12 B2B Sales Enablement Tools from Content Management to Sales Intelligence and More

B2B sales enablement tools:

• Make content readily available so reps always have the content they need, when they need it.
• Provide reps with the right training and coaching to handle client interactions before it affects performance.
• Give reps the tools to create custom proposals for every client.
• Give reps the tools to engage with customers virtually and share content securely.
• Gather analytics to understand what’s working and what’s not regarding each of those areas.

However, many tools only provide solutions for one or two of these areas. This leaves companies with the headache of managing lots of different tools. In our experience working with companies like US Foods, Siemens, and Dell EMC, it’s much more efficient and effective to choose a comprehensive tool that covers every aspect of sales enablement — particularly if it’s a tool that lets you pick and choose which features you need as your company grows.

That’s why we start this list of B2B sales enablement tools with our all-in-one solution, Bigtincan, that can be customized to fit your needs. Then, we cover 11 other B2B tools divided into five categories for companies looking to solve only one aspect of B2B sales enablement.

Tools Covered

All-in-one Sales Enablement Tool

1. Bigtincan: Choose one, two, or any combination of features

Content Management Tools

2. Highspot

3. SharePoint

Training & Coaching Tools

4. Lessonly by Seismic

5. MindTickle

Sales Management & Automation Tools

6. Dooly

7. Chili Piper

8. Outreach

Sales Engagement Tools

9. Mixmax

10. SalesLoft 

Sales Intelligence Tools

11. ZoomInfo

12. Clearbit

Get a demo to find out more about how Bigtincan’s sales enablement platform can be custom-tailored to your sales team’s needs and company branding.

All-in-one sales enablement software

1. Bigtincan: Customizable, end-to-end sales enablement software

Bigtincan is a complete sales readiness, engagement, and enablement platform that covers content management, training and coaching, buyer engagement, communication, and analytics.

And the entire platform can be customized down to the pixel to fit your brand. (Or you can add your logo to a variety of ready-made platform configurations if you prefer.)

Find content in any repository in minutes not hours

Most content management software use a folder-in-folder system. This has two major downsides:

1. It relies heavily on all employees following filing rules (what goes where) and adding metadata to files to further aid in the search. Of course, at large organizations, it’s nearly impossible to get 100% compliance (whether intentional or not), inevitably resulting in misfiled documents and folder disorganization.
2. Reps often spend hours searching through folder after folder because of the inevitable disorganization.

As a result, individual sales reps will create and store copies of key documents in private locations so they always know where to find them. When this happens, the marketing team loses all insight into how content is being used and loses control over what content is being used — which often means outdated, inaccurate content is used to make sales.

Bigtincan’s content management system solves these problems with a search feature that: 

• Connects to multiple repositories at once, so content can live anywhere.
• Scans all text, not just titles and metadata.
• Suggests relevant content based on role, region, clients, preferences and patterns, what’s the newest version of the content, and more

This means organizations can file and label content however they want — with or without folders and metadata. 

For example, let’s say you remember reading about a specific use case for a new product that was just released. You want to refresh your memory for a client meeting that’s in 20 minutes. You think you read about it in a section of PDF that’s stored in SharePoint. You start typing a few letters into the Bigtincan search bar and within minutes you see that the use case was actually mentioned in a footnote on a PowerPoint presentation stored in Google Drive.

Bigtincan’s content management platform also provides the marketing team with full version control for all users across all devices and repositories. This means the marketing team can edit a document from within Bigtincan and all versions of that document that exist will also be updated at the same time. Version controls also include:

• Choosing whether or not content can be shared, copied, or downloaded.
• Choosing which areas of a document can be edited.
• Adding expiration dates to automatically archive or delete content on a given date.
• Controlling whether or not edits have to be approved by a given person or team before being shared.
• And much more. 

To learn more about creating an enterprise content management strategy without updating metadata, read our article: What Most Enterprise Content Management Strategies Are Missing (And How to Fix It).

Easily create customized proposals for every meeting

Being able to find the right content in minutes is the first step. Then, reps often need to personalize the content for each client individually. Without this additional step of personalization, many clients will quickly lose interest or feel the rep and company don’t understand their needs. However, creating custom proposals often costs reps hours of valuable time that could be spent closing more deals.

There are tools that automate the process of customizing proposals, however, most of them require technical expertise.

Bigtincan offers document automation that anyone on the marketing team or sales team can use to create custom templates. We also provide a dedicated team to help you build any document automation template. However, most teams find the drag-and-drop editor easy to use, so they don’t require the additional assistance.

Once a template is created, it can be used by anyone to create a single proposal (e.g. to close a one-time deal) or a batch of proposals (e.g. for monthly reporting).

Not only does document automation save time, it also helps ensure everyone is using marketing-approved, error-free proposals.

For a more in-depth explanation of how to use Bigtincan’s document automation, read this article.

Create trainings to keep up with constantly evolving products and regulations

Creating, storing, and managing sales training is another essential feature of sales enablement tools. However, many teams struggle to provide training that keeps up with constantly changing products and regulations for one main reason: They’re using a tool that requires highly specialized skills in order to create or update the training content.

