Make Every Call Count.

Introduction

Today’s world of customer acquisition is a challenging environment for sales leaders. Among other things, you’re challenged with recruiting and onboarding productive sales reps, designing and implementing sales processes and keeping your management team informed of your progress. Not to mention that big, hairy, audacious goal that stares you in the face every morning.

And to make things even more challenging, the business buying process has changed. Your buyers are now in control of the process.

So how will you be able to do all of the things necessary to hit your numbers and make your management and investors happy? The answer is simple, yet not so easy to execute – design and implement a sales stack that will produce a predictable revenue stream for your company.

Introduction

Corporate Executive Board found that the average business buyer completes 57% of their sales process before ever contacting a sales person.

What is a Sales

Stack?

What is a Sales Stack?

A sales stack is an integrated set of applications that automate elements of your sales process like lead generation, lead qualification, sales outreach management and sales analytics. 10 years ago, sales stacks were often embedded within ERP systems that produced sub-optimal outcomes.

Most modern sales organizations use a “best-of-breed” approach that integrates the various elements of the platform in a hub and spoke configuration with the company’s CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system serving as the hub.

Because most of the components of a sales stack are based in the cloud and are accessible via mobile apps, they are always accessible to your sales team. There are four primary benefits of an effective sales stack

What is a Sales

Stack?

1. Make Sales Transparent

Sales technology provides transparency into each sales rep’s behavior and activity. With a transparent sales process, you no longer have to wait until the end of the month to identify sales reps that aren’t meeting performance targets. You also don’t have to waste time finding out that underperforming reps aren’t hitting their numbers because you’ll see they will miss their numbers based on leading activity indicators. By logging every activity automatically in your CRM you can remove a pain point for reps while collecting the data you need to determine if your team is going to be successful.

A transparent sales process also helps identify which reps need coaching and how you should coach them. For example, if a rep is chasing sales prospects that don’t meet your lead qualification criteria, a transparent sales process will identify the rep and the problem so that you can coach the rep to focus on qualified prospects.

A transparent sales process creates an environment where each member of the sales team focuses on the appropriate activity every day. It also gives management real-time feedback on sales performances so that there are no surprises at the end of the month.

TIP: “Predicting outcomes based on measurable activity will help you forecast accurately and know what to focus on to beat your plan.”

What is a Sales

Stack?

2. Identify Best Practices

A transparent sales process enables you to identify which reps are consistently hitting their quotas and the behaviors and activity that enable them to do so. What email subject line has the highest open rates? What email message is generating the most responses? Which voicemail is getting the most people to call back? What call opening is getting the most decision makers to schedule meetings?

By consistently identifying best practices and embedding them into your sales process, you will continuously improve the productivity of your sales organization. By tracking what’s working you can consistently train your team to be using the best practices.

TIP: “This consistent iteration will help you sustain growth and keep you ahead of your competition.”

What is a Sales

Stack?

3. Automate Manual Processes

Identify where your team is currently spending time on manual processes that could be replaced by software and prioritive those investments. A good sales stack will automate many tasks traditionally performed manually by reps like lead generation, lead qualification and scoring, and call scheduling.

While it’s clearly important to focus sales activity on the right prospects, sales is a numbers game. As reps eliminate wasting time on manual processes they can touch more prospects. And if you use technology to improve the quality of these touches you’ll improve your sales process which will convert a higher percentage of leads to opportunities and opportunities to sales.

TIP: “This automation leaves more time for reps to do what they should be doing – selling!”

What is a Sales

Stack?

4. Develop Consistency

By implementing and optimizing a sales stack that is transparent, based on best practices that generates high-quality activities you will develop consistent funnel metrics. And consistency is key to creating a scalable revenue-generating machine!

Your sales stack will provide a realistic view of your pipeline that will help optimize your company’s finance, operations and customer service functions based on realistic revenue estimates.

TIP: “Selecting the right technology for your sales stack is crucial to developing the optimal sales process.”

This eBook is designed to help you implement and optimize an effective sales

stack.

