Smaller Org? ClearSlide will get you started on your sales enablement journey
June 26, 2018
Smaller Org? ClearSlide will get you started on your sales enablement journey
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with ClearSlide
CS is primarily being utilized by our revenue teams as a way to quickly access content and share collateral with prospects or current clients. A select number of research team members also utilize the platform to quickly send collateral to prospects or clients. CS is intended to streamline access of content across multiple revenue verticals and to track client engagement with collateral sent to them as part of the sales process. Our revenue teams also use CS as a conference line and presentation platform for client-facing meetings.
- CS easily loads in any web browser for client-facing meetings, which is awesome. No longer having to rely on an application of plug-in loading to present slides or do a screen share makes things simple for our teams and clients.
- CS Outlook Plugin is very handy. Being able to share links to collateral from an existing email window pane has been incredibly helpful. This feature is a serious improvement from the earlier version of CS where you could only create links to collateral via their browser site.
- The tracking capabilities that CS has embedded with linked collateral have been helpful in our client engagement strategy as an organization. Seeing what a client has viewed and for how long helps us know what they care about. Also, if they forward or share the information, we can also track that engagement.
- Call quality with CS has always been an issue in my two (2) years of experience with the platform. CS upgraded their phone provider in winter 2018, but the call quality has only been marginally improved from my perspective. Also, with the switch to a new phone provider, users are required to use a new conference line, access number, and a leader pin. The leader pin is new and adds an extra step to setting up a conference line, which seems unnecessary.
- Content curation is probably my biggest issue with CS. With previous experience in a sales enablement company, I've seen how content can be curated to map to the seller's specific stage in a deal cycle, which is what most companies want. CS does not have this functionality from my perspective, and if it does, then overall curation capabilities are weak. Rather than curating content to match a seller's current point in a sales process, CS relies on surfacing content that is most popular or recently added. There is a search feature, which works well if you know what the collateral is called, but it is not scanning the content of documents to find what is most relevant. I equate the content feature of CS to a search that you would do in your computer's "Download" folder or even in Dropbox. If your company is smaller and only needs to surface a few pieces of collateral, then CS will work fine. If your organization is larger with large amounts of specific collateral, then I would look elsewhere.
- The CS plugins for Outlook, Gmail, or your web browser are great ideas but executed poorly. The integrations have caused a lot of headaches for colleagues and me since their release. They have caused our email to close unexpectedly, content to not be linked properly, or emails to not be tracked. The idea for these integrations was to reduce the amount of time a seller has to jump between windows, which is awesome, but the integrations are full of glitches. One of the biggest glitches I've seen is how CS, Grammarly, and Outlook all work together. CS is always the component of those three that causes everything to freeze or crash. In short, the integrations are a great idea but executed poorly at this time.
- Reduced the amount of time that our sales staff have to spend searching for content or collateral. Everything is available in one area and can be surfaced as long as you know the keywords of the collateral you would like.
- CS doubles as a conference line and online presentation platform, which is incredibly helpful. Rather than having to use multiple systems or launch an application that requires a plugin, CS launches right from my browser. Prospects that are viewing our presentations have the same ease of use with CS as well.
- The integrations with Outlook, Gmail, and web browsers are a dual-edged sword sometimes. They do make it easier to link documents to emails, but they also tend to crash or cause issues with other software. I would say that overall the savings in terms of efficiency are greater than what has been caused by glitches, but not by much.
- The tracking details on collateral sent to prospects are incredibly insightful and help us improve our future communication strategy. This has made us smarter about our future engagements by providing targeted information that the client cares about.
If you are looking for a true sales enablement platform that improves the efficiency and effectiveness of your sales staff, curates content based on a seller's deal stage, and provides actionable analytics and intelligence, then I would go with Seismic/SAVO. That is the only comprehensive platform that solves the sales enablement challenge and can scale to meet the needs of both small and large organizations.
CS is perfect for smaller organizations that need conference/video presentation capabilities and want to place sales content/collateral in a system with a decent search capability. If the organization cares about tracking client engagement data for future use, then CS will do a fine job. I think the CS platform is great for smaller organizations that want to scale quickly and need an affordable point solution.
The rest of the applications that I have mentioned are great for storing content and letting users search for it. They are really on repositories.
CS is perfect for smaller organizations that need conference/video presentation capabilities and want to place sales content/collateral in a system with a decent search capability. If the organization cares about tracking client engagement data for future use, then CS will do a fine job. I think the CS platform is great for smaller organizations that want to scale quickly and need an affordable point solution.
The rest of the applications that I have mentioned are great for storing content and letting users search for it. They are really on repositories.