Month: October 2015

Competing with email

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Follow-up to my post What is the Sales Enablement market size and how hot is it? that has my constantly updated public table/sheet of all vendors I’m aware of & definitions of Sales Enablement I subscribe to:

Out of 4 vendors Scott Santucci talked about in CRM magazine’s article ‘Sales Enablement Tools’ in 2010, …

“[…] Santucci says each of the relevant vendors — including BizSphere, iCentera, Kadient, & Savo Group — cater to slightly different problems. […]”

…only one still operates under the same name in 2015.

Besides the ever increasing number of new market entrants, what Sales Enablement vendors are really competing with and will be for the foreseeable future is email!

A recent whitepaper with data from an August 2015 survey by Highspot and Heinz Marketing says

“More than 70% of respondents rely on email to distribute content to their sales organization.”

It might seem logical to expect the importance of email to decline as baby boomers are retiring and millennials advance in the workforce.

However, the October 2015 IBV Millennial Survey ‘How Millennials are reshaping B2B marketing‘ by the IBM Institute for Business Value suggests a distinct preference for email amongst millennials. [This was for engaging with b2b vendors after the sales cycle has started, but in terms of the type of activity and state of mind it could be compared to receiving content from your own marketing / sales enablement organization.]

Source: IBV Millennial survey. ©2015 IBM Corporation
Source: IBV Millennial survey. ©2015 IBM Corporation

 

For sales enablement teams that means that for their most important task – as per the whitepaper with data from an August 2015 survey by Highspot and Heinz Marketing – “Making sure sales team can find content” they have to focus on ways to make that happen via email or deeply integrated with email.
whitepaper

Source: whitepaper with data from an August 2015 survey by Highspot & Heinz Marketing

Only 25% of product information consumers look at is accurate says hubba B2B product information platform for brands, distributors, vendors & retailers

hubba hubba.com more focused on fast moving consumer goods than any other vendor on this list. Helps with sharing of product information between brands & retailers. Managing product information sucks. You are faced with more information to manage, more digital channels to oversee & more demand for product images, descriptions, videos, & more. Hubba’s B2B Product Information Network gives brands the ability to generate a hub of comprehensive product information while providing retailers with real-time access to this accurate, up-to-date content. Toronto, Ontario, Canada 1-Feb-2021: Just over ten years after its founding, Toronto-based retail startup Hubba will shut down operations, BetaKit has learned.

In October 2015, Toronto-based B2B product platform hubba (on my list of Sales Enablement companies in Canada) picked up $11 million in Series A financing after $3.1 million in seed funding from December 2014.

Hubba
The B2B product-sharing and discovery platform, has grown its user base to over 10,000 brands & retailers. Building on this momentum, hubba will use the financing to accelerate expansion into additional verticals & geographic regions.

“[…] we are on a mission to be the source for every piece of product content for every product on the planet. The goal is to power this new generation of commerce […]” Ben Zifkin, CEO of hubba.com

hubba provides a product information platform for brands, distributors, vendors and retailers to manage and share product information like product descriptions, reviews, images, videos and marketing assets, all in one place.

“We’re in a B2B software space, helping brands, retailers and trade partners to share product information. Today, product information sharing isn’t efficient, to the point where only 25% of product information consumers look at is accurate. Brands are overwhelmed with the amount of rich and unstructured product information, from video, images, marketing materials, to consumer reviews, size, and product specs,”

Howard Lis, COO of hubba told betakit in December 2014

“All of that information is challenging to share, maintain and update to accommodate a barrage of requests from retailers, marketers working on product flyers and copy, e-commerce sites and trading partners’ needs. hubba is a simple easy-to-use platform that pulls together a source of truth, so that everyone gets consistent, updated information coming directly from the brand,” said Lis.

“We saw a critical need for a network that empowers information sharing and doesn’t look or function like traditional enterprise software,” said Ben Zifkin, founder & CEO of hubba. “The best way to make the lives of marketers and salespeople better is to provide them with tools that are easy to use, make them more effective at their job and encourage engagement with their colleagues and business partners.”

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