Groove Analysis: Gartner Market Guide for Sales Engagement Applications 2023
Gartner® recently published its latest piece of research on the sales engagement market “Market Guide for Sales Engagement Applications, Q1 2023,” featuring key insights on how this market is evolving. Groove is one of 16 vendors profiled in the guide, authored by analysts Dan Gottlieb, Keith Jones, Roland Johnson, Amy Jenkins, and Guy Wood. If you are a Gartner client, you can access the full report on Gartner.com.
The guide features market predictions, key terminology and definitions, as well as analysis and recommendations for vendors looking to invest in sales engagement applications.
Sales Engagement Definition According to Gartner®
Gartner has evolved its definition of sales engagement platforms in a number of ways, including the end user base, use cases and capability set. According to the report:
“Sales engagement applications (SEAs) streamline how sellers orchestrate sales activities and deal workflows at scale. They optimize seller productivity by combining three key capabilities into a single interface: multichannel engagement, workflow execution and time-saving AI/automation.
The SEA market is transitioning from systems used by a few business development sellers to systems of action for the entire customer-facing team, prescribing engagement tactics and iterating on messaging.”
Gartner also includes commentary on the role of AI and the value it brings to sales engagement applications, stating: “Generative AI/ML technology adds instant value for creating more relevant, personalized messaging faster, and will directly affect the heuristics of crafting messaging in the future.”
Sales Engagement Market Size
According to Gartner, “Sales engagement applications comprise a fast-growing segment of the $17.1 billion CRM sales software market. Gartner estimates the SEA market grew 27.6% in 2022 to $983 million, and expects the category to experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.7% over the next five years. Sales engagement applications are positioned to evolve into the primary interface for many Salesforce Automations/CRM workflows.”
Gartner estimates the SEA market grew 27.6% in 2022 to $983 million
Different Approaches to SFA/CRM Integration
When evaluating sales engagement applications, Gartner organizes them into three different vendor types based on their approaches to integration with Sales Force Automation (SFA) and CRM systems. Is shown in the image below, Gartner identifies the three vendor types SFA/CRM integration categories as:
- CRM providers that expand their product with SFA capabilities
- SEAs that offer bidirectional sync with multiple SFA/CRM providers
- SEAs that integrate exclusively with Salesforce
Of the 16 SEA vendors featured in the Gartner Market Guide, Groove is the only category leader that is Salesforce-native. Groove’s decision to build its platform on top of Salesforce offers several benefits that have been validated by its clients.
With Groove, our customers are able to:
- Maintain Salesforce as their database of record
- Eliminate sync errors and data latency
- Capture all sales activities, including data from custom fields, objects and workflows
- Ensure accurate reporting and forecasting with real-time data
- Reduce administrative overhead by as much as 90%
- Lower compliance risk for GDPR, CCPA, and other global privacy laws
Groove’s Salesforce-native architecture also provides the security, flexibility, and ease-of-use required by large and complex enterprises. In G2’s most recent Enterprise Sales Engagement Grid, Groove is the only leader that is Salesforce-native, and the highest-rated sales engagement platform across all other providers.
Introducing The Seller Action Hub
Gartner notes most sales engagement application vendors are continuously adding new functionalities and capabilities to their platforms. As a result, Gartner introduces the term “Seller Action Hub” in this report, which refers to vendors with capabilities from at least 3 out of the 5 following sales tech categories:
- Sales engagement
- Conversation intelligence
- Revenue intelligence
- Revenue data solutions
- Revenue enablement platforms
As you can see in the Gartner image below, the Seller Action Hub brings siloed and disjointed vendors and capabilities together in a more integrated and unified way.
Groove is one of eleven seller action hubs featured in the report.
Sales Engagement Core Requirements and Recommendations
According to the Market Guide, organizations looking to implement a sales engagement application, should “evaluate functionality offered natively in a CRM suite before making a decision to invest in a sales engagement application. Weigh the cost-saving appeal of a Seller Action Hub against the costs associated with a rip-and-replace of other software with overlapping capabilities.”
Gartner describes the several key benefits of the Seller Action Hub, including:
- Faster and deeper adoption
- Simplified tech task
- Configurable to different roles
- Cost savings from consolidation of tools
Groove’s Approach to Sales Engagement
Groove believes Salesforce should always be the source of truth. Due to Groove’s Salesforce-native design, teams benefit from the most advanced activity capture in the industry, enabling orgs to rely on accurate reporting and forecasting, lower compliance risk, and streamlined administration. Teams are able to get up and running faster because Groove is highly configurable, scalable, and secure.
Interested in learning more?
For the complete report, Gartner clients can access the “Market Guide for Sales Engagement Applications” by logging into their account on Gartner.com.
If you’re evaluating sales engagement platforms, you can learn about Groove on our Platform page.
G2 Sales Engagement Software Report
Learn why Groove is leading the pack, and how the top providers are ranked across several criteria, including user satisfaction and placement in G2’s proprietary Grid® Report.
Download Report