3 Ways Sales Leaders Can Optimize their Tech Stack and Empower Sellers

“The tech stack isn’t broken,” says Tiffani Bova, Global Growth and Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce. “It just needs to be optimized.” 

Bova recently joined Sean Callahan, Senior Content Manager at LinkedIn Sales Solutions, for a special edition of The Sales Think Tank focused on “Deep Sales and the Future of the Sales Organization.” During the show Callahan and Bova discussed the role sales technology plays in enabling seller success. 

Bova’s conclusion?  

Some sales organizations have lost their way by placing technology–and not their customer–at the center of their sales process. Instead, the future of sales requires a skilled salesperson and the right sales tech stack.  

Here are three ways sales leaders can rethink their tech stack and empower sellers to succeed in a challenging market. 

Three Tips to Streamline Your Sales Tech  

1. Focus on the customer. 

Is your sales tech optimized to focus on your customer–or to track seller productivity? For many organizations, the technological emphasis is on tracking how sellers spend their time, rather than how sellers are serving customers. 

“Is your customer better served by having your sellers fill out fifty fields?” asked Bova. 

Her answer?  

A resounding no. 

And the problem goes beyond just sales tech, with sellers also having to work with a wide variety of sales and non-sales platforms. 

“The average enterprise has 927 applications, and less than thirty percent of those are integrated,” said Bova.  

While many of those additional applications won’t be used by sellers, the data (and the experience of many sales reps) is clear: while technology plays a foundational role in achieving sales goals, many sellers and sales leaders are overwhelmed by a tech stack that isn’t adding value. 

But the first step to overcoming that challenge isn’t throwing your tech out.

It’s remembering who sales organizations are here to serve: the customer.  

2. Try new things.  

“When I started, we were told to call one hundred prospects to get one ‘yes’,” said Bova. “I still hear that advice today. So much has changed since then, but the approach many sellers take hasn’t.” 

That does not mean that sales organizations need to reinvent their wheel. Instead, they should create opportunities to test innovation and technology in a way that won’t break what is currently working. 

“Pop-up teams are great ways to test the practical implications of new technology,” said Bova. “Too many sales organizations test new technology on top performers. That can skew the results. Instead, try having temporary teams use new technology before going company-wide with a new tool.”

Testing out technology also helps individual sellers become champions for platforms and tools that deliver real value.

3. Optimize your tech stack.

Bova recommends sales leaders take two initial steps to better optimize their sales tech stacks:

• Step 1: Complete an inventory.
  

Sales leaders must have a full understanding of all the technology demands facing sellers. Chances are that sellers are responding to excessive technology by not adopting (or ever even logging into) sales tech that could help them achieve their goals. 

• Step 2: Meet with customers (and missed opportunities) to understand how technology played a role in their success. 

Understanding the role your tech stack plays in getting customers, keeping customers, and losing customers doesn’t start by digging into your data. It starts by digging into your customers. 

Take direct feedback from your customers and align that feedback with the way sellers are being asked to engage with technology. That feedback will help sales leaders see that sales technology is often used to track seller time and activity rather than improve seller performance. 

Technology plays an essential role in helping sellers dive deep and better understand buyers. However, failing to optimize that tech creates misalignment between sellers and the tools they need to succeed. 

“The most successful sellers will be those that use technology and personal skills in a more harmonized way,” said Bova.  

Remember

Sellers are increasingly overwhelmed with a sales tech stack that just keeps expanding. Sales leaders should respond by evaluating their current tech stack and aligning technology and processes in a way that ensures sellers can dive deep and deliver the value buyers are looking for.  

Takeaway 

1. Sales leaders need to implement and integrate a sales tech stack that places their customer at the center of their sales process. 
2. Innovating within a sales organization is difficult, but needed. Sales leaders can ease the pain of trying new processes and new technology, by first deploying innovation within a small “pop-up” team before integrating it at an organizational level. 
3. Sales leaders can better optimize their tech stack by conducting an inventory and getting feedback from customers on the sales process. Sales leaders should align that feedback with the tech stack and sales process in a way that frees sellers to focus on adding value. 

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