We will identify several technology applications and describe how they can be

used in your sales process.

We will also identify providers for each application that may be able to meet your

needs classifying them in one of three categories.

These are the providers that are challenging the industry leaders for market share. These providers often appeal to

certain market segments or have unique product features that make them a good choice for their target market.

Industry Leader

These are the providers that are widely considered the major player in the market. For example, we don’t think we will create controversy by identifying Salesforce as the industry leader in

the CRM field.

These are solid providers that offer a good option for organizations with tight budgets. They may lack some of the

features of more expensive alternatives, but get the job done for companies who want to build a sales stack on a budget.

Up-and-Comers

Budget Choice

What is a Sales

Stack?

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Wikipedia’s definition of a CRM system fits nicely with our concept of a sales stack: “Customer relationship management (CRM) is a system for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It involves using technology to organize, automate and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support.”

Your CRM system is the linchpin of your sales stack. It “organizes, automates and synchronizes” the sales technology applications of your platform. As the hub of your technology process, your CRM serves as the integration point for the other applications.

For example, your telephony system communicates an activity to your CRM, which in turn records the activity and transmits it to a marketing automation system for lead scoring. Because of its critical role, your CRM system is the most important application of your sales stack.

One of the most important criteria in selecting other applications is how well they integrate with your CRM. Most technology applications have “out-of-the-box” integrations with the major CRM providers and APIs that allow developers to create integrations with other CRMs.

Industry Leader

Salesforce

Up-and-Comers

Streak, Zoho CRM

Budget Choice

Pipedrive

What is a Sales

Stack?

2. Lead List Building

While inbound, permission-based marketing is an excellent way to generate sales leads, a Sales VP with an aggressive sales goal can’t afford to wait for leads to raise their hands and identify themselves.

Outreach to targeted lead lists should supplement inbound marketing to fill the top of your sales funnel. A best-practice approach to using lead lists is to make sure every interaction with that lead should be helpful and respect the lead’s time.

Don’t send 3-page emails detailing every nuance of your product offering – they will be deleted. Don’t call a busy executive and say, “How are you doing?” – you will destroy the relationship before it starts.

Design brief, impactful communications that quickly identify how you can help busy executives. Respect their time and remember that the headline sells, not the text. Your first task is to give them a reason not to hang up on you or delete your email.

Most organizations use lead lists by importing them into their CRM and conducting campaigns to qualify leads and fill the top of the sales funnel.

Industry Leader

Up-and-Comers

Budget Choice

Data.com

SalesLoft, LeadSpace

InfoFree, SalesGenie

What is a Sales

Stack?

3. Social Selling

Social selling tools help your team monitor key prospects’ social media activity and to develop lead intelligence from their social media profiles.

It could be argued that all of the tools we’re describing could be described as social selling tools. Some of the specific tasks that social selling tools do include:

▸ Social monitoring and listening for prospects.

▸ Lead list generation using social media networks like LinkedIn

▸ Identification of pathways to connect with prospects through common business acquaintances

▸ Social media prospecting outreach.

Many marketing automation systems include social selling tools in their product portfolio and there are stand-alone social selling tools. All of these tools help sales organizations sell the way their buyers want to buy.

Industry Leader

Up-and-Comers

Budget Choice

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Inside View

RainKing

What is a Sales

Stack?

4. Email Tracking

More and more sales teams are using email tracking software to see when their emails are opened and when included links are clicked. This helps sales reps see what resonates with prospects and pick the right team to reach out to prospects.

Beware! Make sure your outreach inspired by email opens and clicks comes off as helpful, not like you’re stalking your prospects.

Don’t say, “I saw you just opened my email.”

Say, “Hi Don, I was calling to follow up on that email I sent you about project management best practices. Did you have any questions?”

A CRM-integration with your email tracking software is crucial. Email opens and clicks are important touchpoints to record in your CRM and marketing automation systems.

Industry Leader

Up-and-Comers

Budget Choice

Yesware, ToutApp

PersistIQ

Signals from HubSpot

What is a Sales

Stack?

