Christian Pieper, Author at Mindtickle

6 Steps to a Winning Sales Enablement Program for Med Device Reps

Christian Pieper on June 12, 2024

Medical devices and pharmaceutical companies play a critical role in our society. After all, these businesses are laser-focused on developing and delivering products that improve medical outcomes and enhance patients’ health and quality of life.

But the life of a medical device or pharma sales rep isn’t easy. Day in and day out, these sellers must contend with a whole host of unique challenges, including (but not limited to) heavy regulation, crowded marketplaces, and demanding buyers.

Today, winning medical device and pharma businesses are investing in sales enablement. For good reason. With the right sales enablement strategy and tools, med device and pharmaceutical sales reps are equipped to deliver engaging, compliant experiences throughout the purchase journey – and ultimately close more deals.

In this guide, we’ll explore everything you need about sales enablement for medical device reps. You’ll walk away with a clear understanding of:

What sales enablement for medical devices is
Why medtech and pharma companies are investing in sales enablement
6 practical steps you can take to create a high-performing sales enablement program for your medical device or pharma business

What is sales enablement for medical device reps?

As a revenue leader in the medical technology sector, you’ve likely heard the term “sales enablement.” But what exactly is sales enablement for medical device or pharma reps?

Sales enablement is designed to increase sales reps’ effectiveness and efficiency. It involves equipping revenue teams with the training, tools, information, and compliant sales content to engage buyers throughout the sales cycle.

While sales enablement is a relatively new concept, it’s quickly caught on in all industries – including medical devices and pharmaceuticals. According to the 2024-2025 Chief Revenue + Sales Leader Outlook Report, the vast majority – 84% – of organizations are investing in a sales enablement function.

of orgs invest in sales enablement

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Sales enablement for medical device reps is an enablement practice focused on addressing the unique needs of sales reps in the medical device industry. Later, we’ll look at some of those unique challenges and how medical device sales enablement addresses them.

You may wonder who is responsible for medical device or pharma sales enablement. It varies from organization to organization. But a dedicated sales enablement team is increasingly tasked with managing sales enablement for health tech.

What is a medical device sales enablement platform?

A sales enablement platform is a tool that powers a sales enablement program. A sales enablement platform centralizes everything related to sales enablement. Sales, marketing, and sales enablement teams can always find what they need – all within one platform.

A medical device or pharmaceutical sales enablement platform is a sales enablement tool equipped to meet the unique needs of medical device and pharmaceutical companies. Think of it as a one-stop shop for everything related to medical device or pharmaceutical sales enablement.

Enablement teams use a medical device sales enablement platform to build and deliver programs and initiatives. These teams can also use the medical sales enablement platform to measure the impact of their programs and optimize accordingly.

Medtech sales reps turn to a medical device sales enablement platform to access everything they need to engage with buyers and close deals in a complex, competitive, and highly regulated industry, including:

Onboarding
Ongoing learning
Reinforcement and practice opportunities
Coaching
Compliant sales content

A medical device sales enablement platform also incorporates robust analytics that can fuel better decision-making. For example, a sales enablement platform can help sales reps determine what step to take next or what content to share based on customer engagement and the historic performance of sales content.
Why should you implement sales enablement for medical device sales?
Let’s face it: medical device and pharma sales reps face a lot of challenges. Some key challenges include:

Navigating a heavily regulated industry with big penalties for non-compliance
Crowded markets and fierce competition
Ever-evolving product offerings
Increasingly large buying committees
Lengthy enterprise sales cycles
Shifting sales climate
Heightened buyer expectations

That’s just to name a few.

The most successful med device companies are turning to sales enablement to ensure medtech sales reps have everything they need to overcome these challenges and close more deals faster.

Let’s examine some of the key reasons leading med tech and pharma organizations are investing in sales enablement teams, plans, and tools.

Alignment between marketing and sales

Sales and marketing teams both aim to close more deals and grow revenue. But often, these teams work in silos. They’re so focused on their own work – without regard to what the other team is doing.

This misalignment can cause big problems.

For example, a marketing team might spend much time and effort creating sales content. But if this content isn’t used by sellers or doesn’t improve sales outcomes, the marketing team is wasting its time. They need hard data and feedback from sales teams to create content that resonates with buyers and helps move them through the sales funnel.

Effective sales enablement requires sales and marketing teams to come together to ensure revenue teams have what they need to be effective and efficient. This alignment is a powerful way to improve outcomes.

Companies with aligned sales and marketing teams experience

faster growth rates

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faster growth over a year

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Research from Forrester found that companies with aligned sales and marketing teams experience 24% faster growth rates and 27% faster growth over the period of a year.

A single source of truth for compliant information and sales content

The medical device and pharma industries are heavily regulated. Furthermore, medtech and pharma products always evolve, requiring sales collateral updates. Ensuring sales reps always have the latest, greatest, compliant collateral to use with prospects can be challenging.

A sales enablement platform enables organizations to house and organize all sales content in one location. That means sellers can easily find relevant, compliant sales content for any sales scenario. Furthermore, sales enablement teams can easily update content to ensure sales reps have the most current, compliant versions.

Training and coaching that’s relevant to the needs of each seller

It’s well understood that training and coaching both help improve seller performance. But often, organizations take a generic approach to learning and coaching. In other words, they develop generic training and learning initiatives and assign it to all reps – regardless of whether or not it’s relevant.

Training and coaching must be personalized to be effective. Yet, a recent report found that just 40% of C-level executives can identify sales rep strengths and weaknesses for customized training.

A solid sales enablement strategy and the right technology allow enablement teams to understand each seller’s strengths and weaknesses. Then, they can deliver training and coaching that addresses those unique needs.

Engaging buying experiences across the purchase journey

Selling medical devices and pharmaceuticals is getting more and more complicated. Sales cycles are long, and buying committees are growing. Furthermore, each stakeholder involved in a purchase has different needs and challenges.

It can be difficult for medical device and pharma sales reps to keep large buying committees engaged throughout the sales cycle – especially when most interactions take place remotely.

A sales enablement practice ensures that medical device and pharmaceutical sellers have the skills, tools, and content to keep buyers engaged throughout the purchase journey.

For example, some sales enablement platforms incorporate digital sales rooms, enabling all buying and selling team members to align, communicate, and share content. When everyone is on the same page, deals can progress faster.

Data and insights to fuel better sales outcomes

Making decisions based on hunches isn’t an effective approach. Instead, revenue teams must leverage data.

A sales enablement platform can provide robust data and analytics that can be used by sales, marketing, and sales enablement needs. For example, a pharma sales rep can see how different buying committee members interact with a specific piece of content. This intel can help inform next steps.

In addition, some sales enablement platforms incorporate revenue intelligence, which helps medtech sales leaders better predict sales outcomes. If a winnable deal is at risk, sales managers can work with their reps to improve its outcome.

6 steps to develop an impactful sales enablement program

Sales enablement can have a large, positive impact on sales performance. But how can you ensure your sales enablement teams and programs run on all cylinders?

Certain steps are essential when developing a sales enablement program for your medical device or pharmaceutical sales team.

Step 1: Collaborate cross-functionally

It’s important to identify who will own sales enablement within your organization. In the past, sales or marketing often owned sales enablement. But increasingly, organizations are investing in dedicated sales enablement teams.

However, sales enablement teams can’t (and shouldn’t) do it alone. Successful sales enablement requires ongoing collaboration from key teams – including enablement, sales, and marketing. You will likely achieve your sales enablement goals when these key teams are aligned.

Step 2: Determine your sales enablement goals

Without goals, creating effective medtech sales enablement initiatives and measuring their impact is impossible. As such, it’s critical to determine your sales enablement goals. In other words, what do you hope to accomplish with sales enablement for medical device reps?

While setting goals for program adoption and completion are important, you shouldn’t stop there. Instead, be sure you’re setting goals related to how your programs and initiatives will positively impact the metrics that matter most to your business – like quota attainment and revenue generation.

Avoid vague goals like “improve sales performance.” Instead, develop goals following the SMART methodology. SMART sales enablement goals are:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-specific

You will also need to decide what medical device sales enablement metrics to track to determine whether you’re on track to achieve your sales enablement goals.

Step 3: Define sales excellence

Sales enablement for medical device reps aims to build a team of excellent performers. But first, you have to define excellence.

Look at your best medtech sales reps and determine what makes them different. Use these insights to develop an ideal rep profile (IRP), which spells out the skills and behaviors a medical device or pharma sales rep needs for success at your organization.

Once you’ve developed your IRP, you can measure each rep against this gold standard. It’s a great way to determine where they’re shining and where there are opportunities for improvement.

Step 4: Develop sales enablement programs to support your goals

Once you have a clear idea of what you hope to achieve with sales enablement, you can start building programs and initiatives to help you achieve those goals.

Among countless other factors, sales enablement initiatives vary widely based on goals, team size, and budget. However, some common initiatives include:

Sales onboarding
Ongoing learning opportunities
Sales content
Sales certifications
Role-plays and other practice opportunities
Deal and skill sales coaching

Step 5: Tap into the right sales enablement technology

Technology is a key component of any sales enablement strategy for medical devices. Today, some organizations use point solutions to address specific aspects of sales enablement. For example, a medical device company may use one tool for sales content, one for sales training, and one for conversation intelligence.

Requiring your teams to switch between tools can be time-consuming and cumbersome. Furthermore, using point solutions makes it nearly impossible to get a holistic view of how sales enablement for medical device reps is actually improving sales outcomes.

Instead, consider streamlining your sales enablement tech stack by leveraging an integrated medical sales enablement solution. An integrated medical sales enablement tool incorporates all the key components of sales enablement – all from one platform. Those key components include:

Sales onboarding
Ongoing learning
Conversation intelligence
Sales coaching
Revenue intelligence

An integrated sales enablement platform like Mindtickle empowers enablement teams to create, deliver, and measure their programs – all in one tool. Furthermore, revenue teams can access everything they need to engage prospects and close more deals.

Step 6: Measure and optimize

Launching a sales enablement for a health tech program and hoping for the best isn’t a good approach. Instead, you must measure consistently to ensure you’re on track to achieve your goals. Regular measurement also enables you to identify problems early on. Then, you can optimize your sales enablement programs to improve outcomes.

Build an entire team of top medtech sellers with Mindtickle

Sales reps in the medical device and pharma industries face significant hurdles. A solid sales enablement strategy – paired with the right sales enablement for health tech platform – empowers sellers to overcome challenges, deliver engaging experiences across the entire sales cycle, and close more deals.

Today, some of the world’s best medical device and pharmaceutical companies—including Integrace Health and Janssen India—depend on Mindtickle to equip their revenue teams with the training, tools, content, and insights they need to crush quota consistently.

Sales Enablement for Med Devices

Want to learn more about how Mindtickle enables med device and pharma reps to hit quota every quarter?

Learn More About Mindtickle for Med Devices

Your Guide to the B2B Sales Funnel: What is it and How to Optimize Yours

Christian Pieper on May 22, 2024

In some product categories, the purchase journey is short and sweet. Consider a consumer going to a grocery store to buy cereal. They weigh their options for a few minutes, and then they make their selection.

The B2B customer journey, on the other hand, is often a lot more complicated. The B2B sales funnel is a common way to illustrate this complex journey.

But what is a sales funnel?

In this post, we’ll explore everything you need to know about B2B sales funnels. We’ll start with the basics, like what a sales funnel is and what the B2B sales funnel stages are. Then, we’ll share practical tips for optimizing your sales funnel to drive better results.

What is a sales funnel?

First things first: what is a sales funnel?

A sales funnel is a high level model of how prospective buyers move through the purchase journey. It illustrates their entire journey – from initially learning about a brand to making a purchase.

A B2B sales funnel is a funnel that specifically illustrates how B2B prospects move through the purchase journey.

As you probably guessed, sales funnels are depicted in the shape of a funnel; they’re wider on top and gradually become more narrow. Typically, sales funnels are labeled by stage. Some use general stages, like:

Top of funnel: Early parts of the purchase journey
Middle of funnel: Middle parts of the purchase journey
Bottom of funnel: Late parts of the purchase journey

Other sales funnels are labeled with more specific stages, which we’ll explore later.

B2B sales funnels are a useful tool for sales teams to determine where their prospects are in the purchase journey. Then, sellers can use a sales playbook to engage any buyer, no matter what stage of the sales funnel they’re in. This will increase sales acceleration. In other words, sales reps will be able to move more prospects through the sales funnel – faster.

Of course, not every prospect follows the same purchase journey. While some prospects progress through each sales funnel stage, others take a less linear path. For example, a prospect might proceed through the sales funnel – but then realize the specific product they’re considering isn’t the right fit for them. So, they may jump back up to earlier stages of the funnel as they consider their other options.

As such, a sales funnel should be seen as a broad overview of the purchase journey rather than a rigid set of steps prospects must complete.

What are the stages of a B2B sales funnel?

A quick Google search will show you many B2B sales funnel examples. Not every revenue organization uses the same B2B sales funnel.

As we mentioned earlier, some B2B sales funnels use general terms for the parts of the sales funnel – like top of the funnel, mid-funnel, and bottom of the funnel. Others use more specific terms to describe the stages of the B2B sales funnel.

While each B2B sales funnel is different, certain stages are common.

Stage #1: Awareness

Awareness is the first stage of the purchase journey. As you probably guessed, it’s the stage when prospects become aware of your brand.

There are many ways a prospect may become aware of your brand. Often, the marketing team owns these awareness-stage initiatives.

For example, a prospect may see a paid post on LinkedIn, promoting an upcoming thought leadership webinar focused on industry trends. Or one of your blogs might show up in Google search results when the prospect searches for solutions to solve one of their pain points.

Stage #2: Interest

The prospect is now aware of your brand. The next challenge is to build their interest.

During the interest stage of the B2B sales funnel, brands must build relationships with potential customers and help them see the impact their challenges have on their effectiveness and efficiency. At this point, the prospect isn’t ready to buy, so it’s best to avoid delving into the ins and outs of your product offerings.

There are several channels organizations can use to build prospect’s interest, including:

Blogs
Webinars
Ebooks
Email campaigns

Stage #3: Consideration

During the consideration stage, prospects know they have a problem and are actively seeking a solution.

During this stage, sales and marketing become more focused on the product. For example, marketing teams may develop case studies that convey how customers have used specific products and services to overcome their challenges.

Stage #4: Intent

During this stage, buyers take action that demonstrates their intent to purchase. They know they want to buy but are unsure which brand or product best suits them.

For example, a prospect might reach out to a sales rep to ask questions. Or, they might schedule a live demo.

Demos – one-on-one or in a group webinar format—are important tools at this stage of the B2B sales funnel. Some revenue organizations also offer “self-guided tours,” which allow prospects to better understand the ins and outs of a product or service.

Stage #5: Evaluation

The evaluation stage of the sales funnel is when the prospect weighs their options and makes a purchase decision. Prospects make their decision based on all the information they’ve gotten up to this point – including:

Sales collateral
Sales battle cards
Pricing information
Demos
Free trials
Testimonials and reviews from existing customers

Negotiations are common at the evaluation stage of the sales funnel.

Stage #6: Purchase

You’ve been working toward this stage. It’s when the prospect signs a contract and officially becomes a customer.

Of course, that doesn’t mean the work is over. It’s important to ensure the customer has an excellent implementation experience and feel supported during the initial rollout and throughout their relationship with your company. This will boost satisfaction – and customer retention.

B2B sales funnel vs. B2B sales pipeline

Sales funnel and sales pipeline are two phrases often used interchangeably. While they have similarities, they aren’t the same.

A sales funnel is a visual representation of the stages a buyer goes through during their purchase journey. However, buyers aren’t required to go through every stage of the B2B sales funnel to make a purchase.

Sales pipelines are visual representations of the B2B selling process. They include every stage of the sales process – from prospecting to retention. B2B sales pipeline management is the process of overseeing the sales pipeline.

Prospects may skip stages of the sales funnel. However, sales reps can’t skip stages of the sales funnel. Each step is required in the sales process.

B2B sales funnel vs B2C sales funnel: What’s the difference?

B2B and B2C customers navigate a journey before making a purchase. As such, both B2B and B2C businesses can use sales funnels to illustrate these journeys.

But B2B and B2C sales funnels aren’t the same.

