We’re thrilled to announce this year’s Seismic Shift Award winners! Now in its fourth year, the Seismic Shift Awards honor the people who champion the ideals of sales enablement and sales and marketing alignment within their organizations, the teams and programs that have upended the idea of what a sales enablement process should look like and what it can accomplish, and those that have taken the Seismic product to innovative new heights.
This year’s winners are:
People
- Taryn Reed, director of commercial enablement at Quest Diagnostics
- Steve Borsje, co-head of marketing and messaging at Brown Advisory
Programs
- Cox Automotive
- Brinker Capital
Product
- Investec
- Refinitiv – Thomson Reuters
All award winners will be presenting at this year’s Seismic Shift, the company’s fifth annual customer conference. Over the course of three days—November 7-9 at the Pendry San Diego— Seismic Shift 2018 will boast a speaker lineup of 14 customers, industry thought leaders, and Seismic executives. We’ll be sharing sales enablement tips and some fun personal facts from our Shift Award winners, both from a sales enablement perspective and a personal perspective. You can get to know them in person at Seismic Shift, where they’ll be speaking as well as receiving Shift awards.
We will be profiling some of this year’s winners on our blog, showcasing their thoughts on the current state of sales enablement, sales and marketing alignment, and a few decidedly non-sales enablement questions!
The Winner: Valerie Varela, Manager, Field Marketing and Sales Enablement at Cox Automotive
What is the importance of sales enablement to you/your business?
As our business continues to become more complex and our sales teams are being tasked with selling across multiple solution sets, the importance of a comprehensive sales enablement strategy that can make the holistic sales enablement process both more efficient and more effective is crucial. In addition to the development and refinement of the marketing assets themselves as a part of our overall strategy, the platform through which our sales teams directly access and interact with the content was of just as much importance. The more we can keep our sales teams out in the field selling and not doing the work around developing, finding and sending content, the more revenue we drive as a company. In addition, the better we can equip both our sales team and marketing teams with real-time analytics reporting on the assets that are being utilized both internally and by clients, the more informed conversations they can have in the field and the better our marketers are at building content that can help close deals.
How much has the implementation of Seismic changed your business?
The implementation of Seismic changed our business primarily by better aligning our sales and marketing teams which is essential for success. Seismic has allowed our sales teams to accelerate their sales cycles by prescribing the right content/assets for the right selling situation at the right time and the analytics provided through LiveSends allows them to further refine the conversations they are having in the field directly with clients. LiveInsights has helped our marketing teams manage and track how effective marketing assets are within the sales cycle and will soon allow our content contributors to see exactly what assets are tied to revenue generation. The analytics that Seismic provides have and will continue to change how we, as a marketing and sales organization, approach our content and to build our strategies around assets that deliver against our financial goals.
What’s your best recipe?
I love salsa and all things spicy! I believe any meal can be paired with the perfect salsa, so I’ve made it a point to master a lot of salsa and hot sauce recipes.
Favorite podcast, business or non-business?
How I Built This. It’s my go-to podcast when I need to feel inspired or motivated. I’m always amazed at what hard work and determination can accomplish. Plus, it’s fascinating to hear about the journeys some of my favorite bands and companies went through to get started. Highly recommend!
Best concert you’ve seen?
Dwight Yoakam. Only because he said I had good dance moves.
