Brainshark Launches Sales Coaching Solution - Helping Organizations Drive Greater Sales Performance

WALTHAM, Mass., Feb. 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Brainshark, Inc., delivering SaaS-based sales enablement solutions, today announced the launch of Brainshark for Coaching. With this new video-based solution, sales managers can hone their reps' knowledge and skills quickly and easily – helping reps perfect their pitches, increase productivity and close more deals. The new offering – when combined with Brainshark's solutions for onboarding, continuous learning, prospecting, presentations and engagement – makes the company a one-stop shop for sales enablement.

With reps most often missing quota due to a failure to articulate value, a recent survey from Brainshark and Forbes Insights shows that three-fourths of top-performing companies rank coaching and mentoring as the most important role front-line managers can play. Yet, 77% of companies say they give too little sales coaching, according to a November 2015 report from the Sales Management Association – while those companies that do provide optimal coaching realize annual revenue growth rates 16.7% greater than their peers. Brainshark for Coaching empowers companies to grow business – enabling managers to provide valuable reinforcement and regular feedback to help reps master pitches, presentations, demos and other sales messages, and maximize revenue potential.

"In a perfect world, managers would prioritize coaching and perform ongoing one-on-one and role-play scenarios live with their reps. Realistically, however, coaching remains one of the least addressed performance-related productivity challenges facing sales leadership," said Sharon Little, research director for sales enablement strategies at SiriusDecisions. "The ramifications of not solving the coaching dilemma are significant: reps take longer to be productive, turnover increases, and deals are lost. The emergence of asynchronous solutions removes barriers and offers the promise of making coaching work."

Through its use of video content, Brainshark for Coaching enables managers and reps to connect conveniently and asynchronously – enabling sales teams to maximize productivity and use the solution's leading features to drive improved results and sales effectiveness.

Brainshark for Coaching: Key Features

Available as a standalone solution or integrated with Brainshark's comprehensive sales enablement offerings, Brainshark for Coaching works as follows:

• Managers initiate individual or team-wide challenges – for example, asking reps to deliver a presentation, show a demo or rehearse sales messaging for an upcoming meeting – via the coaching interface. Once issued, the challenge appears as an email invitation within each rep's inbox, along with a link to the rep's coaching dashboard.
• Reps perform the required activity on video and send it to their manager through the system.
• Managers can review their reps' performance – providing feedback and ratings for each key aspect of the recording. Reps receive scores based on the ratings as well.
• Reps and managers can view their respective dashboards to see the status of a challenge.

Brainshark for Coaching can be accessed easily by reps from within the Brainshark platform directly or via seamless login from Salesforce. 

Future releases of Brainshark for Coaching will also include:

• Access to top-performing videos – so reps can learn from the success of their peers.
• Integration into the Brainshark formal learning system – allowing sales trainers to integrate practice scenarios into their courses and curricula.   

"It's important that our sales reps articulate the value of our products and services in a way that will resonate with individual buyers across the many industries we serve. Practice makes perfect – but only if that practice is reinforced and validated with valuable coaching and best practices," said Tracy Murphy, director of sales enablement at Iron Mountain, a leading provider of storage and information management services. "We chose Brainshark for Coaching to improve sales effectiveness. Since we already use Brainshark for sales training, we now can enable our reps to learn more effectively, practice what they've learned and perform to their potential once they're out in the field selling – all from a single, comprehensive platform."

Brainshark CEO Greg Flynn said: "Regardless of how you conduct training, it's not complete until you know your reps can deliver the message the way they're supposed to. With our new sales coaching offering, managers are better equipped to help reps be more effective at engaging and improving their buyer interactions, even with distributed sales teams. Importantly, this solution extends the impact of Brainshark's entire sales enablement suite, enabling organizations to address all facets of their sales enablement needs – from training, to coaching, to prospecting, to analyzing how deals are won – through a single platform. With our proven technology, organizations can close more deals faster."  

