Work in progress list of Sales Enablement vendors
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Find below a list of Sales Enablement software vendors (Sales Enablement solution, marketing content management, sales knowledge management) and agencies / consulting firms, as of May 27, 2013.
CRM magazine did a good job singling out the relevant vendors in the article Sales Enablement Tools.
When you shortlist vendors, be sure to look into the following:
- Will they integrate content from existing repositories or upload copies (of what you have in your repositories) into the cloud?
- Can the solution be installed behind the corporate firewall or not? Single-Sign-On?
- Ask the vendor whether the code, that defines how the search weights results, is shared by all customer companies or whether each customer can highly customize it.
- Do they offer a choice between the cloud and on-premise? Do they support the move from one to the other?
- SaaS vs. Licensing: What is cheaper in the long term, to buy the software as a service or perpetual user license?
- Exit strategy for your content and the meta information when you want to change vendors.
- How does the solution support you to meet the challenges that come with doing business globally? (Which languages are supported for the content and for the user interface?)
- Flexibility for customization / your influence on the road map / number of developers at the vendor?
- Can they help to integrate the solution into existing IT infrastructure/processes?
- Does the solution help to manage how you show your complex portfolio of products, services, and solutions to your sales people and channel partners? How quickly can it be updated for org changes? Is it the vendor making the changes or is there an editor?
- Are there social web 2.0 like features that allow for feedback from sales to marketing (ratings/comments) and uploading/sharing of content?
- Is there an intelligent way to maintain the ‘single source’ of content that is being re-used a lot? Can documents be auto-generated in order to be highly customized for the specific sales situation yet look polished?
- What kind of content intelligence is available? (Where in its life cycle is my content? What gets bad ratings? What needs to be retired? What is not being used? What is missing?)
Alinean alinean.com
Altus Corp. altus365.com
AMACUS amacus.net
Attensa attensa.com
Attivio attivio.com Unified information access platform: Active Intelligence Engine® (AIE®). Ingests both structured & semi-structured data, Big Data & unstructured content, from a wide variety of databases, document repositories, content management systems, email systems, websites, social media & file servers
AvayaLive™ Engage web conferencing in virtual 3D environment for meetings, training, sales & support. Also allows collaborative web browsing and accessing/presenting marketing material in its on-demand, web-based, immersive collaboration environment.
Avitage avitage.com
Bantam live (acquired by Constant Contact in 2011)
basis06 AG basis06.ch (Switzerland)
BigMachines Inc. bigmachines.com
BizSphere AG bizsphere.com suite of Sales Enablement software solutions for global businesses with a complex portfolio [of products, services, & solutions] and large sales force / channel partners (Full disclosure: I’ve worked here)
Bloomfire bloomfire.com
Brainshark brainshark.com
Callidus (Callidus Software Inc. purchased iCentera)
http://calliduscloud.com/products/enablement/
Canidium canidium.com/services/sales-enablement/
changeBEAT changebeat.com
Combionic GmbH combionic.com Germany/Switzerland based. Combionic collaboration software connects people, processes, and information in context and across applications. Enabling sales people and partner organizations with a cloud based slide library. (Full disclosure: I work with them)
Compendian compendian.com small US based vendor with a solution named CollaboRate
d!NK dink.eu Sales library on tablets enables customer facing staff to adapt interactions with customers/prospects to what interests them. Makes sales more effective; better qualification, condensed sales process. Belgium based
Direxxis Marketing dmEDGE™ Distributed Marketing Portal direxxismarketing.com
FatStax fatstax.com (Catalog app that helps sales reps embrace the iPad)
fision fisiononline.com (Marketing Automation & Sales Enablement Cloud Platform)
Game Plan gameplanhq.com (iPad app; connects to Box.com, DropBox, SharePoint 2010, Amazon S3)
immer-uptodate (German. “immer” means always) immer-uptodate.net Enterprise Social Network Software. Create closed groups for [sales] people to exchange knowledge & documents. Has iPhone App. Allows free trial.
