?

The opportunity is now for digital transformation. Arm your organization with the best practices and strategic insight to help you create powerful shopping experiences that captivate customers and boost sales.

The B2B Commerce Best Practices Book is a FREE 50-page guide packed with the latest digital commerce tips, strategies, and tactics to help you transform your business. Compiled by experts from Magento Commerce, the world’s #1 commerce platform, it includes the digital strategies that help Magento power more than $101 Billion in sales transactions every year.

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 B2B Commerce

Adapty Delivers First Ever Insite Online B2B Commerce

Adapty Inc., a leading digital commerce and customer experience company, today announced the successful roll-out of a B2B e-commerce solution for Carotek, USA. Adapty partnered with Insite, an Episerver company, and Digital DNA Marketing agency to implement InsiteOnline, an out-of-the-box commerce solution, for the process equipment distribution business of Carotek.

The shift to digital was imperative in the B2B (business to business) space and particularly now in the economic crisis caused by Covid19 pandemic it has gained more significance. Digital transformation in traditional manufacturing and distribution business has the potential to completely change how clients interact with brands and run their businesses.

Carotek a leading distributor of process equipment in the USA, partnered with Adapty to implement a responsive B2B platform. As part of the implementation, the corporate site and e-commerce portal were merged to give the customer a single site view thereby improving the user experience. The implementation delivered improved customer experience and reduced customer service dependency. This is the first ever InsiteOnline platform implementation for B2B business.

Comments on the News:

“Adapty implemented our new InsiteOnline website for Carotek.com. Because this was a new platform, the challenges were higher than normal. Adapty was extremely diligent at problem solving, and very thorough in the QA process. They were willing to go the extra mile to get things done correctly. They were patient with the learning necessary to complete implementation and very supportive during launch.” – Carotekxaa

Adapty besides having solid B2C e-commerce capability also specializes in providing B2B digital commerce solutions for manufacturing and distribution businesses worldwide.

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 B2B Commerce

Adapty Delivers First Ever Insite Online B2B Commerce Implementation

Adapty Inc., a leading digital commerce and customer experience company, today announced the successful roll-out of a B2B e-commerce solution for Carotek, USA. Adapty partnered with Insite, an Episerver company, and Digital DNA Marketing agency to implement InsiteOnline, an out-of-the-box commerce solution, for the process equipment distribution business of Carotek.

The shift to digital was imperative in the B2B (business to business) space and particularly now in the economic crisis caused by Covid19 pandemic it has gained more significance. Digital transformation in traditional manufacturing and distribution business has the potential to completely change how clients interact with brands and run their businesses.

Carotek a leading distributor of process equipment in the USA, partnered with Adapty to implement a responsive B2B platform. As part of the implementation, the corporate site and e-commerce portal were merged to give the customer a single site view thereby improving the user experience. The implementation delivered improved customer experience and reduced customer service dependency. This is the first ever InsiteOnline platform implementation for B2B business.

Comments on the News:

“Adapty implemented our new InsiteOnline website for Carotek.com. Because this was a new platform, the challenges were higher than normal. Adapty was extremely diligent at problem solving, and very thorough in the QA process. They were willing to go the extra mile to get things done correctly. They were patient with the learning necessary to complete implementation and very supportive during launch.” – Carotek

Adapty besides having solid B2C e-commerce capability also specializes in providing B2B digital commerce solutions for manufacturing and distribution businesses worldwide.

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 News

Connexity Expands Retail Content Network Reach and Improves Commerce Opportunities for Both Retailers and Publishers With Skimlinks Acquisition

Connexity, the leading independent source of new customers and sales for online retailers, announces that it has acquired Skimlinks, the leading monetization solution for commerce-oriented publishers.

Online retailers are taking advantage of increased demand in commerce-oriented channels to diversify outside of traditional walled gardens like paid search. Connexity’s acquisition of Skimlinks creates the largest independent customer acquisition channel for ecommerce, adding thousands of new retail-oriented publishers, including many desirable and respected consumer-facing media brands. The companies’ combined reach will drive nearly $2.5 Billion in commerce annually.

Online publishers are increasingly turning to lead generation commerce revenue as a way to increase the monetization of their loyal shopping audiences. Publishers are looking to expand and diversify those monetization sources to include cost-per-click budgets in addition to traditional CPA budgets. Bringing Connexity’s longstanding direct retailer advertising relationships to Skimlinks’ impressive network of publishers will be a big step forward in providing easy access to those cost-per-click budgets and enabling both improved monetization yield and diversification.

“Connexity and Skimlinks share a similar mission as architects of online shopping markets,” said Bill Glass, CEO of Connexity. “Our solutions help retailers acquire new customers and sales while enabling ecommerce-oriented publishers to monetize engaged shopping audiences. Combining the companies creates more scale on both sides of the marketplace.”

Merchants advertising on Connexity will benefit from easy access to new, high-quality traffic sources on Skimlinks like marquee publishers such as Condé Nast, DotDash, Hearst, Vox Media and over half of the top 100 publishers globally. Connexity’s enterprise publishers and ShopYourLikes social influencer partners will also benefit from access to CPA affiliate advertising budgets from over 48,500 retail advertisers who live on the Skimlinks platform.

Skimlinks publishers will benefit from access to incremental cost-per-click monetization in budgets of premium Connexity merchants including brands like Dell, Wayfair, Chewy, Kohl’s, Skechers, and more. Skimlinks advertising partners will also obtain easy access to Connexity’s premium publisher and social influence marketing network without any incremental work.

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