MarketStar Blog | Inside Sales

Key Takeaways

• The technology and tools you use in your sales stack can directly impact your sales and the deals you close 

• A sales tech stack provides a deep understanding and intelligence about your customers and helps deliver amazing customer support 

• The sales stack tools should be wisely selected to enable you to structure, digitize, and speed up your revenue growth 

• Build a sales stack that functions inside the system you already have 

Are you using an outdated CRM that isn’t user-friendly? Are you struggling to keep track of your leads/prospects? Is your productivity suffering as a result?  

Switching to a new CRM with improved features and leveraging new tools & technologies can help things take off for your business. 

Today, sales professionals constantly look for ways to improve their performance, and the right sales stack can make a difference. If you’re not using technology to back your sales process, you’re probably missing the boat to increasing your sales and success rate. 

What is a Sales Stack?

A sales stack is a collection of software tools and technologies that a sales team uses to manage all the sales processes – from generating leads and storing contact details to building proposals and supporting customers. 

Sales stacks can also help accelerate sales productivity and help close deals faster. It helps your team be more efficient by providing them with relevant data and insights. It can include CRM, email marketing platforms, sales intelligence, and automation tools. 

Before building a sales technology stack for your team, you need to consider three important aspects: 

Evaluate the Tools You Are Currently Using

Just because a few tools offer more features doesn’t mean all those features are right for your business. Evaluate the tools you’re currently using and eliminate the ones that aren’t serving you. 

Identify Your Pain Points

It is critical to figure out where your prospects are dropping off in the sales pipeline as well as identify the challenges you’re facing in communicating with your team members & customers.

Sales tools, today, offer features that can help you spot the exact pain point, and once you identify them, there’s a higher chance of deriving a solution that can help you. 

Ensure New Tools Can Be Integrated Easily

New software can add value to your business any day.

However, if your existing software is not compatible with the latest sales tools, it is time to update your software. Find tools compatible with the programs you are currently using to make the integration easier. 

How to Build a Sales Tech Stack for Your Team?

Every sales team needs a sales tech stack to perform efficiently, but building it isn’t just about purchasing some of the latest tools – it’s a bit more detailed.

Building the sales tech stack around the existing sales process is essential. The software you purchase should turn the sales process that’s already in place into something more effective and productive.

Before adding new tools to your sales stack, ensure that your sales process is clearly defined.

Why Does Your Business Need a Sales Tech Stack?

Here are a few advantages of having a sales tech stack in your business. 

• Sales tools have splendid features that can help you understand how leads respond at different touchpoints of the sales funnel. This makes it possible for your business to push more leads to the final stage of the funnel. 

• Managing deals and sales can become monotonous and time-consuming if you don’t have cold email software. Adding a new-gen email outreach tool to your sales stack can get your emails automated and ensure a top-class email deliverability rate for your campaigns.

•  Sales stack tools have AI capabilities that provide data and insights on the overall sales performance. This gives you the correct information to improve customer experience. 

• The tools allow brands to use data to identify and fix their customer’s pain points, strengthen the sales team’s weaknesses, and improve business. 

The Top 7 Technology Solutions to Include in Your Sales Tech Stack

1. Gong

Gong is a leading revenue intelligence platform for B2B sales teams to help close more deals.

It is best for sales professionals looking to drive up the effectiveness of their sales conversations. It records, transcribes, evaluates, and analyzes all sales calls so you can drive sales effectiveness across your team.

Gong provides proactive guidance, helps onboard new hires quickly, and provides collective reality, and real-time insights. 

2. Intercom

Intercom is a customer interaction tool that helps track customers using your website or product. It enables you to communicate with them with personalized messages and conversational support.  

Intercom helps you identify who your potential customers are and what they do. It converts leads into customers, engages, and provides self-service support to your potential customers. 

Some of the key features of Intercom include: live chat support, targeted messaging, business messenger, app integration, and more. 

3. Salesloft

Salesloft is a sales engagement platform built for sales, marketing, and customer success teams.

It integrates with Gmail and Outlook to help B2B sales teams close more deals. This tool helps identify transaction process gaps and prevents deals from falling through the cracks.

Salesloft boasts a list of features, and the top ones include cadences, sales email templates, CRM sync, calendaring, and analytics & reporting.

4. ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is a B2B intelligence tool for sales and marketing teams. It helps your sales team identify clients that are a good fit for your service/product.

ZoomInfo improves your sales team’s efficiency by discovering new information about B2B companies. The tool can help you with website visitor tracking, contact tracking, digital advertising, identifying & research, and connecting & engage.

5.Leadfeeder 

Leadfeeder is a B2B website tracking software that helps sales teams track companies that visit your website, how they arrived, and their activities on your website. It also enables you to understand your prospects better and monitor your potential customers. 

Users that visit your website are more likely to be interested in your product/service. Keep those ready-to-buy prospects in the loop with Leadfeeder. It offers CRM integration, record tracking, custom feeds, ready-to-buy leads, and more.

6. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator should be your first choice if you’re looking to boost your LinkedIn selling strategy.

This native LinkedIn tool is a set of subscription-based offerings designed to help sales professionals identify prospects on LinkedIn, receive alerts, and request prospects’ info through shared connections.

The Sales Navigator provides access to an extensive list of users who’ve viewed your profile, real-time updates about your prospects, and InMail messages.

7. Groove

Groove is a cloud-based sales engagement tool for SMBs to improve the effectiveness of their sales processes.

It manages and optimizes time-consuming processes like appointment scheduling, email tracking, event recording, etc.

Groove offers several features, including API integrations, precise reports, live chat, and email templates, to name a few.

Conclusion

What have we learned so far?

First, your sales stack includes tech tools that help optimize your sales operations process and improve your team’s productivity.

Second, the benefits of having a sales stack and the different aspects you need to look for in a sales technology stack.

And finally, we learned about the top sales stack tools you need in your business to narrow your deals faster. 

Sales as a Service is growing in popularity year by year with an increasing number of executives seeing the enormous value that Outsourced Sales bring to the table. The high cost of living combined with the long and costly recruiting process, expensive industry turnover, and a future that isn’t very predictable are only a few challenges faced by many organizations today.

Direct sales have been a staple of business. They offer your business a strategy to sell products—as it sounds—directly to customers without intermediaries. Your success is linked to the direct sales tactics you put in place in your business. In this article, I will cover three proven direct sales tactics to transform your business.  

Everyone wants to save money, but there are times when you need to invest more to get more in return. You have undoubtedly heard the thread-worn platitudes “penny-wise and pound foolish” and “you get what you pay for.” They certainly apply when outsourcing sales. If you want superior results and a higher ROI, expect to pay a premium for expertise, technology, and service.

The role of the high-tech field rep is changing and so is the way they are selling. The old method of overseeing the customer from lead capture to deal close and beyond is gone. High-tech field reps are now key members of a larger sales team, with each member playing a distinct role in the value chain. With the changes in the field rep’s role come new strategies to generate sales.

Native cloud software is here to stay, and a surprisingly large number of software as a service (SaaS) offerings are free. Free SaaS applications can be invaluable, especially if you need to solve a problem in a hurry. In fact, many free SaaS applications are outstanding tools to increase productivity, address business challenges, and make it easier to work remotely, which is extremely useful with more employees working from home thanks to the coronavirus.

There are free SaaS solutions for almost every business need. We have collected a few of the most popular SaaS tools with free offers:

Times of uncertainty present challenges to all of us, but they also present new opportunities. During a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone is anxious about their health, their family, their job, their company, and the future. 

No one can predict what’s coming, but you can help secure your company’s future by solidifying your brand reputation. It’s an excellent time to build brand recognition and customer loyalty.

In times of crisis, you need to plan for the future at the same time you address the challenges of the present. These are certainly interesting times, when the global COVID-19 pandemic has created an economic crisis and turned everyone’s operations upside down. 

For many, work has stopped, resulting in 21.5 million Americans filing for unemployment. Businesses across all sectors have been affected by the pandemic, and sales have stalled waiting for the crisis to abate. Now is the time to revisit your sales programs and lay the foundation for sales during and after a crisis.

Even during a typical summer, staying motivated and focused on work can be challenging. After all, the weather is warm, kids are out of school, and vacations are looming. This year, motivation can be even harder to come by. Because most people are still working from home, activities are still somewhat limited, and we’re all yearning for a change of pace. 

But despite this summer’s unique challenges, it’s still important for your sales team to hit their goals and keep their momentum up. Read on for five ways to motivate your sales team through the dog days of summer: