Over the past decade, the sales landscape has undergone a complete transformation. Today’s sales teams wield a formidable arsenal—the ‘sales stack,’ also known as the sales technology stack. Gone are the days when a simple CRM tool sufficed for customer communication and prospecting.
Our team leverages 90% of these specialized tools and integrates other non-sales-specific resources.
Forget the old channels—leads no longer trickle in via phone calls or emails alone. They arrive from the web, social media, chat platforms, and various other digital avenues.
And it’s not just marketing efforts that generate leads. Digital networking and outbound omnichannel strategies play a pivotal role.
Communication? It’s no longer limited to traditional phone calls and emails. We engage prospects and customers across video platforms, chat tools, and more.
Are you curious about the tools that empower today’s sales professionals? Here are just a few of the tools today’s sales teams use to find prospects faster and close deals more effectively.
Do I Really Need Sales Technology?
Given the current decline in industry-wide win rates, it’s clear that selling realistically won’t become any easier—it’s actually becoming more competitive. Every company must explore how to blend sales analytics with a solid sales methodology in our global business landscape. That’s precisely why Sales Technology is essential—it ensures you stay competitive in the market.
When considering sales technology, you need to think carefully about your specific needs. Your company size, industry, target audience, and goals all play a role in determining the right tools for you.
Start by auditing your current sales process. Look for pain points and gaps that technology could help address. If you already use some sales software, evaluate what’s working well and what might need an upgrade or replacement.
As you plan your sales tech stack, keep these steps in mind:
- Identify your needs: Understand your team’s challenges and what they need to perform better.
- Define required features: For each tool category, list out the specific features that will solve your problems.
- Plan implementation: Create a roadmap for how you’ll introduce new tools to your team.
- Focus on training: Prepare to train your sales team thoroughly on any new software to ensure they use it effectively.
But more tools don’t always mean better results. While technology can greatly improve your sales process, too many tools can also lead to confusion and decreased productivity. Choose software that aligns with your specific business goals and team needs.
In this way, you’ll be able to streamline your processes without unnecessary complications and build a stack that truly supports your team and helps drive results.
What Are The Benefits Of Sales Technology?
The appropriate Sales Technology can significantly improve win rates and deal size and reduce the amount of time it takes to close sales. However, not all Sales Technologies are the same or even useful, so it’s essential to remember that the best sales technologies feature predictive analytics and offer mobile-first, real-time access for sellers and managers.
Sales Leaders know that CRM software alone isn’t effective for closing deals and keeping up with industry changes. As a result? Sales leaders and IT teams are working together to develop technology stacks that include other useful technologies. So what are the benefits?
A Valuable Resource For Sales Teams
Utilizing Advanced Sales Analytics platforms increases adoption rates because Sales Teams typically understand the technology as a necessary resource for selling activities rather than an administrative burden.
Data-Driven Insights
Sales Teams need critical data insights to inform their selling activities. Sales Analytics platforms provide teams with recommendations for actions they can take to improve deal outcomes, enabling leaders to replicate winning behaviors across the organization.
Faster Problem Solving
Adopting an advanced technology stack will make problem-solving more straightforward and faster – Considering that certain types of sales technology can provide accurate, real-time metrics. By utilizing status reports at every stage of the sales process, the data will highlight where the difficulties are, meaning that Sales Teams are more likely to quickly identify their sales process problems and make adjustments before it’s too late.
Increased Productivity and Efficiency
Sales automation of time-consuming, repetitive, and laborious tasks is the best method of giving time back to your Sales Team, allowing them to do what they do best. For example, if we look at Lead Generation, it’s estimated that up to 22% of a Sales Rep’s time generates leads! Sales technology centralizes data, optimizes workflows, and automates tasks, further boosting overall efficiency.
Streamlined Communication
Sales technology can provide a unified place for collaboration, allowing team members to share information, updates, and insights seamlessly. This improved communication can lead to better coordination and more effective teamwork.
Optimized Sales Process
With customizable workflows, sales technology can help to create a consistent lead journey. This standardization ensures that every prospect receives the same high-quality experience, regardless of which team member they interact with.
Enhanced Personalization
Automation in sales technology can help to deliver personalized experiences to leads while minimizing manual effort. This allows sales teams to focus on high-value interactions rather than administrative tasks, leading to more meaningful engagements with prospects and customers.
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What’s In a Sales Tech Stack
Everything from social media platforms like LinkedIn to Slack to Whatsapp to Calendly to Zoom to Google Docs and CRMs… there’s a huge technology stack that sales reps must be proficient in.
