5 Common and Costly Sales Tech Stack Mistakes
5 Mistakes That Prevent the Perfect Sales Tech Stack
How to Improve the ROI of Your Sales Technology
When organizations think about the “perfect” sales technology stack, many imagine a set of tools. The ideal CRM. Flawless sales automation. Productive lead generation. A sales enablement software. In actuality, the perfect sales tech stack is whatever perfectly fits your needs, challenges, strengths, and goals. Getting to that place is less about ticking the boxes and more about learning the system behind how to choose a valuable sales stack that’s effective for you.
What tools should be in your sales technology stack?
The answer will depend on your business, and sales process but here are 5 mistakes our team frequently sees that you should avoid when buying software.
"In actuality, the perfect sales tech stack is whatever perfectly fits your needs, challenges, strengths, and goals. Getting to that place is less about ticking the boxes and more about learning the system behind how to choose a valuable sales stack that’s effective for you."
5 Surefire Ways to Stunt Your Sales Technology Stack Development
- Starting with the Sales Technology
Many organizations believe sales tool selection should start with the sales software itself. As counterintuitive as it seems, though, a successful sales tech stack has sales technology selection as the final step.
For the profitable selection, integration, and adoption of your sales technology, you have to lay organizational groundwork first. You have to create an environment where sales technology can be successful. Otherwise, you could have the best solutions in the world, and they still won’t produce results for your organization.
Before you even think about making the investment with specific sales software, you must ask yourself hard questions about your organization. (Are we in alignment? Do we produce reasonable, appropriate goals? Do we communicate effectively? Do our sales reps feel heard and involved in the decision-making process? Is our messaging relevant, engaging, and personalized? Do we have an effective sales process? Could we streamline processes?)
Be ruthlessly honest about how your organization is structured and run, and fix those foundational problems. Otherwise, your sales technology will just continuously address symptoms and never the root cause of any issue.
- Not Having a Sales Tech Selection Strategy
Arguably the biggest mistake organizations make with their technology stack is a general lack of direction and thoughtful strategy. They are reactive in how they select sales tech vendors instead of going in with a precise and personalized plan of attack.
Part of what makes choosing the right tools so challenging is that it is highly personalized to each company.
The right sales tech stack for you is going to depend on many factors
- Your vertical, industry, and place within the market.
- Your size.
- Your audience.
- Your challenges, pain points, and barriers to success.
- Your goals and objectives.
How to build a sales stack your team will actually use
A sales tech stack must address your company’s specific needs. That means your strategy must include identifying your most pressing priorities.
Much of this information can be gathered through a thorough and strategic audit. Conduct audits of your relevant stakeholders, your existing sales technology (looking for both overlap and gaps), your existing processes, challenges, and your capabilities. Having a well thought out sales tech stack evaluation process is essential.
- Not Aligning to Your Stakeholders
Your sales teams are one of the most important pieces to success with sales technology, but they’re too often forgotten about in the selection process. Sales teams are the ones who are going to be using these solutions every day. It makes sense, therefore, that any sales technology decision should be aligned to their needs, challenges, and strengths.
Your sales reps know better than anyone what they need to close more deals and they also know what your customers need. Their insight and knowledge are invaluable resources and provide crucial data to you.
How to build a sales tool stack your team will actually use
Making sales technology decisions at the managerial level and then handing decrees down from on high is a recipe for poor adoption, diminished results, and low or negative ROI. Instead, sales reps and other relevant stakeholders should be actively consulted throughout.
Creating these communication channels helps your sales professionals feel more invested, which means they’re more inclined to demonstrate ongoing adoption of those sales technologies.
- Not Aligning Your Departments
Even if there’s only one department using the sales technology software, it’s important to remember that the tools affect everybody. If you want to use those solutions to the best of their capabilities, your departments need to be in full communication and alignment.
Marketing and sales, for example, should always be integrated. This gives you a better, more insightful understanding of the data generated by your sales technology software.
If your departments aren’t aligned, you’re more likely to experience business gaps, unmet needs, and poor communication. You’re also less able to fully utilize the insight, knowledge, and expertise of your entire team.
Aligning your departments means you have the infrastructure, mindset, and processes to avoid siloed departments and working environments. (Learn more about the perils of departmental silos here.)
- Not Viewing Sales Technology as a Holistic, Integrated Process
Having success with your sales technology often requires a fundamental shift in mindset. Part of the problem for many companies is that they don’t view sales technology from the right perspective. They see it as a separate process and don’t think about how it affects and interacts with every other process within the organization.
As just one example, your messaging and your sales software interact and work together. Getting your messaging engaging, relevant, and impactful for specific prospects is essential. Your sales software then amplifies that messaging by distributing it through automated workflows.
To have maximum success, both pieces need to work in tandem. The messaging must be right, and the technology must alleviate the manual burden on your sales teams.
Point being, sales technology should not fit into your organization as an afterthought. A systematic sales technology ecosystem should be an integrated and interconnected part of your overall business strategy and sales process. When you start thinking about all the sales technology with this systems-based approach, you set your organization up for success and growth.
There’s a Better Way
Depending on the size and complexity of your company, getting your sales technology wrong can result in millions in lost revenue and a ton of wasted time and resources. The good news is that many companies are starting to realize the extent of this problem.
More and more business roles are helping drive innovation in this sphere. People in these roles are thinking about sales technology from a strategic, process-oriented, systems-based approach. They’re viewing technology through the lens of a business perspective, and they’re keeping revenue generation as their primary KPI.
If you and your company can get organized and aligned on your sales technology strategy, there’s an incredible opportunity to get exponential value out of your sales tech tools and to surpass your competition. You can always tweak, refine, and improve your strategy as you go. In these early days, though, the companies that simply get started are going to have a distinct advantage and be able to scale.
Our sales stack audit is a great way to get started today.
Have Questions?
Want to learn more? Check out this blog about why a sales technology digital strategy should always come before building your sales stack.
If you need help implementing any of these ideas in your organization, choosing the right sales tech stack, or with your sales process don’t hesitate to reach out with questions.
How to build your sales tech stack?
If you have sales software, you probably wonder how to start. Creating a sales technology stack from scratch can be difficult. Let us show you some useful sales technology tools based on your priorities with our valuable sales technology platform builder.