inkonit inkonit.com/sales-enablement/
InQuira (Oracle purchased InQuira) inquira.com
InsideView insideview.com
Jive jivesoftware.com/solutions/sales-enablement
KnowledgeTree knowledgetree.com @knowledgetree Right Content, Right Time, Right in Salesforce.com – Sales teams sell more when they use effective presentations, datasheets, and case studies. Makes sales enablement easy by surfacing the best content for any sales process — instantly in Salesforce.com
Landslide Technologies landslide.com (The Resource Library for easy sharing, retrieval and managing)
Launch International launchinternational.com The Sales Enablement Content Company
LIA LiberatedIntelligence.com Digital Asset Manager that stores in the cloud, routes/syncs to individual devices, and allows access via desktop and mobile web apps. Claims to be enterprise-class.
LogicBay logicbay.com
LTP Sales ltpsales.com training video solutions for sales & marketing organizations
MarcomCentral marcomcentral.com an online, on demand marketing assets management (MAM) solution
Mediafly SalesKit mediafly.com/product/saleskit ensures sales teams, partners, and customers have immediate and secure access to the latest sales & marketing materials, whether online or offline.
MING Labs GmbH minglabs.com Boston, Portland, Berlin, Munich, & Shanghai based User Experience (UX) Design company, mobile responsive websites & app development (iOS, Android, Windows8, BlackBerry, etc) as well as Portfolio & Marketing Consulting. (Full disclosure: I work here.)
mutualmobile mutualmobile.com/resources/sales-enablement/ Based in Austin, Texas. Create rich user experiences that re-invent how businesses engage the world through mobile. Custom software solutions. Increase the demonstrable value of mobile.
n-tara ntara.com also SalesEnlightenment.com
Perperitus Sales solution perperitus.com
Playboox Playmaker Solution playboox.com
PocketWorks Mobile Ltd, UK pocketworks.co.uk Enterprise iPad and smartphones solutions in Leeds, UK
Qvidian (Sant and Kadient merged) qvidian.com
RO|innovation (RO|enablement) roinnovation.com/roenablement/
Salesforce.com salesforce.com/content
SalesKB SalesKB.com
Salient6 salient6.com In Bellevue, WA, USA. Designers/builders of portals/applications that drive business results and a prototype Sales Enablement tool to “increase the productivity of your sales force”.
SAVO Group savogroup.com
Scepos scepos.com
Sendside sendside.com
Showpad showpad.com Combination of iPad app & online platform; turns each iPad into a sales enablement tool
SKURA SFX Sales Enablement solution skura.com (talent acquisition by Deloitte)
Solutions for Sales solutionsforsales.com Sales enablement consultancy that helps clients to develop value-based propositions, sales playbooks and sales enablement platforms. Based in Europe&USA
Squirro Squirro.com Harvest content that matters: Revolutionize the way you gather/store/use content that matters
StreetSmarts StreetSmarts(R) Inc. and ELA Consulting Group announced the building of a joint, dedicated Sales Effectiveness Practice
TappCtrl tappctrl.com sales tool composed of two main elements: Online Web Manager controlled by your Sales Manager or Commercial Director and iPad App installed on all devices distributed & configured for your sales team
UpSync UpSync.com Sales Process Empowerment & Presentation Tool for web, iPhone, and iPad
Vivisimo Inc (acquired by IBM) Now, Vivisimo Velocity Platform is IBM InfoSphere Data Explorer
VONICAL vonical.com @vonical Ottawa, Canada based full-service agency: Web application development, user experience & interaction design, sales enablement tools & training, gamification & reward platforms, etc. Providing sales enablement as a service for 3 large companies. Productizing some of the offerings starting May 15, ’13
Woople woople.com Hosted video-based sales enablement platform. Target content to staff & measure its adoption. Woople was developed by the Canadian company Big Bang Technology.
