This post originally appeared on www.justintimeenablement.com. Visit the site for more guides and to get a copy of Melanie Fellay's book Just-in-Time: Enablement in a World of AI.
Choosing the right enablement platform today can feel overwhelming. The market is crowded with flashy demos, overlapping buzzwords, and promises of “all-in-one” solutions. Yet, many teams still end up with clunky portals that no one uses, rigid content management structures that lead to inevitable content decay, and training tools that are disconnected from actual seller workflows.
This guide is designed to help you cut through the noise. Whether you’re replacing a legacy enablement platform, consolidating point solutions, or evaluating your first enablement platform, you’ll find a clear framework for making the right choice.
We’ll break down:
- The most common pitfalls that drive low adoption and poor ROI (and how to avoid them)
- The critical AI features modern GTM teams need, including in the flow of work delivery, context-driven AI recommendations, and unified analytics. The world is changing; make sure this platform helps you stay ahead, not stick to old habits.
- The key questions you should ask every vendor to separate true innovation from marketing hype
Enablement is no longer just about storing sales decks or running one-off training sessions. The best platforms deliver knowledge, guidance, and insights seamlessly in the flow of work, exactly where your reps need it most.
By the end of this guide, you’ll know exactly what to look for, what to watch out for, and how to evaluate platforms against the outcomes that matter: faster ramp, higher rep productivity, and measurable revenue impact.
🎁🎁 Bonus: Impress your team and save hours by making a copy of this RFP / evaluation google sheets template (you can download to excel) for your team to use when evaluating an enablement platform.
How to run a smart evaluation
Before we jump into comparing enablement platforms, it’s worth pausing on the evaluation process itself. Too many teams get distracted by slick demos or overloaded feature lists and end up with a tool that looks great in a sales pitch but fails in the real world. These best practices will help you stay focused and objective
First, determine who to include in your evaluation
A successful enablement platform evaluation isn’t just about features and pricing, it’s about adoption across every function that touches revenue.
To ensure success and get an honest picture of whether your platform will serve the business, you need to bring together the voices of those who create content, those who consume it, and those who rely on it to drive outcomes. That means involving not only your enablement and marketing teams, but also sales, customer success, leadership, operations, and product stakeholders. Each group has unique needs and workflows, and their feedback will reveal where your current platform is enabling success and where it’s creating friction.
If this list feels overwhelming, you’re not alone. Involving this many stakeholders can seem like a heavy lift, especially when you’re eager to move quickly. But here’s the truth: getting alignment up front will save you countless hours of frustration later. Skipping these conversations often leads to misaligned expectations, hidden roadblocks (hello, IT/security), and wasted investment. By investing a little extra time now, you’ll avoid the headaches of rework and ensure your enablement platform truly serves the whole business.
The voices that matter most: involving sales reps & managers
Will reps actually use it?
Will managers reinforce it?
If the answer is “no” to either, the platform won’t succeed. While the above list of stakeholders is the *ideal* group to include, your frontline sales reps and their managers are the most critical stakeholders in evaluating any enablement platform. If they don’t adopt it, your investment fails no matter how good the features look on paper.
As I share in Chapter 4 of Just-in-time: The Future of Enablement in a World of AI, we live in a just-in-time world, a world of instant gratification. From Uber to Instacart to Amazon, everything in our personal lives is instant, seamless, and personalized. Reps now expect the same at work. If an enablement platform feels clunky or slows them down, adoption will crater - not because reps are “lazy,” but because every extra click steals time from closing deals. And in sales, time kills deals.
That’s why building consensus early, especially with your reps, is critical. If you design or choose a platform without them, you’ll spend far more time fighting uphill battles to drive usage later. But if you involve them now asking how they work, what frustrates them, and what would actually help them sell, you’ll create lasting buy-in. And buy-in is what transforms software from “just another tool” into a true competitive advantage. Check page 164 on developing a Sales Excellence program to have ongoing sales reps and manager champions you can rely on.
Then, build an evaluation grid
Start by creating a simple framework that everyone on your team can use to score vendors consistently. Your grid should include:
1) Top three problems & how you’ll measure them
Define the biggest enablement challenges and exactly how you’ll prove impact with leading, lagging, and adoption metrics.
