I saw Kristina McMillan speak with our COO Anna Baird at the Outreach Lounge during Dreamforce, and one point hit especially close to home.
Kristina is the VP of Research at TOPO, the research and advisory firm that tracks and predicts trends in sales and marketing. She joined us to speak about her perspectives on the rapid evolution of sales technology, along with the key sales trends that TOPO is watching for 2020.
"Is the sales tool stack getting overwhelming?" Anna asked.
"Yes," Kristina responded without hesitation.
Take a second and look at how many tabs you have open on your browser right now. When sales managers and enablement teams pile on the tools, sales reps must constantly toggle between tabs and windows: a dialer, email, Linkedin Sales Navigator, analytics, video conferencing, content sharing... the list goes on and on.
Kristina noted that with the overwhelming amount of data in front of a rep, we need to focus on workflow and automation. The goal is to pare down their day so that sales reps are spending all their time on selling activities.
How many tools does Kristina think reps should use every day? 3 to 5.
We completely agree, which is why we worked so hard this year to consolidate all your sales actions into a single workflow within Outreach. More functionality within Outreach means less switching back and forth between apps and getting lost in the process.
Does your company have a too-many-sales-tools problem? Here are some ways you can clean up your stack and help your sales reps be more efficient.
3 Ways To Simplify Your Sales Tech Stack
1. Audit Your Current Sales Stack
The first step in consolidating your tech stack is to conduct an audit. Create a spreadsheet and go through every sales tool you use.
You want to track:
- Name
- Purpose
- Price
- Use-data
This spreadsheet will be your bible when you’re consolidating. Remove anything redundant, anything barely being used, or anything that doesn’t integrate into your CRM or Outreach — unless it has huge value all on its own.
You may be surprised by how many redundant or unused tools sales teams continue to pay for. This adds confusion to your process and can make it hard to identify where you have gaps in your stack.
Additionally, this audit will help identify places where you actually do need more tools and automation. For example, you may have five tools that all provide content sharing and management, but realize you have nothing for account-based sales.
2. Stick To The Essentials and Avoid Gimmicks
There are a few tools that are pretty much required in today’s sales world, including a CRM, email automation, and video conferencing. When consolidating your stack, focus on keeping the essentials and the tools that integrate seamlessly with them. Keep the ones that bring you joy, quit the ones that don't.
Avoid gimmicky tools, or tools that perform very niche functions. Don’t grab a new tool just because you’ve heard a lot of hype about it. It needs to either fill a gap in your stack or provide a large advantage over a tool currently in your stack.
Develop a process to vet new sales tools to prevent stack buildup. The spreadsheet you created for the audit can be great for this.
3. Use Outreach Galaxy to View Everything in a Single Pane of Glass
Outreach Galaxy makes simplifying your sales stack well… simple! We partner with the best tools to keep everything in a single pane of glass so you can do everything in one platform. This means you can simplify your stack without getting rid of your favorite tools.
With Galaxy, you can integrate the tools that you use daily with the tools you may only use once a quarter, unlocking workflow possibilities and tool combos that weren't possible otherwise. It keeps your stack organized, saves you time transferring data and switching between tools, and simplifies your workflow.
We may be biased, but Outreach Galaxy is truly one of the best ways that you can simplify your sales stack today.
Kristina proclaimed that 2020 is "The Year of the Rep." For us, every year is The Year of the Rep as Outreach enables reps to automate tedious data entry and complex analytics so they can spend more time focusing on selling activities that directly generate revenue.
