“Bold” is the best word to describe the opening of last week’s Seismic Shift, which is the annual customer conference for sales enablement provider Seismic. This year, 500 attendees gathered at San Diego’s sleek Pendry Hotel to share experiences and inspiration around sales enablement. The name of the conference itself -- “Seismic Shift” -- along with some skillful marketing, applies the notion of CHANGE to an industry (sales enablement) in the midst of crossing the proverbial chasm to mainstream adoption, and to the innovators (Seismic customers) who are using the technology to “transform their businesses.”
Seismic CEO Doug Winter shared impressive stats and trends on industry growth and Seismic’s momentum. According to SiriusDecisions, 74% of enterprises increased their sales enablement budget in 2017 and 37% of high performing organizations increased it by 30% or more.
Winter noted that “something has changed” in their market, suggesting a move toward broad, mainstream adoption of sales enablement solutions. As sales performance consultants, we can attest to widespread pain we see amongst clients who are not fully leveraging sales content nor unified in their sales and marketing approach. In addition to hefty year-over-year growth for Seismic itself, Winter further illustrated momentum with data such as a 220% increase in sales enablement job titles on LinkedIn in just two years.
Here are four key takeaways we drew from the conference and what we would challenge Sales, Sales Ops, and Sales Enablement leaders to think about as their organization implements a sales enablement solution.