ebook unleash the power of content in salesforce

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Unleash the Power of Content in Salesforce

2Unleash the Power of Content in Salesforce

Introduction

As a sales leader, one of your most important roles is providing your sales team with the guidance and tools they need to successfully sell. At the top of the list for most organizations today is customer relationship management (CRM) software, like Salesforce.

Salesforce is a business-critical platform that plays a pivotal role at the center of sales operations. But organizations are increasingly finding that Salesforce alone isn’t enough.

To transform their sales teams into high-performing, revenue-generating machines, successful organizations proactively equip their sellers with sophisticated add-ons to make Salesforce even more useful—especially as it relates to content.

Turning traditional sellers into digital warriors starts by arming them with a toolkit that unleashes the power of content through:

• Fast content discovery

• Easy content personalization

• Better collaboration and team alignment

• Robust content analytics to boost buyer engagement


Salesforce + Sales Enablement

Integrations increase Salesforce use. Sellers don’t have to leave Salesforce to access their other critical sales systems. The result is more time selling and less time combing through the tech stack to find what they need.

Sales enablement is one of these critical systems that can make Salesforce even more sticky and impactful.


Companies continue to make significant investments in CRM software because it allows them to address major frustrations such as an inability to see how sales teams are engaging with customers or accurately monitor the status of accounts at every point in the deal cycle. Without this level of understanding, it’s difficult to manage the business, forecast sales, or optimize team productivity.

CRMs, like Salesforce, are designed to solve these problems by being the single source of truth for seller activities. However, to maximize the value of Salesforce, an organization must not only ensure sellers are consistently populating the CRM with accurate data, but also actively motivate those sellers to adopt the platform.

The importance of adoption

CRM adoption has a direct impact on seller productivity, sales team success, and overall business revenue. That’s why so many organizations are focused on increasing adoption of Salesforce.

Effective sales organizations are 81% more likely to consistently use a CRM or other system of record1.

1 http://v1.aberdeen.com/launch/report/research_report/15644-RR-Effective-Sales- Workflows-AM.asp


Why a sales enablement integration?

Sales enablement is the process through which traditional barriers are removed between Sales and Marketing. Sales enablement improves the entire content process, increases collaboration, enhances alignment, and unlocks insights that lead to better-informed business decisions.

A sales enablement solution makes it easier for sellers to send content to customers, track the customer’s engagement with that content, and ultimately provide content usage information to the seller so they can better understand a buyer’s interests.

The sales enablement solution surfaces content relevant to specific industries, personas, or customer journey stages. It highlights content that is trending, has been successful in the past, or is especially contextually relevant to the deal the seller is currently working.

Sales enablement

Marketing

CRM

SalesMarketing also benefits from a sales enablement solution. It streamlines content management, and it gives marketers the tools to tag content so it will be surfaced to sellers when they need it—increasing the use of marketing-created content.

Unleash the Power of Content in Salesforce 5

Content is critical for Digital Warriors

Sellers today need to be furnished with solutions that optimize their use of content. That’s because today’s buyers are consuming more content and they expect that content to be relevant.

With the rise of virtual selling, content is more important than ever for the last mile, that critical touchpoint between seller and buyer. But accessing the right content for this stage isn’t always easy.

Content disconnect

The marketing team often produces the bulk of the content for sales enablement. Which means that content is usually stored and maintained in another system along with the associated usage data. This creates a serious disconnect that requires sellers to regularly leave Salesforce in search of content to share with their customers. It also creates a headache for the content management team because sellers, understandably, create copies of assets and store them in more accessible locations and then reuse them over and over even as they become outdated or off-brand.

By integrating a sales enablement solution with Salesforce, you make critical content and usage data readily available to sellers while also ensuring marketing and other creators can maintain content governance and integrity.

Half of US consumers say they have spent more time consuming content than before the pandemic2

82% of buyers viewed at least five pieces of content from the vendor prior to purchase3

85% of companies agree that buyers will dismiss a seller in the first interaction if they don’t receive tailored information4

Customers are already 57% of the way down the purchase path before they consider engaging with a sales person5

85%

82%


2 https://mediafrenzyglobal.com/u-s-covid-communications-survey-results3 https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/1941744/TBIG_Conferences/110_Sales_and_Marketing_ statistics.pdf?t=14776624517074 Forrester, “The State Of Enterprise Sales Enablement, 2019” commissioned by Seismic5 https://www.gartner.com/en/sales-service/insights/challenger-sale

Content is more important than ever


Powering up with a sales enablement integrationA sales enablement integration unites your Digital Warriors and your marketers by providing a single source of content truth. Sellers can optimize customer interactions and accelerate deal cycles by delivering the right content at the right time and understanding the context of how to use a given asset at a given point in the sales process.

The combination of Salesforce and sales enablement aligns mission-critical content with the sales pipeline so sellers can engage customers with the organization’s most relevant and compelling stories. Because sellers live in Salesforce and constantly update records, companies have greater visibility into account history, the latest activity records, and insights into growth—all in one place.