If only a specialized design team can create new training material, it may be weeks or months before the new training is available. This is too long for sales teams that meet with clients on a daily basis.

These trainings often lack authority and relevance because it’s difficult for the design team and subject matter experts (SMEs) to collaborate effectively. Most reps will have a difficult time staying attentive to and remembering information that feels irrelevant or that is presented by someone they don’t know and trust as an expert.

Bigtincan solves this by letting anyone create engaging, professional sales training content in 15 minutes — without any specialized skills. 

With Bigtincan Learning (also known as Brainshark), you can roll out new training fast enough to keep up with the latest products and legal requirements. And, any internal subject matter expert can contribute to the training material.

Here’s an overview of how our clients use Bigtincan Learning to create content:

First, you take a document (PDF, PowerPoint, etc.) that you already have and upload it into the Bigtincan Learning/Brainshark platform. Then, you can add interactive elements such as quizzes, videos, hyperlinks, branched pathways, etc.

Once the visual content is in place, you would invite an SME (such as a sales manager, leading sales reps, product designer, etc.) to record a voiceover using any device. This voiceover is particularly useful for drawing the viewer’s attention to important information and for adding credibility to the training.

From there, you would assign the training to reps or make it available for self-enrollment. Reps can access any training online or offline and on any mobile device.

To dig deeper into various training methods, read: How to Train a Sales Team on Products: Use Modern Software, Not Old-Fashioned Training Techniques

Ensure every rep can apply trainings before meeting with clients

Completing the necessary training only tells you that a rep knows a specific piece of information — it doesn’t tell you whether or not they can use that information to actually make a sale. Sales coaching is a great way to ensure reps have mastered the pitch before meeting with clients.

Most sales coaching software only provides a way for reps to upload a video of themselves giving a pitch so that sales managers can leave a percent or star-based rating and a few written comments.

Bigtincan sales coaching (which Brainshark and VoiceVibes are a part of) takes it a step further with AI-powered analysis that provides feedback on:

• The overall ‘vibe’ the rep is portraying based on body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, verbal language, etc.
• The number of filler words used (and which ones).
• Rate of speech.
• Grade-level of speech based on vocabulary and sentence structure.
• Whether certain words were used or avoided (new product names, for example).
• And much more.

This detailed analysis automates a lot of the manual work usually involved with evaluating pitches (such as manually counting filler words, for example). Then, whoever is evaluating the video pitch can leave detailed comments for the rep. The rep can also share their video pitch with any number of peers for additional feedback, which promotes team learning.

To learn more about the difference between sales training and sale coaching, download this ebook: The Complete Guide to Sales Training and Coaching | Bigtincan

Provide seamless virtual selling experiences

More and more B2B sales meetings are moving online so reps are facing a new set of challenges such as:

• How to know if prospects or clients are staying engaged or getting distracted by incoming emails and messages, calendar alerts, etc.
• How to present physical products in a virtual environment.
• How to conveniently and securely share information with specific people.

That’s why Bigtincan’s engagement hub — which ClearSlide is a part of — includes solutions for engaging clients in real-time, sharing content via digital sales rooms, and more.

When you host sales meetings on the Bigtincan platform, clients can easily join via a secure link. Then, you’ll get real-time data on who’s fully engaged and who’s multi-tasking. This gives you the opportunity to ask a question to re-engage the inattentive attendee.

You can also open a private screen to find additional resources to answer on the spot questions without anyone else knowing. Every meeting can be recorded and analyzed by artificial intelligence for things like overall engagement and the likeliness that the prospect will buy.

Bigtincan’s Digital Sales Room lets you upload documents of any type or size that can be securely shared with clients via a unique URL. Clients can view any content they choose at any time, and you’ll always have full control over every piece of content.

You can even add 3D representations of your products for clients to view. They can view the product from any angle, click on various pieces of the product to learn more, and place the product in a virtual representation of any room so they can see how it would look in their space.

Learn more about Bigtincan’s Digital Sales Rooms.

View unified analytics across content, learning, and engagement

The last piece of sales enablement is actually knowing what’s working and what’s not. Without the right data, you won’t have concrete evidence to answer questions such as:

• What content is used most often to close deals and how is it being used?
• Are prospects and clients viewing the content and which sections?
• What training did successful reps complete and what was their score?
• Are reps ready for real-world sales conversations?
• Is our sales training program impacting the bottom line?

Bigtincan offers robust analytics that can be separated into two main categories: content analytics and learning. All data (displayed as charts, graphs, etc.) can be viewed in a user-friendly dashboard that helps you make quick, informed decisions about what’s working and what’s not.

Content Analytics

Content analytics give you insight into how reps and clients are using the content. You can track things like:

• What marketing content is opened, how often, and by whom.
• How much time each viewer spent on a given section.
• What order content was viewed in.
• Viewing trends over time.
• And much more.

All of this information can be tracked for individual users or can be displayed as an average.

Learning Analytics

The learning analytics dashboard includes training and coaching data. It provides visibility into what a rep still needs in order to succeed, along with the ROI of the training program.