2) Top 3-5 must-haves capabilities to validate in a pilot
Capabilities you must have to solve the problems above. Make sure you validate these capabilities in a pilot. Any vendor, I repeat, any vendor, should feel comfortable setting you up in a demo environment that your reps can test in and that you can validate. If they're not comfortable doing that for a day or two, or even a couple hours of a workshop, you likely have bigger problems.
3) Nice-to-haves (bonus capabilities)
Valuable, but not essential to hit your core outcomes. Be careful not to get distracted by the bells and whistles here. Really think critically about your core needs.
4) Top three evaluation criteria
The factors that matter most to your success:
Have each stakeholder score platforms 1–5 against these criteria. This keeps the process data-driven and reduces the risk of being swayed by “shiny-object” features.
First-time buyers: don’t buy the watch with 12 settings
When you’re buying your first enablement platform, it’s tempting to reach for the flashiest tool with the most features. But here’s the risk: it’s like buying a watch with 12 advanced settings when all you really need is to teach your team how to read the time and show up on time.
If your reps are already drowning in information, piling on more complexity will only make things worse. What they need isn’t hour-long certification paths or courses they take and instantly forget. They need simplicity. They need clarity. They need information that’s organized, sequenced, and delivered where they work so they can take action now.
That’s why if this is your first enablement platform purchase, LMS platforms are a dangerous starting point. Ask yourself:
- Do you really have the time to develop full courses and formal certifications?
- Will that content still be relevant by the time it’s updated, or will it already be outdated within days or weeks based on your team's pace of innovation?
- Can you afford to have reps stepping away from their work to sit through hours of training when what they actually need is an answer in the moment?
The reality: most LMS platforms are built for compliance and long-form training, not for fast-moving sales teams. If you’re just beginning your enablement journey, your first priority isn’t advanced certifications. It’s simply making sure your reps can find the right information at the right time without digging or guessing.
Rip-and-replace buyers: avoid “switching apples for apples”
If you’re replacing a legacy system, chances are you’ve already felt the sting of poor adoption, slow load times, difficult admin, or static content. But here’s the danger: many teams end up swapping one broken system for another that makes the same mistakes. If you’re already asking your reps to trust a “new and better tool,” you can’t afford to repeat history. The stakes are higher this time, because rep confidence in enablement is on the line.
As you evaluate your replacement, dig deeper than surface-level promises and ask yourself:
- What caused low adoption before? Make sure the new solution addresses those exact gaps.
- Does it integrate seamlessly into workflows? Avoid heavy portals or fragile CRM customizations.
- Are analytics unified? Look for a single view into training, content, and outcomes.
- Is it future-proof? AI-driven recommendations and real-time insights aren’t optional anymore.
- Did you involve skeptics? If the reps and leaders who ignored the old tool don’t buy in now, adoption will fail again.
Top traditional enablement platforms on the market
Highspot
Highspot, founded in 2012, is a leading sales enablement platform designed to centralize content, training, and guided selling tools for sales teams. It offers advanced content storage, search functionality, and analytics, helping organizations manage sales collateral and onboard reps. Highspot emphasizes formal training programs and structured content with its LMS (be aware that it's less mature than corporate LMS platforms), and its portal-based interface often requires reps to leave their workflow to access resources.
Seismic
Seismic, founded in 2010, is another leading sales enablement platform focused on content management, automation, and personalized sales experiences. Seismic integrates CRM and marketing automation systems. Like Highspot, it’s built around a robust content repository, advanced analytics, and structured onboarding programs (through their acquisition of LMS platform, Lessonly), but it can be complex to administer and requires significant setup to leverage its capabilities fully. Seismic offers an integration with Salesforce Einstein AI but requires significant implementation.
Showpad/Bigtincan (they just merged)
Showpad, founded in 2011, is a European-based enablement platform that combines content management, sales training, and buyer engagement. Showpad was just acquired by the same private equity that owns Bigtincan. It emphasizes rich content presentation and branded sales portals for customer-facing experiences. A key move in Showpad's evolution was the acquisition of LearnCore, which added an LMS component to its platform. Similar to Seismic, its training and content modules are not fully unified, leading to a more segmented experience for admins and reps.
