For many B2B companies, sales tech stack consolidation is top of mind heading into 2023. And for good reason. While the average company spends over $10k per rep/per year on sales tech, the vast investment has not translated to sales productivity or increased win rates.
In fact, according to Forrester, only 53% of sales reps say their sales tech aids productivity and positively impacts results. Why?
Modern sales tech stack challenges
There are four key issues inhibiting the efficiency and effectiveness of your current sales tech stack. That includes:
- Too many point tools performing limited tasks and creating silos
- Various internal admin processes suck away valuable selling time
- A lack of trusted information leaves first-line managers to chase details
- Implementation of tools designed for managers that fail to help commercial teams improve execution
The good news is, more CROs are embracing this opportunity to change the paradigm and consolidate technology investments to empower reps and managers — and the potential bottom-line impact goes well beyond a single expense line item.
3 steps to consolidation
It’s time to take inventory across your sales tech stack to identify redundancy, inefficiency, or untapped potential. Here are three steps to get started:
Step 1: Inventory & evaluate your sales tech stack
The typical tech stack review approach begins with ranking by invoice value. But this is a risky approach that can lead to a loss of critical functionality and impair customer-facing processes and activities. Cost is one factor, but not to the detriment of execution capability, company strategy, or customer-facing activities.
There are other, more customer-centric and comprehensive, ways to tackle your audit. Take inventory of the tools used in various revenue activities. Look at the average seat costs and personas that can utilize the tools. Observe how siloed your data and operations are.
Then summarize the Customer Lifecycle specific to your business. At a high level, identify tools that don’t support your customer lifecycle or impede the flow. Next, lay out the Revenue Enablement and Operations motions that support your Customer Lifecycle. Have your Ops team help identify the tools aligned to the Customer Lifecycle process.
Step 2: Establish the impact criteria of your tools
Consider the following:
Frontline sales productivity – Does the tool create additional admin work for your team? Does eliminating it? Automation can return critical selling capacity to your field.
Deal insight – Can you remove the tool without impacting visibility, intelligence, and quality? Hone in on tools that improve data quality and use machine learning to validate opportunities.
Win rates – What tools improve win rates or deal progression? Improve buyer confidence? Reduce competitive losses? Generate actionable insights?
CRM license costs – Is expensive CRM access necessary for all employees licensed? Or can other tools provide equal or better visibility and reporting?
Adoption/usage rates – How frequently are the tools in your sales tech stack leveraged? Does usage match initial expectations? Is low usage due to training, usability, or value gaps?
Cash flow – Do you have redundant tools or idle licenses you can eliminate?
Don’t boil the ocean. Focus on the areas where you can make the most significant impact. Look for ways to improve processes, eliminate redundancies, connect your Customer Lifecycle, and drive sales productivity.
Step 3: Consolidate your sales tech stack
Once you’ve audited your existing tech stack and established robust impact criteria, you can begin consolidating your tech stack.
As you look across the platforms and tools you’ve deployed, find opportunities where your tech stack partner has integrated applications across activity silos and can meet your implementation cost criteria.
The illustration here, for example, shows four vendors that make consolidation across several categories possible:
Again, do not tackle everything at once. Keep an agile mindset — iterative, incremental, and evolutionary change.
Need help? Download The Ultimate Guide to Sales Tech Stack Consolidation or contact us to complete a free assessment to determine how much you can save with sales tech stack consolidation — without sacrificing sales productivity and performance.
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