Does Your Sales Tech Stack Include These 4 Vital Pillars? With Dan Cilley & Nancy Nardin, Episode #84

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For the first time EVER on #SellingWithSocial, I have two guests on the same episode, both co-founders of Vendor Neutral and experts in sales tech stack tools. Dan Cilley and Nancy Nardin know how difficult the sales environment can be, especially when searching for the right sales tools and technology for your company. On this episode they explain why financial investment is required in order to build the right kind of sales tech stack and how you can build yours on only 4 pillars. They also walk you through the process of identifying which tools you should invest in and how to get measurable ROIs on the technology your salespeople are already using. It’s an episode you can’t afford to miss, so be sure to listen.

Why There Is No Such Thing As A Budget-Conscious Tech Stack

In the modern selling environment digital tools are essential for business growth and workplace efficiency… and they don’t come at a low cost. Dan and Nancy’s team recently conducted a survey n the sales environment because they wanted to know how much an average salesperson’s tools costs per month. They found that the average amount spent on sales tech per user is $129 per month. To get the results needed, Nancy encourages sales leaders to plan on budgeting EVEN MORE money per user, especially in larger companies. Why? Because at the end of the day, sales tech is all about helping a salesperson understand their buyers better, which translates into more sales. That means that though their understanding comes at a price, the investment will pay off.

An Effective And Utilized Sales Tech Stack is Built on These 4 Pillars

Once you consider how much money you can budget for technology, you’ve got to take the next step: determine which tools need to be part of your sales tech stack. In making that decision , it’s easy for sales leaders to get distracted by the “next best thing.” You need to avoid that by sticking with the basics first by establishing your sales tech stack along 4 basic areas of need – and when you do, your ability to track, manage, and generate leads will grow exponentially. Here are the 4 pillars of a good sales stack:

1. CRM
2. Online meetings
3. E-signatures
4. Lead database

How Should Sales Leaders Decide on Which Sales Tech Stack Tools to Use?

There are currently 500 to 700 sales tools that fall into these 4 pillars of technology plus dozens of other subcategories. How do you know which ones to use? It should not be a process where you make assumptions about what your priorities should be – it should be more of a strategic process. You’ve got to focus on your “capability gaps,” then prioritize those gaps in order of importance. Then you can match those determinations to the different technology types available.

To help you make the right decisions along those lines, Nancy’s team at Smart Selling Tools developed an infographic that categorizes each type of tool. Check out their list and evaluate them in light of your prioritization. You want to find tools that directly and simply address those issues so that you’re not wasting money on bells and whistles that you won’t use or won’t move you forward. In other words, you want to determine which vendors map their capabilities to your capability gaps, specifically.

Does YOUR Sales Tech Stack Provide Measurable ROIs? Here’s How To Know

Purchasing new tools and training your salespeople is only worthwhile if you are able to measure the ROI on the investment. Dan explains that if you work to align company sales goals with employee behavior, letting team members know what your goals are and why they exist, they will better understand why they need the particular tools you’ve selected for your sales tech stack.

Here’s a simple but powerful tip that has worked for me when determining the ROI on any tech tool. It’s based on the need to track what tools in the stack are actually being used – which tools the sales reps believe are of value. The way we did that was to include required fields in our tracking software that required sales reps to disclose which tools they used to open the opportunity and which tools they used to close deals. Simultaneously, we informed the sales team why we were requiring the field – showing them that once we are able to assess the effectiveness and value of each of the tools, we’ll remove the ones they don’t use or need and invest more in the ones they do use.

Within six months we discovered that a tool that cost over 6 figures annually was only bringing in $1100 into the pipeline! And we didn’t get even one complaint about the removal of that tool from our sales tech stack. For more actionable advice on sales tech stack tools, be sure to give this podcast episode your full attention.

Outline of This Episode

• [1:04] Why Dan and Nancy are on the show – together!
• [4:05] The new A.I. Bot Vengreso has created
• [10:37] The 4 pillars of a great sales stack
• [15:50] Interesting data about how sales reps feel about their tech stack
• [21:17] What is the process to properly evaluate a sales tech stack buying decision?
• [24:02] Suggestions on determining ROI for sales tech
• [34:06] How do you get groups to align over goals and tools?
• [38:00] What tools should individual sales reps consider getting on their own?

Resources Mentioned

One of the things I love to do is to read amazing sales books and listen to sales podcasts.  That is why we’ve created the best books to learn sales list and the best podcasts for sales list for sales leaders, sales managers, and sales reps.  I encourage you to click through these and give them a listen! Also, take a look at the resources below mentioned during this podcast:

• Connect with Nancy on LinkedIn
• Connect with Dan on LinkedIn
• Follow Vendor Neutral on LinkedIn
• Follow Nancy & Smart Selling Tools on Twitter: @sellingtools
• Follow Vendor Neutral on Twitter: @Vendor_Neutral
• Vendor Neutral website
• Smart Selling Tools website
• 2018 SalesTech Landscape infographic
• TOOL: Conversica
• TOOL: SmartCloud Connect
• TOOL: Cirrus Insight
• TOOL: Seamless.ai
• TOOL: DiscoverOrg
• TOOL: OneMob
• TOOL: LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• TOOL: Narrow
• TOOL: Grammarly
• TOOL: Smart Cloud Connect
• TOOL: eSignatures
• Dan’s all-time favorite movie, Schindler’s List
• Nancy’s all-time favorite movie, Broadcast News
• Social Business Engine Podcast – Bernie Borges

Connect with Mario!

• www.vengreso.com
• On Facebook
• On Twitter
• On YouTube
• On LinkedIn

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