Mindtickle
Mindtickle, founded in 2011, is a sales readiness and enablement platform known for its strong focus on sales coaching, skill development, and revenue intelligence. Its core differentiator is its sales readiness focus on measuring rep competencies. Mindtickle offers features like role-based learning paths, conversation intelligence, and gamified coaching exercises.
Saleshood
SalesHood, founded in 2013 by by Elay Cohen, former SVP of Sales Productivity at Salesforce, and is designed with a heavy emphasis on peer-to-peer learning, guided selling, and community-driven enablement. It differentiates itself with features that focus on collaborative learning (team storytelling, video role-plays, and win-sharing exercises). Unlike Seismic or Highspot, SalesHood takes a lightweight, social-first approach to training and enablement rather than relying solely on static repositories.
3 major pitfalls to consider when purchasing a legacy platform
When evaluating enablement platforms, it’s tempting to look to the big names that have dominated the category for over a decade. But a lot has changed in the world, and in the power of technology, since the early 2010s when these platforms were first built.
Many of the platforms were architected before the age of AI in a world where the best vision of enablement was a centralized portal for content and training. Today it feels like dragging reps back into the era of digital filing cabinets (with a nicer UI), leaving reps frustrated and content teams overworked. Slow load times, patchwork modules built through acquisitions, and accumulated tech debt can create a lot of friction that frustrates both reps and admins while newer tools leapfrog ahead with AI-driven innovation.
In fact, in the Sales Enablement Collective’s 2025 Impact of Enablement research report with buyers of traditional platforms like Highspot, Seismic, Mindtickle, they found that 92.3% of enablement and marketing teams believe less than 60% of their internal content is ever used. Content discovery is a glaring issue.
Content adoption is also incredibly low for marketing-produced external-facing content; in fact, less than 15% of respondents believe that over 60% of their content is used.
Sellers don’t have time to hunt through static libraries.
Let’s break down the three biggest pitfalls and how to combat them.
1) Pitfall 1: Clunky UI and poor content discovery
Traditional platforms rely on static folder structures and browsing-based navigation that haven’t evolved beyond a basic Google Drive. In fact, the research in the report suggests that poor user experience was cited by 50.8% as the reason for switching platforms, and low adoption rates were cited by 55.2% of respondents.
- Clunky, outdated intranet interfaces slow reps down, even when wrapped in pretty layouts or custom branding. Moreover, they create an added administrative burden on marketing and enablement teams that can be distracting (creating a beautiful layout for your content vs spending time updating your outdated content).
- Reps want speed and precision, not page browsing. Modern sellers go straight to a search bar or, more often, expect AI-powered answers in the flow of work. While some of these platforms have begun to add "in the flow of work" integration (ie, Seismic with Salesforce Einstein), these tend to be difficult to implement, often break easily when fields or workflows change, and ultimately create a dependency on Revenue Operations or IT that manages those systems - slowing the enablement team down.
What capabilities to look for in a modern enablement platform to combat poor content adoption?
Platforms should leverage in-app delivery and AI-driven recommendations to suggest content contextually.
Automated in-the-flow-of-work delivery.
This is about ease of access and setup. Modern sellers expect the same seamless experiences at work that they get as consumers. Just as Google surfaces the right answer instantly, enablement platforms should proactively deliver the right content, guidance, or training directly in the tools reps already use Salesforce, Gong, Gmail, Slack or LinkedIn. This eliminates the need for portal logins, tab-switching, or digging through folders, ensuring guidance is consumed in real time, not after the fact.
The experience should be truly “zero friction”: one-click to install, no complex integrations or manual mapping, and content that simply appears where it’s needed. Reps stay focused on selling while admins avoid heavy setup and maintenance.
