MindTickle Accelerates Leadership in Readiness for Customer-Centric Companies

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- MindTickle, the leader in Sales Readiness technology, today announced key results and milestones demonstrating significant growth in the enterprise segment, expansion across services, manufacturing, pharmaceutical and life sciences, and financial services industries, and continued leadership in the high-growth and high tech market. Companies are looking to not only enable their sales and customer-facing teams with the right content but also leverage better data to ensure these teams are ready to engage prospects and customers through the right skills and behaviors tied to better business outcomes. As organizations of all sizes partnered with MindTickle to realize this goal, MindTickle accelerated its leadership adding to its list of remarkable customers in 2019, achieving almost 170% growth in enterprise customer acquisition. 2019 was also a banner year for MindTickle having raised $40M in Series C in a funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners as well as bringing innovative new products to market, earning recognition from industry associations, analysts and experts, and posting record levels of platform engagement.

"As organizations look to maximize the potential of every seller and customer-facing rep, they're looking for solutions to drive a personalized, adaptive experience to ensure the desired mix of field knowledge, skill, and behavior focused on customer-first outcomes," said Krishna Depura, CEO and co-founder of MindTickle. "They're building on existing sales training, learning and coaching investments while replacing siloed tools for microlearning or video role-play with a single, holistic and AI-enhanced solution that measurably improves sales effectiveness. Our growth, as evidenced by our revenues, customer acquisition and the record number of seven-figure, multi-year deals, as well as recognition in the market, owes as much to the support we receive from our customers and partners as does our relentless pursuit of innovation and breadth across our readiness platform. We look forward to continuing the partnership with our current customers while welcoming new organizations to the fold."

Business Momentum

Year over year, MindTickle achieved almost 170% growth in the acquisition of enterprise customers including many of the Fortune 500. MindTickle now counts five of the top 20 health and life sciences companies and five of the top 20 technology companies globally as customers. In addition, MindTickle raised $40 million in Series C funding with new investor Norwest Venture Partners leading the round and participation from all existing investors including Accel Partners, Canaan, NewView Capital (a spinout of New Enterprise Associates) and Qualcomm Ventures LLC. In addition, Scott Beechuk, partner at Norwest Venture Partners and former Senior Vice President of Product Management at Salesforce Service Cloud, joined MindTickle's Board of Directors.

MindTickle also added key executives tasked with driving continued global growth, customer success and building a world-class organization. In July of 2019, MindTickle announced the appointment of Jeff Santelices as chief revenue officer to lead the company's global sales organization. In December, Ankur Verma was appointed as the head of finance and legal overseeing finance, legal and deal desk functions. Previously, he was the CFO at hCentive, Inc. during which he was responsible for managing double-digit growth and the eventual acquisition by UnitedHealth Group. More recently, Jessica Ma was named vice president of customer success to lead post-sales customer success, combining professional services, customer success, technical support, content services, and managed services to deliver delightful customer experiences. Previously, Jess was the VP of Professional Services at Apttus and prior to that was the Director, Digital Marketing and Commerce at PwC and a Manager at BearingPoint. Sameer Madan has joined MindTickle as vice president of people operations to lead all functions and facilities related to human resources. Sameer has over 20 years of progressive experience as an HR leader and was previously the head of HR for ZS Associates. Lastly, Sunil Chandra has been named vice president of engineering with more than 23 years of engineering development and leadership experience. Prior to MindTickle, Sunil was the India head of engineering for Instart and was previously at Amazon, Google and IBM.

Readiness Adoption Momentum

This year, MindTickle saw more enterprises rethink how they engage sellers, transform sales capability and ensure ongoing readiness. In addition, organizations embarked on significant sales coaching initiatives, leveraging MindTickle's platform to maximize relevant knowledge, drive skills development with a systemized coaching methodology and improve execution in the field. To this end, there were more than 170 million microlearning assignments which included more than 8 million knowledge check questions, 192,000 hours of video consumed, 370,000 certifications granted, and 165,000 role-play exercises conducted on MindTickle in 2019.

Continued Innovation Further Differentiated and Led the Market for Customer Value

In 2019, MindTickle released a number of product capabilities that underscored readiness as a pillar of sales effectiveness.

• Innovation in our 'Missions' virtual role-play allows sellers to practice voice-over slideshow, video role-play, email and task evaluation, and voice-over screenshare (product demo/walkthrough, etc.) in one unified experience. Work in this area furthered our differentiation and lead in the market by leveraging AI and machine learning capabilities, enhancing the user experience, as well as enabling user management at scale. This includes automated transcription, keyword and sentiment analysis, as well as length and speech pace.
• The release of Spaced Reinforcements delivered the industry's only intelligent and adaptive tool that leverages microlearning coupled with spaced repetition, retrieval practice, coaching, and personalization as well as gamification and smart notifications to promote knowledge retention.
• Our integration with LinkedIn Learning means users will have access to tens of thousands of LinkedIn Learning online courses through the MindTickle platform for knowledge and skills development. Seamless access to third-party content through the MindTickle platform enables organizations to assess and observe sales capabilities and then remediate knowledge and skills gaps through an expansive and comprehensive library of assigned learning.
• In 2019, we also launched a number of other significant features and updates such as
• A completely revamped mobile app for iOS and Android to give a state-of-the-art mobile experience to our users.
• Blended learning modules, further solidifying our position as the most comprehensive Sales Readiness platform.
• SOC2 Type II audit highlighting the company's ongoing commitment to customer data protection and security.