Yammer yammer.com
zoomstra (zoomstra workbooks) zoomstra.com
2 comma sales 2commasales.com Metro D.C. @2Comma Sales PlaybookPro: Custom-built web-based application to access, capture, organize & present all necessary product, marketing & sales information that you already have within your enterprise (typically scattered in many different places).
In its February 2010 issue CRM magazine singled out the relevant Sales Enablement vendors in the article ‘Sales Enablement Tools’:
“[...] Scott Santucci, senior analyst at Forrester Research, says he’s seen an explosion of interest in this area over the past year. As with any technology, however, those rushing to buy the hot newness without first establishing a clear strategy are doomed to fail. It’s not that there’s a lack of information—far from it. Instead, it’s hard to wade through the sheer tonnage of information and determine what’s up-to-date, relevant, and in a form amenable to the particular sales conversation. “It’s a very simple, yet really complicated problem,” Santucci says.
[...] Santucci says each of the relevant vendors—including BizSphere, iCentera, Kadient, and Savo Group—cater to slightly different problems. [...]“
In case you have not seen ‘Is Sales Enablement just lipstick on a Knowledge Management pig?’ It is a must read! I will try to discuss some of the aspects here on this blog later.
Gerhard Gschwandtner (@gerhard20) writes:
“[...] let’s take a look how the sales enablement vendors are selling their solution to you, the sales leader.
Vendor Pitches or Marketing Glitches?
Savo promises, “Never sell alone!” Does that hit a hot button for you? I don’t know many lonely salespeople. On another part of the SAVO site I read, “Clone top performers.” Excuse me! Why not promise, “Clone your Swiss bank account”?
Kadient’s Website [Qvidian.com now] isn’t shy about pitching the exact same theme on their home page: “What if all of your salespeople could sell like your top performers?” The promise continues, “With Kadient’s on-demand sales enablement application, you arm your sales team with the knowledge, messages and strategies they need to win at every stage of the customer’s buying cycle.” If they found the key to winning at every stage, how come Kadient isn’t a hugely successful company?
iCentera [Callidus now] bills itself as a sales enablement company. Their pitch is a model of modesty: “Sales Enablement maximizes your sales organization’s ability to communicate through a central messaging vehicle.” The key benefit: “Close more business through more knowledgeable sales people.”
N-tara.com created a special sales enablement site with this teaser copy: “Ever feel like your salespeople don’t get it?” Here is the pitch: “N-tara’s sales enablement solutions equip your sales force with engaging, customer-ready content that is timely, relevant and in context to your customer’s needs.”
The best part of their site is a “Guide to Enlightened Conversations”. It is engaging, interactive and it makes a lot of sense.
BizSphere AG‘s pitch: “Do you want your sellers to minimize preparation time and maximize quality time with your clients?” The key benefits: close more deals, increase average deal size, shorten your sales cycle. It is a clear and concise pitch.
Another vendor in the space is Salesforce.com/content which offers a competing solution to their AppExchange partners Kadient and SAVO.
Other vendors include Avitage.com (marketing automation and sales enablement),
Streetsmarts.com(channel sales) [...]“
Here’s a couple more:
Salesforce.com/content http://www.salesforce.com/content
Landslide Technologies http://www.landslide.com/
Thanks Jeanne
I have added them above.
Have a great day.
Paul
nice list – thanks
Graeme
http://www.twitter.com/graemethickins
[...] like http://www.compendian.com is a company I need to add to my list of Sales Enablement vendors. Tagged with: conversation enablement, knowledge management, sales enablement, training leave [...]
[...] text you can interchange the word Intranet with the term Sales Enablement as many of the leading Sales Enablement vendors are not only embracing but actually pushing Mobile Availability and Social Networking. ‘Top [...]
[...] @Chad Levitt from newsaleseconomy.com wrote a great Sales 2.0 resource guide (see below). I would like to add some additional Sales Enablement vendors here. [...]