AI-powered & context-aware:
This is about personalization and relevance. Once the content is accessible in the flow of work, the platform should go further by using deal context (call transcript, email CRM fields, pipeline stage, account type, activity) to proactively surface the right content at the right time. Instead of reps having to search or guess, AI should anticipate their needs: “Here’s the case study for this industry” or “Here’s the template for this stage of the deal.” For example, a rep opening an opportunity in Salesforce could automatically see the latest competitive battle card, pricing updates, or call script relevant to the deal stage.
EASE OF USE AND integrated sales workflows:
This is about making enablement so effortless that it becomes second nature for reps. Search should feel intuitive tolerant of typos, partial terms, or even natural-language questions (e.g., “how do I discount for enterprise accounts?”) and deliver instant, accurate answers. But discovery is only half the story. The real value lies in seamless action: the ability to immediately to insert that answer into an email, add the content you surfaced to a deal room, create that deal room on-the-fly if you don't already have it, share that deal room with your buyer all in a single click. No multiple steps. Just frictionless workflows that form lasting habits.
What questions should you ask vendors in your evaluation?
2) Pitfall 2: Rigid folder structures and static content that leads to content decay
Difficult content management (content decay) was cited by 60.1% of respondents as a key reason for switching platforms, with 51.2% of respondents believing that over 40% of their content needs refreshing.
Content management remains an unsexy, tangled, messy problem. The problem is that traditional CMS tools store content in static folders and long-form documents, a format that was very well intentioned in the early 2010s when most of these platforms were founded (Seismic in 2010, Highspot in 2012, Mindtickle in 2011, Showpad in 2011). But, a lot has changed since then.
These traditional content management systems, with their intricate webs of folders, subfolders, and tags, were built for a world of static, long-form content. Repurposing content, managing updates, and avoiding content decay have become herculean tasks.
Most enablement content today lives in long, monolithic documents, 120-page playbooks, dense training manuals, and lengthy PDFs. While comprehensive, these formats are hard to navigate and even harder to keep current. Updating a single change on page 15 means blasting the entire document out again and hoping reps find and read the right section.
This leads to content decay and duplication, especially when processes differ slightly by segment (e.g., SMB vs. enterprise) but live in the same file. Reps wade through irrelevant sections, get confused, or miss critical updates.
While long-form PDFs work great for a case study or research report, for internal enablement, that format is less effective.
What capabilities to look in a modern enablement platform:
A modular, scalable content structure
While branded PDFs (ie. Case studies) are great for external use, they're not ideal for internal use. Internal knowledge should be structured into reusable “blocks” that can be embedded, reordered, or combined for different contexts whether it’s onboarding, in-the-moment performance support, or customer-facing material. For example, instead of your sales playbook living in a 40-page PDF, each section (e.g., discovery questions, competitor positioning, persona insights) should be able to live as its own reusable piece of content (or section), while also combined into a larger single PDF.
Multi-purpose playlists
A modern system should allow you to assemble and reassemble these blocks into playlist-like paths for different purposes. For example, a discovery questions module can stand alone for quick reference or be combined with competitor positioning and persona insights to form a full playbook. Similarly,the same product overview might be part of a New Hire Onboarding path, reused in Competitive Training, and shared externally in a Customer-Facing Collection, all without recreating content.
Cascading updates and governance
When a product update happens, a single edit should instantly update every guide, playlist, or deal room where that content lives. To maintain trust at scale, AI-driven governance features are also essential to ensure content remains accurate, secure, and up-to-date across both internal and external audiences.
3) Pitfall 3: The “all-in-one” reality of bolt-on features
In response to these shortcomings, many CMS, LMS, and KMS vendors have tried to rebrand themselves as “all-in-one enablement platforms.” But in most cases, these “all-in-one” claims are the result of bolt-on acquisitions, not unified product design.
This shift is evident in the recent scramble by CMS companies to acquire or build LMS or KMS solutions to stay competitive. For example, Showpad acquired LearnCore in 2018, and Seismic acquired Lessonly in 2021. Similarly, LMS platforms like Allego are building or acquiring CMS capabilities, and CMS platforms like Highspot are building LMS capabilities. Most recently, Big Tin Can and Showpad merged.