A well-rounded sales tech stack typically includes tools from several essential categories:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems: These form the backbone of your sales operations, helping you manage customer data and interactions.
- Prospecting Tools: These help you find and qualify potential leads, such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator or lead generation software.
- Sales Productivity Software: This includes tools like Calendly for scheduling and email automation platforms to streamline repetitive tasks.
- Communication Tools: Video conferencing software like Zoom and messaging apps like Slack or WhatsApp fall into this category.
- Analytics Platforms: These provide insights into your sales process and team performance, helping you make data-driven decisions.
- Content Management Systems: Tools like Google Docs or Dropbox for storing and sharing sales collateral.
- Sales Enablement Tools: These might include presentation software or proposal creation tools.
Sales teams can build a comprehensive tech stack that supports every stage of the sales process by considering these categories. The key is to choose tools that integrate well with each other and align with your specific sales strategy and goals.
Sales Tech Stack for Inbound Sales
These tools help sales teams to efficiently manage the process of converting incoming leads into customers, ensuring no opportunity slips through the cracks.
When routine tasks like scheduling and follow-ups are automated in a well-integrated stack, it frees up valuable time for sales professionals to focus on building meaningful relationships with prospects.
It provides critical insights into customer behavior and preferences, enabling personalized interactions and more targeted sales approaches.
Moreover, a comprehensive inbound sales tech stack improves collaboration within teams, streamlines the sales process, and ultimately leads to higher conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
Communication Tools
Communication tools are vital for maintaining smooth interactions with prospects and team members. These tools enable real-time conversations, file sharing, and collaboration across various channels. From video conferencing platforms to instant messaging apps, communication tools help sales teams stay connected and responsive, ensuring no opportunity slips through the cracks.
Video Conferencing Software
Sales are happening online now, so using platforms like Zoom, GoToMeeting, BlueJeans, and Microsoft Teams is essential. You need to know how to use any platform your prospect wants to talk on, so practice ahead of time so you don’t fumble on the call.
Website Live Chat
Many sales teams these days have moved from being mostly phone-based to spending a lot of time on chat. This includes live website chat, which allows reps to chat with prospects in real time when they’re on their website.
With tools like Drift, Intercom, and ZenDesk Chat in a team’s sales technology stack, reps can see which page a prospect is on, giving them clues about what they’re interested in buying and their questions.
Website Live Chat tools are also great for lead capture.
Messaging Tools
Mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp, for example, are great for sending quick messages, either voice or video recordings, to your prospects and customers. Line, WeChat, and Telegram are also popular mobile messaging apps in our part of the world in APAC.
Most importantly, you’re on the platform your prospect likes to use. Messaging your customer through messaging apps is essential in a rep’s sales tech stack because moving from email to messaging apps makes the conversation more personal.
Team Communication Tools
Slack, for example, is a great tool for communicating, sharing, and collaborating with your sales team. It is a wonderful platform that we use. You can set up different channels based on certain topics and invite the right people to the right channels.
I’m curious to know, which of these tools are you using?
Customer Relationship Management Software (CRM) | A Sales Tech Stack Essential
Last but certainly not least is CRM. Of course, you need to have a customer relationship management tool in your sales tech stack.
Using a database or a customer relationship management (CRM) tool will help you store and record information vital to closing sales. You can use this tool to record how prospects heard about you to help determine when you should follow up with prospects and existing customers. A CRM enables you to remember what you and a customer discussed during your last conversation or invoice your customer.
People always ask me, “Hey Tom, what’s the best CRM platform?” I say, “Good question; the answer is what your team actually uses.” They’re all great; they have great features, limitations, and some customization elements, but don’t get fixated on that.
There are always 2 different answers I get when talking to sales professionals and managers about their customer relationship management (CRM) tool: they either love it and use it daily or hate it and think it’s a waste of time. If you’re part of the ‘Hate it’ group or are considering investing in CRM software, read on for 4 reasons why you should use CRM software to organize prospecting information.
Keep Track of Customers, Clients and Prospects
The most obvious reason why people start using a CRM is to keep track of prospects and clients. The naysayers will say it takes too much time. Tell me if your piece of paper system or ‘I’ll remember strategy’ can do this with your clients and prospects.
