February 2019 -

I’m almost ready with my third research project across the major marketing business processes. As organizations acquire more insight into the buyer journey, Marketing is playing an increasingly active role in selecting and funding enablement software for the sales team, often collaborating with their colleagues in Sales Operations (if that organization exists).

Marketers usually start off their project by seeking a system to distribute content to sellers; while sales-ops wants to provide on-demand coaching plus support the day-to-day operational processes that sellers must endure. Ideally, these projects should be combined into one robust set of sophisticated tools, on the seller’s device of choice, in order to engage productively with their knowledgeable prospects and buyers. So, I see Sales Engagement Management as one of the fastest growing Martech markets and focused on equipping Sales Representatives, Sales Managers, and Marketers with the necessary tools to engage with prospects in an all-digital fashion.

I found nearly 30 active software and SaaS vendors generating an estimated total revenue of around $ 1 billion in annual software licenses, maintenance and SaaS and I know of many companies budgeting well over $100 per seller per month for solutions in this area. Most of the vendors I talked to are enjoying annual growth rates of over 100%.

In our survey of 1500 business executives, 48% said that they will be investing in Sales Engagement Management software for the first time soon and 37% of those who have current solutions will be replacing their existing system for various reasons. The market is in the early-adopter phase; in our survey, the users scored most vendors quite low on perceived differentiation, tending to buy from the first vendor that calls. We anticipate considerable vendor consolidation or churn in 2019/2020 as smaller vendors with point solutions lose their customers to a more complete sales engagement management provider.

The top twenty vendors who were mentioned the most by the 1500 executives appear in the Vendor Selection Matrix, which will be published the first week of March. They are (listed alphabetically): Accent Technologies, Apparound, Bigtincan, Brainshark, Clearslide, Client Point, CustomShow, DocSend, Fileboard, Highspot, Insite Software, Journey Sales, Mediafly, Octiv, Pitcher, Prolifiq, SalesLoft, SAP, Seismic, and Showpad.

Always keeping you informed! Peter