Building a Winning Sales Tech Stack: The Ultimate Guide

But bigger isn’t always better when it comes to the sales tech stack. Research shows that revenue teams don’t consistently use all the sales tools they have available. Furthermore, 70% of sales reps feel overwhelmed by the number of tools they’re expected to use.

Investing in technology can significantly enhance seller productivity and buyer experience. But rather than randomly investing in tools, revenue leaders must focus on building an optimized sales tech stack that improves efficiency and boosts sales performance without adding unnecessary bloat.

Questions to consider before building your sales tech stack

A strong sales tech stack can significantly impact the success of your revenue organization. But before building it, there are certain questions you’ll need to address.

What are my current goals and challenges?

Each tool in your tech stack should be aligned with a specific goal or challenge. As such, defining your sales team’s goals and objectives is essential. Some examples might include:

• Accelerating new rep ramp time
• Improving buyer experience
• Increasing conversion rates
• Improving customer retention

What are my future goals and challenges?

A tool in your sales stack may meet your needs today. But it’s important to ensure it’ll continue to meet your needs in the future.

Consider your future needs and challenges. For instance, you might expect significant growth to your sales team in the next two years. As such, it’s important to find a sales enablement solution to support it as it grows.

What tools do I currently have?

Undoubtedly, you already have certain sales tools in place at your organization. Take an inventory of the tools you have, what they do, and how (or whether) they align with your goals and challenges.

It’s also important to measure the adoption of your existing sales tech stack tools. You might invest in a great tool, but if no one uses it, it will not make a difference.

Do my current tools have additional capabilities I’m not using?

It’s possible one of your unmet needs can be addressed with a sales tool you already have. Before investing in a new solution, it’s important to determine whether this is the case.

Do my sales tools work well together?
It’s important to ensure the tools in your sales technology stack integrate. If they don’t, you’ll end up with inefficiencies and data silos.

What is involved with adding a new sales tool?

Before adding a new tool to your B2B sales tech stack, it’s important to consider what that will entail. Of course, you need to consider costs. You’ll also need to factor in the time and effort required to implement a new solution and ensure sellers know how to use it.

How will I measure success?

Every tool in your sales tech stack should contribute to achieving a goal or overcoming a challenge. Be sure to define how you’ll measure the effectiveness of each tool.

How to build your sales tech stack

How can you build an optimized tech stack that improves the effectiveness and efficiency of your sellers? There are a few steps you’ll need to take.

Define your needs, goals, and requirements

Your B2B sales tech stack should support your organization’s needs and goals. Therefore, the first step in building it is to clearly define those needs and goals.

One of the best places to start is accessing your current sales process. By examining each part of the process, you can pinpoint what’s working well and where there’s room for improvement.

Additionally, be sure to have conversations with different areas of the go-to-market team, including sales, marketing, and customer success. That way, you can understand their unique needs and pain points.

Identify sales tool categories

Once you’ve identified your goals and challenges, you can determine which categories of sales tools will best address them. A typical B2B sales tech stack includes tools from various categories, including:

• CRM tools help go-to-market teams manage interactions with current and prospective customers. A customer relationship management platform is a central hub for all customer data, enabling organizations to manage relationships throughout the customer lifecycle effectively.
• CRM tools offer a range of features and functionality, like contact management, pipeline tracking, and analytics and reporting, among others.
• Sales enablement tools provide sales teams with the training, tools, and resources to engage prospective customers and close deals. With the right sales enablement tech stack, sellers can be more effective and efficient. Key features of sales enablement tools include onboarding, training, sales content management, and data and analytics.
• Sales engagement tools assist sellers in managing their interactions with prospects throughout the sales cycle. These tools can significantly improve the efficiency of sales outreach and help sellers engage their prospects more effectively. Features of sales engagement tools often include email automation, call and email scheduling, multi-channel outreach, and tracking and analytics.
• Sales training tools give sellers the knowledge and skills they need to be effective in the field. Some common features of sales training tools include onboarding, ongoing training modules, quizzes, gamification, and interactive role-plays.
• Sales coaching tools enable sales leaders to deliver targeted support to each seller to help them improve their skills, behaviors, and in-field performance. A sales manager or AI-powered tools can deliver sales coaching.
• Conversation intelligence tools record and analyze sales calls, allowing sellers to focus on the conversation rather than note-taking. Sales managers can use conversation intelligence tools to identify trends and provide coaching to improve sellers’ behaviors and call performance. Some examples of conversation intelligence features include call recording, conversation summaries, and call scoring.