5. Telephony

While today’s buyer consumes sales information in many different forms, a face-to-face or telephonic interaction is almost always necessary to close sales.

A CRM-enabled telephony system is a must-have for companies that rely on inside sales to hit their numbers. A good telephony system will match callers to contact records and log calls as activities in your CRM. The telephony system shows sales reps important information on their prospect including information on past interactions, social media information and data downloaded from your CRM.

The ultimate goal of a CRM-enabled telephony system is to enable your reps to make more calls, increase connect rates, and have higher qualiy interactions.

Best Choice

Ringio

What is a Sales

Stack?

6. Scheduling

When emailing or calling cold leads, a sales rep’s first goal is to get the prospect into a meeting, and ultimately turn that meeting into a closed deal.

Getting a cold prospect to accept your request for a meeting is hard enough in the first place. Add the tedious process of finding times that work for both parties to that mix and you have a recipe for low conversion rates. That’s where scheduling tools come into play.

These solutions take your sales rep’s calendars and turn them into self-service booking sites where all prospects have to do is select a time that works for them and book a meeting. No more back and forth emails trying to schedule a meeting and no more dealing with different time zones.

Industry Leader

Up-and-Comers

Budget Choice

ScheduleOnce

YouCanBook.me

Assistant.to

What is a Sales

Stack?

7. Screensharing

Online meeting software provides a platform for sales reps to go beyond the traditional cold call – enabling face-to-face (and screen-to-screen) interaction across geographic boundaries. A sales rep in Boston can have a meeting with a prospect in Los Angeles that is the next best thing to a traditional face-to-face sales call.

Professor Emeritus Albert Mehrabian of UCLA theorized that the “likability” of a communications is influenced 7% by the actual words contained in the message, 38% by the vocal tone and 55% by body language. It’s not difficult to see how online meeting software brings the 55% non-verbal communication component into the mix.

For software companies that use demos as an important part of their sales process, online meeting software is essential. Any company that incorporates visual media like PowerPoint presentations or videos in their sales process can take advantage of online meeting software to improve the quality of their outreach.

And sales teams can meet in real-time across geographies to improve their effectiveness. Look for CRM integrations and the ability to record meetings in your online meeting software. Sales managers can use recorded sales meetings to coach reps. For companies that use webinars for lead generation, look for webinar upgrades to the online meeting software.

Industry Leader

Up-and-Comers

Budget Choice

Webex, GoTo Meeting

Uber Conference

Join.me, Skype

What is a Sales

Stack?

8. Contract Management

With an effective sales stack and sales process in place, your team should start to see more and more deals moving through the pipeline to the final stage of every deal - the contract stage.

The most important thing to look for here is CRM integration and ease-of-use. Features like creating contracts from your CRM and syncing contacts to the right leads will help your team be more productive.

Other features to look for are those that help with the negotiation stage with change logs, deal rooms, and document analytics.

Industry Leader

Up-and-Comers

Budget Choice

Adobe eSign

PandaDoc

HelloSign

We’ve talked about how a sales stack can help you consistently hit your sales quota

and we’ve described the tools you can use to build out your process.

Now we will lay out a 7-step process for building and optimizing your sales stack.

What is a Sales

Stack?

1. Conduct a Needs Analysis

Your first step is to conduct a needs analysis. Based on your unique sales process, what technology do you need to accelerate sales? Ask yourself questions like:▸ What does my sales cycle look like? How long is it? What steps do buyers

take as they decided to buy from us?▸ How do we generate leads? How do we want to generate leads? ▸ What types of information do our buyers consume as they move through

their buying process?▸ What is our ideal customer profile? What does our target prospect look like?

Where are they located? Locally? Nationally?▸ What type of information do I need to share with management? How

frequently?

Answering these questions will focus you on which technology components you need to build out your sales stack and how they should fit together.

What is a Sales

Stack?

2. Diagram Your Lead Flow Process

Before choosing which applications you will use in your sales stack, it’s important to diagram the interactions your sales team has with leads in the business development process.

