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The right sales stack can make or break your commission check
Let’s talk table stakes and what we’ll cover here. We’re not going to bore you with the obvious.
Of course you’re going to need a CRM, an email account, a LinkedIn account, video conferencing etc..
Recapping that and telling you to look at Salesforce and HubSpot would be a halfhearted attempt at helping you..
Instead, we’re going to introduce 5 types of (or further acquaint) you with tools you an add to your arsenal!
These solutions are engineered to eliminate or minimize repetitive work, enhance productivity, improve your craft, and help you source / close more deals.
We’ll cover what they are, how they help, what outcomes you can achieve. Then, we’ll point you in a direction to learn more.
We’re software fanatics, but we’re not fans of buying software without a purpose.
Too often, individuals and organizations invest in tools without clearly defining objectives or ROI.
Save yourself the buyer’s remorse and break down what kind of activities you’re doing and how intensive it is to complete.
You should also consider what kind of positive business impacts you’re looking to achieve.
In other words, with a new tool:
Buzzword alert 🚨. Here’s what we mean by this.
As for positive business impacts, tools should advance business initiatives and objectives by:
Let’s begin with Sales Enablement!
What they are: These solutions serve as a central place to store, manage, and share content for internal and external use.
What they solve: Have you ever spent a frustrating amount of time looking for internal information or marketing collateral? It happens when Drives are not properly organized.
Targeted outcomes: When sales enablement systems like Seismic or ShowPad are deployed intelligently, it can eliminate operational waste and improve adoption of your varies sales assets.
Where to start looking: You can’t go wrong with G2 Crowd on this one.
What they are: Lead intelligence are used solutions built for researching or enriching contact & company records.
What they solve: If you are manually researching new or existing prospects, you’ll likely significant amounts of time browsing the web and manually aggregating information. With tools like ClearBit, you can take an email address or domain and instantly append dozens of other fields.
Targeted outcomes: Streamlining the research process improves accuracy and increases speed of sales reps. With time saved by letting smarter software do research for you, you can spend more time on high value tasks.
Where to start looking: For B2B companies, ClearBit is a strong starting point for adding lead intelligence to your stack. You can find alternatives on G2 Crowd, but in reality most of the tools, such as DiscoverOrg/ZoomInfo, are more complementary than they are competitors. InsideView is a well-known direct alternative. And of course, DataDen by FoxBound is a great starting point as well.
What they are: Let us preface this here..
So, LinkedIn (ever heard of it?) is the world’s largest professional network. By default, it’s also world’s largest repository of B2B data. That’s why Sales Navigator, a premium version of LinkedIn, is an integral of seemingly every single sales stack today.
There’s just one small (huge) issue. Even if you invest in Sales Nav, there’s no efficient way to export data..
👏 What . 👏 A. 👏Conundrum!
Enter the List-building tool. These are Chrome plugins that sit on top of LinkedIn and harness contact and company metadata into external (you guessed it) lists.
What they solve: Without a tool for harnessing LinkedIn / Sales Nav, you’re not going to see the full ROI on what is very expensive software. No human on earth can manually compile data from LinkedIn into an actionable format. And unless you can talk to computers, the chances that you can validate email addresses are exactly 0%.
Let’s break this down.
In other words. Mind = Blown 🤯
Targeted outcomes: By eliminating the operational waste associated with manual data entry, list-building tools can easily 10x productivity.
Where to start looking: We may be biased, but we’d recommend our very own DataScout to a friend. A few market alternatives include tools like Lusha and RocketReach. Just remember tools like this are a package deal with LinkedIn 🙂
"By eliminating the operational waste associated with manual data entry, list-building tools can easily 10x productivity."
Do you need more time in your day? Learn how to work smarter, not harder with tips to help you reclaim your time and focus on executing revenue-generating tasks.
What they are: Reps use Sales Engagement (often referred to as sales automation) Platforms to plan and execute campaigns with emails, calls, and social steps.
What they solve: Salespeople waste a lot of time and leave opportunity on the table doing things like logging activities, manually tracking emails, updating CRM, and so forth. Sales Engagement seeks to eliminate these time-draining tasks.
Targeted outcomes: By eliminating the operational waste from burdensome tasks, you can focus efforts on increasing the volume & quality of your prospecting efforts. Reclaimed time can also be invested into managing pipeline (or getting to happy hour on time).
Where to start looking: It depends the policies and needs of your organization. If you need/prefer legacy solutions and don’t mind the associated price tag, start with a SalesLoft or Outreach. For organizations that absolutely require above-and-beyond levels of compliance certificates like SOC2, that’s not a bad place to begin.
Startups, SMB’s, and businesses looking for a lighter alternative turn to FoxBound Pursuit and make use of the complementary list-building solution we mentioned earlier, DataScout.
From here, you can re-evaluate your own sales stack. See if you can topgrade an existing tool or bring on a new solution.
We advise everyone to always take a look at the big picture and not make a quick, emotional decision. Consider things like this before making an investment and committing time & resources:
Building your team’s sales stack will require time and patience, but the results will be worth it. From here, check out Selling Faster Than Humanly Possible to visualize your end results.
Co-Founder
January 7th, 2020
Co-Founder
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