According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, approximately 6.5 million jobs have been added to the U.S. economy since January 2017. Of those 6.5 million jobs, the number of sales enablement positions has grown drastically. In fact, Paul Krajewski, who has been tracking sales enablement job titles on LinkedIn for many years, claims that the number of people with sales enablement in their job title has nearly tripled since 2017. Based on those two data points, it’s safe to assume that the growth of sales enablement is skyrocketing. However, this may not necessarily be the case.

In 2019, the sales enablement platform market tallied $1.1 billion, and that number is projected to climb up to $2.6 billion by 2024. Also, 76% of organizations increased their enablement budget. This trend in sales enablement is indicative of “the customer era,” a time where customers feel more in control and have higher expectations of the customer experience during the buying process.

Sugar Connect empowers sales and service agents with critical context during real-time email communications with customers. Connect keeps customer account information up to date and available within a user’s email tool and synchronizes Office 365 and G Suite data with Sugar’s CRM products.

FEATURES/FUNCTIONALITY:

Sugar Connect provides complete visibility and access to your accounts, contacts, leads and opportunities from within your email app. Users can view, create, update, delete and attach emails to Sugar records directly from a sidebar when reading or composing an email.

The tool is designed to allow users to archive inbound and outbound emails, attaching them to Sugar data records while automatically syncing calendar events and contacts. Connect’s meeting scheduling assistant makes finding meeting times with contacts fast and painless.

Connect also supports multiple integration models to ensure interoperability with a variety of email products and services, as well as offline synchronization between Sugar products and productivity apps.

TARGETED USERS:

Sugar Connect is targeted at senior sales and service managers at mid-market B2B companies with 100-2500 employees. Industries include manufacturing, financial services, media, business services, professional services, technology and software.

COMPATIBILITY:

Sugar Connect integrates with SugarCRM products including Sugar Sell, Sugar Serve, Sugar Enterprise and Sugar Professional.

DELIVERY/PRICING MODELS:

Sugar Connect is priced at $15 per user, per month.

COMPETITIVE POSITIONING:

Connect is designed to provide access to all Sugar records, including custom objects, directly from within the email application, allowing sales and service representatives to gain critical context about customers 

CONTACT INFO:

SugarCRM
+1.877.842.7276
sales@sugarcrm.com

Having a well-thought-out content plan for the New Year is essential to delivering a top-notch buyer and customer experience no matter where they are in their journey. During Demand Gen Report’s 2019 Strategy & Planning Series, a variety of experts from companies such as Content4Demand, ON24 and Uberflip shared tactical tips and best practices for making the most out of your content and engaging customers and buyers with the proper messaging to accelerate deals.  

Talkdesk, a cloud contact center for sales and support teams, announced the hiring of Kathie Johnson as its first CMO. She will be tasked with the development and execution of the company’s marketing strategy and will report directly to Talkdesk CEO Tiago Paiva.

SalesLoft, a sales engagement platform, has acquired Costello, an opportunity management and guided selling software provider. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

One constant exists today in B2B tech sales: people buy from people. Most importantly, people buy from people they trust. In fact, LinkedIn’s State of Sales reports consistently find trust to be the most influential factor in buying decisions. In the last 10 years, companies have invested heavily in marketing technology to deliver an educational and personalized buying experience. Delivering this value to buyers builds trust with the company brand; but for B2B tech sales, that’s just the beginning. 

Sales enablement platform provider Seismic has acquired Percolate, a marketing campaign orchestration and content management platform. Through the acquisition, the company is positioned to deliver personalized content throughout the customer journey and across multiple channels, via customer-facing teams including sellers, customer success reps and partners.

Sales enablement platform provider Seismic has appointed Michael Londgren as CMO to lead the company’s marketing strategy and operations worldwide.