What’s in your sales stack, are you getting it right?

Sales is a competitive business. It can sometimes feel like a minefield out there. But there is a vital tool to help you, known as your sales stack, or in other words, the technology deployed to support the sales team.

Not all sales stacks are created equal, though. In a modern sales environment, one tool is rarely enough. Your stack should ideally include a combination of technologies to support you at each step of the process.

Get your stack right, and you can drive productivity, equip the team with all the background information they need, and automate repetitive and tedious jobs. The correct tools are great for the team and the manager, proving insight and data to support smarter decisions. But with more innovations out there than you can shake a stick at, and with new ones evolving all the time, how do you choose which should be in your stack?

Here are our suggestions for the most vital inclusions to a killer sales stack:

1.  CRM

Your CRM system should be right at the heart of your sales efforts, nurturing your relationship with accounts all the way through from pre-sale to post-sale. You need one that delivers a 360 view of prospects and their experience with your brand so far. And one that tracks their engagement, through every touchpoint, providing a history of the contact you’ve had with them.

If you don’t have one in place – sorry, but you are way behind your competition. A great CRM can improve customer satisfaction, drive up retention and value, streamline communications, and optimise marketing effort. If you’re in the process of getting one, be clear at the start about why you are investing and what you expect the system to deliver.

2.   Automation

We’ve covered process in depth here and automation almost works as an overlay to ensure your perfect sales process flows easily and your not bogged down!

Every job has elements of routine and administration. And it’s vital, as anyone who has lost a deal because they forgot to schedule a follow-up call will know! The trouble is, it can distract us from our core focus and drive down productivity. So why do everything manually when technology can do it for you?

I’m talking about follow up emails, meeting invites, reminders to get in touch, and syncing up sales and marketing systems. All of these tedious but important tasks can be automated using software, artificial intelligence, and other tools. There are lots of options from dipping your toe in the water to going all out. At one end of the scale, systems such as Zapier provide easy automation by connecting web apps together. At the other, you can go for a full digital transformation strategy and API integration.

3. Lead Sourcing & Engagement

Prospecting is a time-consuming business, but there is now a multitude of ways to now be able to access contact information. Tools exist to help collect data on your prospects’ behaviour, such as who visited your site or to give you the correct contact information so that you can follow up new leads.

Lusher, Hunter, Get Email.io, and Prospector.io are just some of the readily available systems that can help. And platforms such as LinkedIn Professional allow you to create communication channels with your prospects.

4. Booking technology

Congratulations. You’ve managed to get engagement, automate your processes and track everything in your amazing CRM. So what’s missing?

Enabling the easy attendance of meetings, whether physical or virtual, is a must in modern-day sales. Technology such as Calendarly and hosting services like Zoom make it easy for anyone to book and access meetings, dropping all the details into peoples’ schedules. Now there’s no excuse to ever miss a meeting again!

So those are our suggestions? How many of these tools are you using?

Are there others that you think you should have in your stack? Join the conversation by commenting below.