Your organization has invested a lot in Salesforce.

You’ve placed a bet that it can help sellers close more deals, faster. And it can—if you unleash the power of content in Salesforce through a sales enablement integration.


The Case for Driving Salesforce Adoption

Integrating critical systems like sales enablement into Salesforce helps increase Salesforce adoption, which ultimately means increased ROI from your CRM.

CRMs like Salesforce bring tremendous value

Businesses that use a CRM report:

$8.71 50% >245%

65% 40%

Average ROI (per dollar spent)

Increase in productivity

Potential ROI

Increase in sales quota

Decrease in labor costs

Resulting in better performance from sales reps

But only when Salesforce is well-adopted

Adding a sales enablement integration drives adoption

Studies show sales organizations that use CRMs can see a potential:

29%

34% 8-14%

Increase in sales

Increase in productivity from sales reps

Shorter sales cycles due to data accessibility

41%Increase in sales revenues

73%26% <75%Average CRM user adoption among sales

professionals

Average CRM adoption rate across industries

Adoption rates results in poorer sales team performance

350% 35% 32%Increase in content usage

More time spent selling

More leads in the pipeline


http://nucleusresearch.com/research/single/crm-pays-back-8-71-for-every-dollar-spent/https://financesonline.com/crm-statistics-analysis-of-trends-data-and-market-share/https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/d27b1c65-986e-4a4f-a491-5e8eb23980be/entry/2017_CRM_Statistics_Show_Why_it_s_a_Powerful_Marketing_Weapon?lang=enhttps://financesonline.com/crm-statistics-analysis-of-trends-data-and-market-share/https://media.trackvia.com/blog/wp-content/2013/02/TrackVia_CRM_72-01.png

https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2013/03/accounting-crm-increase-sales-productivity.html http://nucleusresearch.com/research/single/data-accessibility-for-sales-teams-shortens-the-sales-cycle/https://www.g2.com/categories/crmhttps://www.agilecrm.com/blog/statistics-that-prove-the-need-for-a-crm/https://www.csoinsights.com/2018-sales-operations-optimization-study/


Unleashing the power of content in Salesforce

When you integrate a sales enablement solution in Salesforce, you add a content toolkit that provides two key benefits:

• Greater Salesforce adoption

• Increased sales velocity

Content unlocks these benefits by improving the effectiveness of each buyer interaction and improving the seller experience. Your sellers are focused on reaching buyers with the right information to move the sale along. So it’s frustrating when they have to waste time searching for content and manually update it for each opportunity. When sellers can easily tell the right story at the right time to a buyer—and measure the effectiveness of their efforts—that moves buyers through the journey faster, accelerating sales.

What about adoption?

Salesforce becomes more sticky as you integrate value-add functionality into it. Adding powerful content capabilities to Salesforce does just that. Sellers are more productive and successful, which increases their willingness to adopt the CRM.


The content toolkitWhat capabilities does a sales enablement solution bring to Salesforce? A solution like Seismic empowers sellers to:

• Discover the best content for each selling situation

• Personalize content

• Collaborate on content for opportunities

• Gain valuable buyer insights through content usage data

Content discovery

Studies show that up to 90% of marketing content goes unused by sales reps6. One reason is that many times it is just too hard to find the right asset. But that’s where sales enablement solutions excel. They provide the ability to find content even if you only remember a fragment of text from the piece.

The best solutions do more than a keyword search, though. They provide content discovery through tools like Seismic’s predictive content engine which tracks how and when content is used in opportunities that led to closed-won deals, and then suggests that winning content to sales reps who are in similar selling situations. Using technology in this way makes it easier to share best practices across sales organizations.

Disc

over

Gain insights Collab

orate

Personalize

6 https://salesmanagement.org/web/uploads/marketing.pdf


A strong sales enablement integration will augment its own powerful discovery tools by leveraging the information in Salesforce. That means that a seller looking at a particular contact or account record can immediately discover the best content for this buyer.

The system is situationally aware: it knows which content works best based on the buyer’s industry, sales stage, etc. and adjusts recommendations to the buyer journey so appropriate content is delivered at the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. Sellers always have access to the most relevant content at the right time.

Seismic predictive

content engine

Content targeted to this selling solution

Salesforce record data

Now, it’s easier than ever for your Digital Warriors to find the content most likely to accelerate the deal, and they don’t even have to leave Salesforce.



Content personalization

With a sales enablement integration, sellers can easily preview the recommended content within Salesforce to see if it’s right for their buyer. They can do more than that, though. A good sales enablement integration allows sellers to utilize the latest version of a core asset—which is presumably branded and reflects the agreed-upon messaging, information, and data—then personalize it with information from Salesforce.

Common data used for personalization:

That’s important, because research shows that buyers engage more with personalized content.

