Because sales reps have more to do than update their handouts, Seismic nails $20 million

“Sales enablement” is a still-evolving term. It covers delivering up-to-date content to salespeople, training them, providing them with tools for closing a deal, and more.

Today, cloud-based sales enablement provider Seismic announced it has finalized $20 million in a Series B round to support its definition of the term, which leans more heavily on the content side.

The problem to be solved, according to CEO Doug Winter, is embodied in Forrester Research’s finding that “78 percent of executive buyers claim salespeople do not have relevant examples or case studies to share with them.”

To counter that dilemma, his company’s platform provides up-to-date sales material on demand.

“Using Seismic,” he said, “sales reps at a leading cloud-based HR and finance software company are able to automatically generate customized sales presentations that deliver relevant case studies based on information pulled from Salesforce.com.”

Similarly, he pointed to a “popular music streaming service that uses Seismic for updating marketing materials” that come from several sources, are specific to metro areas, and change monthly.

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Winter said the new money will be used to “expand and enhance the product,” plus grow the sales and marketing efforts.

Even in just the up-to-date content part of the sales enablement spectrum, Seismic faces a number of competitors, including SlideShark, Highspot, ClearSlide, and Fileboard.

By contrast, Winter told us that Seismic’s “‘secret sauce’ is its LiveDoc feature, which integrates content with the data sources that populate it” from CRM, ERP, Excel spreadsheets, or live external sources like Zillow or Morningstar. These on-demand documents, he said, allow sales reps to deliver up-to-date and personalized messaging to customers.

Seismic’s LiveSend and LiveShare features also provide real-time feedback on whether customers view and share the sales materials.

The new round of funding was led by JMI Equity, with participation by previous investor Sigma West. JMI General Partner Peter Arrowsmith is joining the company’s board of directors. In August 2103, the company raised $4.5 million in a Series A.