Highspot is a sales enablement tool we use to gather, categorize, and share content within GitLab and externally to our customers. It brings together native content and guidance, training and coaching, and engagement intelligence – all supported by actionable analytics. GitLab uses Highspot as a sales portal to:
To learn more about Highspot's features, check out this Highspot in Action video.
Because of the pace of business and rapid growth of the GitLab team, efficiently organizing and distributing content are key pain points for the GitLab GTM organization.
Upon surveying members of the Field team, we found that 92% of the Field organization felt that finding the resources they needed to do their jobs was moderate-difficult (source). Furthermore, we found that 85% of the organization only finds the resources they are looking for some of the time (source). Lastly, we found that Enterprise SAEs spend an average of two hours per week simply searching for Sales content, which equates to 200 hours per week across the entire Enterprise team that could be used for revenue-generating activities instead (source).
GitLab ultimately chose to onboard Highspot as a sales asset management system to increase the efficiency of marketing spend, improve sales productivity and drive more visibility around content adoption and performance.
Highspot is managed by the Field Enablement organization, specifically, the Field Communications & Content team. The team leverages a contract agency, Arnic Business Solutions, to help manage the day-to-day administration of our Highspot instance.
There are two primary Slack channels to communicate with platform DRIs and other content owners / contributors about Highspot at GitLab:
The Highspot team creates GitLab Issue Templates within the Enablement Project for common requests:
| Spot Title | Description | Viewable By | Contribution Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Channel & Alliances | Channel marketing material to share with Partners and internal GitLab team members. | All internal team members | Locked |
| Competitive Intelligence | All internal competitive matters; to be used for self-education about our competitors. | All internal team members | Locked |
| Customer Success | CS Operations, Gainsight, Professional Services, Solutions Architects, Technical Account Management. | All internal team members | Locked |
| Customer Advocacy | Customer case studies, video testimonials, quotes, peer reviews, and accolades from G2, Gartner, and Forrester. | All internal team members | Locked |
| Customer Outreach | Resources and insights to support customer collaboration, including case studies, industry research, personas, value drivers, analyst reports, marketing campaigns, and events. | All internal team members | Locked |
| Field Contributed Content | Collateral that Field team members have created for customers and prospects – examples of "what good looks like." | All internal team members | Open - Review Required |
| Field Strategy and Enablement | Training, onboarding, organization-wide changes or large projects. | All internal team members | Locked |
| GitLab Duo (AI) | Resources to understand our developing AI strategy and effectively communicate with prospects and customers. | All internal team members | Locked |
| Solution Selling | What to know, what to say, what to show, what to do across our primary GitLab Solutions | All internal team members | Locked |
| Company Pitch Templates | Curated messages and content you can pitch from Highspot or directly within associated Gmail or Outreach accounts. | All internal team members | Locked |
| Reporting (Analytics) | Sample analytics reports that Analysts can view and modify to help answer key business questions. | Analysts in GitLab | Locked |
| Highspot User Guide | This spot features quick tutorials, tips & tricks, analytics reports and more. | All internal team members | Locked |
| Personal Spot | Each team member with a Highspot account will have their own personal spot that they can use to upload content of their own. Naming convention is [Your Account First Name] Spot. |
Account holder only | Open |
Teams with access to Highspot include:
Non-active users, such as team members who have left the company, will be removed from Highspot on a regular basis in order to open seats within the tool.
Access to the tool is provisioned via SSO in Okta. To access Highspot, please navigate through the Highspot tile in your Okta dashboard. If you do not have access via your Okta dashboard, please submit an Access Request.
Highspot provides powerful ways to browse and filter content and helps you pinpoint the most effective content for any given situation.
To quickly explore a spot, you can click on a tag list in the left nav pane. The main area will show only the items tagged within that list. For example, in the screenshot below, the eBook tag list shows all items that match that asset type found in the Customer-Facing Content spot.
You can also use Filter mode to narrow down all items in a spot to just the content you need, much like filtering for products in an e-commerce application. To enter Filter mode, click the funnel icon in the left nav pane.
You'll see lists with checkboxes for narrowing down the results. In the filtered view of the Solution Selling spot, pictured below, you can filter results based on Asset Type and Buyer Persona, for example. You can also use your own activity to filter results. In this case, if you've copied or viewed an asset, you can click Copied and Viewed under Your Activity.