• 80% of consumers said they’re more likely to make a purchase from a company that provides a personalized experience.7

• 78% of customers expect consistent interactions across their journey, meaning reuse of the information they’ve already provided.8

In the last mile—where sellers are trying to build relationships with individual buyers—personalization is especially important. Sales velocity increases with increased buyer engagement.

Industry Role Competitors Product interest

Number of employees

7 https://us.epsilon.com/pressroom/new-epsilon-research-indicates-80-of-consumers-are- more-likely-to-make-a-purchase-when-brands-offer-personalized-experiences8 https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2019/07/customer-experience.html

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Personalized content is critical. But so is consistency. Integrating your sales enablement platform lets content creators maintain consistency of branding and messaging while giving sellers the ability to tailor content to individual selling situations.


Collaborating on content

Speed and collaboration become even more important when a buyer turns into an opportunity. At this stage, more team members become involved, necessitating broader visibility into the content associated with the opportunity, such as proposals, pitch decks, and contracts.

Workspaces surfaced in Salesforce through the sales enablement solution provide secure spaces to collaborate on the important content at this stage. Seismic’s Workspaces are virtual, tailored content repositories specific to an opportunity and where only stakeholders associated with that record can upload, view, store, collaborate and edit one-off content, keeping the team focused without distracting others.

A strong sales enablement platform can keep workspaces partitioned from the primary content library, so unique assets don’t mix with everything else, which would lead to content sprawl, slower searches, and seller confusion.

Sales is under pressure to enable their teams quickly. Yet, it can take over five months to ramp a new salesperson to productivity! With a strong sales enablement integration, sellers can get up to speed, share information, and learn faster.

Using Workspaces, all the content relevant to an opportunity is automatically associated with the Salesforce record. This provides context for a seller, who can acclimate to a new account in minutes, rather than months. A strong integration will also maintain an audit trail of content actions which allows managers to provide fact-based feedback to the team.


Using content insights

Most companies now have rich data at the top of the funnel, such as the number of website visits and engagement analytics on content distributed through marketing channels. But it’s much more difficult to know what is happening in the last mile of the deal cycle, when companies activate their expensive sales teams. Critical data, such as what content the seller sent to the customer, at which sales stage, and how long the buyer engaged with that content, is harder to consistently track.

Powerful sales enablement platforms offer powerful intelligence. Platforms, like Seismic, allow sellers to send content in a way that tracks the buyer’s engagement with that content. Sellers can use Seismic’s LiveSend feature to send personalized content as a link so that engagement is tracked in the activity history of the Salesforce record associated with that LiveSend.

That means that the next time the seller checks on the lead, contact, account, or opportunity, he or she can see whether the buyer opened the content that was sent, how often they opened it, and how much time they spent on it.

Sales enablement integrations should always capture engagement data automatically. 32% of sales representatives spend more than an hour a day on manual data entry.9 It’s a key reason for the lack of CRM adoption. So the more your integration saves sellers’ time, the more likely they are to use it.

9 https://financesonline.com/crm-statistics-analysis-of-trends-data-and-market-share/#link4


of sales representatives spend more than an hour a day on manual data entry.

32%

FinancesOnline


8%32%35%

Conclusion

Maximizing CRM adoption is a primary objective for sales and sales operations leaders because it helps them manage the business more effectively and take full advantage of a significant technology investment. A sales enablement integration can support these goals by providing sellers with a content toolkit that allows them to be more productive and provide exceptional buyer experiences—from within Salesforce.

Organizations that have implemented the Seismic sales enablement solution8 have seen:

350%Increase in content usage

More time spent selling

More leads in the pipeline

Shorter sales cycle

Adding a content toolkit to Salesforce makes it sticky, driving adoption. Empowering sellers with easy access to high-performing content and engagement analytics accelerates the buyer journey ultimately leading to more revenue. Seismic for Salesforce is a powerful addition to strengthen your team of Digital Warriors.

Ready to see why Seismic and Salesforce are better together?

Let an expert show you how a sales enablement integration can make your sellers more effective.

Request a Demo

8 Seismic research

https://seismic.com/speak-with-our-team/

About Seismic

Seismic is the industry-leading sales enablement and marketing orchestration solution, aligning go-to-market teams while empowering them to deliver engaging buyer experiences that drive growth. Seismic’s Storytelling Platform™ delivers innovative capabilities for marketers to orchestrate content delivery across all channels, and for sellers to engage with prospective buyers in a compelling, resonant manner at every step of the buyer journey. More than 600 enterprises including IBM and American Express have made Seismic their sales enablement platform of choice. The Seismic Storytelling Platform™ integrates with business-critical platforms including Microsoft, Salesforce, Google and Adobe. Seismic is headquartered in San Diego, with offices across North America, Europe, and Australia.

To see how Seismic is being used by companies in your industry, please visit seismic.com.

© 2020 Seismic. All rights reserved.

https://seismic.com/

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