If you're running a B2B sales or marketing team, you’ve probably heard about sales enablement platforms. Maybe your reps are drowning in decks, or marketing’s fed up with content graveyards. Maybe you’re just tired of not knowing what’s actually working. This review cuts through the noise on Highspot—what it does well, where it falls short, and how it really fits into a go-to-market tech stack in 2024.
What is Highspot, Really?
Highspot calls itself a sales enablement platform. Translation: it’s a big, organized library for all your sales content—plus tools for training, playbooks, analytics, and (if you want) some AI-driven recommendations. The idea is to help salespeople find the right stuff, at the right time, and actually know if it made a difference.
Who is it for? Realistically, Highspot is best for mid-to-large B2B companies with 30+ reps, dedicated marketing, and a sales ops function. If you’re a five-person startup, this is overkill. If you’ve got a small army of sellers (and a few marketers trying to herd them), it’s worth a hard look.
Core Features: What You Get (and What You Don’t)
Let’s break down what Highspot actually delivers—and what you need to watch out for.
1. Content Management
What works: - Centralized Library: Everything—decks, one-pagers, battlecards, PDFs—lives in one place. Search mostly works, provided your stuff is tagged and organized. - Version Control: No more “which version is this?” drama. You can update content centrally and push it out to everyone. - Permissions: Lock down sensitive docs so only the right folks see them.
Where it falls down: - Setup is a slog: You’ll need to invest real time up front to organize your content, tag it, and set up folders or “Spots.” If you skip this, your library will get messy fast. - Search isn’t magic: AI search is only as good as your metadata. If your team is lazy about tagging, good luck finding that killer case study six months later.
Pro tip: Assign a content librarian (yes, an actual person) to keep things organized and archived.
2. Sales Playbooks & Guidance
What works: - Playbooks: You can embed battlecards, talk tracks, objection-handling guides, and more alongside content. Makes it easier for new reps to get up to speed. - Contextual Content: Highspot can surface the “best-fit” content based on deal stage, persona, or CRM data.
Reality check: - Adoption varies: Salespeople will ignore playbooks if they’re too generic or out of date. If your marketing team isn’t working closely with sales to keep these fresh, don’t expect miracles. - Customization is work: Building good playbooks takes actual effort—copy-pasting your last sales training doc won’t cut it.
3. Buyer Engagement & Tracking
What works: - Content Sharing: Reps can send content directly from Highspot, get notified when buyers open/view it, and see which slides/pages they spend time on. - Analytics: You can track which content gets used, shared, and actually engaged with by buyers.
What’s overrated: - Engagement ≠ interest: Just because a buyer opened your PDF doesn’t mean they’re ready to buy. Treat these signals as conversation starters, not buying intent. - Over-notification: Be careful—reps can get “alert fatigue” if the platform pings them for every click.
4. Training & Onboarding
What works: - Microlearning: You can build bite-size training modules and quizzes right into Highspot. Handy for onboarding new reps or rolling out new products. - Certifications: Track who’s completed what, and tie it to CRM data.
What’s so-so: - Not a full LMS: Highspot’s training is good for quick-hit sales enablement, but it’s not going to replace a real learning management system if you need deep, compliance-heavy training.
5. Analytics & Reporting
What works: - Content ROI: See which decks actually get used, which ones influence deals, and which are just taking up space. - Pipeline Influence: Connects to Salesforce (and other CRMs) to show which content is being used on real deals.
What to ignore: - Vanity metrics: Don’t get sidetracked by “content views” or “downloads.” Focus on whether content actually moves deals forward.
Pro tip: Set up a quarterly review to cull unused or underperforming content. Less is more.
The AI Factor: Hype vs. Useful
No 2024 review is complete without an AI section, right? Highspot has jumped on the AI bandwagon, mostly by promising smarter search, content recommendations, and some auto-tagging.
What’s actually helpful: - Auto-tagging: Cuts down on admin work if it works as advertised, but you still need someone to sanity-check the results. - Personalized recommendations: Can suggest content based on deal stage or persona, but only if your CRM and content are well-integrated.
What’s overblown: - “Intelligent” insights: AI can surface correlations, but don’t expect earth-shattering revelations. You still need human judgment to figure out what actually matters.
Integrations: Plays Nice (Mostly)
Highspot integrates with Salesforce, Outlook, Gmail, Slack, and a bunch of other tools. The Salesforce integration is the most important—if you don’t connect the two, you’re missing half the value.
The real-world scoop: - CRM integration is solid: You can track content usage at the account/opportunity level. - Email/calendar integration: Makes it easy to share content from where reps actually work. - APIs/Webhooks: Available, but don’t expect “plug and play” sophistication. Complex integrations will need dev time.
Gotchas: - Integration maintenance: Expect some upkeep. When your CRM schema changes, things can break. - Data privacy: If you’re in a regulated industry, double-check how Highspot handles data and permissions.
User Experience: Will Sales Actually Use It?
The good: - Clean, modern UI: Highspot is less clunky than most legacy platforms. Sellers don’t need a PhD to use it. - Mobile-friendly: Works well on phones and tablets for field reps.
The drawbacks: - Learning curve: There’s still onboarding needed—especially for non-tech-savvy reps. - “One more tool” fatigue: If your teams already juggle a bunch of apps, getting adoption takes real effort.
Pro tip: Tie Highspot usage to sales onboarding and manager scorecards. If managers aren’t using it, the team won’t either.
What Highspot Doesn’t Do (Don’t Get Fooled)
- It’s not a CRM: You still need Salesforce, HubSpot, or whatever you’re using for deal management.
- Not a replacement for marketing automation: No fancy nurture campaigns here.
- Doesn’t write your content: If your content sucks, Highspot won’t magically make it better.
- Not cheap: Pricing isn’t public, but expect it in the “enterprise SaaS” range—usually per user, per year. If you’re price-sensitive, get clarity up front.
Should You Buy Highspot? A Gut-Check List
Ask yourself: - Do you have more than 30 sellers and real marketing support? - Is your sales content a mess, or just hard to find? - Are you ready to invest time up front to set it up right—and assign someone to keep it organized? - Is your leadership actually willing to drive adoption?
If you can’t say yes to most of these, you might be better off cleaning up your shared drive and waiting another year.
Final Thoughts: Keep It Simple, Iterate
Highspot does a lot of things well, especially if you’re drowning in content chaos and need a single source of truth. But it’s not a magic fix. The real work is in getting your content house in order, making sure sales and marketing talk to each other, and not getting distracted by pretty dashboards.
Start small. Roll out to a pilot team, get feedback, and iterate. Don’t over-engineer workflows you don’t need. Focus on what actually helps reps close deals, and ignore the rest. That’s how you get real value from any sales enablement tool—Highspot included.