Past Clients
Can you remember all of your past clients? Can you remember exactly what they bought, for how much, and what else they might be interested in? Maybe you have a file of past clients. Good for you. So when should you follow up with them next? Most people who are not using a CRM won’t even bother with the last one because it’s too much effort without an automated tool. Don’t you think you would increase sales if you got a reminder 6 months after a job is complete to see how your customer is doing with your product or service? Or better yet, 6 months after the job, an automated email goes out to past prospects checking in on them?
Don’t leave following up with past customers when sales are slow, only to realize they’ve moved on to your competitors.
Prospects
While a couple of hot prospects might be easy to keep track of, what about that guy who contacted you two months ago but said their company is restructuring, so they will have to hold off for now? How do you keep track of these no longer ‘hot leads’? You could either forget about them, which is easy when not using a CRM, or create a system or a set of reminders to follow up. With certain CRMs, you could even automate an email to go out at a pre-determined date to follow up with them. That’s almost easier than forgetting about them!
A CRM system and pipeline management tool help you nurture prospects and stay on top of the sales process. With some, you can track all email and phone correspondence, put in notes and reminders of the next steps, and have templates for those repetitive emails to the locksmith boss. Losing that sticky note with details of your phone call or forgetting to send the prospect the information they asked for is no longer an option.
Sell More Products
With a good CRM, you can pull up all contacts who have shown interest in a certain product of yours at the click of a button. I’m sure they’d love to hear from you when there’s a promotion on it or updates to it. A CRM can make this process efficient and seamless.
Forecast Sales
With a CRM, you can look at your dashboard and see what’s in your pipeline. How incentivizing would it be to see how much money you could make if you closed all open leads? Or see which sales are forecasted to close this month so you know how close you are to your targets.
Some information to keep track of in your CRM include:
- The product they are interested in
- The forecasted amount of the sale
- The date of your last contact with a customer
- The date of the next contact
- The date expected to close
- List of supporting materials you should be sending them
- Names of the other stakeholders who will be involved in the buying decision
It’s time to up your game and have a clear picture of what’s in your sales funnel and a strategy to close more sales.
Improve Your Sales Strategy
With a CRM, you can track how your prospects and clients find you. Is it through referrals, certain publications, networking, or trade shows? Maybe you get a lot of leads from one, but they don’t convert to as many closed sales. It’s important to know where your customers come from so you know where to concentrate your efforts.
Sales Enablement Tools
Sales enablement tools help sales teams sell more effectively. These tools support various aspects of the sales process and equip sales reps with the right information and resources at the right time to significantly improve productivity and success rates.
Sales Presentation Software
Whether you’re using PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides, or a snazzy Prezi deck, sales teams need a solution to deliver visual, structured sales presentations.
Some companies are incorporating Prezi into their sales technology stack because it can track where reps spend the most time in the presentation deck and comes with hundreds of ready-to-go templates.
Productivity Software for Inbound Sales
Productivity software for inbound sales focuses on streamlining workflows and automating routine tasks. These tools can include email management systems, task organizers, and time-tracking software.
When you reduce the time spent on administrative tasks, productivity software allows sales reps to focus more on engaging with prospects and closing deals, ultimately improving overall sales performance.
Appointment Scheduling for Inbound Sales
Appointment scheduling tools for inbound sales simplify the process of setting up meetings with prospects.
These platforms allow prospects to view a sales rep’s availability and book time slots that work for both parties.
With features like automatic time zone adjustments and integration with calendar apps, these tools eliminate the back-and-forth often associated with scheduling, making it easier for sales reps to secure more meetings and demos.
Popular appointment scheduling tools include Calendly, HubSpot Meetings, Acuity Scheduling, and YouCanBook.me.
Content Management Systems
Content management systems (CMS) serve as a centralized place for storing, organizing, and distributing sales-related content. These platforms ensure that sales teams have easy access to the latest marketing materials, product information, and sales collateral. With features like version control and analytics, a CMS helps maintain consistency in messaging across the sales team and provides insights into which content is most effective in moving prospects through the sales funnel.
Examples of content management systems include HubSpot CMS, WordPress, Drupal, and Contentful.
Document Storage
Having tools like Google Docs or Dropbox for document delivery in your sales tech stack is essential for collaborating with coworkers and sharing documents with customers. Our reps have our brochures and collaterals, which are all easily accessible in different DropBox folders.
Sales Tech Stack for Outbound Sales
A robust sales tech stack for outbound sales equips your team with tools to proactively reach out to potential customers. These tools help streamline prospecting, automate outreach, and analyze performance to maximize efficiency and conversion rates.
