Enjoy Predictable Growth with a Sales Technology Audit
Stop the Revenue Bleeding with an Effective Sales Technology Audit
When you’re considering adding new sales technology to your company’s stack, it’s vitally important to perform a sales technology audit before committing to any new solution. A tech audit is part of a sound digital strategy. Skipping it could hinder your ability to implement sustainable growth, potentially costing you millions.
What Should a Tech Audit Entail?
If you’re serious about deriving value from this exercise, a sales technology audit should not be a cursory assessment. A worthwhile audit should be extensive, asking questions surrounding each stakeholder’s technology stack and how that stack impacts the organization as a whole. It should identify how the existing technology stack aligns to the stakeholders’ needs and wants. At its conclusion, the organization should have a complete and thorough understanding of its sales tech stack.
Going into a sales technology audit without a detailed high-level understanding of that process is not going to be effective. You’ll be placing Band-Aids on individual problems as they become clear but not addressing holistic root issues.
Keep in mind that many pieces related to your digital strategy are interconnected. For example, a tech audit cannot be complete without accounting for every stakeholder, meaning you’ll need to identify those individuals beforehand. (If you don’t feel equipped to accurately perform a stakeholder audit, consultative services can help guide this process.)
When It Comes to Your Sales Technology Audit, Divide and Conquer
Many companies understand a tech audit is necessary but get discouraged by the logistics of implementing that undertaking. Companies that have success with this don’t approach a tech audit as if it’s one big project; they break it into smaller, more manageable steps.
This includes the following:
- Identify and then interview individual stakeholders.
- Learn about the organization as a whole.
- Identify pain points and frustrations.
- Identify what tech is currently being used.
- Ask relevant questions. (Is the tech working? What’s sitting on the shelf? What analytics and data are supporting the organization’s tech-related decisions?)
- Look for overlap between sales tech solutions.
- Identify where gaps still exist in both tech and capabilities.
- Identify, account for, and understand your customers.
"In this economic environment, start-ups are surpassing established enterprise businesses because they’re nimble and use the right tech."
Don’t Forget the Capabilities Audit
Again, all the pieces that create a successful digital strategy work together. A tech audit, for example, is less successful—to wholly unsuccessful—without a capabilities audit. Using analytics and data to back up your assessments, a capabilities audit helps you understand where your organization currently is and what technologies can feasibly and effectively be implemented. You can ascertain important things like the willingness of your stakeholders to work with peers toward a larger objective, the answer to which will color how you move forward as an organization.
Policy and Mind-Set Must Change…or Companies Will Continue to Lose Millions
Your organization can select amazing tech that would provide tremendous ROI, but if the mind-set of the people using those solutions isn’t right, it isn’t going to do you any good.
Especially when it comes to older and larger organizations, the individual departments tend to be siloed. Solutions are implemented to support the needs of individuals—not the organization as a whole. Finance, for example, cares about paying the bills, and they might leverage an ERP for that purpose. Senior sales leadership has a different set of priorities and a different stack of tech solutions to address those needs. In these companies, sales enablement functions, which inherently attempt to create cross-functional alignment between your departments, are limited or nonexistent.
This siloed approach used to work well, but it’s no longer effective in our buying landscape. Tools that were working aren’t anymore, and lots of companies are frustrated and confused about why. Today, a holistic strategy that accounts for and supports needs across the organization is necessary to see truly effective ROI.
One of the biggest problems here is that most companies don’t pay attention to how much money they’re burning on underused, unnecessary, or unused sales tech solutions. Organizations are losing millions every year, and many have no idea. One study found an average US company wastes $247 per desktop on unused or rarely used software solutions. That equates to around $30 billion per year.
A strategy to align and to integrate your sales technology could save your company from contributing to this statistic, and a thought-out tech audit is an important and necessary step to get there.
"One of the biggest problems here is that most companies don’t pay attention to how much money they’re burning on underused, unnecessary, or unused sales technology solutions."
The Time is Now
If you’re hoping to have sustainable and predictable success moving into the new year and beyond, a sales technology audit is no longer optional. In this economic environment, start-ups are surpassing established enterprise businesses because they’re nimble and use the right tech. Older companies, which are often tied to legacy technology, are anything but nimble, and they’re seeing three common outcomes. They’re put out of business, acquired, or leapfrogged by the competition.
Failing to take action puts your organization in that precarious position. If you’re ready to approach your technology selection with more strategy, more deliberation, and a more revenue-centric mind-set, but you’re not sure how to start, learn more about our sales technology audit and other consulting services today.
We’re the first organization in the sales tech selection category that provides a framework and strategy in a simplified process. A multiyear relationship just to nail down strategy isn’t what companies need right now. They need a nimble, actionable solution that focuses first on your priorities.
Ready to get your revenue on track? Contact us today.