Another way to navigate a spot is by using Sort under the spot title:
Here is an overview of each sort:
One of the quickest and easiest ways to find content in Highspot is through search. You can run a quick search across the entire site by entering your query and clicking return. When you type in a search term, individual items will appear at the top of the list. Different types of items in the search results are divided by lines. You can use the icons to quickly identify results by type: a target for Spot, a headshot outline for person, three heads for Group, etc.
You’ll see the Search results page, pictured below:
You can scroll through the search results and use the left nav to filter down the results.
Learn more about browsing and searching in the Highspot Help Center:
Watch This: Review GitLab’s Highspot General Training to learn more about searching and discovering content in Highspot.
Pitching allows you to easily and flexibly share content with your customers and prospects. Pitch it live, email it from Highspot, or create a custom link and send it through Gmail, LinkedIn, and more.
Pitching through Highspot improves conversion rates and helps you more effectively engage buyers. It gives you the ability to customize, personalize, and send content from Highspot through virtually any channel and receive real-time, actionable notifications when prospects or customers interact with your content. These analytics help sales and marketing teams understand what works best to drive buyer engagement so they can better optimize their sales processes and sales content.
Adding a custom email signature to your Highspot profile will give your email Pitches a consistent look and feel for recipients.
Once these steps are complete, you will see your custom signature included under the Signature section of your Highspot email Pitches.
Watch This: Review the Highspot Pitching Deep Dive Training to learn more about ways to share Highspot content with customers, prospects and partners.
When to use: When you would like to generate a new email and understand exactly who is looking at what.
Learn more: Send an Email Pitch
When to use: When you want to package up content to share via LinkedIn, a text message, an existing email thread, a QR code (good for industry conferences), etc., and don’t need to know exactly who looked at it. (Note: You will still be able to see the number of views.)
Reminder: You won’t be able to know exactly who looked at the link pitch.
Learn more: Send a Link Pitch
Learn more: Check out this quick demo video and download the Chrome extension to begin using this awesome feature.
Engagement tab:
Engagement tab. Each pitch and the associated analytics are unique to one recipient / email address.
Learn more: Check out this quick demo video to begin using this awesome feature.
When to use: If you want to understand how long you spend on each slide/piece of content during a client conversation. Also, if you want to automatically log the activity/touchpoint on a SFDC opportunity. (Opportunity must be linked in Highspot.)
Learn more: Use Live Pitch to Present Content
SFDC Integration
Pitch Styles
Simple Content View Pitch Style: This is the default pitch style on all pitch types and will display content in a simple thumbnail view in the pitch and a webpage view upon clicking.Content Portal Pitch Style: If you want to create a more official, branded “landing page” to serve up more than 3+ pieces of content to customers or prospects. Example: Create a content repository for a champion that they can refer back to through a deal cycle.Pitch Templates
Pitch Analytics
Note: For more information on the differences betweeen Pitch Styles and Pitch Templates, refer to the previous section or the following link: Pitch Templates vs Pitch Styles
The following steps are used to create Pitches using specific Pitch Style and Pitch Templates:
To prepare for a pitch, you can customize content for the customer you are corresponding with.
There are two ways you can customize content inside of Highspot: Remix and Edit in Google Drive.
Remix Content
Edit in Google Drive
The Highspot core team offered two trainings to break up the two main capabilities of Highspot - discovering content and sharing content. These trainings are structured so that the first 20 minutes consist of an uninterrupted demo, allowing you to quickly get up-to-speed and skip the Q&A portion if desired.
Who has access to Highspot?
At this time, the entire GitLab GTM organization, which includes the global Field team, Sales Dev (SDR/BDR) and Strategic Marketing.
How do I get access to Highspot?
All members of GitLab's GTM organization have access to the tool via their Okta dashboard. For a full list of teams with Highspot access, see the Availability section above. If you are on one of these teams and still do not have Highspot access via Okta, please open an access request.
If I have a recommendation for a piece of content that should be in Highspot for all to access, how do I contribute?
Contributing to Highspot is easy, and we encourage all team members to contribute resources that you think the entire GTM org or specific teams could benefit from. This could be anything from a Marketing resource you found that isn't already in Highspot or a presentation/document you created or found that would be helpful for team members to reference as an example of "what good looks like." If it's helpful for the team, we want to include it in Highspot!