You can track and compare individual reps’ and teams’ completion rates, scores, and overall training progress in one place. Then, you can also link these reports to Salesforce or your CRM and view training performance next to key performance indicators like pipeline created or deals win rates.

This gives you clear insight into what trainings are impacting real-world sales performance and it can tell you what struggling reps need to improve.

To learn more about the right sales enablement metrics to track to improve productivity and ROI, download this ebook: The Definitive Guide to the Most Important Sales Enablement Metrics | Bigtincan

Content management tools

2. Highspot

Highspot is a sales enablement solution with a heavy focus on content management. Instead of folders, they offer something called ‘Spots’ which allow you to group content within their platform according to use case or topic.

As part of their content management focus, they also offer various marketing automation features that gather analytics to help marketers understand which reps are using approved content and which reps are using their own content. They also provide various social media integrations to platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter.

To learn more about Highspot and their competitors, read this article. 

3. SharePoint

SharePoint is a popular content management solution for companies already using Microsoft products. It’s a step up from basic cloud storage options like Google Drive or Box because they offer a variety of collaboration, search, and content sharing features. But it still uses a folder management system.

For more SharePoint alternatives, read this article. 

For more sales content management solutions, read this article.

Training and development tools

4. Lessonly by Seismic

Lessonly is the coaching and learning solution for the Seismic platform.  They were acquired by Seismic in 2021, but continue to exist as a standalone software solution as of 2022.

On their website, they advertise the ability to “prepare teams to confidently grasp product launches and market changes — all in one place in sales playbooks and pages.”

5. MindTickle

MindTickle is a sales readiness platform that offers features to improve sales productivity starting with onboarding and all through the sales lifecycle. They provide tools to manage modern training methodologies such as micro-learning and elearning.

From their website, “Mindtickle helps your world-class company grow its revenue by expanding knowledge, understanding ideal sales behaviors, and adapting to change”.

For more training and development solutions, read this article. 

Sales management and automation tools

6. Dooly

Dooly is a task management and sales acceleration tool that syncs sales meetings and notes with Salesforce allowing sales reps and other sales team members to speed up the process of updating information in the CRM. It claims to save each salesperson up to 5 and a half hours of CRM data entry per week.

According to its website, Dooly helps users, “spend more time with your customers and less time organizing and logging your notes. Take notes and Dooly syncs everything with Salesforce for you.”

7. Chili Piper

Chili Piper offers features for inbound lead optimization such as one-click scheduling software, ‘round robin’ distribution of inbound sales calls and quality leads, and automation of SDR to Account Executive handoffs.

It provides booking over email, which includes embedding suggested times and allowing recipients to book a meeting with one click, rather than using a booking link that takes them to another webpage.

8. Outreach.io

Outreach is designed to drive the sales cycle by automating sales, tracking emails, and providing data analytics. It is specially designed to work as a sales enablement platform for remote sales teams.

The Outreach website claims the following benefits, “From sales automation, to conversation intelligence, buyer sentiment analysis, team performance reporting — and so much more — Outreach is an integrated sales engagement platform that helps sales reps and leaders increase productivity, generate more sales opportunities, and beat your sales goals.”

Sales engagement tools

9. Mixmax

Mixmax directly connects with tools like Gmail, Salesforce, and DocuSign to automate engagement tasks. You can schedule follow-up emails to be sent at optimal times for the client, automate Salesforce data entry, set reminders to follow up, and more.

They also offer features to automate your workflow such as one-click scheduling for things like demos, account reviews, support meetings, etc.

Mixmax offers email tracking and analytics so you can see how many emails have been sent, viewed, replied to, or forwarded all in one place.

10. SalesLoft

SalesLoft is a sales engagement platform that integrates with a range of the most popular CRMs and offers automation tools for the outbound sales process, including:

• Working through sales cadences
• One-click dialing and texting from anywhere
• Email templates for fast messaging
• Automatic CRM integration for all activities
• Analytics to give managers insights into which cadences are working best or how many touches it takes to get a response

For more sales engagement software options, read this article. 

Sales intelligence and analytics tools

11. ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is a tool that pulls market intelligence for the accounts that sales organizations are attempting to reach. Its search functionality streamlines the process of identifying and connecting salespeople with their ideal prospects. It does this by gathering market information on target buyer personas from a variety of online sources about:

• How the company has been featured in the news
• New hires and employees who have moved on
• Contact information including addresses and phone numbers
• Names of decision makers
• Team size
• Funding
• Technology use
• Which companies are looking to buy
• And many more data points

12. Clearbit

Clearbit is a marketing data engine for customer relationship management, from lead generation and prospecting to ongoing communication after closing the deal.

It offers real time lookups of specific accounts and prospects, allowing sales professionals to act on the latest and most up-to-date contact and company information. Alongside this, it alerts your sales team to job changes within the qualified leads and accounts they follow, so they have accurate information at all times.

If you’re interested in finding out more about how Bigtincan can help your organization with sales enablement, request a demo.