About This Constellation ShortList™
Sales performance management (SPM) systems are designed to help both individual sellers and management optimize sales processes and drive more effortless growth. While salesforce automation (SFA) and other CRM systems may track sales activities, SPM systems are designed to integrate data from various sales-related systems and activities to better inform and instruct sellers towards their best path to quota. In turn, management can get a more holistic and intelligent view of how sellers are performing, and make more proactive decisions given the richer data set inside SPM systems versus CRMs as it pertains to the actual selling motions in play.
SPM systems have begun adding more artificial intelligence to better consolidate and analyze disparate sets of data (from call and email records, CRM systems, web meeting tools like Zoom, ERP data, etc.) to identify coaching opportunities, spotlight the ideal opportunities sellers should be working, as well as other upsell/cross-sell opportunities. Generative AI features allow for automation of more common sales tasks, such as email responses, meeting creation, and other common workflows, and also act as prompt-based “copilots” that can surface sales collateral, ideal customer references, and other content pertinent to a specific deal or customer account.
The ideal outcome is improved forecast accuracy, higher conversation rates, shorter sales cycles and increased revenue. On a management level, sales performance management provides the opportunity to analyze and evaluate overall operational efficiencies and the effectiveness of individual sellers, identify and recognize success, improve timing and content of coaching, establish contextual and personalized seller training based on identified team wide best practices. In many cases, these tools also tackle broader challenges of territory management and commission or compensation management. Tools focused solely on Incentive and Compensation Management (ICM) were not included in this review.
Threshold Criteria
Constellation considers the following criteria for these solutions:
- Consolidate account and customer insights from across internal data sources
- Incorporate external data sources for market context
- Leverage AI to process data, specifically to identify key trends and patterns for predictable growth planning, forecasting and performance
- GenAI powered coaching and establishment of automated actions to optimize action
- Integration to CRM and other enterprise systems
- Automated activity capture across channels
- Digital assistant that supports text and voice interaction
- Mobile accessible
- Recommended actions in customer account context
- Cross functional collaboration
- Data and performance-based coaching
- Territory management and planning
- Commission/compensation and incentives management
- Quota management and planning
- Robust reporting on performance, objectives and goals, and conversion analytics
- Integrated training and coaching environment with recommendations for improvement or course correction
The Constellation ShortList™
Constellation evaluates around 20 solutions categorized in this market. This Constellation ShortList is determined by client inquiries, partner conversations, customer references, vendor selection projects, market share and internal research.
- Aviso
- Gong
- Introhive
- Oracle Fusion Sales
- Monday Sales CRM
- SalesDirector.ai, a Bigtincan company
- Salesforce Revenue Cloud
- SAP Sales Cloud/CallidusCloud
- Varicent
- Xactly
Frequency of Evaluation
Each Constellation ShortList is updated at least once per year. Updates may occur after six months if deemed necessary.
Evaluation Services
Constellation clients can work with the analyst and the research team to conduct a more thorough discussion of this ShortList. Constellation can also provide guidance in vendor selection and contract negotiation.
