"Sales stack" is a term that allows technology and software tools help salespeople to do their jobs and connect with prospects effectively and more efficiently.
The best way to support your team is to have the right tools in your sales tech stack so they can do their best work.
Start by looking at your selling process to determine what you need in your stack.
We use the inbound sales methodology at RiseFuel to help frame our sales processes.
We look at every step that the salesperson can take (Identify, Connect Explore Advise) as to the where the buyer is in their journey (Awareness, Consideration, Decision).
The consequence of meeting the client where they are— with an approach tailored to their needs— is that the prospect travels in a frictionless manner from outsider to opportunity and eventually becomes a customer.
Look through every aspect of your sales process and find where with the right technology you can streamline processes and make the lives of your reps easier.
To help you get started, we have compiled a list of the top technology types that should be in the stack of every sales team.
Do you see any stack gaps in yours?
Sales Stack Types
1. CRM
Your CRM is your sales team's backbone— and possibly your companies.
CRM's promote the building of relationships with your customers, improve the sales cycle and keeps your team coordinated and focused on prospective targets.
A CRM database is software that records customer information and opportunities for employee interactions.
Marketing and sales touchpoints (including email, telephone, website, live chat, and social media) are monitored, providing detailed background for customer-facing employees on consumer behavior and feedback.
That's why selecting the right one is crucial. Ask yourself as you pick a CRM: Why are we investing in CRM?
- What are the operational challenges we need to solve?
- Which processes are we lacking to implement?
- How many people would I expect the CRM to be used by?
- How much data do we have about customers?
- Which other software do we use to integrate the CRM with?
- How much expense is this going to create?
Keep in mind your answers to these questions as you are reviewing potential CRM's and knowing which ones are non-negotiable.
1.HubSpot CRM - Free (with limitations)
You will be able to manage your pipeline, track items such as customer interactions via email or social media automatically, synchronize with Gmail or Outlook to capture every meeting in real time, and make each aspect of the sales process simpler.
2. Sales Enablement and Automation
Sales have been remarkably manual and laborious to date. It doesn't have to be today— more than that, it does not need to be.
When reviewing every part of your sales process to identify gaps in your
sales stack, make sure you look at the processes that you can automate. With some of this automation, the CRM may be able to help.
Consult with your CRM support person to see if there is a functionality you can apply to your existing software before you purchase a new piece of software.
Here are a few areas where sales enablement can help your team sell better:
Email - There's a reason why email is the primary communication medium sales folks use. In fact, 86% of business professionals prefer email to any other form of workplace interaction.
HubSpot Sales Hub, for instance, provides email sequences that allow you to customize and automate email follow-up to your prospects.
Creating and customizing email templates within your CRM reduces the response time.
Then easily track your email results to refine and improve quicker.
Prospecting / Lead Generation - Prospecting is where the majority of the time of a sales rep goes. This makes it another perfect automation nominee. Use an email template with a scheduling link and allow your prospects to choose their own terms for a meeting.
Live Chat - Is your pricing or features page a prospect? Use direct messaging to communicate with them at the moment. Just make sure you use filtering criteria to make sure you get the most qualified leads possible from your chatbots.
Content - Content is a powerful tool within the arsenal of a salesperson. A well-targeted case study or timely blog post could offer the assurance and champion what a skeptical executive wants to be reassured of.
To ensure that you make the most of your best use cases, track your CRM usage and use that data to identify and reach potential clients with case studies or blog features.
Reporting - Standardize what KPIs the team will have in your CRM and reporting system and automate the monitoring of those numbers.
Specific KPIs are:
- Customer acquisition level
- Number of calls
- Number of emails
- Upsell / Cross-sell rates
- Average conversion rate
- Transaction size
Keep track of this information and be prepared to adjust and refine the plan as indicated by data.
Examples of Sales Enablement Software
- Price: Based on reply volume
- About: Another one that integrates with your CRM to provide you with insight into your team's email efforts.
