What Every Business Should Have in Their Sales Tech Stack

  “Sales stack” is jargon for the technology/software salespeople need to do their jobs and communicate effectively with prospects. Having the right tools in your stack is the best way to support your reps, so that they can do their best work.

To determine what you need in your stack, start by looking at your sales process. At HubSpot, we use the Inbound Sales Methodology to help us frame our sales process. It views each action the salesperson will take (Identify, Connect, Explore, Advise) in relation to where the buyer is in their process (Awareness, Consideration, Decision).

The result of meeting the buyer where they are -- with an approach tailored to their needs -- is that that prospect moves from stranger to opportunity and finally customer in a frictionless way.

Free Download: Sales Plan Template

Think through every part of your sales process, and identify where you could streamline processes or make your reps’ lives easier with the right technology.

To help you get started, we’ve pulled together a list of the top types of technology that should be in every sales team’s stack. Do you see any gaps in your stack?

Sales Stack

1. CRM

Your CRM is the backbone of your sales team -- and likely your company. CRMs facilitate relationship building with your prospects, speed up your sales cycle, and keep your team organized and goal-focused.

HubSpot Senior Growth Marketer David Ly Khim describes CRMs this way: “CRM, or customer relationship management, is a strategy companies use to track customer relationships from pre- to post-sale. A CRM database is software that stores information on client and prospect interactions with employees.”

Khim continues, “Marketing and Sales touchpoints (including email, phone, website, live chat, and social media) are tracked, providing customer-facing employees with detailed context on a client’s activity and feedback.”

Pretty important, right? That’s why it’s crucial to choose the right one. When selecting a CRM, ask yourself:

• Why are we investing in CRM?
• What operational business challenges do we need to solve?
• What processes do we lack that we should implement?
• How many people do I expect to use the CRM?
• How much customer information do we have?
• What other software do we use that the CRM should integrate with?
• How much budget do I have?

Keep your answers to these questions in mind as you’re vetting potential CRMs and know which are non-negotiable.

Examples of a CRM

HubSpot CRM

• Price: Free
• About: Everything you need to organize, track, and nurture leads. You’ll be able to manage your pipeline, automatically track things like customer interactions over email or social media, sync with Gmail or Outlook to capture every meeting in real time, and make every part of the sales process easier.

2. Sales Enablement and Automation

Sales used to be incredibly manual. Today, it doesn’t have to be -- more than that, it shouldn’t be. When you’re reviewing each part of your sales process to identify gaps in your sales stack, make sure you’re looking at what processes you can automate. Your CRM might be able to help out with some of this automation.