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WALTHAM, Mass., May 23, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Brainshark, Inc., delivering SaaS-based sales enablement solutions, today announced new offerings and advancements to improve sales coaching and prospecting effectiveness. These include new peer collaboration and leaderboard capabilities in Brainshark for Coaching, as well as the launch of a Microsoft Outlook integration. These new capabilities – in concert with Brainshark's already acclaimed solutions – reflect the company's continued and comprehensive focus on meeting sales teams' needs for training, coaching and buyer engagement, so reps can close more deals faster.

"To improve sales productivity, many organizations take a multi-pronged approach to enablement by focusing on learning and development, coaching and buyer interactions," said Heather Cole, service director for sales enablement strategies at research and advisory firm SiriusDecisions. "Platforms that are user friendly and integrated within the environment where reps work are more likely to be consistently leveraged, driving better return on technology investments."

Brainshark for Coaching – New Enhancements

Complementing Brainshark solutions for sales onboarding and continuous training, Brainshark for Coaching enables managers to prepare reps to capitalize on any sales interaction. The recent winner of a "Best New Product" Stevie Award, the solution supports anytime, anywhere coaching, so managers can be confident in reps' skills and effectiveness in the field. Managers issue challenges through the system – for example, to deliver a presentation, show a demo or rehearse sales messaging – and reps respond via video. Feedback, configurable ratings and scores help ensure managers and reps are on the same page about reps' performance. Brainshark also provides best practices guidance – both to managers on how to coach and to reps on how to complete challenges and sell effectively – through optionally integrated, award-winning eLearning content from CloudCoaching International.

Important, new coaching capabilities include:

• Challenge attachments – Allowing managers to attach virtually any type of document to assist reps in completing their challenges. Reps can view and download the materials from their coaching dashboards on any device, so they can respond to challenges in a more informed way.
• Leaderboards – Providing team-wide access to sales reps' challenge responses. Leaderboards encourage friendly competition, serve as a motivational tool and enable reps to learn from their peers. They can be displayed in two ways: "competitively," so top-performing responses appear on top (with all responses stacked according to score) and "collaboratively," where scores and rankings are hidden.
• Peer collaboration – Enabling any sales team member to provide real-time feedback – such as tips, key observations and special considerations – on their peers' challenge responses to make sure everyone is on-point. Management also can see who's frequently collaborating and contributing to team success.

"Effective sales training is obviously critical – but so is what happens next. Managers need to continuously prepare their teams by showing them examples of what 'great' looks like and ensuring that their reps can repeat it. That's where coaching and collaboration comes in," said Brainshark CEO Greg Flynn. "It's incredibly important to provide visibility into what top performers do, and make it easy to share experiences and successful approaches. With our new capabilities, sales teams benefit not only from their managers' expertise – but also from their peers' experiences, skills and perspectives – so everyone can perform more effectively."

NEW: Microsoft Outlook Integration

As sales teams seek to improve efficiency and effectiveness, it's important they have a cohesive, streamlined experience – with instant access to the materials they need within the systems they use every day. But organizations are struggling – data shows 1 in 3 sales reps can't find the content they need to close more deals, while up to 70 percent of the content that marketing creates for sales goes unused.

With Brainshark's new integration with Microsoft Outlook, reps can instantly find and send sales content within their Outlook email environment – whether on the desktop or the Office 365 web portal. Users can:

• Search for, insert and email sales content directly from Microsoft Outlook – without having to interrupt workflows to navigate multiple systems. Users also can embed and size Brainshark videos, so they play directly within customer and prospect emails.
• Use multiple filtering and view options to discover the right content.
• Preview content prior to insertion.
• Track interactions to see when the email was opened and the level of prospect engagement with the content. 

In addition to the coaching capabilities and Outlook integration, Brainshark is also introducing new and enhanced reports and dashboards within the Brainshark Sales Accelerator for Salesforce. The reports contain an updated approach to data visualization, trend charts that display changes in key metrics over time, and specialized views to show reps, managers and executives the data that is most relevant to them.

"The sum total of these new offerings and enhancements underscores Brainshark's role as a sales enablement leader," Flynn said. "We're committed to continual innovation so our customers can make their numbers and make their sales teams great. With our comprehensive capabilities, companies every day are maximizing sales productivity and winning more business."

Brainshark is previewing its new offerings at two events this week: the Association for Talent Development (ATD) International Conference and Exposition (booth 858), May 22-25, at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, and the SiriusDecisions 2016 Summit (booth 501), May 24-27, at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee. The new capabilities are currently in limited release, with general availability in June. For more information, please also see this two-minute on-demand video: http://bit.ly/bnsk-prod-updates.

About Brainshark, Inc.

Brainshark is the leading sales enablement company that helps businesses harness the power of content to drive sales productivity. With Brainshark, companies can: empower salespeople with dynamic content that can be created quickly, imported easily and accessed anywhere; prepare sales teams with on-demand training that accelerates onboarding and keeps existing reps up-to-speed and in-the-know; hone performance with sales coaching that ensures reps make the most of every buyer interaction; and arm reps with the right content and resources for any selling situation to better engage buyers and close more deals. In addition, Brainshark analytics enable organizations to track sales content effectiveness and make smarter decisions that drive results. Thousands of companies – including more than half of the Fortune 100 – rely on Brainshark to improve sales productivity and increase the impact of their sales, marketing and training. Learn more at www.brainshark.com.

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SOURCE Brainshark, Inc.