A glimpse into Seismic and the evolution of sales enablement

Published on October 5, 2021 by Anurag Sikder

Like a magic trick that awes an audience, sweeping a prospective client off their feet demands a delicate balance between bedazzlement and pertinence. To convince prospective clients of the price of admission to this magic act, sales enablement, a process that empowers teams to have up-to-date collateral to support their sales pitch, is gaining traction in the business world.

A new organisational best practice

Sales enablement is meant to empower an organisation’s sales personnel to create an immersive, informative and engaging experience for buyers and prospective clients to increase the chances of deal conversion. Sales enablement, which has evolved into an organisational best practice, was conceived to create a consistent, yet customised, brand experience for an existing (or potential) customer. In recent years, it has become increasingly relevant – 85% of buyers dismiss their first interaction with a brand if they do not receive a tailored experience. At the same time, 91% of customers prefer up-to-date interactive or visual content delivered on demand.

In light of this development, the decision to invest in sales enablement has gained traction and reaped rewards.

In the financial sector, sales enablement is still coming of age, as sales personnel still spend 26 extra hours per month collating content for sales collateral. But with advanced tools such as Seismic, companies in this sector can catch up with an audience that is moving swiftly towards digital self-servicing.

Within its pool of asset and wealth management clients, Acuity Knowledge Partners (Acuity) has also witnessed growing interest in Seismic in recent years. Adoption of this technology is gaining momentum, especially for utilising its wide range of capabilities in the post-pandemic work-from-home phase.

Seismic: unlocking slide library management solutions

Seismic’s patented LiveDocs technology is a key component of its widely endorsed content management solution for asset managers. LiveDocs facilitates the much-sought-after real-time updating of marketing collateral. For large asset managers and their sales teams, the ability to share documents with daily-/weekly-/monthly-updated data instils significant confidence in existing (or potential) leads in their expertise.

Using Seismic’s platform for centralising, organising and creating content for sales and marketing purposes is demanding. Procedural automation, timely data repository updates and detailed user insights require a thorough understanding of the mechanics of the platform.

While navigation of the Seismic platform may be simple for a seasoned user, new users need time to orient themselves to the platform. Maintaining the existing setup within Seismic can pose its own problems, too. Coping with change on an ongoing basis within the asset management industry, whether process-related or personnel-related, is not a new development and still wields a disruptive influence. This could include changes to the data structure within the databases, addition of new data points, additional performance/risk characteristics, addition or deletion of charts/tables and formatting changes.

Understanding how asset managers can make the best use of Seismic

While the primary objective of Seismic and its myriad applications is to enhance the sales enablement process, there is no denying that it creates an environment of learning and sharing within the company. With such a solution, it is not just the sales enablement process and sales conversion rates that improve over the long term, but also the organisation as a whole.

While navigation of the Seismic platform may be simple for a seasoned user, using Seismic’s platform for centralising, organising and creating content for sales and marketing purposes requires a certain skillset. New users need time to orient themselves to the platform and Seismic’s support team does help set up the infrastructure, but there is little in the way of ongoing support included in the initial licensing fee. For additional support, training and employee on-boarding, a sizeable fee needs to be paid for engaging a Seismic resource for each function.

Such modifications and changes would naturally demand the engagement of more resources. In essence, the additional costs to action this could be sizeable without a well-equipped support team.

Our observations

A common observation is that asset managers are using Seismic merely as a document repository because of constant personnel changes coupled with weak knowledge-retention processes. The platform has become popular among our clients because of the support we provide based on our strong understanding of the platform.

In addition to assistance with the initial setup of LiveDocs, we make sure that documents are maintained and updated during the pre-production phase, ensuring quick turnaround once production starts. Periodic changes to marketing collateral and data are common in the industry, and the Seismic workflow setup should be constantly monitored to accommodate these changes. If a Seismic setup is required, Acuity is well equipped to create and maintain it.

References:

• https://salesenablement.pro/assets/2019/10/CSO-Insights-5th-Annual-Sales-Enablement-Study.pdf

• https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/the-who-what-how-and-why-of-sales-enablement

• https://seismic.com/customer-stories/brandes-investment-partners/

• https://www.membrain.com/blog/a-history-of-sales-enablement-and-predictions-for-its-future

• https://www.salesprocentral.com/frs/14351222/the-ultimate-buyer-s-guide-for-sales-enablement-platforms/email

• https://learn.seismic.com/analyst-report-download-report-forrester-wave-sales-enablement-automation-platforms-2018

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