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Brainshark, a provider of cloud-based sales enablement solutions, today released enhanced analytics capabilities for its Sales Accelerator platform. According to Alex Salop, director of enterprise product marketing at Brainshark, the improvements will give managers deeper visibility into the activity of reps during all stages of the sales cycle, in turn allowing them to heighten team productivity. "When organizations want to move the needle with their sales forces, they typically look at results," Salop says. "Results are a great thing to look at, but they're also a lagging indicator. They don't reveal how you got there. What we're providing…is the ability to find out what steps in the process affect deals, and…to see specifically what content works, when it works, and how it should be used in the future." Launched last October, the Sales Accelerator equips organizations with on-boarding and training resources and content delivery tools; previous iterations of the platform included analytics surrounding how leads interacted with content, but provided no insight concerning the deals that were closed as a result. The new analytics capabilities will complement the package with information designed to help managers identify the challenges their reps face at various stages of the selling cycle. Rather than using the contact engagement as a proxy measurement, Salop says, managers can now be "much more specific in [their] diagnosis of what works and what doesn't work." The updated platform includes dashboards and forecasting tools that allow managers to determine how content is accelerating revenue growth. With such knowledge, hypothetically, managers will be able to determine what distinguishes their top selles from those who are underperforming, ultimately to bring them up to speed. In addition, marketers can get a glimpse at the ROI of their campaigns. For Brainshark, the release comes as a response to customer requests for tools to help boost sales force productivity. The company points to a TAS Group report that suggests that more than two thirds of reps in all fields are not regularly meeting their quotas. Salop points out that companies have little faith in sales forecasts. "People are always lamenting the inaccuracy of forecasting," Salop says. "In fact, there's a survey we often quote from a while back which determined that 100 percent of the companies surveyed felt results were a good indicator of sales performance, but had very little confidence in forecasts. That's because forecast is made of conjecture." Brainshark aims to bolster its customers’ confidence in forecasts. "The analytics we're providing give early insights that help companies determine whether they need to make changes…sooner, faster, and with greater confidence," says Robin Saitz, Brainshark's CMO.
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