The merger of revenue enablement platform arch-rivals Seismic and Highspot is now complete. The combined company positions itself as a GTM performance company focused on revenue execution rather than traditional enablement, serving thousands of customers and millions of users while investing more than $100 million annually in R&D.
The important “what’s next?” following the most consequential transaction the REP market has experienced, however, is not about size, but whether a top-funded provider can solve the challenges that continue to prevent most organizations from realizing the full value of revenue enablement technology. Will the new Seismic close the current gap between what these platforms can do and what most organizations can successfully operationalize?
We wrote when the merger was announced that continued consolidation would create clearer choices for buyers while also introducing new risks; that the market was moving beyond feature comparisons and rewarding vendors capable of connecting content, learning, coaching, intelligence, and execution. Those observations remain true today. If anything, the completed merger makes them more relevant.
Product Differentiation Has Narrowed. Will The New Seismic Pull Ahead?
One of the defining characteristics of today’s REP market is functional parity. Nearly every serious provider now offers some combination of AI-assisted content creation and content management; learning, coaching, and role-play; buyer engagement spaces; and enablement program management and advanced analytics.
The challenge is no longer assembling capabilities but orchestrating them. The Seismic-Highspot merger creates the industry’s strongest opportunity yet to move beyond individual features toward a connected execution environment. If successful, the company could reset buyer expectations and reopen meaningful separation in the market.
Can “Content + Learning” Finally Evolve Into Revenue Execution?
As the pending publication of The Forrester WaveTM for Revenue Enablement Platforms, Q4 2026 will reveal in mid-October, the decade-long era of REPs that primarily compete around content consolidation and learning management is ending. The Seismic-Highspot merger messaging is notable because it focuses less on enablement preparation and more on GTM performance and revenue execution, which is precisely where our REP coverage anticipates the market’s evolution. The next phase of revenue enablement is increasingly defined by systems that:
- Guide actions and reinforce behaviors
- Activate and inform managers
- Improve execution consistency
- Make sense out of overlapping or conflicting information streams
- Connect enablement investments to business outcomes
The technology appears increasingly capable of supporting that vision, but the larger question is whether customers are prepared to adopt it. Because for every REP Wave reference customer we encountered who showcased the advanced integration of systems and data required to leverage best-of-breed REP capabilities, we spoke with two or three others still struggling with disconnected systems and data, chaotic content, poor sales-marketing alignment, and REPs that weren’t even CRM-integrated. Some customers find that they’ve bought a Maserati just to drive to the flea market on Saturday mornings!
Seven Shifts That Will Define Revenue Enablement’s Next Era
In light of continued industry consolidation and our Wave research, here are the REP headlines moving forward:
- AI is moving from productivity to performance. Most organizations can already create and route content faster; far fewer can consistently improve execution, coaching, and selling outcomes.
- AI role-play is becoming enablement’s killer use case. Role play is emerging as the clearest path from AI experimentation to measurable seller improvement.
- Seller intelligence is becoming behavioral intelligence. The focus is shifting from tracking activity to identifying, reinforcing, and scaling successful seller behaviors.
- Winners reduce seller effort while increasing seller competence. The best platforms remove administrative burden while simultaneously making sellers more effective.
- Data quality is becoming execution quality. Context, governance, integration, and clean sales and marketing signals increasingly determine whether AI improves seller execution.
- Human-in-the-loop is winning. The most effective approaches combine AI scale with human judgment, coaching, and accountability.
- AI amplifies maturity; it doesn’t replace it. Organizations with strong governance, coaching, and enablement discipline will benefit disproportionately from AI investments.
A Higher Bar Requires More Than Better Software
The newly combined Seismic represents perhaps the market’s most ambitious effort yet to build a true revenue execution platform. Its scale, investment, installed base, and vision are difficult to ignore, but the central challenge facing GTM leaders has never been technology alone. It’s the ability to operationalize that technology through governance, integration, behavior change, manager engagement, and organizational discipline.
The Seismic-Highspot merger raises the bar for the industry. Clearing that bar will require GTM organizations to do the harder work of aligning their people, processes, and data to turn better technology into better execution.
If you’re a Forrester client thinking about how to take advantage of the latest revenue enablement capabilities, request a guidance session with us here to dive deeper and explore solutions that work in your environment.