[...] 2.0: Such sales-process tools as Kadient and Brainshark [also see 'work in progress list of sales enablement vendors'] create a repository of effective messages and materials while encouraging content creators to [...]
[...] relevant vendors Posted in Uncategorized by salesenablement on February 3, 2010 I keep a work in progress list of Sales Enablement vendors. In its February 2010 issue CRM magazine does a great job at singling out the relevant of the [...]
[...] Tags: conversation enablement, information overload, information workers I keep a work in progress list of Sales Enablement vendors. In its February 2010 issue CRM magazine does a great job at singling out the relevant [...]
[...] sure that pretty much everyone in the B2B environment can relate to the them. No matter which Sales Enablement vendor you decide to work with, what needs to be done is the [...]
[...] is obviously very exciting for us in this field, who for years now have been saying that Sales Enablement is going to be huge one day. Let’s [...]
John Rourke (@JohnRourke on Twitter) said: “Please consider http://www.BantamLive.com (Social CRM, Sales Collaboration) for that list. Thx.”
Excellent list! Please consider checking out 2 Comma Sales, Inc., a direct competitor to Kadient-Sant. We’ve deployed sales enablement “dynamic web-enabled playbooks” to telecom, banking, information services and other large enterprises.
Thanks… JOHN
Hi John, Thanks for reaching out. I have added your company to the list. Best, Paul
[...] Microsoft SharePoint” or “Kadient versus SAVO Group”. As you can see in my work in progress list of Sales Enablement vendors there are a lot of players. destinationcrm.com wrote an article on that as well. Their shortlist is [...]
Thanks – very good listing especially also the one in Europe, which I find very promising
Thanks. Peter
Good list!
You are missing RO|Innovation. They make a sales enablement solution called RO|Enablement. It’s simple, easy to use, powerful, and low cost. A variety of enterprises use it. Here’s the website: http://www.roinnovation.com/roenablement
Dear Nichole, Thanks for your comment. I will look into this company. Best, Paul
There’s also a company in stealth right now that we are trialing, SalesKB (www.saleskb.com) – their site is still in stealth, but their overview video is on youtube (updated: here’s the link for the video: http://youtu.be/mKtyIIOtaCg) . They are taking the approach of hyper-targeted sales tools, based on your target’s persona, where you are in the process, etc.
Thanks Cindy. They have been on this list ever since I first noticed the YouTube video.
Indeed great list and thanks for sharing, Paul. I have found one more company being Scepos: http://www.scepos.com (similar features but with supporting back office), based in the Netherlands and active in Western Europe. Regards, Alexander
Awesome work. Keep it up. Thank You!!!
[...] companies I am currently still consulting BizSphere AG and its clients. Having said that, with my List of Sales Enablement vendors I am actually trying to provide an impartial and complete picture of all players in the [...]
Great list so far, please consider adding Fision. http://www.fisiononline.com/ Thanks.
[...] disclosure: I work with BizSphere AG. Here is a list of all other vendors I know of. Rate this: Share this:StumbleUponDiggTwitterLike this:LikeBe the [...]
[...] a taxonomy of customer …As of today I am cou… on About this blogfisiononline on Work in progress list of Sales…define a taxonomy of… on Where does Sales Enablement [...]
[...] disclosure: I work with BizSphere AG. You can find them on Crunchbase. Here is a list of all other vendors I know [...]
I believe I commented on this some months ago, but the situation appears to be getting worse. The term “sales enablement” appears to have been largely hijacked by a variety of vendors, selling hardware, software, and services, as a means of jumping on the latest, sales-associated, money-making bandwagon.
Savo continues to attempt some level of balance with “professional services” and much to say about their version of sales enablement, but it all still comes across as product marketing and PR. BizSphere takes a more credible, solution-approach.