"We continue to heavily invest in the MindTickle platform in terms of both outcomes-focused functionality and the team to drive ongoing innovation," said Nishant Mungali, chief product officer and co-founder of MindTickle. "Across the platform, we're constantly pushing on the frontiers of microlearning, gamification, personalization and engagement in the flow of work. At the same time, we're harnessing the power of AI and Machine Learning to drive highly-dynamic and adaptive experiences for revenue-facing employees with limited intervention or repetitive efforts for administrators. With these developments, we'll continue to bring more value to our current and future customers."

Calculating the Return on Readiness for Enablement and Sales Leaders

The release of MindTickle's Readiness Value Assessment tool helps readiness, enablement and sales leaders quantify the value of an integrated approach to customer-facing readiness for their business. It provides a comprehensive, dynamic and easy-to-use ROI calculator for implementing targeted readiness initiatives while providing real-world insights, industry-specific benchmarks and case studies.

Industry Recognition

2019 was a stand out year for recognition of MindTickle's business and solutions from customers, industry associations and experts:

• In August, MindTickle was recognized as a Representative Vendor in Gartner's inaugural Market Guide for Sales Engagement Platforms. Gartner identified MindTickle as a Representative Vendor meeting all of the evaluated sales use cases, including customer-facing selling, internal knowledge transfer, seller onboarding, sales coaching, continuous educations, partner relationship management/channel enablement, and inside sales (sales development representative [SDR]) processes.¹
• MindTickle was ranked 79 on Deloitte's Technology Fast 500tm, a ranking of the 500 fastest growing technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and energy tech companies in North America. Based on the rankings, MindTickle also placed 14^th in the Bay Area.
• Driven by reviews and ratings from real customers, MindTickle secured leadership positions in four categories for Sales Acceleration Software on G2, including Sales Enablement Software, Sales Coaching Software, and Sales Training and Onboarding Software.
• In April, MindTickle was recognized as one of the 50 Highest Rated Private Cloud Computing Companies To Work For, in a list released by Battery Ventures with data provided by Glassdoor.
• Recognized for Innovation and Company Performance: Aragon Research positioned MindTickle as a Leader in the Aragon Research 2019 Tech Spectrumtm for Sales Coaching and Learning followed by being named a Hot Vendortm.
• MindTickle was also named to Built In's 50 San Francisco Tech Companies You Should Know in 2020 list and has been recognized as among India's Great Mid-Size Workplaces 2019.

"Today's senior revenue-responsible executives face a growing challenge ? meeting performance targets while adapting to rapidly evolving and increasingly savvy buyers," said Gopkiran Rao, chief strategy and marketing officer. "Successful organizations are seeing that modern buyers engage a varied mix of digital and human assets at all stages of the buying journey. Enhancing those person-to-person interactions with a systematic and data-driven approach represents the difference between organizations that are advancing their business forward and those being left behind."

Collaborating with Leaders to Develop and Evangelize Sales Effectiveness
MindTickle attended, hosted or participated in a number of live and virtual events in 2019 including:

• At the Sales Enablement Society annual conference, enablement leaders from Amazon Web Services and MindTickle ran a hands-on workshop for building a sales simulation program using sales enablement best practices and sales readiness tools.
• At the Gartner CSO and Sales Leader conference, MindTickle hosted an executive session led by Christi Moot, Global Director of Sales Readiness at LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, which presented LinkedIn's experience working with MindTickle to power a world-class, high-performing sales organization and linking measurable customer-facing capability to incentive practices.
• In a webcast with the Sales Management Association and MindTickle, Learning and Development (L&D) and sales leaders from FedEx Office discussed how they made competency-based L&D a practical, measurable, and systematically deployed program embraced by field sales.
• At an exclusive CXFS'19 session, Julie Zhang, Director of Sales Enablement at Russell Investments, discussed how Financial Services can empower and enable their client-facing teams with sales readiness.
• In an online MindTickle webinar, Forrester Principal Analyst, Mary Shea, joined MindTickle Chief Revenue Officer Jeff Santelices, to discuss new research that explored the impact of modern sales enablement tools on new hire on-boarding, sales effectiveness, and ROI.

For additional information:

• Read the MindTickle blog for industry insights and advice
• See MindTickle's customer stories
• Check out the Careers Page for open positions
• Connect with MindTickle on LinkedIn

¹Gartner "Market Guide for Sales Engagement Platforms" by Melissa Hilbert, Mark Paine, Alastair Woolcock, Theodore Travis, August 13, 2019. *This Market Guide is an evolution of "Market Guide for Digital Content Management for Sales", which focused on content management vendors.

Gartner Disclaimer:
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About MindTickle
MindTickle provides a comprehensive, data-driven solution for sales readiness and enablement that fuels revenue growth and brand affinity. Its purpose-built applications, proven methodologies, and best practices are designed to drive effective sales onboarding and ongoing readiness. With MindTickle, company leaders and sellers can continually assess, diagnose and develop the knowledge, skills, and behaviors required to effectively engage customers and drive growth. Companies across a wide range of industries use MindTickle's innovative capabilities for on-demand, online training, bite-sized mobile updates, gamification-based learning, coaching and role-play to ensure world-class sales performance. MindTickle is a global, privately-held company headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Visit them at www.MindTickle.com.

SOURCE MindTickle