B2B sales are typically more complex than B2C sales. In B2B deals, there is usually more money on the line and more people involved in the evaluation process. So it’s unsurprising that the B2B sales cycle often takes much longer than the B2C sales cycle.

As such, B2B SaaS sales funnels are typically more complex than B2C sales funnels. B2B sales funnels are often longer and incorporate more stages. In addition, B2B buyers often spend more time in each stage of the sales funnel than their B2C counterparts.

	B2B Sales Funnel	B2C Sales Funnel
Overall funnel length	Longer	Shorter
Amount of time spent in each stage	More	Less
Number of stages	More	Fewer

Tips to improve your B2B sales funnel

Perhaps you’ve never created a B2B sales funnel. Or maybe your revenue organization uses one, but it’s not working.

Whatever the case, there’s always room for improvement.

Let’s explore some tips for creating (or improving) your B2B sales funnel.

Leverage data to understand the customer journey

There are plenty of B2B sales funnel examples out there. But they may not be relevant to your business.

It is important to leverage data to understand how your customers navigate the purchase journey. Then, you can use those insights to develop a relevant B2B sales funnel for your business.

Identify your ideal customers

You may have many people in your B2B sales funnel, but you’ll be wasting your time if they aren’t a good fit for your products and services.

It’s important to document your ideal customers. A great starting point is to analyze your existing customer base.

Then, you can develop buyer personas, which will help inform content development. Buyer personas will also help your sales reps prioritize their time on good-fit prospects.

Align sales and marketing

All too often, sales and marketing teams act in silos. They each focus on their initiatives without much insight into what the other team is doing.

This misalignment causes big problems in the B2B sales funnel.

For example, your marketing team may devote much time to developing webinars and reports. But the leads that result from these initiatives may never convert. Without this feedback, marketing teams will continue doing what they’re doing, and sellers will continue getting unqualified leads.

Instead, sales and marketing teams must act as partners. That way, marketing can prioritize content and campaigns that attract the right people and guide them through the sales funnel. And, sales will get qualified leads that are more likely to become customers.

Develop content for each stage of the B2B sales funnel

Modern B2B buyers depend on content to make informed purchase decisions. But generic content won’t cut it. Instead, sellers need content that’ll resonate with each customer – no matter where they are in the B2B SaaS sales funnel.

Sales and marketing teams should collaborate to develop content for sellers during each sales funnel stage. All content should be stored in a single content management system so sellers can easily find the right sales content for each sales scenario.

Ensure sellers know how to use content

You might have great sales content. But if your sellers don’t use it (or don’t know how to use it), it won’t help you close more deals.

Be sure to provide training and enablement to help sellers learn how and when to use key content assets. In addition, be sure they know exactly where to find the content they need. That way, they’ll spend less time searching and more time building relationships with prospects.

Prioritize good fit leads

Salesforce research found that sales reps spend only 28% of their time selling. The rest is spent on internal meetings, data entry, and other manual tasks.

Research found that reps only spend

of their time selling

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Because sales reps have such limited time, they need to prioritize prospects who are a good fit for their products and services. For starters, marketing teams must ensure their initiatives are actually yielding high-quality leads. In addition, sales reps should know their ideal customer profiles inside and out and have the skills needed to quickly determine whether or not a prospect is a good fit.

Don’t check out after the deal is closed

You might think the work is done once the prospect has signed the dotted line. Well, think again.

Instead, revenue organizations should continue to engage with customers. For example, they could invite them to a webinar where another customer shares how they use a specific product feature. Or, they could add them to an email campaign that shares tips for making the most of their investment.

Staying engaged with customers will increase their satisfaction. That means they’ll be more likely to stay a customer – and recommend your company to those in their network.

Analyze and optimize your sales funnel regularly

Your sales funnel shouldn’t be set in stone. Instead, it’s important to track B2B sales funnel metrics. For example, measure prospects’ conversion rates at each stage of the B2B sales funnel. Then, use that data to make optimizations.

Engage with buyers – wherever they are in the B2B sales funnel

A B2B sales funnel is a great tool for visualizing the B2B purchase journey. When sales reps understand where buyers are in their journey, they can better determine how to engage with them.

Mindtickle’s integrated revenue enablement platform equips your entire revenue team with the training, enablement, content, and call insights they need to deliver outstanding experiences across the sales funnel – and close more deals.

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3 Ways Mindtickle is Making a Seller’s Job Easier Right Now

Christian Pieper on May 16, 2024

First and foremost, a seller’s job is to close business.

But all too often, their work time is filled with perfunctory tasks that distract from that job. At Mindtickle, we make it part of our mission to change that and help sellers sell more, faster, and easier.

In this post, I will highlight three new capabilities being announced as part of Mindtickle’s Spring 2024 product announcement, designed to help your sellers do their jobs more easily today.

#1. Utilize content in the flow of work

Every minute spent searching content repositories for the right datasheet or infographic is a minute that could be spent closing more business.

That’s why Mindtickle puts the content sellers need front and center in the most used tools. In addition to CRM and email integrations, sellers can now add content directly from Mindtickle’s Asset Hub to sales engagement sequences in Outreach and social posts in LinkedIn—there is no need to log into multiple tools to power their work with targeted content.

#2 Use AI to help you discover and leverage new and better content

Sellers frequently spend too much time looking for content because they don’t know what content exists. In too many cases, they end up using the same content in many different sales scenarios when better content might have been used had they known about it.

Now, Mindtickle uses AI to identify and list similar assets for reps whenever they view content within Mindtickle. That will help them discover and engage with new content, in a manner similar to how they engage with content on YouTube, Netflix, and other modern media platforms.

It will also point them to better, more targeted versions of content for specific sales scenarios, helping them use content to engage more customers and close more business.

#3 Collaborate with co-sellers seamlessly

Mindtickle’s Digital Sales Rooms have quickly become the preferred way for our customers’ sellers to engage with their buyers. These collaborative spaces allow buyers and sellers to interact with each other, share content back-and-forth, and track progress and align throughout the buying journey.

Now, as part of the 2024 Spring announcement, Mindtickle is releasing a new version of Digital Sales Rooms built to power collaboration between internal teams. Team selling has become increasingly the norm for high-touch B2B sales, and with more folks involved in the sales process, it becomes increasingly important to align your selling team step-by-step throughout the sales cycle.

Mindtickle’s internal rooms will give your teams a place to share content, communicate, and track progress. Whether you use these rooms for team selling, account planning, knowledge sharing, or any other internal collaboration needs, Mindtickle will help you sell more and better by working together.

While this post has focused on how these releases drive easier and better selling, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that these capabilities, as well as the entire Mindtickle platform, provide the same benefits to customer success reps, business development reps, marketers, and all the critical roles that dictate how your company goes to market. All these folks need to find and distribute content, so AI recommendations and flow-of-work integrations will save them time and help them do their revenue-generating activities more efficiently and effectively.

In particular, Mindtickle’s internal rooms present many exciting opportunities for different teams to coordinate their efforts and collaborate cross-functionally. Some use cases our customers have discovered for these rooms include:

Interactive landing pages for demand generation
User groups and customer communities
Digital event support
Onboarding groups
SKO breakouts and team exercises
Hiring portals
…and many more.

These three releases are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how Mindtickle is innovating the future of selling. Register for our spring 2024 announcement webinar on June 5, 2024, to hear how Mindtickle is unlocking new productivity levels for GTM reps, front-line managers, enablement teams, and marketing leaders.

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How Sales Content Analytics Helps Revenue Teams Close More Deals, Faster

Christian Pieper on April 10, 2024

When it comes to B2B sales, content is still king. According to the Demand Gen Report, more than half of B2B buyers rely on sales content to guide their purchase decisions more now than in the past.

Revenue organizations have heard the message loud and clear, and most invest time and effort in producing content for their sellers to use throughout the sales cycle. According to the recently released State of Revenue Productivity Report, organizations published an average of 642 new assets in 2023.

Average number of new assets orgs published in 2023

But simply producing a large volume of sales content doesn’t mean it’ll be used – or that it’ll make a difference in deal outcomes. Instead, you must understand how sales reps and prospects are (or aren’t) using sales content. In other words, you need sales content analytics.

In fact, without sales content analytics, you’re likely sinking time and money into content that has little to no impact on sales performance.

