Seismic Agrees to Acquire Sales Enablement Competitor Savo Group

Seismic, a San Diego-based software company whose platform generates marketing collateral for sales teams, said it has agreed to acquire the Savo Group, a Chicago-based competitor with a presence in Europe.

Terms of the deal, announced May 8, weren’t disclosed.

Savo, founded in 1999, was the first company to offer what’s known as sales enablement: information, content and tools intended to bolster sales teams’ performance. Last year it acquired Raleigh, North Carolina-based competitor KnowledgeTree.

Seismic anticipates the acquisition will push it to $100 million in revenue by year’s end.

The deal is slated to increase Seismic’s headcount by 75 employees to about 450 across eight offices and further strengthen its engineering and development teams, which comprise more than one-third of its workforce.

Folding in Savo also will add about 200 enterprise customers to Seismic’s client roster, increasing the number of companies with which it works from 300 to more than 500 in industries including technology, life sciences and financial services, the company said. Savo customers include Stryker, BMC Software, Miller Heiman and Canon Europe. Firms that work with Seismic include Getty Images, NCR, Capital One, Illumina and T. Rowe Price.

Seismic has offices San Diego, Boston, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Sydney and London. Acquiring Savo will add to that an office in Raleigh and another in London.

Seismic plans to move its Chicago-based team into Savo’s headquarters in that city.

“Sales enablement programs are having a huge impact on revenue for enterprises because they take everything off the plate of the seller, allowing them to focus on building the best relationships with buyers,” said Doug Winter, co-founder and CEO of Seismic. “However, they require an equally powerful sales enablement solution to really see it through. In that regard, today’s announcement puts even further space between Seismic and the rest of the sales enablement market.”

Seismic’s investors include private equity firms General Atlantic and JMI Equity and early-stage venture capital firm Jackson Square Ventures.