The modern sales stack has become a tangled mess. Every year, organizations add more tools to their stack in hopes of them improving their efficiency and effectiveness. Cost and complexity have continued to increase, but most organizations still find themselves lacking. In fact, almost half of B2B companies are experiencing difficulty with productivity and performance, according to The Bridge Group.
Building the right sales stack shouldn’t be such a difficult endeavor. In fact, often you have more than you need and the answer is to consolidate your sales stack. But first, you must assess. To simplify it, let’s compare the sales stack to a formal suit. They each:
- Have core sets of features
- Can be assembled any number of ways
- Range widely in cost
The Key to a Winning Sales Stack
Every sales stack looks slightly different from the next, but the most successful organizations share many core similarities. Chief among these similarities is an emphasis on data—and a growing best practice is using artificial intelligence to collect, analyze and make better use of data.
In Salesforce’s State of Sales, 3rd Edition, they identify the key differences between high- and low-performing sales organizations. One of the most notable statistics is that high performers are 4.9X more likely to use AI than low performers.
If you aren’t using AI to support your sales process, you are missing significant value in the following areas:
The Formula for Success with Your Sales Stack
There are many features that high-performing sales teams leverage more than others — some of which you may not have even been aware. AI is the cornerstone of many, if not all, of them. While you should take note of the features above, understand that they alone do not provide you with a winning sales stack.
A winning sales stack is not about the most expensive or newest tools. Like a suit, the success of your sales stack is more dependent on:
- Fit
- Function
- Cohesion
Fit
You can pay for premium products, but if they are not built specifically for the size and maturity of your organization, you will not see the results you expect. Many tools require significant maintenance and support. They can also pit personas against each other if they trap data or insights that others may eventually need. Keeping information away from your SE or Account Manager will only stall deals and implementation.
Function
Does your sales stack support the functions most important to you and your team? You may think so, but according to Hubspot, reps spend only 34% of their day performing actually selling. While you may be well-intentioned in your search for new tools, you are more likely better off without them. Find the tools that help the user do their job better – not just those that support management. If the user doesn’t benefit, you’ll be left with another tool with poor adoption.
Cohesion
You may feel as though a “best of the best” approach to assembling your sales stack will yield the best results, but that is not only prohibitively expensive, but risky in terms of how well they work together. Every integration adds a level of complexity to the system and frustration to the reps.
Your Answer is Consolidation
One thing that fit, function, and cohesion should tell you about your sales stack (and your suit) is that less is more. More tools equates to more overhead, more training, and more complexity within your stack. The simple truth is you can realize the same ROI from a consolidated platform than one composed of five separate tools.
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