Our differentiator at Thought Action Group (once we are fully operational) is that we aim to make our clients entirely self-sufficient. We are not looking for follow-on sales or recurring revenue. We want to help you setup your sales enablement ecosystem in a time-efficient and cost-effective manner, and empower you to continue to manage and evolve that ecosystem yourself. And with several careers worth of multi-million dollar deals in the technology sector, alongside on-going exposure to a variety of sales systems, training, and methodologies, we actually do know what we are talking about.
Thanks for your comment Michael. As you might have seen, I made it a blog post. What is your twitter account? I could not find it on your quora or LinkedIn profiles. Best regards, Paul
[...] Fox of the former TribalKnowledge.tv now ThoughtActionGroup.com just commented the following on my work-in-progress list of players in the Sales Enablement market, which I just updated: “I believe I commented on this some months ago, but the situation [...]
Paul- any sense of which solutions have a coaching/mentoring tool? May be interesting to note in your listing. What are your thoughts about Oracle/Siebel’s OSS?
Hi Diana, thanks for the question. Coaching/mentoring can come as a kind of content like in videos / podcasts that all Sales Enablement solutions should be able to deal with or it comes via community features like sharing of things / voting / blogs / comments / suggested contacts / QA / FAQ / Help / semantic suggestions of what to up-sell or cross-sell etc… that are also part of most Sales Enablement solutions. I am sure there are even better approaches to really focus on coaching/mentoring, but they need to really be part of the Sales Enablement solution as additional stand-alone tools always fight for attention and Sales Enablement itself is already an extension of the CRM system. My list does not focus on the CRM systems themselves which is why you can’t find Oracle/Siebel’s OSS on there. Cheers, Paul
Awesome list!
Our team has put together a suite of tools that extend the SAVO Groups’ sales enablement platform. Simply put, our technology makes sales enablement software more effective. For more info: http://www.gosavodesign.com/
We’re looking at bringing this framework to other sales enablement software in the coming months as well. I’d be interested in the community’s feeling: would these be helpful for you? Is there anything you need addressed that isn’t being addressed? Is there any platform that needs this over others?
Thanks for the heads-up. Of course customization is always something that clients of SaaS end up looking for. In terms of other platforms, I would rank them by install base and frontend technology to find out which one to address next.
Thanks Paul.
This list certainly helps us start that process. Appreciate your thoughts.
Hey Paul, I’ve run across something recently that is pretty impressive that I wanted to pass along and this seemed like the right spot. A small, private company in Dallas invested a lot of time and effort to develop a what they call The Strategic and Competitive Opportunity Report (SCORE!). SCORE! is an opportunity assessment that helps pursuit teams, strategic account managers, and their sales leaders better assess an account, opportunity, status, and true potential to close (or what to do differently to improve those chances). The assessment was developed by CMI Assessments. I met the owner recently at an local event and was invited to a training session at a major client’s office, and was very impressed. The client is raving and when I saw it in action and the discussion/coaching potential, I was really intrigued. CMI’s website is very basic, but in their words:
SCORE! will:
- Ensure they are practicing consultative (solution) selling.
- Fortify their probability for closing this large opportunity.
- Determine how likely they are to be successful.
- Identify their team-related strengths and weaknesses.
- Ensure they’re focusing the right resources on the opportunity.
You can see their website at http://cmiassessments.com/ or a descriptions and report sample at http://cmiassessments.com/images/SCORE!_Description_Sample_1121b2011.pdf
If you are interested in reviewing this further, I’d be happy to connect you to the owner.
Mike
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikekunkle
mike_kunkle at mindspring dotcom
[...] However, I have always tried to cover even vendors that target small companies in my list of Sales Enablement market players. [...]
Paul,
It would be great if you would add Mediafly SalesKit to your list. Our Fortune 100 clients rave about our products and love our security. http://www.mediafly.com/product/saleskit
Thanks!
Keith
[...] the course of the year 2012 my list of Sales Enablement vendors grew to [...]