If you’re sales process is fairly simple, you may be able to get by with an email marketing software application like Mail Chimp or Constant Contact. If you have a high-touch, complex sales process, you will need a more sophisticated approach with several high-end applications that support the multiple touchpoints required to close a deal. Most companies lie somewhere in the middle.

To help determine your application needs, diagram your lead workflow process to identify the various touchpoints needed to close a deal.

TIP: “Your Sales Stack should fit your lead flow process. The more you have to change your processes, the less productivity increases you will see.”

New Lead

Prospecting

Sales Outreach

Closed Sales

Lost Sales

Nurturing

Sales Ready

Dormant Lead

What is a Sales

Stack?

3. Diagram Your Technology Flow

Your needs analysis and lead flow diagram will help you identify which technology applications you will need for your company’s sales stack.The first and most important component is your CRM system. Every company, from a solo entrepreneurial endeavor to the largest enterprise business, should use a CRM system to manage customer and prospect relationships. Your CRM will be at the center of your “hub and spoke” diagram.

TIP: “Lay out a diagram that defines the components of your sales stack and how they will integrate.”

What is a Sales

Stack?

4. Choose

Now that you have defined your sales technology requirements, it’s time to choose the vendors for each of your technology applications.Start with choosing your CRM. The CRM you choose will play an important role in deciding which vendor you choose for the other applications. Almost every vendor outside of the CRM space will have an “out-of-the-box” integration with Salesforce. Most other CRMs have APIs (application programming interfaces) that enable developers to design custom integrations for your technology applications. Take into account the IT support available to you when choosing applications that don’t have an “out-of-the-box” integration with your CRM.Keep in mind that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If you choose an application that doesn’t work for you, you may have a 12-month commitment to deal with.

TIP: “Do your research and talk to your peers to get recommendations.”

What is a Sales

Stack?

5. Integrate, Test, and Implement

Now it’s time to put your technology process in place.Connect all of your technology applications to your CRM using the integrations and test to make sure information is flowing properly throughout your system.Use one of your more experienced reps to help you with user testing. This will allow you to identify and fix any bugs before you roll out the process to the entire sale team.When you’re confident that everything is working properly, roll out the technology to your sales team. Make sure you make the proper training available. Most technology platforms have training available and outside consultants are available to fill in the gaps.Start with your CRM; make sure everyone on your sales team is trained on how to use the CRM in your environment and is actually using it. Better yet, use technology components that automatically log activity into the CRM.

TIP: “Sales reps that don’t record activity in the CRM defeat the purpose of having it.”

What is a Sales

Stack?

6. Use Your Sales Stack to Hire and Onboard

Your sales technology plays a vital role in your revenue-generation process. Accordingly, you need to hire sales reps that are comfortable with technology and are able to use it to improve their performance.Look for the ability to use sales technology in potential sales reps. Ask them to share examples of how they used sales technology in previous jobs. If they have experience using your CRM platform, all the better. What you want to avoid at all costs are technology-phobes. They will not be successful reps.Make technology training part of your onboarding process. Every rep should be able to take advantage of your sales technology to hit their quotas. If they can’t, they either need to be coached or terminated.Lastly, make sales technology compliance part of performance evaluations. You’ve made a significant investment in your sales technology and you should reap the maximum return from it.

TIP: “Make technology training part of your onboarding process.”

What is a Sales

Stack?

7. Institute Best Practices Team-Wide

The beauty of sales technology is that it provides total transparency into your sales process. You can use analytics to see what works and what doesn’t. Keep a careful eye on analytics dashboards in your CRM to identify coaching needs and keep your management team up to speed on results on a real-time basis. By doing so, you will be able to make mid-course corrections and improve performance before it is too late.By embedding best practices throughout your sales organization, you will continually improve your sales process. In other words, you will sell more!

TIP: “Over time, sales process optimization will help you hire the right reps and give them the right support to be successful.”

Share this free guide with your followers!