In this post, we’ll explore sales content analytics, why they’re important for driving B2B sales performance, and which analytics you need to start tracking immediately.

What is sales content analytics?

The harsh reality is that most B2B sales content ends up on the shelf. According to Forrester, an estimated 65% of B2B content isn’t used. For those keeping track, that means 417 pieces of content each year go completely unused by the sales team.

According to Forrester

of B2B content isn't used

0 %

With sales content management analytics, you can spend your time and effort creating content that will be used and improve sales outcomes. But what is sales content analytics?

Sales content analytics is the practice of analyzing the performance of the different types of sales content your revenue team uses. These include sales presentations, sales collateral, whitepapers, case studies, videos, or any other type of content used throughout the sales cycle.

Sales content analytics can help you understand:

How often a piece of content is used by sales reps
How and when sellers share a piece of content with buyers
How buyers consume the content
How (and whether) the content influences revenue
Which teams and sellers get the most customer engagement from the content they share

Revenue organizations can leverage content analytics to optimize their sales content strategy. For example, teams can use these insights to understand when there are opportunities to:

Update existing content to improve performance
Eliminate unused or underperforming content
Create new content

Content analytics can also help organizations determine where additional sales training and sales enablement are needed. For example, let’s say an organization finds that its best sellers frequently use a specific piece of sales content to close deals. However, this piece of content isn’t used widely across the sales team. The revenue organization can use this intel to deliver sales training or sales enablement to help all sellers understand when and how to use this piece of content in the sales cycle.

Sales content analytics are also hugely beneficial to sales reps – which we’ll cover in more detail next.

How does sales content analytics help your B2B sales team?

Today, businesses tap into analytics to make better decisions and improve performance. Their efforts are paying off. A survey from PwC found that highly data-driven organizations are three times more likely to report significant improvements in decision-making.

Data-driven orgs are

more likely to report significant improvements in decision-making

0 x

Revenue organizations are no exception to this rule. With the right sales analytics, revenue teams can make better decisions – and improve outcomes.

Sales content analytics, which is a type of sales analytics, enable sellers to be more effective and efficient in their roles. Let’s take a closer look at some of the key ways sales content analytics can improve sales rep performance.

Content analytics inform more effective training and enablement

On every B2B sales team, there’s a subset of top performers. Content analytics helps you understand what your top sellers are doing with content so your entire team can adopt these winning behaviors.

For example, you may find that one of your top sellers uses a specific piece of sales content every time they close a deal in a specific industry. However, the entire sales team hasn’t widely adopted this content. You can use these insights to deliver training and sales enablement focused on helping all sellers understand how to use this particular piece of content.

Sales content analytics help reps determine the next best action

Chances are, your sellers follow an established sales process for every deal. However, the sales process must be flexible enough to allow sellers to deliver personalized experiences that resonate with each buyer.

Content analytics provide valuable information that B2B sales reps can use to determine what action to take next. For example, a sales rep can examine content analytics to see how (or whether) different buying committee members are engaging with the content they’ve shared. These insights can help the sales rep determine the next best action.

Sales content analytics helps drive deal acceleration

Sales content helps reps close more deals. But not just any content will do. Instead, reps need relevant, proven content for each customer – no matter where they are on the sales journey.

With sales content analytics, revenue teams can understand how content is being used and whether it’s impacting deals. Then, they can use these insights to invest in content that’s proven to accelerate deals.

For example, content analytics may reveal that certain pieces of content are never used. This content can be eliminated altogether.

Content analytics can also illuminate opportunities to freshen up existing content and boost its effectiveness. According to the recently released State of Revenue Productivity Report, the top 10% of revenue organizations update their content at least every 3.25 months.

The right sales content analytics can also help organizations understand where new content is needed. For example, you may find that deals frequently drop off at a certain point in the sales cycle, and the existing assets for that stage aren’t as effective as you’d hoped. You can use data—as well as feedback from your sales team—to develop new content for sellers to use.

The bottom line is that sales content analytics enables organizations to improve the effectiveness of their sales content. That means sellers are equipped with proven-to-work sales content. When sellers use this content, they’re more likely to close deals faster.

Sales content analytics help create a culture of data-driven decision-making
Making decisions based on hunches or gut feelings isn’t an effective approach. Instead, business decisions must be rooted in data.

Revenue organizations should strive to build a culture where data-driven decision-making is the norm. Equipping the right people with the right sales content analytics is a key way to make this a reality.

What sales content metrics do you need to track?

Now you know what sales content analytics is and why it’s important to revenue organizations. But what content metrics do you need to track to understand how your content is being used and what kind of impact it has on deals?

Let’s take a closer look at some of the top sales content metrics. Ideally, you should be able to access these metrics via your sales content management solution.

Searches

Track what keywords your reps are using when searching for the right content. You can leverage this information to categorize better or tag your existing sales content assets.

In addition, look for trends in reps’ searches. If sellers’ searches turned up no results, there may be an opportunity to develop new sales content.

Finally, be sure to monitor whether the content reps find during their searches is effective. In other words, ask yourself if buyers are engaging with this content and whether it’s creating opportunities for sellers.

Sales content usage

You may have spent a lot of time creating great content. But if your sellers aren’t using it, your prospects will never see it.

Content usage metrics help you understand how (or if) sales reps use a particular piece of content. Key metrics include things like:

Sales content views
Sales content downloads
Sales content edits
Sales content shares

You can track sales content usage metrics across the whole revenue team, as well as by region, territory, or individual rep.

Sales content engagement

The right content helps accelerate B2B deals. However, content must be relevant and engaging to be effective.

As such, it’s important to track sales content engagement, which measures how your buyers consume your sales content. There are several metrics you need to track to understand sales content engagement, including:

Clickthrough rate
Average amount of time buyers spend engaging with a specific piece of content
How often buyers engage with a piece of content
How many pages or sections the buyer engage with, and which pages or sections get the most engagement
How often buyers are sharing a piece of content with others
Which sales reps have the highest engagement on sales content

Sales content production timeline

Producing content requires time and effort. Be sure to track the amount of time it takes to create sales content. This metric will be important when determining whether the results are worth the time and effort spent on it.

Sales content performance and ROI

You want to invest in content that improves sales outcomes. As such, it’s important to measure sales content performance and ROI.

You can use these insights to invest more in content that’s proven to work.

Be sure to track which content buyers are engaging with at each stage of the sales cycle and how it’s impacting whether or not they continue through the funnel. You should also track which content is used in both closed-won and closed-lost opportunities – and the impact the content had on each deal.

Feedback from the sales team

When it comes to sales content optimization, hard data is key. However, it’s also important to ask for feedback from your sales teams, as they meet with customers daily. Your sales reps – especially your top performers – have unique insight into which content works, which doesn’t, and where there are opportunities to develop new assets to accelerate the sales cycle and improve sales outcomes.

Leverage sales content metrics to optimize your sales content with Mindtickle

Sales content is a key component of the B2B purchase journey. But without sales content analytics, it’s impossible to know how content is being used by buyers and sellers, and how it’s impacting the outcome of deals.

If you’re not using sales content analytics, you spend time, money, and effort on content with little to no impact. So, while your sellers have plenty of content, it’s ineffective, and they may lose deals because of it.

It’s time to start leveraging sales content analytics to understand how buyers and sellers are engaging with content today and how you can optimize for greater engagement and impact.

Mindtickle’s integrated revenue productivity platform incorporates sales content management tools, which ensures your sales reps can easily surface the right content for the right selling scenario.

Mindtickle’s sales content management platform also features robust analytics to help you understand how sales reps and prospects engage with content and how various assets influence sales outcomes. Revenue organizations can use these insights to improve the effectiveness of their content and deliver sales training and sales enablement to ensure reps know how and when to use content that’s proven to drive revenue.

Sales Content Analytics in Mindtickle

Curious why winning revenue organizations turn to Mindtickle to create better sales content that positively impacts revenue? See for yourself.

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How Alkami Drives Revenue Impact with Digital Sales Rooms

Christian Pieper on March 14, 2024

B2B buyer expectations are higher than ever, and how they want to interact with sellers is changing.

Enablement teams are under pressure to ensure sellers are always ready to deliver outstanding experiences and provide value throughout the sales cycle.

