Industry news
Gartner's take on sales engagement
If you want to better understand the sales engagement platform landscape, the gift-giving season just came early. On Tuesday, Gartner published its Market Guide for Sales Engagement Applications with new market insight from analysts Dan Gottlieb, Shayne Jackson, and Ilona Hansen, which is available now for Gartner clients. How deep is the research? We're talking 27 pages of in-depth analysis of the sales engagement category and 13 of its most representative vendors. We also recommend following Dan Gottlieb's Sales Tech Mayhem series for the latest market trends. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
What happens when you assume
In polite society, making assumptions can lead to grave misunderstandings that even a Hallmark Christmas movie wouldn't be able to resolve. However, making assumptions for your annual B2B sales planning is essential for setting up a happy and predictable ending to 2022. The thing with assumptions is that they work best when you base them on accurate information. If you misjudge where the market is headed or your ability to adapt to change, you'll quickly discover the dark side of assumptions. Fortunately, Forrester has identified the key industry trends that should shape the priorities of B2B sales leaders in its new guide, Planning Assumptions 2022: B2B Sales. Happy planning.
Caterpillars, birds, and bees
After more than a year and half of working from home, how do companies entice workers back to the office? If you answered with "praying mantises," you’d be right and also incredibly prescient. It's going to be a hard sell to employees who are used to a cross-home commute and the ability to do laundry between Zoom calls, but Google thinks it has the answer—make the office so cool you can't stay away. Google is testing out this approach with its new Manhattan campus that it's building out with caterpillars, bees, and, yes, praying mantises. Insider takes a look at Google's new nature-forward office, and why it thinks its so-called “biophilic” approach will help with employee recruitment and retention. And yes, biophilic is a word. We checked.
In the groove
A Tenable position
The overall impact that Groove has had on Tenable has actually been really huge. It has saved us millions in operational overhead.
Flat earth, Bigfoot, alien abductions. These are not easily defended beliefs. However, a certain enthusiasm for Groove and our Salesforce-native architecture is a very Tenable position. We know that because we interviewed Matt Mullin, Senior Director of Marketing Ops and Technology at Tenable, and that's what he told us. More specifically, he said that our native integration with Salesforce made choosing Groove a "no-brainer." We think Matt's affinity for Groove might also have to do with the millions of dollars it has enabled Tenable to save in operational costs. Read more of Matt's musings on Groove and Tenable’s revenue engine in a new case study.
Learn something new
Revving up sales without running out of gas
As you race toward the finish line at the end of year, it's important to make sure everything is running at peak performance by regularly checking your speedometer, tachometer, odometer, and gas gauge. This might seem like sage advice from a Formula 1 coach, but there are compelling analogs to running a sales organization. If you like cars and crushing your number, you're going to love Gartner analyst Dave Egloff's latest article exploring how these instruments provide insights for measuring sales productivity, efficiency, and productivity. Just remember to accelerate aggressively out of turn three. It's a doozy.
Making a list, checking it twice
Santa knows the importance of checking lists. Forgetting a gift for a kid on the nice list might lead to such emotional trauma that they wind up on next year's naughty list. Whether you're a sales leader or quota-carrying rep, you also need to be good at checking lists to help ensure that all the deals you expect to come in aren't a figment of a fitful, eggnog-fueled dream. As you review all the opportunities that you're working, there are a number of questions you should be asking yourself. Julie Thomas isn't Santa Claus (she's the CEO of ValueSelling Associates), but she is giving out a free checklist to evaluate the health of deals in your pipeline. Unlike kids who believe in Santa, salespeople need to be really good at determining what's real, and what's not.