Analytics Platforms
Analytics platforms provide crucial insights into your sales process and team performance. These tools help you track key metrics, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions. By analyzing data from various sources, you can optimize your outbound strategies, focus on high-potential leads, and continuously improve your sales approach.
Phone Tracking Software
Whether your company is using in-house phone tracking software or an online tool like justcall.io, phone tracking software has been an essential sales tool for some time now. It allows companies to see how much time reps spend on calls, how many calls they’re making, and how many calls they’re missing. These tools also allow sales managers to check on the quality of their reps’ calls.
Some Features of CRM Software
While CRM software is essential for both inbound and outbound sales, certain features are particularly valuable for outbound strategies. These include lead scoring, pipeline management, and activity tracking. These features help prioritize leads, manage outreach efforts, and ensure consistent follow-ups, making your outbound sales process more efficient and effective.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools for Data Analysis
AI-powered tools are revolutionizing outbound sales by providing deep insights and automating complex tasks. These tools can analyze vast amounts of data to identify potential leads, predict customer behavior, and even suggest the best times for outreach. To learn more about how AI is transforming sales, check out our detailed guide on AI sales software.
When companies incorporate some of the cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence Sales Software on the market now, their teams can gather more intelligent information about their prospects and reduce time spent on mindless tasks, freeing them up to spend more time building relationships with prospects.
Examples of AI Sales tools include Saleswhale, Chorus, and Cogito.
Productivity Tools for Outbound Sales
Productivity tools for outbound sales focus on streamlining repetitive tasks and optimizing time management. These can include email template builders, automated follow-up systems, and task management software. By reducing the time spent on administrative tasks, these tools allow sales reps to focus more on meaningful interactions with prospects.
Email Automation
Sales teams can automate email campaigns to prospects using tools like Hunter, Woodpecker, Keap, and many CRMs.
Appointment Scheduling for Outbound Sales
In outbound sales, efficient appointment scheduling is crucial for converting initial interest into meaningful conversations. Tools in this category allow sales reps to easily share their availability with prospects, reducing the back-and-forth typically associated with scheduling.
Some platforms even offer features like automatic reminders and integration with video conferencing tools, streamlining the entire process from initial outreach to the actual sales call.
Calendly, for example, is a time-saving way to schedule meetings with prospects. Many reps will have different calendars set up with different criteria. Best of all, these tools will automatically send out reminders. These tools are great for reducing and eliminating the constant back and forth between you, your prospects, and your customers when booking a time.
If you can make it easy for a customer to say, “Hey, how about tomorrow at 10?” Or “If you want to find a better time, just click the link here.”
Other examples include Yesware, SalesLoft, and Outreach.io.
Prospecting Tools
Prospecting tools are the backbone of outbound sales, helping teams with sales targeting to identify and qualify potential leads. These tools often leverage AI and big data to provide detailed information about prospects, including company size, industry, and decision-makers. Sales teams can then focus their efforts on the most promising leads, increasing efficiency and success rates.
Lead Gathering
While LinkedIn Sales Navigator is excellent for finding decision-makers at companies, adding sales technology tools like Lusha and Hunter allows sales teams to gather more information on their prospects, including contact information.
Website Monitoring for Sales Teams
While marketing teams have analytics tools like Google Analytics and Facebook, sales teams can get intelligence on website visitors that helps them fill their pipeline with tools like Leadfeeder. Leadfeeder and similar tools allow teams to identify which companies are visiting their websites and get email alerts when a certain company visits. This lets them know which companies they should follow up with and when.
Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms have become indispensable tools for outbound sales. Ensure you’re using LinkedIn as a minimum in your sales tech stack. Sales teams need to use social media platforms.
If you’re in B2B sales in particular, make sure that your team is very active on LinkedIn and using it for prospecting, researching customers, and nurturing leads for those who aren’t yet ready to buy.
Sales teams can warm up cold leads, establish thought leadership, and create more personalized outreach strategies when they leverage these platforms effectively.
Key platforms for B2B sales include LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. For B2C sales, Instagram and TikTok are also becoming increasingly important.
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Transform Your Team With Award-Winning Sales Training
Investing in sales training enhances skills and empowers your team to thrive in today’s dynamic market.
At SOCO, we understand that the core of successful selling isn’t about aggressive tactics but about fostering genuine connections and providing real solutions.
Our training programs are crafted to help your team adapt, grow, and excel in building those vital customer relationships. With SOCO, you’re not just learning to sell; you’re learning to succeed.