To submit content, navigate to the Highspot homepage and click on the Contribute Content to Highspot button. From there, you'll see these instructions that will guide you through how to submit a piece / pieces of content in less than one minute! Please follow the instructions for adding a piece of content from Google Drive or adding a piece of content via a URL below when contributing content.
Who can upload content to Highspot?
Each spot has a handful of designated “Content Owners” who are DRIs in their respective areas. Only these team members can upload content into that particular spot. The reasoning for this is to keep our Highspot database “clean” – i.e. maintain content uploading best practices, tagging, etc. Anyone can submit a piece of content to be added to Highspot in less than 30 seconds by following this process.
Can all team members upload content into Highspot?
There is one spot in which all team members can upload content in Highspot that all users can access: the Sales Contributed Spot (for Sales, Channel, Alliances and Operations-related submissions). Content submitted to this spot requires review before it is visible to all users. Each team member can upload content to their Personal Spot without the need for review. Keep in mind that content uploaded to your personal spot will only be viewable by that user.
How do I request to become a content owner?
Please request access from the owner of the spot where you would like to gain access.
How do I determine the owner(s) of a spot?
You can find the spot owner in the top right-hand corner of a spot and/or at the bottom of the spot overview page. To get in touch with the spot owner, we recommend reaching out on Slack.
What's the best way to save a piece of content that I want to come back to later?
You can do this by selecting Bookmark on the piece of content and bookmarking it into your Personal Spot.
Can content be in only one Spot?
No - content can be added to multiple spots. Content owners can do this by uploading a piece of content into one spot and bookmarking it to additional spots. Highspot users can also bookmark any piece of content in Highspot to their personal spots.
Can partners or other external audiences access Highspot?
Not at this time. GitLab's Highspot instance is only accessible by internal team members via SSO. External audiences can only see external content that is pitched to them via Highspot.
We are exploring the option of a Highspot instance for GitLab partners and will share more details when available.
Can I find industry- or segment-specific content in Highspot?
Yes! You can quickly find industry- or segment-specific content by using Highspot’s tag lists, which allow you to filter search results as well as content found within individual Spots. When you enter a keyword in the Highspot search field and hit return, all available filter lists will appear in the left-side navigation pane. Simply scroll down to the Industry or Market Segment tag list and click on the desired Industry (e.g., banking, retail, technology) or Market Segment (e.g., Enterprise, SMB) to find all related content. When browsing through a specific Spot (e.g. the “Competitive Intelligence” Spot), simply click into the Spot and then select the appropriate filter list that appears in the left-side navigation pane. For more information about browsing and filtering content, check out the Highspot Help Center.
How can I find content that is trending or popular among GitLab’s field team?
You can quickly find trending/popular content by using the Sort functionality found within each Spot. When you visit a specific Spot - e.g., the “Customer-Facing Content” Spot - simply click into the “Content” view and use the sorting options (found under the Spot title) to arrange your display by popularity. Content will then be grouped by trending (popular items for the last two weeks) and most popular (most popular for all time). For more information about sorting and browsing Spots, check out the Highspot Help Center.
How does search work in Highspot?
Highspot's search algorithm is designed to get users in contact with the right content in a quick and effective way. Highspot identifies items that match your search term - looking in many places to detect a match, including the title, description, the content of the item, the name of the Spot it is in, the name of any tag lists it is in, a word spoken in the transcription (if it is audio or video), a word that appears in an image or in a snapshot of the video - and then ranks them.
Can I download content found in Highspot?
Generally, no. To help us maintain GitLab’s SAFE framework and cultivate Highspot as a single source of truth, most content found in Highspot is not available for download. Please reach out to the Highspot admins in #highspot-help-center if you have any questions about a specific piece of content.
Can teams have an area where they can post content specific to their team?
Yes! How we accomplish this very much depends on individual use cases, how relevant the content is to other audiences, etc. If you’d like to explore having an area/avenue where you can curate content specific to your team, please reach out to the Highspot admins in #highspot-help-center to set up time to discuss.
Do we have automation in place to automatically pull in new blog posts, eBooks, slide decks, YouTube videos, etc.
Not at this time. All content must be manually added to Highspot via designated content owners. This is intentional in order to maintain the quality of content and tagging in Highspot. If you find that a helpful piece of content is not included in Highspot, please follow the instructions on the Highspot homepage to submit a piece of content – it takes 30 seconds or less!
