As a sales leader, it is up to you to equip your sales team with the technology needed for success. We’ll start with the minimum sales technologies first. If you already have those in place, check out the second list to enhance your results further.
The Minimally Viable Sales Technology Stack
These five types of sales technologies will give your team enough capacity to get started and close more deals this quarter.
1) Stop Wasting Time Manually Gathering Leads: Use A Lead Data Provider
Spending hours searching for prospecting leads is not an effective way for your sales team to spend their days. Instead, invest resources in a lead data provider that can produce contacts on demand. Start by evaluating three sales leads options: Uplead, Seamless.AI, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Think of it this way, if your reps can get all the leads they need for the week in 15 minutes, they will have much more time available to spend with prospects and customers.
2) Avoid Losing Sales Due To Disorganization: Use A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Platform
Staying organized is challenging in sales because you are continually meeting new people and companies. At a minimum, a CRM system needs to be a place to take notes on each sales effort, track and schedule the next actions (e.g., “follow up with this prospect in mid-November”) and support collaboration within the sales team. You find a list of the best CRM products out of more than 800 products on the market on Capterra if you are looking for a new CRM.
Tip: As a sales leader, it is crucial to look for a CRM with sales forecasting capabilities. Many CRMs like Salesforce include forecasts and management reports built-in.
3) Hold More Sales Conversations With A Digital Phone Service and Video Conferencing
Your sales staff are going to be on the phone for hours every day. Therefore, it is vital to equip them with top-quality communication tools. In terms of phone service, check that each salesperson has access to a company phone. Ideally, it is best to use a digital phone service known as a VoIP phone because these services are low cost and can be used on multiple devices.
Further, check that all of your sales representatives have access to a video conferencing tool like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet. Asking sales representatives to share video conferencing accounts will cause you to have less prospecting time.
4) Improve Your Sales Email Productivity With Email Outreach Software
Your company probably uses email prospecting, also known as cold email, to start sales conversations. Manually sending sales emails does not scale, however. Instead, invest in an email outreach tool like Outreach or QuickMail. These tools are especially helpful for you as a sales leader because they give you statistics about sales activity. You can determine which salesperson has the best results with sales email and ask them to share their best practices with others.
Use These Sales Technologies If Your Sales Team Is Still Struggling To Reach Quota
Once you have the key technologies in place, there are some advanced technologies that you may want to consider.
1) Stand Out In The Prospect’s Inbox With Video Prospecting Apps
It is getting harder to stand out with regular sales emails. There is a way to solve that problem: leverage video in your emails.
There are two ways to do this. You can ask your sales team to do it the manual way – record a video and attach it to the email. Such a manual approach makes sense if you want to run a proof of concept experiment with video in email.
To scale up your results and get the analytics data you and your team need to improve, we suggest using a specialized video prospecting tool like Vidyard or BombBomb.
2) Reduce Administration and Non-Selling Time With Zapier Automation
According to Pace Productivity, sales representatives spend 23% of their time selling and 22% of their general administration time. While administrative tasks are needed to keep the company operating, such activities do not close deals.
As a sales leader, you can help your sales team to succeed by removing non-selling tasks from their plate. For example, you can work with your administrators to build automatic processes with Zapier to build monthly reports. By gradually building more automation into your company over time, your sales team will have more time available for sales.