Partnership with CloudCoaching International

In conjunction with the launch of Brainshark for Coaching, Brainshark is announcing a partnership with CloudCoaching International (CCI), a leading global sales performance training and technology company. Serving more than 1,000 clients per year – including Amazon, Monster, Dell and half of the Fortune 500 – CCI helps organizations increase sales productivity and instill behaviors to drive winning results.

As part of the partnership, CCI will provide integrated access to its acclaimed eLearning content, delivered on-demand via Brainshark video presentations, within the Brainshark for Coaching solution. Initial available titles include "Coaching for Success" – focused on helping managers coach more effectively – and "Communicating for Success" – which helps salespeople deliver exceptional customer-focused communication.

"Effective sales coaching is a critical part of increasing sales results," said Tony Robbins, co-founder of CCI and America's number one business and life strategist, who has reached more than 50 million people with his best-selling books, multimedia and health products, speaking engagements and events. "Every action a manager takes matters – and through their coaching, managers have the potential to ensure improved rep productivity and performance, and greater pipeline predictability. CloudCoaching International is pleased to team up with Brainshark so organizations can tap into our proven content and coaching expertise, along with Brainshark's award-winning technology to increase sales results."

Walter Rogers, co-founder of CCI, said: "Coaching expands sales' capability to ensure more meaningful customer-focused conversations and, ultimately, increased sales productivity. This shift helps sellers transition from vendors to trusted advisers in their relationships with customers. Brainshark for Coaching, infused with CCI's premier content, will elevate any organization to their next level of excellence."

Expert Panel on Feb. 11: "Enabling Better Sales Coaching"

To help organizations maximize sales performance, Brainshark will join CCI and Iron Mountain in a webcast hosted by the Sales Management Association, tomorrow, Feb. 11, from 2-3 p.m. ET. Titled "Enabling Better Sales Coaching," the panel will explore coaching best practices and how technologies can support coaching delivery – by making data-driven insights available, improving visibility into sales rep activities and providing efficient delivery platforms for coaching content. Panelists include:

• Mike Kunkle, senior director of sales enablement, Brainshark
• Michael Crain, vice president of global sales and product design, CloudCoaching International
• Kevin Starner, vice president of sales enablement, Iron Mountain

For more information and to register for the free Web event, please visit: http://salesmanagement.org/events/expert-panel-enabling-better-sales-coaching. For more information about Brainshark for Coaching, see: www.brainshark.com/solutions/coaching. A brief video demonstration is available at www.brainshark.com/see-a-demo/coaching.

About CloudCoaching International

CloudCoaching International designs and deploys company-wide Sales Performance Improvement Systems that integrate processes, methodologies, skills tools and psychology to maximize organizational effectiveness. With a global presence in more than 20 countries, CloudCoaching International helps corporations create organizational breakthroughs, maximize the use of corporate systems, improve strategy execution, accelerate growth and improve customer engagement. The company was the winner of Elearning! Magazine's Best of Elearning! Award for Sales Training for its Pathways to Growth sales management system for three consecutive years, authored by co-founders Tony Robbins and Walter Rogers. Learn more at www.cloudcoachinginternational.com.

About Brainshark, Inc.

Brainshark sales enablement solutions help organizations harness the power of content to achieve faster training, better coaching and more successful sales conversations. Using Brainshark to simplify content creation and delivery, companies can ensure salespeople are always up-to-date with the information and resources they need – anytime, anywhere and from any device. Tight integration with Salesforce empowers reps with fast, easy access to the right content and training for every selling situation. Brainshark's detailed analytics also help companies tie content directly to revenue and identify the best sales opportunities, while enabling managers to pinpoint best practices to improve coaching effectiveness. Thousands of companies – including half of the Fortune 100 – rely on Brainshark to improve sales productivity and increase the impact of their sales, marketing and training communications. Learn more at http://www.brainshark.com/.

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SOURCE Brainshark, Inc.

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