Is it possible to see the speaker notes when viewing a Google Slide?
This is not a Highspot capability at this time due to limitations with Google’s API. The Highspot team is aware that this is a needed feature and are hoping to offer it soon.
How does Highspot differ from the Handbook?
The Handbook is still our SSOT at GitLab. If you’re a content creator and wanting to document information, processes, etc., you should still use the GitLab Handbook as the place to do this. The added benefit is that you can then add a link to that Handbook page within Highspot and add it to the appropriate Spot/lists so that the Handbook page is more easily discoverable by the Field team. A great way to think of Highspot is like a search engine across the documents/resources that the Field uses often.
What is the difference between Highspot and Thought Industries (LevelUp)?
Thought Industries (LevelUp) is the main hub for all training content, courses, etc. Think of Highspot like a search engine put across all of the tools and platforms we use - Google Drive, YouTube, Handbook, etc. So, we might upload a link to a training course or a video recording that's housed in another location so that it's more discoverable and served up with related content within Highspot.
What are the differing goals of Highspot and PathFactory?
Similar to PathFactory, Highspot is a tool that can point customers to a set of relevant assets. In Highspot, users can create Pitch Templates with Pitch Styles (sometimes called Digital Sales Rooms) that curate a series of content into a customized experience for customers. Once sent, users can update DSRs for their customers and prospects for a customized, personalized experience. In general, the high-level goals for the two platforms are:
Can Highspot users send PathFactory content to customers?
Yes. PathFactory tracks are a type of asset that can be shared using Highspot. Content owners can “upload” (point to) PathFactory tracks within Highspot, and send those tracks to customers and prospects via a Highspot Pitch activity.
Can I use Highspot to mass-send a pitch to multiple customers and prospects?
Not from within Highspot. The Highspot pitch function and analytics are currently designed for a 1:1 or 1:few experience. The tool is optimized to provide tracking and insights into what customers are opening and viewing (i.e. what content they value) through the 1:1 motion.
If you would like to send Highspot content or a pitch template to a mass audience, consider leveraging the Outreach integration.
Is Highspot a tool for Marketing automation and email nurture? Highspot is not a replacement for marketing automation or email nurture tools such as Marketo. All email pitches are sent by a member of the Field team, who can then view insights.
Please see the short support videos below:
See more articles about spots and content.
See recordings for internal, GitLab-specific Highspot trainings below:
Watch this video for a ~5 minute demo on how to upload content into Highspot. See the guidance below for more detailed instructions and considerations.
When uploading content to Highspot, it is best practice to fill in as many of the Properties as possible. Some Properties may be auto-populated, such as Title, Description, and Expiration Date. You can edit any of these fields.
Please note: Highspot Lists are not auto-populated. It is best practice to check the box for EVERY relevant List item, including Market Segment, Region, and Role, as well as Asset Type, Use Case, and more. This is an important step in the upload process because Highspot uses these Lists to filter content in the Browse menu, as well as within SmartPages that are organized based on these Properties. The more Lists you check, the more your content becomes discoverable.
Highspot offers the ability to link files directly from GitLab's Google Drive. When adding a piece of content from Google Drive, you should always add the file directly from Drive versus add the link – i.e. select the + button –> Add Files –> From Cloud Services (Google Drive) vs. + –> Add Link. This will allow Highspot to keep that piece of content up-to-date as changes are made to the Google Drive file.
In addition, when adding files directly from Drive, ALWAYS select the Automatically update content from Google Drive option to maintain version control.
When adding a link in Highspot, you will have the option to add an embed code to the content. You should always aim to use the embed code for links when possible.
The format for the embed code is: <iframe src="https://URL HERE"></iframe>
Using the embed code will allow Highspot users to view the webpage content directly in Highspot instead of having to click out of the tool, which drives more efficiency and a more seamless user experience. Furthermore, if that link is marked as external and a Highspot user wants to pitch it out to a customer or prospect using Highspot, we will only be able to track engagement analytics on an embedded link, as a non-embedded link will cause the customer to land natively on the URL page where we cannot gather analytics.
For external YouTube links, you will need to use the embed URL provided by YouTube within the embed code vs. the standard url. To do this, navigate to the YouTube video –> click Share underneath the video –> click Embed –> copy the url that is a part of the embed code shown.