But there’s a challenge with this approach to consolidation: Sure, you might have “CMS” and “LMS” capabilities under the same roof with a shared login, but often you’re left with two completely different user experiences. The best you get today is perhaps a shortcut to a course when looking at a document:
- Inconsistent UX/UI across modules: Many of these platforms have grown through acquisitions. While this expands their checklist of features, it often leads to multiple UIs stitched together. Reps have to navigate between modules with different designs, logins, and workflows, breaking the promise of a unified experience.
- Fragmented analytics and governance: If each module is bolted on, analytics and permissions often live in silos. Admins can’t get a single source of truth across all enablement activities, making it harder to measure what’s working, enforce compliance, or manage user access consistently.
- Shallow feature execution: Instead of excelling at one core thing, platforms often do many things mediocrely. For example, their LMS module lacks the depth HR teams require, and their conversational intelligence tools lag behind dedicated Conversation Intelligence providers like Gong.
For a period, enablement platforms heavily invested in LMS modules to own training and onboarding. However, many of these LMS capabilities didn’t meet HR leaders’ needs (compliance tracking, SCORM support, certification governance, etc.). As a result, HR teams have increasingly pulled LMS ownership back under centralized HR platforms like Docebo or Cornerstone. In contrast, GTM teams were left with a half-baked LMS in their enablement tool — and a separate content platform for sales.
What to look for in a modern enablement platform:
Rather than being dazzled by feature checklists, focus on platforms that prioritize cohesion and usability over bloat. Instead of cobbling together LMS, CI, CMS, and coaching tools with inconsistent UIs, modern enablement platforms focus on delivering a unified, consistent user experience across all capabilities.
This ensures reps aren’t learning one interface for training, another for content, and another for call coaching. It also allows admins and leaders to see comprehensive analytics in one view: which content is used, which call behaviors correlate with success, which reps are behind on training, all tied back to revenue outcomes.
Truly unified USER EXPERIENCE:
One seamless interface across content, training, and analytics. No jarring module-hopping or separate admin dashboards.
Comprehensive, cross-module analytics:
The ability to see, in one view, what content is being consumed, what training is being completed, how call behaviors are evolving, and how these correlate to business outcomes.
Granular governance controls:
Robust permissions, version control, and compliance-friendly workflows that give both HR and GTM leaders confidence that their teams have the right, current information.
Questions to ask vendors in your evaluation
Where modern enablement is heading
The traditional enablement model, static PDFs, portals, and bolted-on LMS, has hit its limits. Modern go-to-market teams operate in a faster, more complex environment where sales reps can’t afford to waste time digging for answers or toggling between disjointed tools. The future of enablement is defined by four core pillars: contextual delivery, modular content, unified experiences, and intelligence.
The next generation of enablement isn’t about building a bigger portal; it’s about eliminating friction and bringing enablement to the rep, not the other way around. Platforms like Spekit exemplify this evolution:
- In-app, AI-powered delivery of knowledge directly inside Salesforce, Slack, and other tools.
- Modular, reusable content that stays fresh and relevant automatically.
- A unified UI and analytics layer for visibility across content, training, and call insights.
- Governance and flexible integrations
The result is higher adoption, faster ramp, and scalable enablement that aligns with how modern GTM teams actually work.
Top modern enablement platforms on the market
Gong
I’ve included Gong in this list because conversation intelligence tools like Gong should absolutely be considered enablement platforms. While traditionally viewed as “call recording and analysis,” Gong has evolved into a critical coaching and performance engine. By capturing every customer interaction and turning it into insights, Gong enables managers to coach reps at scale, identify winning talk tracks, and surface deal risks in real time.
More recently, Gong has been advancing into AI-driven role play and skills development, allowing reps to practice objection handling, refine messaging, and receive instant feedback based on real-world scenarios. In this sense, Gong goes far beyond analytics — it’s an enablement platform that drives continuous rep improvement where it matters most: in actual buyer conversations.
Spekit
Spekit is the modern sales enablement platform that unifies sales content and learning, and enables your reps in their flow of work with AI Sidekick, the most contextual Just-in-Time Sales Assistant™.
In other words, Spekit gives you both:
- A centralized, well-governed content hub for organizing and maintaining all your sales and enablement materials.
