Why Your Sales Tech Stack is Hindering the Sales Process

Selecting the right sales tech stack is a complicated but crucial process for sales teams. Your current tech stack may be working against you. We’re here to tell you why and how you can improve your tech stack and optimize your sales process.

What is a sales tech stack?

A sales tech stack is the set of software and apps that your team uses to perform their daily tasks. Ideally, a tech stack should allow your team to spend less time on administrative work (Salesforce, anyone?) while also streamlining, organizing, and improving their processes. Ultimately, a successful tech stack should give your team more time to close deals.

Why your sales tech stack is hindering your sales process

• Not all tools are built for AEs.
  • Most sales technology is built for sales operations and leadership and intended to give sales ops and leaders the data they want, not close deals.
• Your AEs may not be fully utilizing the tools.
  • We don’t doubt your AEs are tech savvy, but some of your tools may still require a higher level of technical expertise or are clunky and difficult to navigate and use. Also, your AEs may not understand the benefits of the tools or may be averse to change.
• There are too many tools at your AEs disposal.
  • The average sales tech stack has 5 applications. Managing multiple tools slows down the sales process and hinders the productivity and success of your AEs. And the more tools you add, the less likely each one is utilized properly and adds value to your AEs’ work.
• Not all sales tech integrates seamlessly.
  • Those 5+ applications we mentioned above? Odds are they don’t all play nicely. And it’s even more unlikely that your sales tech stack integrates with the tools of other teams in your organization who may collaborate with your AEs. Poor integrations lead to miscommunications, duplicative data (which can later become time-consuming to sift through and reduce), and lost information. Not to mention, a massive headache for everyone involved.

Why it’s important to select the right tools for your sales tech stack

Selecting the right tools for your sales tech stack is the key to your AEs’ success. When you choose the right tools, your AEs are more likely to adopt those tools, utilize them fully, and make the purchase and adoption worth any costs.

The right technology depends on company size, audience, pain points, goals, and industry. It’s important to fully understand how the technology works, what it solves, and what gaps it would fill in your sales process and organization. Here are some other valuable questions to ask when looking to add a new tool to your sales tech stack:

• Does this tool remove or streamline any manual processes?
• Is this tool just reporting process gaps or helping fill them?
• Can we measure the ROI of this tool?
• Does it easily integrate with the rest of our tools?
• How difficult would it be to adopt this tool?
• What is the maintenance of this tool?
• Does this tool consolidate the number of tools in our tech stack?
• Is this tool scalable?

4 ways to optimize your sales process

You’ve recognized the gaps in your sales tech stack and know the steps you must take to find the right tools. Now, how do you optimize your sales process?

1. Give your AEs the tools – or just one tool – for success. Choosing tools that directly solve your AEs’ problems and are within their technical expertise will set your AEs up for success. A word of caution, adding multiple tools to your tech stack may be tempting, but often this can lead to tool overload resulting in your team spending more time jumping between tools than actually selling the product. There are some tools out there that are often a wide variety of services all in one. One example is Sellular, the all-in-one sales engagement platform. Sellular allows teams to improve productivity, update Salesforce without switching tabs (yes, you read that right), and monitor, track, and understand team performance.
2. Automate your processes and admin tasks. Whenever you can, automate the work your AEs are doing. Your AEs are putting in a lot of time doing admin tasks like data entry and combing through impossible-to-understand Salesforce reports. Sellular can give your AEs back their time by automating these admin tasks with its seamless Salesforce integration.
3. Improve communication. Both internal and external communication in your sales team is key to a successful sales process. Communication lines should be open and frequently used, keeping prospects and customers happy, and your sales team aligned, informed, and efficient. With Sellular, your AEs can communicate with prospects through email, call, and text all in one place. Your AEs can be flexible and reliable in their communications (which all sync to Salesforce) and reach prospects across 190+ countries.
4. Track sales performance and engagement metrics. The best way to improve your sales team and processes is by making data-backed goals and changes. Seeing how your team is performing will help them be more successful and identify what’s missing. Using Sellular, sales leaders can monitor, track, and understand team performance with pre-built reports and dashboards. And AEs can track engagement metrics to expand their accounts, win new business, and maintain strong pipelines

Your tech stack shouldn’t hinder your sales process or cause headaches for you and your AEs. It’s important to build your tech stack with the right tools. Sellular makes it easy to have a simple and effective tech stack that empowers your AEs to supercharge their sales strategy, nurture opportunities through the funnel, and close more deals. See Sellular in action by booking a demo today.