The most recent LinkedIn, “State of Sales Report” found that 73 percent of sales professionals are using sales tech to close more deals, with 97 percent responding that sales technology is either important or very important to closing deals, but which sales tech is making the greatest impact?
Sales leaders know that building the right sales technology stack is one of the most important aspects to support their rep’s success, but too much technology can also be more of a distraction than a help.
We asked today’s sales leaders, what sales technology they cannot live without and why? Here is what they had to say.

Human to human engagement

Humans. By far most important part of my sales stack. Now, enabling them to be more effective without burying them in tech is an ever-increasing balance. CRM and then a cadence tool supported by great analytics- that’s what I’m trying to build. Have been liking video selling for demos lately a bunch. Always a fan of prospect engagement, agent assisted technology to speed up the number of times I can get those humans engaged with other humans.” – Robert Beattie

4 Cornerstones of performance

“CRM is the base, but to extend that, Sales Navigator, a contact info tool, an emailer, a dialer, sales content management, e-signature, workflow performance support, and conversation intelligence make up my preferred stack. This is a sales stack, so I didn’t include any sales readiness tools, but I consider those to be critical for enablement. I consider the content management or sales asset management tools to be more in line with a sales stack these days, than enablement..” – Mike Kunkle

Opportunity spotting

“I want to know what keywords are being searched that drive opportunities, so we know what content to produce. Is that part of the sales tech stack? Technically it’s part of the marketing stack but I argue those walls have melted.”-Bernie Borges

Funnel feeding

“CRM and BI for starters, Marketing Automation and Sales enablement second. Give me a system that registers everything we do with customers and the proper platform to visualize and understand that data. With that, I’ll give you a highly efficient team. Feed their funnel and train them in a lean and consistent way and I’ll give THE best team we can get!” – Alejandro Cabral

Multi-channel engagement

“At a minimum the sales tech stack needs to include multi-channel methods to engage customers from the first lead to closing the deal – the technologies you need are based on the service or product you sell and how you want to engage with your customer.” – Jennifer Marie Jacober

3 Keys to scale

“The power of three is essential for scale. CRM, Marketing Automation, and a Sales Enablement “– James Buckley

Analysis and development

CRM and then analytics tools to clearly understand the data. From a salesperson’s perspective, a social networking tool like LinkedIn Sales Navigator. For enablement, a training platform for scalability and knowledge dispersion. – Sheevaun Thatcher

Organized development

“Coaching. All those tech tools and CRMs are great. But if sales reps aren’t getting quality coaching to motivate them and improve their belief in themselves and what they’re actually selling and help to have actual better human conversations then all else becomes pretty irrelevant.” –Will Milano

A focus on revenue

“I see the world through a revenue-enablement lens, where we align strategy and tools from the point of buyer awareness through the lifetime of the customer. From that lens, the most important tool is the CRM. It is the one place where our view of the buyer comes together across this spectrum. In the future, we will see more capabilities/tools that come together to better align departments to meet the customer along this journey, but even then, I believe the data will be centrally managed in the CRM.” – John Moore

Targeting buyers

“With the assumption there is a CRM in place and my friends in marketing are leading the charge with social listening and marketing intelligence/automation: Sales Intelligence technology. That’s for contact data, org-chart info, buying triggers and ongoing enrichment. Sales Engagement to optimize your workflow with intelligence, to measure success.” – Donna Sanborn

Final thoughts

Sales leaders seems to agree that CRM and business intelligence (BI) tools are the foundation for a highly successful sales technology stack. Having the ability to accurately collect, access and report on their teams’ activities and how that impacts the customers journey is the most import aspect of a successful technology stack.

Once this foundation of information and technology has been established, the next step is to look beyond the CRM towards technology and coaching that will improve your rep’s ability to engage, support their own processes and their customers journey. Sales leaders who have seen the greatest return on their sales technology investment beyond CRM have integrated content management, conversational intelligence, prospect engagement, e-signature and research technologies to effectively support the needs of all parties involved.

Make sure you use free our “Simple Sales Stack Selector” tool – it’ll help you evaluate if YOU need the tools the leaders above mentioned. And which of them you don’t need in your specific case.