Evaluate sales tools

Once you’ve identified which categories of tools you need in your sales tech stack, you can begin exploring options that align with your needs, goals, and requirements.

Start by researching your options online, seeking recommendations from industry peers, and reading reviews from current and past customers. Once you’ve narrowed your options, request demos to experience the different tools firsthand.

There is no one-size-fits-all sales tool. Instead, finding the option that best suits your unique goals and challenges is important.

It’s also important to choose options that are intuitive and easy to use. If there’s a steep learning curve, you’ll struggle with adoption and won’t experience a return on investment.

Lastly, be sure any sales tools you consider integrate with other technology you already have in place. Otherwise, you’ll only add further complexity to the sales process.

Look for opportunities to streamline your sales tech stack

As we mentioned earlier, many sellers find themselves overwhelmed by the volume of tools at their disposal. So while building your B2B sales tech stack with the right tools is important, it’s equally important to keep it streamlined and efficient.

Rather than investing in point solutions that tackle one specific issue, opt for integrated platforms that address multiple challenges. For example, the right sales enablement platform can address sales training, coaching, role-plays, conversation intelligence, and sales content management – all from one platform.

Prioritize user adoption

You may have the best sales tech stack in place. But your investments won’t pay off if sellers aren’t using the available tools.

Be sure to provide training, enablement, and coaching so your sellers know what tools are in the B2B sales stack and how to use them to improve the sales process and outcomes.

Measure effectiveness regularly

All businesses want to get the most out of their investments. With ongoing measurement, you can determine whether you’re getting value from each tool in your sales tech stack.

In addition, be sure to ask your sales team for feedback so you have both qualitative and quantitative insights. These insights will help you understand where things are going well and where there are opportunities to refine your sales stack.

Adapt accordingly

In the world of sales, change is inevitable. New sales technologies are continually introduced, and your business needs are always evolving. It’s important to reassess your needs regularly and ensure your sales software stack is keeping up.

Benefits of a modern sales tech stack
Building a winning sales tech stack isn’t a simple task, but it’s worth the time and effort. Why? Because a modern, optimized sales tech stack can provide a variety of revenue-boosting benefits, including:

Increased efficiency

Sales reps are responsible for several tasks – many of which are repetitive and time-consuming. A modern sales tech stack can streamline and even automate many of these processes, allowing sellers to focus on high-value activities contributing to revenue growth. That means sellers can close more deals faster, positively impacting the bottom line.

Improved collaboration

Engaging customers across the sales cycle is a joint effort involving teams including marketing, sales, and customer success. But often, these teams work in silos, which leads to disjointed experiences.

A modern B2B sales tech stack integrates various tools, which enables teams to work together seamlessly. This alignment improves customer experiences and sales results.

Centralized data to fuel informed decision-making

The best decisions are rooted in data, not intuition. Modern tech stack tools can gather and analyze data on factors like seller performance, pipeline health, and buyer signals. Sales leaders can use these insights to make more informed decisions, forecast revenue, and refine sales strategies.

Better customer experiences

Research shows that 80% of customers feel a company’s experience is just as important as its products or services. Modern businesses must be able to meet customers’ expectations for outstanding experiences.

With the right sales tech stack, organizations can create tailored experiences for every customer, no matter where they are in the sales cycle. Sales tools also offer insights into a buyer’s behaviors, allowing sellers to adjust their approach and deliver experiences that’ll resonate with the buyer.

Accelerated sales cycles

The quicker you close deals, the faster your revenue will grow. A modern sales stack can streamline various processes within the sales cycle, reducing the length of your sales cycle and accelerating revenue growth.

Consolidate your sales tech stack with Mindtickle

A modern sales tech stack can greatly impact how you do business. With the right combination of sales tools in place, you’ll increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your sellers – while also improving the experiences your customers have with your business.

But building a large tech stack isn’t the answer. Too many tools can overwhelm sellers, and switching between them can be time-consuming.

Instead, focus on streamlining and simplifying your sales tech stack. One way is to trade disparate, point solutions for integrated platforms.

Mindtickle is an all-in-one revenue enablement platform that combines training, coaching, role-plays, sales content management, conversation intelligence, and more – all in a single platform. With Mindtickle, your sellers have one central hub for everything they need to be ready to sell.