Alkami Technologies, a digital baking solutions provider for financial institutions in the U.S., understands these challenges well. The team at Alkami had built a large repository of content for sellers to use throughout the sales cycle. However sellers struggled to leverage this content to engage buyers effectively. That all changed when they started using digital sales rooms.

At this year’s Sales Enablement Summit in Austin, Stephanie Massey, Senior Sales Enablement Manager at Alkami Technology, joined Teri Long, VP of Revenue Enablement at Mindtickle, to discuss how Alkami has leveraged Digital Sales Rooms from Mindtickle to deliver personalized, engaging experiences that enable sellers to close more deals.

Connecting with buyers – digitally

Alkami invests significant time and resources into developing content for sellers to use in any sales scenario. But they didn’t want sellers spending their time hunting down the right content. “We needed a place for sellers to have access and discoverability into all of that content,” said Massey. “Mindtickle provided that.”

Alkami’s sales teams have the content they need to engage with buyers. But today, many buyers don’t want to engage with sellers. In fact, according to the Gartner B2B Marketing Report, 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience.

According to Gartner Research,

of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience

0 %

Today, Alkami uses digital sales rooms to meet their customers where they are. Digital sales rooms enable buyers to share the right sales content at the right time and engage with sellers throughout the sales cycle – without needing in-person visits.

“We needed a digital vehicle to get this content in front of buyers,” explained Massey. “That’s the next place where Mindtickle came in."

Stephanie Massey

Senior Sales Enablement Manager, Alkami Technology

Delivering personalized, on-brand experiences

The team at Alkami understood the need to transition to digital experiences. However, they also knew one-size-fits-all experiences wouldn’t cut it. Digital experiences need to be personalized to each customer and reflect the branding and culture of both the buying and selling organizations.

Digital sales rooms from Mindtickle enable the Alkami team to easily develop and deliver tailored digital experiences that resonate with each buyer. Alkami provides sellers with pre-built templates focused on specific industries or challenges. Sellers can then customize those templates with the company’s branding.

Of course, digital sales rooms aren’t static. Instead, they evolve throughout the sales cycle as sales reps better understand a prospect’s needs and challenges. For example, reps can look for buying signals, find key, relevant content, and then add and share that content with prospects through the digital sales room.

These personalized experiences go a long way for Alkami’s sales team. “Our sellers need to build relationships with buyers,” Massey explained. “We have massive deals, and some can span across two years. It’s such a long journey, and buyers really value that personalization and feeling like reps are really speaking to their unique needs.”

Engaging large buying committees

It’s no secret that the number of people involved in a B2B purchase decision is growing. Recent research shows that every deal has between 11 and 22 unique decision-makers.

Alkami has seen even larger buying committees, with 20 to 26 unique digital sales room visitors for every deal. With deals this complex, it can be challenging to manage content and communication effectively. Massey says it’s easy for things to get “lost in a sea of emails.”

Number of unique DSR visitors for every deal

Digital sales rooms provide Alkami sales reps with a centralized location for managing content and interactions across the buying committee. “With digital sales rooms, teams can not only see content, but also engage with each other,” said Massey. “Everything is centralized so you’re not having to sort through all the clutter.”

In addition, digital sales rooms provide insights into how prospects are engaging. Sellers can use these insights to determine the best way to follow up to move deals forward.

“At Alkami, reps are closing deals 50% more often when using digital sales rooms."

Stephanie Massey

Senior Sales Enablement Manager, Alkami Technology

Increasing buy-in and seller adoption

Change is hard for everyone. The team at Alkami knew they’d have to have a plan in place to gain buy-in and adoption of digital sales rooms. Simply telling sellers to start using digital sales rooms “because I said so” wouldn’t be an effective approach.

Instead, the enablement team worked to understand the pain points of sellers – specifically related to finding and sharing content and collaborating with large buying committees. Then, they focused on conveying how Mindtickle’s digital sales rooms would help sellers overcome these challenges to close more deals.

Alkami’s Chief Revenue Officer was a big champion of this initiative, which was key to gaining seller buy-in. “We’re a digital-first company. We need a digital-first experience for our prospects,” said Massey.

Massey’s team knew a one-off training wouldn’t be enough to get the entire sales team on board and ready to use digital sales rooms. After all, 70% of what reps learn is lost within the first 24 hours. Furthermore, the team recognizes that sellers all learn differently. That’s why the team created various learning and reinforcement formats to get sellers up to speed.

Alkami has also tapped into the power of recognition and friendly competition to increase adoption. The enablement team recognizes top performers in their bi-weekly digest and during all-hands meetings. “We share how many rooms they’ve created and how many room visitors they’ve had,” said Massey. “Now that they know how to use the digital sales rooms, the key is to make sure they keep caring.”

See Digital Sales Rooms in Action

Want to connect with a Mindtickle expert to see how digital sales rooms can better engage buyers and close more deals?

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Simplifying Sales Content Management

Christian Pieper on March 7, 2024

As a sales enablement leader, sales content is a big part of your job. Whether it’s creating it, training reps on it, monitoring its performance, or updating it, simplifying sales content management lets sales enablement leaders focus on other programs that help sellers actually sell.

When sales content hits the mark with both sellers and buyers, it can be a powerful tool for advancing deals forward. Our 2023 State of Sales Productivity Report found that interactions with content per rep per week doubled last year. It went from 3.5 interactions per week in 2021 to 7.5 in 2022.

But when sales content doesn’t hit the mark, it can disengage your audiences and stall deals. According to Sales Enablement Collective’s 2022 Sales Enablement Landscape Report, 63.1% of respondents said sales content wasn’t as good as needed.

According to the Sales Enablement Collective

of orgs say sales content wasn't as good as needed

0 %

So how do you create a sales content management strategy that’s simple, personalized, and scalable? In this blog post, we’ll walk you through:

What is sales content management?
The importance of sales content management
What are the benefits of sales content management?
Improves sales and revenue productivity
Reducing sales’ search time for content and collateral
Increasing win rates
Improving sales and marketing alignment
Improving the ability to track content usage
Reducing new sales team members’ ramp times
Reducing competitive losses
How to improve sales content management with technology solutions

What is sales content management?

Sales content management refers to the process of creating, organizing, distributing, and analyzing sales-related content, such as product information, case studies, and customer testimonials, with the goal of supporting the sales team and improving their performance.

Effective sales content management involves developing a content strategy that aligns with the organization’s overall sales goals and targets specific stages of the sales cycle. It also involves selecting the right tools and technologies to manage the content, such as a content management system (CMS) or a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Sales content management can help sales teams to:

Access the right content

Customize content

Track peformance

Access the right content at the right time: By organizing and centralizing sales content, sales reps can easily find the information they need to educate prospects and move them through the sales funnel.
Customize content for different audiences: Sales teams can tailor content to meet the specific needs of their target audiences and increase their chances of closing a deal.
Track content performance: By analyzing the performance of sales content, sales managers can identify what’s working and what’s not, and adjust their strategies accordingly.

Overall, sales content management is a critical part of any sales strategy, helping organizations to improve their sales performance and grow their business.

The importance of sales content management

Sales content management is essential for organizations that want to improve their sales performance and drive revenue growth. Here are some key reasons why sales content management is important:

Consistency

Sales content management helps to ensure that sales reps have access to the most up-to-date and accurate content. This helps to ensure consistency in messaging across the organization, which can build trust with prospects and customers.

Efficiency

Sales reps spend a lot of time searching for content, and this can be a drain on productivity. By using sales content management tools, sales reps can easily find the content they need and focus on selling, rather than on administrative tasks.

Personalization

Sales content management tools enable sales reps to customize content for individual prospects or customers, based on their specific needs and interests. This can help to build stronger relationships and increase the likelihood of closing a sale.

Analytics

Sales content management tools provide insights into which content is resonating with prospects and customers, and which is not. This can help sales managers to make data-driven decisions about which content to prioritize, and to identify areas where sales reps may need additional sales training or support.

Scalability

As organizations grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage sales content manually. Sales content management tools can help to scale content creation and distribution, enabling organizations to reach more prospects and customers without sacrificing quality.

Sales content management is critical for organizations that want to improve their sales performance, build stronger customer relationships, and drive revenue growth. By using the right tools and strategies, organizations can streamline content management and make their sales teams more effective and efficient.

What are the benefits of sales content management?