- An AI-powered just-in-time delivery engine that brings that content to your reps automatically, exactly when and where they need it.
AI Sidekick uses contextual AI agents to understand your reps’ precise needs, surfacing personalized coaching, messaging support, answers, and learning. By enabling them in the flow of work™, AI Sidekick helps reps effortlessly prepare for calls, follow-up, or create tailored deal rooms and buyer experiences—leading to faster deal execution, stronger buyer relationships, and reduced ramp times.
This powerful just-in-time enablement approach is backed by comprehensive sales content management capabilities that unite the best of DAP, KMS, CMS, and LMS features. With a robust centralized repository, AI editing and governance features, and a built-in change management solution, enablement and marketing teams can effortlessly combat content decay and ensure consistent messaging. Beyond AI-powered content automation and delivery, Spekit provides granular analytics on content consumption and buyer engagement to optimize strategy and revenue attribution.
Spekit vs. Traditional Enablement Platform: Feature Comparison
Trumpet
Trumpet has carved out a niche as a modern tool for creating polished, buyer-facing experiences. Reps can design branded microsites, embed videos, and craft sleek “digital sales rooms” that give prospects a curated view of content and resources. For teams that prioritize buyer polish and presentation, Trumpet delivers an impressive front-end experience that can help deals feel more personalized.
That said, Trumpet’s strengths are also its limitations. Unlike a true enablement platform, it doesn’t offer a full CMS (and therefore you'll be adding another place where your content lives unsupervised) or address the broader challenges of enablement like content discoverability, onboarding, and rep adoption. Reps often have to spend extra time designing rooms, which can slow down velocity when speed and repeatability matter most. And while Trumpet supports personalization, it lacks the AI-powered recommendations, playbooks, and workflow integrations that modern enablement teams increasingly rely on to scale.
In short: Trumpet shines if your top priority is impressing buyers with sleek, custom experiences. But if your team is struggling with content sprawl, inconsistent execution, or the need for speed and scale, you’ll quickly run into its limitations.
Second Nature
Second Nature is an AI-powered role-play platform that lets reps practice real sales conversations in a safe, scalable way. Instead of waiting for manager coaching, reps can role-play discovery calls, objection handling, or product pitches with an AI “bot” that listens, responds, and provides instant feedback. This makes coaching more continuous, consistent, and accessible on demand.
That said, role-play adoption is often minimal outside of forced onboarding or product launch exercises, since reps tend to prioritize live selling over practice. These tools can also be admin-intensive to set up, requiring scenario design, scoring rubrics, and upkeep. If you’re evaluating Second Nature (or any role-play solution), it’s worth looking closely at the roadmap, particularly how they plan to make practice more real-time and integrated into daily prep rather than a siloed training activity.
The InMoment Case Study: Replacing Highspot
Jenna Siegel, Sr. Director of Revenue Enablement at InMoment, switched from Highspot to Spekit when her CMS became a “dumping ground” with no analytics.
Results after InMoment switched to Spekit:
- 90% increase in time-to-find content
- 92% license utilization and 84% extension usage in the first 30 days.
- Seamless migration and superior content governance.
- Feedback from reps: “Spekit knows what you need before you know you need it.”
FAQs: Spekit vs. Highspot & Seismic
1. Can Spekit replace Highspot or Seismic?
Yes. Spekit provides all core CMS, LMS, and DAP capabilities, plus just-in-time delivery and AI-driven guidance directly in the rep’s workflow.
2. How does Spekit compare to Highspot and Seismic?
Spekit combines a centralized, governed content repository with modular, reusable content and AI Sidekick, the Just-in-Time Sales Assistant. Highspot and Seismic are primarily portal-based and rely on destination-based access which slows reps down.
3. Does Spekit support long-form content?
Yes. PDFs, videos, playbooks, and other assets can live in Spekit and be dynamically reused across workflows and playlists.
4. Why do teams switch from Highspot or Seismic to Spekit?
Because Spekit delivers:
- Higher adoption by reps (no more portal resistance).
- Reduced administrative overhead (less time maintaining and policing content).
- In-workflow, contextual learning that improves ramp time and sales efficiency.