Lead Gnome enables you to protect your valuable customer information and prospect database, use powerful workflows, minimize API calls, and more.
- Price: Basic, $22/month; Standard, $45/month; Premium, $112/month; Enterprise, $445/month
- About: Go deep into sales analytics and keep track of optimization of KPIs and sales execution as never before.
- Price: Available upon request
- About:
Like visibility in conversations with your customers. Maybe you'd like Gong.
This marketing supporting program combines dialer calls and drills down into what distinguished great reps from the good ones.
3. Scheduling
Kiss goodbye to emails going back and forth and make scheduling meetings a breeze with the right scheduling software or device for appointments.
Giving prospects the ability to schedule meetings when they want makes getting a meeting on the books painless— and you're less likely to be ghosted.
We listed a couple of good examples below.
Examples of Scheduling Software
- Price: Free
- About:
Use your free HubSpot CRM to invite prospects to schedule meetings on your calendar and have it connected with your Google or Office 365 calendar automatically.
- Price: Basic, Free; Premium, $8/month; Pro, $12/month
- About: Connect up to six calendars to check availability automatically.
Calendly also has a round-robin scheduling functionality and allows users to host multiple invitees at the same event. A cool time buffer is available to let you correctly space meetings.
4. Demos
Perhaps the perfect pitch doesn't exist, but you can get pretty close to it with the right technology.
Make sure it's user-friendly (i.e. you don't need a designer to tweak the spelling on one of your slides), simple to upload, and device-compatible.
It's also important to think about presentations outside of the slides that you're going to share.
Video is the best friend of a rep and also pretty great for your company as they don't have to have massive travel budgets to get you face to face with prospective customers.
Examples of Demo Software
- Price: Standard, $7/month; Plus, $19/month; Premium, $59/month
- About: Transform your PowerPoint from stuffy into a creative and dynamic Prezi show.
You will get 100 templates and the ability to add motion to your slides, and collaboration features that allow up to 10 people to work at once on your Prezi. Prezi also supports Windows and Mac desktops, iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.
- Pricing: Basic, Free; Pro, $14.99/month/host; Business, $19.99/month/host; Enterprise, $19.99/month/host
- About: Meetings, webinars, conference rooms, communication networks, cross-platform communication
5. Closing/E-Signature
Knowing when someone has received your contract can shave valuable time off your sales cycle by making it easier for them to read it and sign it.
Using an e-signature tool enables everyone to sign digitally, so you're spending less time waiting for buyers to... well, spend 10 minutes trying to remember how to use their office scanner/fax machine.
Examples of Closing/E-Signature Software
- Price: Personal, $10/month; Standard, $25/month; Business Pro, $40/month; Advanced Solutions available upon request.
- About:Integrate your CRM to sign and manage your agreements and documents electronically.
DocuSign takes security seriously, so you can be confident that all your documents will be treated confidentially.
- Price: eSign Team, $25/month; Business, $49/month per user; Enterprise, available upon request
- About: Creating, sending, tracking, and signing proposals, quotes, and contracts from within your CRM.
With custom templates, you will save time, merge crucial data into your document, and track the progress of the document in real time.
6. Team Communication
Most of this list has concentrated on your customer interaction— which is how it should be. But not forgetting the technology that streamlines your interaction with colleagues is critical.
Most salespeople live in their inbox, it's no surprise, but there are resources that can facilitate communication, knowledge sharing, and competitive or opposition analysis among teams.
Examples of Team Communication Software
- Price: Free; Standard, $6.67/month/active user; Plus, $12.50/month/active user
- About: Slack is a collaboration software that is split into channels and direct message opportunities.
Organize your channels entirely by team, project, customer, or something else. Start threads to continue a conversation within those channels.
Slack also provides built-in file sharing, voice and video call features, and CRM integration to convert your Slack conversations into HubSpot tasks and alerts.
Your sales technology stack should be as unique as your company. Analyze what part of your sales cycle to decide what software you need to boost performance and profits.
