Whether you lead a sales team or you’re the one making calls, imagine waking up one morning and suddenly you’re back in the early 1800’s. There are no telephones, no ZoomInfo to find leads, no CRMs. So how would you make your quota this month? With a whole lot of blood, sweat, and tears. That’s how.
Thankfully it’s the 2020’s and we don’t need to bleed, sweat, or cry. We have technology that helps us do our jobs easier, better, faster. In fact, the right technology can actually have a compound positive effect on our sales. It can skyrocket our sales numbers! So instead of living like a caveman, let’s put these tech tools to use.
Ok – that’s all well and good. But how do you do that? Which tools should you use? And what types of activities or results should you optimize for?
Well, the best tech stack is one that you’ll use. You can have all the fancy sales tech in the world, but if you’re not using it on a daily or weekly basis, what’s the point? With this in mind, I’ve highlighted several tools with high functionality
So without further ado, here are some tools and tech that you should consider putting in your sales stack this year and beyond.
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First, What’s a Sales Stack?
A sales stack is a suite of technology and tools (paid and free) that you use to find and organize leads, communicate with prospects and customers, manage your sales pipeline, optimize sales campaigns, and communicate with your sales team internally.
Smart Insights Tech & Tools
What if you had insider information on things like newly appointed CEOs, investment funding, and other juicy info on your prospects? And what if these smart insights were automatically curated and sent directly to your CRM? Game changer, right? That’s the beauty of sales triggers. There are tools out there, like Leadfeeder, that can identify sales triggers and make sure you’re always in-the-loop. These smart insights can inform you on which leads are hot leads, when to reach out, how to package your offer, and how to close deals faster.
Sales Analysis Tools
How’s your team performing? Which opening lines are getting the best results? And do your salespeople listen to prospects at least as much as they talk? You can get all of this information (and a whole lot more) with sales analysis tools like Gong. Gong, and similar tools, not only record sales calls, they can give you actionable insights on them. Take the feedback and make incremental changes over the course of several months to see a positive upward trend. Remember, it’s 2022, let’s act like it!
CRMs with AI Integrations
Artificial Intelligence is popping up in just about every industry. And thankfully, it’s made its way to the sales sector. The best CRMs these days can pull in a host of different data about your prospect to help you better prioritize and speak to them. Your prospect just tweeted about the Chiefs big win over the Colts, great, use it on your call this morning. Where the AI really shines is by intelligently moving your prospects around based on timeliness and their odds of closing. You wake up one morning to find a prospect is now at the very bottom of your funnel, predicted to close soon because of x, y, z, without you having to lift a finger. Nice, eh?
Scheduling and Calendars
A key component in any sales stack is a smart calendar and other scheduling tools. Calendly is one meeting scheduler/calendar that eliminates the time-consuming back-and-forth with prospects. Just click a link and choose a time. This helps to shorten the sales cycle and gives you more confidence that your calendar is accurate and up-to-date. If you aren’t using Calendly — or a similar tool like Sprintful, Mixmax, or MeetingBird — then you’re likely missing out on opportunities and bearing more burden than you need to. Sign up, and in a matter of days it’ll fade into the background and become a huge help behind-the-scenes.
Data and Dashboards
Are you a visual person? If so, two words: Geckoboard. Ok technically that’s one word, but a tool like Geckoboard can be the difference between an energized sales team, and a tired or lackluster sales team. This tool and others like it can display your sales dashboard in a visually appealing way. You can import and track KPIs, see which deals are slated to close, and forecast all kinds of data … without wanting to fall asleep out of boredom. This allows everyone in the company, not just the sales team, to keep a finger on the pulse of sales productivity. Slick, huh?
Honorable Mentions
I’ve included some other tools and tech that you should consider below. Keep in mind these are all things you should already have working for you, that’s why I didn’t mention them in the list above. But … if you find that you don’t have the following tools, I highly recommend getting them right away. These are all productivity boosters and can help you or your sales team go from sales zeros to sales heroes.
- ZoomInfo (prospecting tool)
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator (prospecting tool)
- Uplead or LeadFuze (lead finder tools)
- Hunter.io or VoilaNorbert (email finder tools)
- Better Proposals (proposal builder tool)
- Zapier (automation tool)
- Drift (prospect communication tool)
- Zoom, Slack, and Loom (internal comm tools)
So there you have it, my list of some of the best sales technology in the game today. Whether you choose the sales stack that I mention here, or do your own research to find even more relevant tools for you, be sure that you’re using technology to your advantage. There really is a strong positive correlation between smart technology and increased sales.
Just be sure not to sign up with too many tools at once. I recommend choosing one at a time, gaining proficiency with it, allowing it to become second nature, and then moving on to the next piece of tech. The last thing you want is to get overwhelmed with technology (which is easy to do!).
And last words of wisdom, if you don’t have the basics dialed-in (prospecting, follow-ups, demos, pitching, etc.), then take care of those first before building out your sales stack. And if you’re specifically having problems filling your pipeline, then reach out to us at C-Level Partners. We can put you in front of the right people, in the right role, at the right time.
Until next time…
Johnny-Lee Reinoso