EXCEPTIONS FOR EMBEDDING
The following exceptions should be made for embedding links. Do not select Use embed code when adding these types of links.
Use embed code and then clicking on the item to check. You will see a broken link message if that link is unable to be embedded.
Only mark a resource as external if you are absolutely certain it follows the SAFE Guidelines. Under NO circumstances should anything marked as External contain material non-public information including financial/performance metrics, non-approved customer logos, etc. Also ensure external content follows our Image/Logo Guidelines and Trademark Guidelines.
As a good best-practice, items marked as External should only include decks that have been signed off by Marketing and Legal as fit for external use (ex. DevOps Platform deck) or resources that focus on the GitLab product.
For any internal Google Drive resources, you should also select the option to Prevent users from downloading as GitLab team members should not keep copies of these documents on their local devices.
If you are unsure about whether a piece of content is fit to be external, please contact GitLab Legal in the #legal channel.
Highspot includes the ability to "schedule" content. This allows you to set an expiration date for content. We should set an expiration date on almost ALL pieces of content, as it provides an opportunity to review that content on a regular basis and ensure that it is still relevant, the lists are still accurate, etc. If we don't set content to expire, we run the risk of letting outdated/inaccurate content exist on Highspot, compromising the efficacy of the resources.
The only exception to this would be links or files that you know will not change. (Which is unlikely, even URLs for handbook pages can change.)
The recommendation is to set a piece of content to expire one year from the upload date. Note that Highspot will automatically assign an expiration date of one year out when uploading content.
When a piece of content does expire, it will not be deleted. Instead, it will be moved into an Archived folder. All spot owners will receive a notification and can easily reset the content expiration date with the click of a button.
There are three validation rules set in GitLab's Highspot instance. Each piece of content must include:
If one of these validation rules is broken, you will see a Validates Policy flag. Upon clicking on the flag, a message will appear with more details on which validation rule has been broken. Content owners can easily filter down to content that is in violation of the validation rules by using the Flags list in the spot and filtering down by Violates Policy.
A piece of content that has this flag will still be visible in Highspot for users to see. The flag is more of a visual cue to help content owners maintain Highspot best-practices.
Some content might fit in more than one spot. When this happens, you should bookmark content into an additional spot(s). Avoid uploading the same piece of content multiple times, as this will make version control difficult.
It is likely that this scenario will happen most often with the Customer-Facing Content spot, as content that fits under Marketing could also fit under Customer-Facing Content. Always default to adding the content within the primary spot first and then bookmark into Customer-Facing Content. In this scenario, you'd add the link/file to Marketing and then bookmark to Customer-Facing Content.
SmartPages make it easier for Content Owners to design and build sales enablement content and guidance. Highspot offers a series of SmartPage templates to get you started, including what are called Homepages and Sales Plays. Homepages are designed to direct users to relevant content, and are generally used as Spot overviews and directories.
Plays are designed to track internal and external engagement, and come with an analytics feature called a Scorecard. When creating a SmartPage for a marketing campaign or sales initiative, you will generally want to use a Sales Play template.
Learn more about designing and building SmartPages and Sales Plays in the Highspot Help Center.
Highspot offers what they call pitch templates, which are email templates that can be created by GitLab and sent to prospects and customers with pre-written messages and pre-selected content attached. These templates include built-in tracking and analytics capabilities, and are intended for 1-to-1 or 1-to-few communications.
Once a pitch template is created, currently anyone with access to the Company Pitch Template Spot can access that template, customize it as/if they see fit, send the template to a prospect or customer, and view all tracked activities.
The Highspot Help Center provides instructions on how to create pitch templates, which you can read here. In addition, follow these steps to help keep GitLab's pitch templates organized and consistent:
As of 2023-07-17, the GitLab Duo (AI) spot was added to Highspot to help reps easily discover internal and external resources needed to understand our developing AI strategy and effectively communicate our position with prospects and customers.
Moving forward, all AI-related content – internal and external – should be added to the GitLab Duo (AI) spot. Stakeholders have been given edit access to this spot so they can add content. If you are a Highspot content contributor adding content to this spot, please review and follow the below guidelines to ensure we maintain an efficient user experience in this spot. If you need access to add content to this spot, please reach out in #highspot-content-owners.