Looking for a Sales Enablement tool company or starting one? — Well, there are 828, depending on how you count!

https://SalesEnablement.wordpress.com

My frequently updated list of Sales Enablement software…

• Sales Enablement Platforms (SEP) SaaS software vendors/apps/tools, Sales Enablement solutions, Sales Engagement Platforms (SEP),
• B2B marketing content management systems (CMS),
• B2B sales knowledge management (KM),
• Digital asset management (DAM),
• Digital Content Management for B2B sales (DCMS),
• Sales Asset Management (SAM),
• Learning Management Systems (LMS) for sales

…can be found at https://salesenablement.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/work-in-progress-list-of-sales-enablement-vendors/

…or as a table to download/export (828 line items; keeping track of M&A).

When you shortlist vendors, be sure to look into the following:

• Will they integrate content from existing repositories or upload copies (of what you have in your repositories) into the cloud? You’ll want one single source of truth!
• How does the solution integrate with the given CRM system?
• Single-Sign-On? Security?
• Is the code that defines how the search will weigh results shared by all client companies or can each client customize it?
• Exit strategy for your content & metadata when you want to change vendors. Export feature?
• How does the solution support you to meet the challenges that come with doing business globally? (Which languages are supported for the content & for the user interface?)
• Flexibility for customization / your influence on the roadmap / number of developers at the vendor? Be careful when you get a lot of influence on the roadmap as this might mean you are dealing with an agency / development shop & not a product company — you might be the only customer or the biggest customer & they might go under if they can’t find other customers.
• Can they help to integrate the solution into your existing IT infrastructure / processes?
• Does the solution help to manage how you show your complex portfolio of products, services, & solutions to your salespeople & channel partners? How quickly can that be updated for org changes? Is it the vendor making the changes or is there an editor/admin user interface?
• Are there analytics & social features that allow usage metrics & feedback from sales to marketing (ratings/voting/comments) & uploading/sharing of content (Sales User Generated Content)?
• Is there an intelligent way to maintain the ‘single source’ of content (or content blocks) being re-used a lot? Can documents be [auto-]generated to be highly customized for the specific sales situation / vertical / geo etc… — yet look polished?
• Is content intelligence [As in Business Intelligence and Analytics for the Content Lifecycle] available? (Where in its life cycle is my content? What gets bad ratings? What needs to be retired? What is not being used? What is missing? What is used the most? What closes deals?)