CSO Insights asked 16.5% of participants who actually use a sales enablement platform to share the top three benefits they received from such a system. Below is a chart that summarizes the results:

Let’s take a look at some of the improvements in sales performance experienced by these companies.

Improves sales and revenue productivity

Sales content can be crucial in improving sales and revenue productivity in several ways. Here are some examples:

Educating prospects

Well-crafted sales content, such as case studies, product information sheets, and customer testimonials, can help educate prospects about the benefits of a product or service, and help them make more informed purchasing decisions. By providing relevant information that addresses their needs and pain points, sales content can help to build trust and credibility, which can ultimately lead to more sales.

Personalization

Sales content can be customized to meet the specific needs of individual prospects or customers. This can be achieved by segmenting the audience based on factors such as industry, company size, or job title, and tailoring content accordingly. Personalized sales content can help to build stronger relationships with prospects and customers, and increase the likelihood of closing a sale.

Consistency

Consistent messaging across all sales content can help to build brand awareness and recognition. By using a consistent voice and tone, and conveying a clear value proposition, sales content can help to differentiate a company from its competitors and position it as a thought leader in its industry.

Efficiency

Sales content can help to streamline the sales process, enabling sales reps to more efficiently move prospects through the sales funnel. By providing sales reps with the right content at the right time, sales content can help to reduce the amount of time spent searching for information and enable sales reps to focus on selling.

Analytics

Sales content can be analyzed to gain insights into what content is resonating with prospects and customers, and what is not. This information can be used to optimize sales content, and to identify areas where sales reps may need additional training or support. By using data to drive decisions about sales content, organizations can increase the effectiveness of their sales teams and drive revenue growth.

Sales content improves sales and revenue productivity by educating prospects, personalizing content, providing consistent messaging, streamlining the sales process, and using data to optimize content and identify areas for improvement. By investing in sales content management and creating high-quality sales content, organizations can increase their sales effectiveness and achieve their revenue goals.

Reducing sales’ search time for content and collateral

These two improvements are closely related. When your salesforce has easy access to sales content and tools, their search time is reduced. These two outcomes alone increase the amount of selling time that your reps have and increase their overall productivity. Here’s how.

Increasing win rates

Good sales content can help you close more deals in several ways:

Aligns with the buyer's journey

Good sales content is created with the buyer’s journey in mind. It should provide information that is relevant to the prospect’s specific stage in the buying process. By providing the right information at the right time, sales reps can build trust and credibility with the prospect, and move them closer to making a purchasing decision.

Addresses objections

Sales content should address common objections that prospects may have, and provide persuasive arguments to overcome these objections. By anticipating objections and providing solutions, sales reps can reduce the likelihood that a prospect will back out of a deal.

Differentiates your offering

Good sales content should highlight the unique benefits of your offering and differentiate it from your competitors. By providing clear and compelling reasons why your product or service is the best choice, sales reps can increase the likelihood that a prospect will choose to do business with you

Facilitates conversations

Good sales content can facilitate conversations between the sales rep and the prospect. It can provide a starting point for discussions, and help the sales rep to better understand the prospect’s needs and pain points. By having more productive conversations, sales reps can build stronger relationships with prospects and increase the likelihood of closing a deal.

Provides value beyond the sale

Good sales content should provide value beyond the sale. It should help the prospect to better understand the product or service, and provide guidance on how to get the most out of it. By providing ongoing value, sales reps can build stronger relationships with customers, increase customer satisfaction, and drive repeat business.

By investing in sales content management and creating high-quality sales content, organizations can increase their sales effectiveness and achieve their revenue goals.

Improving sales and marketing alignment

Sales and marketing departments worked separately for many years. More recently, they’ve made more efforts to communicate more consistently. Doing so allows Marketing to continually deepen their understanding of your prospects. This makes it easier for them to create content that encourages prospects to move through their buying cycle. In fact, according to a DemandGen study, over half of the participants estimated a revenue increase of 20% if they had the right content available at the right time in the sales cycle.

Reducing new sales team members’ ramp times

New rep ramp time varies from company to company. Average sales cycle length and training effectiveness influence the amount of time it takes for a new salesperson to become fully productive. Reducing this time increases your bottom line more quickly as well. Having content more easily distributed and accessible means that new reps are able to learn more in a shorter period of time. Having content at their fingertips helps reps sell more effectively without needing to memorize every proof point. All they have to do is find it, consume it, and/or share it with their prospect. Their questions are answered without slowing down in the learning and sales processes.

Improving the ability to track content usage

Tracking content usage provides valuable insights into marketing’s effectiveness. It enables them to know which content is being used more frequently and which content isn’t being used at all. This information allows them to quickly and easily identify content gaps so they’re able to stay current with new content requirements. This results in sales always having the content they need throughout the sales cycle for the exact persona in the specific industry.

Reducing competitive losses

Good sales content can be a powerful tool in winning over your competition. Here are some ways it can help:

Differentiation: Good sales content can help you differentiate your product or service from your competitors. By highlighting your unique value proposition and explaining why your offering is better than your competitors, you can give potential customers a reason to choose you over your competition.
Education: By providing informative and educational content, you can position yourself as an expert in your field. This can help build trust with potential customers and give them confidence that you have the knowledge and expertise to meet their needs.
Persuasion: Effective sales content can persuade potential customers to take action. By addressing their pain points and showing them how your product or service can solve their problems, you can motivate them to choose your offering over your competitors.
Credibility: Good sales content can also help establish your credibility and reputation in the marketplace. By providing case studies, testimonials, and other social proof, you can show potential customers that you have a track record of delivering results and providing value.

Overall, good sales content can help you stand out from your competition, educate and persuade potential customers, and build your credibility and reputation in the marketplace.

How to improve sales content management with technology

There’s no shortage of ways to organize, distribute, and measure sales content. Scaling and simplifying sales content efforts gets its power when it’s embedded into other enablement efforts.

At Mindtickle, we know that content needs to be aligned with skills, processes, and customer needs.

Here’s how we’re doing it.

Mindtickle’s Digital Sales Rooms are much more than simple content microsites and elevate the digital sales experience. They are collaborative portals where the entire selling team and all buyer stakeholders can align, communicate, share content, and drive the deal to its optimal resolution.

Automatic content sync allows you to use more content more easily, by automatically syncing content and metadata from your cloud-based content storage directly into Mindtickle.

Enablement engagement metrics provide granular engagement analytics that expose how learners engage with content. Dashboards and reports give visibility into the impact of your efforts and inform your strategy with smarter data.

Customized, quick content sharing protects your brand and ensures the right messaging reaches the market. At the same time, sellers have the agility and flexibility they need to build smart, custom presentations. Sellers can tailor the buying experience to each buyer’s needs.

Smart content attribution & revenue impact data help you identify the content that actually wins deals. In Mindtickle you can see which content drives revenue impact, and leverage those insights to create better content in the future.

Sales Content Management in Mindtickle

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This post was originally published in May 2018, was updated in April 2023, and again in March 2024.

How Digital Sales Rooms Help Reps Win More Deals

Christian Pieper on January 25, 2024

On average, there are 27 interactions in the buyer journey before a decision is reached. These interactions range from phone conversations to email chains to instant messaging. Each step is an instance where information can be misplaced or forgotten, and sales momentum lost.

# of interactions in the buyer journey before a decision is made

The good news is that this type of back-and-forth communication can be replaced with a digital sales room — a single and permanent location for potential buyers to find all your sales information instantly.

Digital sales rooms (DSRs) give prospects a personalized buying journey with content that is tailored to their business needs and goals. As well, they help sales reps understand which content leads to closed deals and improved close rates.

What you’ll learn:

How digital sales rooms streamline the buying journey
Why empowering buyers can improve your close rates
How to create compelling buying experiences using DSRs

What are digital sales rooms and how do they work?

Digital sales rooms work through a client-seller portal. Here, sales reps create a DSR or virtual sales platform, which essentially serves as a resource and storage location for all the content a buyer needs to make an informed purchase decision.

Similar to a showroom, digital sales rooms are created specifically for each customer, where they can view product demos, have their questions answered, and keep track of all the conversations and information they have with your reps. Depending on the needs of the buyer, content can include product proposals, testimonies, order forms, or service proposals. Once the portal is created, buyers are given access through a unique link.

