by Jim Lundy
(Aragon Research) – There are times when markets become split or more vertically-focused. As I mentioned last week, the learning market is in the midst of a bifurcation. Sales learning and development is becoming a market that will simultaneously be part of other markets and part of its own.
Until recently, sales learning has long been bucketed under “sales enablement” but there has been too much technology innovation in learning for sales to just leave it there. Salesforce legitimized the sales learning category with its October announcement of myTrailhead—a new learning offering that comes directly from Salesforce.
The Promise of Salesforce myTrailhead
Trailhead is known as the training tool for Salesforce customers to learn all things related to Salesforce. Salesforce myTrailhead is a new learning platform that was announced in October 2017 at Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce Customer Conference. myTrailhead is not available yet—so that means no announced pricing. That said, Salesforce had some flashy demos at DF17 and certainly got attendees interested.
At its core, myTrailhead is a social learning platform that features profiles and the ability to create courses and learning paths. One of the things that will be sure to attract sales organizations is the built-in leader dashboards that Salesforce is touting. But while leaderboards and gamification are important, these features need to be balanced against the other needs of a sales organization—lots of rich content and continual reinforcement.
Allego’s Offering Leverages Video Learning
Unlike Salesforce, Allego’s video learning platform is available now. Based in Boston, Allego is fully focused on sales learning and its video-based platform means that courses, flashcards, and manager-initiated role plays are all part of ensuring that account executives are prepared to succeed in the field every day. We have seen extensive demos of Allego and it is the real deal. For sales managers, the value of using video-based role plays with your teams cannot be underestimated.
Given Allego’s Salesforce integration, we expect it to compete with myTrailhead down the road. In the short-term, we see Allego also going up against Silicon Valley-based MindTickle.
MindTickle Focuses on Microlearning, Onboarding, and Analytics
MindTickle is a West Coast-based sales learning platform with a focus on microlearning, onboarding, and sales analytics. MindTickle has been growing and as a result, has gotten more investment (Series B round was U.S. $27 million).
Like Allego, it offers the ability for teams to develop skills by practicing them, and it’s also tightly integrated with Salesforce. Given its location, it isn’t surprising that we have seen MindTickle in more West Coast-based accounts, but we have also noticed a presence in Boston. Its new funding should help with global expansion.
Sales Learning: Should Corporate Learning Firms Throw in the Towel?
The market for sales learning is heating up and will get even hotter as myTrailhead enters the market. Does that mean that corporate learning firms are out of the sales training market? Absolutely not. The firms that offer a modern learning platform will be able to compete.