Digital sales rooms are also connected to sales enablement platforms. This is an added benefit for sales reps, as they can gather insights on how prospects interact with content and where further content needs to be included for future negotiations.

Digital sales rooms empower your buyers

Digital sales rooms improve close rates by empowering buyers with all the information they need to confidently finalize a purchase. Thanks to the personalized sales cycles and customized content management DSRs offer, Gartner predicts that by 2026, 30% of B2B sales cycles will be managed through their use.

Digital sales rooms improve the digital sales experience by:

Offering a platform to answer any questions or concerns with instant two-way communication
Improving engagement with customers through an interactive portal
Improving understanding of buyer behavior and the buyer journey by capturing data on client interactions and patterns
Providing access to the newest product features and offerings
Building relationships, providing content to address questions, and helping clients feel supported and valued

Amount of time during the sales cycle spent with a rep

0 %

These days, only 17% of the B2B buying cycle is spent with a sales rep. With digital sales rooms, buyers can drive the sales cycle but the content they interact with is still controlled and delivered by sellers.

How to create compelling custom buying experiences using DSRs

If you’re thinking about introducing a DSR into your selling process, follow these tips to close more deals.

Personalize the digital sales room experience to your buyer

Your digital sales room should help your prospect through their buyer journey, aiding in their research without overwhelming them with irrelevant content.

Upload content that is meaningful and relevant to your buyer. For example, if your prospect is at the start of their journey, they’ll be interested in content that explains product features and articles on comparisons with competitors. However, if they’re closer to signing off on the purchase, content for next steps, like payment options and implementation processes, will be more relevant.

To know which content to include, ask yourself:

What are your prospects searching for on the internet?
At what stage are they in their buyer journey?
What solutions does your product provide for their business?
What roadblocks are preventing them from buying?
Do they need to share this content with other stakeholders?

To drive high buyer engagement, Include content that has already proved itself based on data from your sales enablement platform or past experience.

Where possible, personalize the content to include the prospect’s name, position, and company. So content is being received in the most persuasive way possible, you can even use terminology that is specific to their industry.

Have support accessible at all times

If your buyer doesn’t find the information they need immediately, you risk them getting frustrated and looking for answers elsewhere, potentially with a competitor.

In your digital sales room, it’s a good practice to include a support channel that is accessible at all times. Or, have an in-room chat option to ask and answer any buyer questions in a centralized platform where no information will be lost.

Make your content unique with purposeful interaction

Your content needs to meet your buyer at their stage of the journey. Answer the questions they have at that stage and guide them through the digital sales experience to the next. But that certainly doesn’t mean that your content should be monotonous.

On the contrary, your potential buyers should feel curious to learn about your product through content that is interactive and engaging.

You want prospects to remember your content, and that means forgoing long Word documents and instead leaning into videos, infographics, product demos, slide shows, and fun visual documents.

Always make the next steps clear

Guide the buyer down the sales funnel with clear next steps and actions. Not only does this direct prospects to the final closure, but it also gives insight into prospective roadblocks in the process and indicates where content is missing. Some things to keep in mind:

Create and embed customized CTAs into each content piece to drive the buyer through their learning journey.
Create a checklist or an action plan built from past successful seller experiences outlining what the next steps or content to consume should be.

With clear next steps, you make sure that the buyer is staying on track and making progress toward their final purchase.

Keep the content on brand to elevate purchase desire

You want buyers to feel the brand throughout the buying process so that they establish a connection with your product. Here are things to keep in mind:

Deliver your brand’s value and purpose to your buyer with every content interaction
Customize your digital sales rooms to reinforce the look and feel of your company
Position your content as an enhancement of your business values and tone

By keeping your content on brand, you avoid creating false expectations. Instead, your content clearly communicates the benefits and objectives the product can fulfill.

Include a product demo

Product demos give users an opportunity to see firsthand the benefits your product or service can provide.

Access to demos helps prospects fully understand the features and product capabilities as well as allowing them to imagine the time they can save and the problems they can solve by using your product.

With demos available, sellers can directly question the prospect’s particular needs and show them how to solve their problems.

Your DSR is only as good as your sales content

When you’ve got a great potential buyer visiting your digital sales room, the real driver is the content you provide.

Use insights from past sales processes to deliver the most impactful content to your buyers at each stage of the buyer journey. This will enhance the buyer experience and simplify the selling process. The sales materials should educate the buyer without hard selling the product or service. The idea is to help the buyer become empowered in their purchase decision.

Ready to see DSRs in Action?

One secure, shared space for all content, communication, and deal planning.

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This post was originally published in October 2022, was updated in August 2023, and again in January 2024.

Sirion: Modernizing and Accelerating Sales with Digital Sales Rooms

Christian Pieper on December 11, 2023

Sirion, a global leader in enterprise Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) software, is demonstrating how proper alignment between revenue and enablement leaders, in combination with the right technology, can unlock new opportunities for deal acceleration and revenue growth.

In a case study session at Gartner’s 2023 CSO and Sales Leader Conference in Las Vegas, Gordon Thompson, Sirion’s EVP of Presales and Business Strategy, and Nick Salas, Senior. Director of Global Enablement, discussed how arming their team with Digital Sales Rooms, powered by Mindtickle, is transforming how their team sells and how their buyers engage with their offerings.

Aligning to the buyer journey

According to Gartner, 64% of buyers see no differentiation in vendor digital experiences.** But Sirion wasn’t going to settle for blending in with the crowd.

Sirion decided to add Mindtickle’s Digital Sales Rooms (DSRs) to their revenue tech stack because they saw the promise of how these persistent, collaborative spaces could help buyers and sellers align around the goals, needs, and tasks of their customers’ buying journey.

“We wanted to stand out from the crowd by providing more self-service information and more engaging experiences for our buyers and Mindtickle’s Digital Sales Rooms have helped us do exactly that.”

Gordon Thompson

EVP, Pre-Sales and Business Strategy

Their buying groups are commonly quite large, sophisticated, and detail-driven, and Sirion’s revenue and enablement leaders hoped that DSRs would help their buyers navigate the sometimes complicated evaluation process.

Sirion buying groups

Digital Sales Rooms

Large groups of evaluators
Sophisticated and experienced
Careful and detail-driven
Many steps and milestones

Unlimited collaborators
Engaging content experiences
Granular engagement tracking
Mutual action plans & task management

Earning seller buy-in and adoption

In part because they recognized the potential of DSR tech to transform the relationship between their sellers and buyers, they were planning to invest significantly in helping their sales team understand how to leverage this new capability. However, Sirion was pleasantly surprised at the speed with which their sellers and buyers took to this new collaborative model.

"Within three months of launching Digital Sales Rooms, we were seeing rooms being built for over 50% of new opportunities, and our sellers were letting us know how easy they were to use and how much they were helping."

Nick Salas

Sr. Dir. Global Enablement, Sirion

Accelerating complex deals

Gordon and Nick shared a powerful example of the impact Digital Sales Rooms have on deals at Sirion.

The Buyer

Digital Sales Rooms results

Fortune 100 tech company
Large, undefined buying group
Stakeholders from various business units and departments

Visited by over 100 participants of the buyer group
Earned over 1000 hours of self-service engagement with Sirion content

After Sirion’s reps closed this critical deal, the buying group reached out to comment on their experience with the Digital Sales Room specifically.

"They came to us asking us what tech we were using for the deal room because they saw how much easier it made it for them to navigate their own buying process. We told them to talk to Mindtickle."

Nick Salas

Sr. Dir. Global Enablement

See DSRs in action

Learn more about how Mindtickle’s Digital Sales Rooms can help you transform your buyer experience and accelerate your most critical deals.

Request a Demo

**Gartner, 4 Steps for CSOs to Improve the Digital Buying Experience, 22 September 2022. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.**

Mindtickle Named a Leader in The Forrester Wave(™): Sales Readiness Solutions, Q4 2023

Christian Pieper on October 4, 2023

Earlier today, Forrester, one of the most influential research and advisory firms in the world, released its 2023 Wave for Sales Readiness, evaluating the 11 most significant sales readiness solutions providers. Mindtickle was named a leader in the Sales Readiness Solutions, Q4 2023 Wave, with the top score in the Strategy category.

About the Forrester Wave(™): Sales Readiness Solutions, Q4 2023

Forrester releases Wave reports on a variety of technology categories that are considered essential guides for organizations that are evaluating and purchasing technology. The Forrester Wave reports contain a graphical representation of Forrester’s call on a market and is plotted using a detailed spreadsheet with exposed scores, weightings, and comments.

For the 2023 Sales Readiness Wave, Forrester evaluated the 11 most significant sales readiness solution providers. Sales readiness vendors, as defined by Forrester, deliver “advanced capabilities and integrations that empower enablement teams to correlate sales results data with learning program information to determine which efforts have a real business impact”.

“Mindtickle offers superior end-user experience, coaching support, and analytics.”

Forrester Research

Forrester Wave(™): Sales Readiness Solutions, Q4 2023

Results of the Wave

Mindtickle was named a leader in the Sales Readiness Wave. According to the report, “Mindtickle has a robust feature set that exceeds expectations in standard readiness functionality and adds unique functionality that provides best-in-class visibility to measure the effectiveness of seller learning programs.”

Mindtickle’s road to a Sales Readiness Wave leader

As cited by the report, “Mindtickle has been in the sales readiness space since 2011 and has built a reputation for providing a strong sales readiness platform with customers’ continuous innovation. It has recently added sales content management capabilities and DSR functionality to augment its readiness platform, and has dedicated significant resources to achieving parity within the sales content market.”

Mindtickle has been delivering readiness solutions to leading organizations for over a decade and has invested heavily in adding key capabilities to the platform arming enablement and operations leaders with the ability to transform the performance of their go-to-market teams.

In recent years, Mindtickle has launched conversation intelligence and content management in the platform, completely revamped its coaching offerings, acquired the leading Digital Sales Rooms provider, and introduced a suite of generative AI capabilities.

As part of the Readiness Wave, Forrester also evaluates vendors’ innovation, strategy, and roadmap. Mindtickle achieved the highest scores in the Strategy category, noting, “The company will have to execute on its broad roadmap, but it has a long history of meeting development goals.”

If you want to learn more about how Mindtickle can elevate readiness and enablement at your organization, reach out for a tailored demo and discussion with our readiness experts today.

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7 Takeaways from the 2023 Forrester B2B Summit

Christian Pieper on June 15, 2023

Last week’s Forrester B2B Summit in Austin, Texas brought together revenue leaders, Forrester analysts, and rev-tech vendors to share their insights and strategies for revenue excellence. From discussions on sales competencies to aligning sales and marketing, the sessions offered valuable takeaways for businesses looking to thrive in the dynamic B2B landscape.

In this blog post, we’ll share key highlights and actionable tips from the sessions we attended and led as well as conversations we had throughout the event. You can also check out a mini photo gallery of some of our team at the event.

This post is for anyone who didn’t attend the Summit and wants to know our biggest learnings or for those who joined us in Austin and need a recap to reference as you start thinking about how to bring these learnings to your own revenue organization.

The booth troop!

Packed house

80s theme night

Another great session

One of the essential ingredients for sales success is having a clear understanding of your sales competencies. Before seeking a vendor or investing in tools, it’s crucial to evaluate and define your sales capabilities. By identifying your strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement, you can make informed decisions that align with your specific needs.

Measuring the success of your revenue enablement programs can be challenging, especially as they evolve over time. While initial indicators like adoption or consumption can be helpful, it’s essential to go beyond surface-level metrics. Gathering feedback on program quality and data on actual impact can provide valuable insights for continuous improvement. Measure how your programs are impacting field behaviors and how those behaviors are contributing to core revenue outcomes.

Revenue leaders and managers recognize the value of training coaches to be effective mentors. However, finding the time for sales coaching is often a challenge. To maximize impact, it’s crucial to prioritize coaching and invest in the development of your sales coaches. By equipping them with the necessary skills and tools, you empower them to guide and support your revenue generators effectively.

Forrester’s Phyllis Davidson and Peter Ostrow taught us how to avoid “sales content purgatory,” where reps have access to tons of content but can’t find what they need or figure out how to use it. This aligns with what we found in our 2023 State of Sales Productivity Report. The vast majority of content engagement comes from a small percentage of the content to which reps have access. To stay out of “purgatory” focus on quality over quantity. Prioritize high-value content and make derivatives of that content that apply to specific audiences, personas, and selling scenarios.

Continuing the motif of “quality over quantity,” Forrester’s Amy Bills and Jennifer Bullock applied this to the creation of customer case studies. Instead of producing a case study with every available customer, focus on creating a few high-quality stories that address common customer questions and concerns. Furthermore, involving the sales organization in the creation process ensures that case studies align with their specific sales motions. Remember, having case studies alone isn’t the solution; enabling sellers to effectively utilize them is key.

In a standing-room-only session, Kathleen Pierce proposed a shift toward mapping content to buyer questions as an effective structure for sales content. By aligning content with specific buyer questions, it becomes easier for reps to search for and find relevant content for the selling situations they encounter. It also maximizes content’s impact on buyer decisions. Work with your field teams to understand key questions and friction points, and implement a question-answer framework within your sales content management system.

Pierce and Anne Slough explored the challenges and potential of Digital Sales Rooms. While DSRs have promising benefits, widespread adoption struggles remain. Mutual action plans, real-time insights, and buyer collaboration are key value drivers for DSRs. Sales leaders should assign DSRs to solve problems such as substandard buying experiences, inefficient sales processes, and longer buying cycles. Communication of GDPR compliance and mapping DSRs to selling and buying processes are crucial for success.

Making these learnings a reality at your selling org

The Forrester B2B Summit delivered valuable insights and actionable strategies for businesses aiming to enhance their sales performance. Keep these takeaways in mind as you’re building out your revenue productivity strategy for the rest of the year.

Want to see how Mindtickle can help make these learnings a reality at your selling organization?P

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About Mindtickle

What is sales enablement for medical device reps?

What is a medical device sales enablement platform?

Alignment between marketing and sales

Companies with aligned sales and marketing teams experience

A single source of truth for compliant information and sales content

Training and coaching that’s relevant to the needs of each seller

Engaging buying experiences across the purchase journey

Data and insights to fuel better sales outcomes

6 steps to develop an impactful sales enablement program

Step 1: Collaborate cross-functionally

Step 2: Determine your sales enablement goals

Step 3: Define sales excellence

Step 4: Develop sales enablement programs to support your goals

Step 5: Tap into the right sales enablement technology

Step 6: Measure and optimize

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Sales Enablement for Med Devices

What is a sales funnel?

What are the stages of a B2B sales funnel?

Stage #1: Awareness

Stage #2: Interest

Stage #3: Consideration

Stage #4: Intent

Stage #5: Evaluation

Stage #6: Purchase

B2B sales funnel vs. B2B sales pipeline

B2B sales funnel vs B2C sales funnel: What’s the difference?

Tips to improve your B2B sales funnel

Leverage data to understand the customer journey

Identify your ideal customers

Align sales and marketing

Develop content for each stage of the B2B sales funnel

Ensure sellers know how to use content

Prioritize good fit leads

Research found that reps only spend

Don’t check out after the deal is closed

Analyze and optimize your sales funnel regularly

Engage with buyers – wherever they are in the B2B sales funnel

Training, enablement + Content In Mindtickle

#1. Utilize content in the flow of work

#2 Use AI to help you discover and leverage new and better content

#3 Collaborate with co-sellers seamlessly

2024 Mindtickle Spring Announcement

What is sales content analytics?

According to Forrester

How does sales content analytics help your B2B sales team?

Data-driven orgs are

Content analytics inform more effective training and enablement

Sales content analytics help reps determine the next best action

Sales content analytics helps drive deal acceleration

What sales content metrics do you need to track?

Searches

Sales content usage

Sales content engagement

Sales content production timeline

Sales content performance and ROI

Feedback from the sales team

Leverage sales content metrics to optimize your sales content with Mindtickle

Sales Content Analytics in Mindtickle

Connecting with buyers – digitally

According to Gartner Research,

Delivering personalized, on-brand experiences

Engaging large buying committees

Increasing buy-in and seller adoption

See Digital Sales Rooms in Action

According to the Sales Enablement Collective

What is sales content management?

Access the right content

Customize content

Track peformance

The importance of sales content management

What are the benefits of sales content management?