Building the Perfect Tech Stack for Your Outside Sales Team

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Today, businesses are only as strong as the software and other tools that support their operations. The world runs online, and to maintain a competitive edge, companies are prioritizing cloud-based computing over on-premises software. Investing in the latest technology for your outside sales team is equally important for ensuring their success.

Tech stacks automate administrative tasks, track leads, streamline sales and maximize productivity—all to help you reach or surpass your quotas.

As many crucial metrics are digitally driven, upgrading your tech stack is necessary for a streamlined sales process.  Investing in a tech stack is a necessity. The only question is how to choose the right software to deliver your company’s sales and growth objectives.

Big decisions require careful judgment, so it’s vital to be well-informed. Here, we’ll start with the basics of what a tech stack is and then break down its key features and how these can improve the performance of your outside sales team.

What Is a Tech Stack for Your Outside Sales Team?

Sales is about maximizing returns at the lowest cost. A sales tech stack is simply a collection of digital tools designed to help you maximize profits. Your outside sales team uses these tools to generate leads, automate customer outreach, create presentations, manage scheduling, coordinate projects and get digital signatures from clients. In essence, a tech stack performs administrative, IT and marketing functions for your team. Therefore, tech stack implementation should yield an increase in the returns you see from your team’s time, effort and resources.

Integration is another fundamental part of a sophisticated tech stack. In the field, your team is better served by being able to access their materials from any device. Here, interactive presentation software helps teams to share their displays with potential clients—without losing functionality.

Review your sales pipeline to determine what your business needs most out of a tech stack. For instance, are there bottlenecks that could be streamlined? What parts of the process could run smoother? Addressing your business’s unique needs when researching or upgrading your tech stack is essential.

Why Does a Tech Stack Matter for an Outside Sales Team?

When setting up a tech stack for your outside sales team, one of your chief requirements might be to see a positive return on investment. Therefore, picking digital tools that have all the business support capabilities you require should be the primary consideration. However, bear in mind that not all tech stacks are created equal. Only the best feature predictive analytics or offer immediate, mobile-first access for you and your team.

Choosing the right software can do wonders for reinvigorating your sales funnel from the bottom up. This includes increasing the average deal size, boosting win rates and speeding up your closing timeframe. While the benefits are numerous, they can nonetheless be placed in three broad categories—team alignment, data analysis and streamlined sales pipelines.

Let’s have a more in-depth look at these different areas.

Team Alignment

A tech stack helps your team create engaging and interactive marketing materials that are easy to disseminate among potential clients. Further, campaigns can be optimized—not only in terms of meeting the needs of customers but also for your team. In addition, you’ll be able to integrate email software, thereby automating time-consuming tasks like importing contacts and performing basic outreach.

Sales enablement software makes it simpler for your team to align messaging, resulting in more cohesive branding. Moreover, providing your outside sales team with the best resources gives them extra time to spend on building relationships and closing deals.

Data Analysis

How can you improve sales without knowing the most relevant details? Data tracking tools give you information on consumer behavior as well as how successful your sales teams are. These are valuable insights that will help strengthen your team’s performance and restructure sales materials to engage your target market more effectively.

Streamlined Pipelines

Generating new leads is integral to any sales strategy. But what percentage of those leads are you able to successfully move through your pipeline? Closing deals with prospects requires a better understanding of buyers’ behavior at different points of the sales journey.

You can leverage the power of a tech stack to identify potential sticking points where you’re losing clients. Armed with this information, you’re able to streamline the process of converting leads into paying customers while reducing the time it takes to close a deal.

What Makes a Good Outside Sales Tech Stack?

When building a tech stack, the goal is to streamline, optimize and track your sales with digital tools. Your tech stack should automate where it can, monitor key performance metrics and create engaging branded materials to attract prospects. Every tech stack is different, but here are some of the principal elements to consider.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM is the most important tool in your tech stack. It’s extremely versatile software with a multiplicity of uses; however, the primary functions revolve around handling customer interfacing and relationships. On top of building and maintaining relationships, your outside sales team will use CRM to track data, forecast sales, manage product releases and monitor their sales pipeline. Furthermore, the software monitors individual team members, providing you with valuable metrics to help develop their skill sets and boost sales.

As the center of customer relationships, your CRM will follow clients from the initial lead to conversion. As such, you’ll be alerted to any issues and be able to step in and save a deal that might otherwise have fallen through. Once your CRM is in place and you’re ready to add to your tech stack, make sure to choose software that integrates with it.

Outside Sales Enablement and Automation

Sales enablement focuses on the collaboration between marketing and sales. The software provides your team members with easy, multi-device access to the content they need to bring in clients. This component of your tech stack is specifically designed to give your team the resources they need to reach—and exceed—their goals.

Here are some of the ways in which sales enablement software helps your team:

• Sharing content. With sales enablement software, the sharing of branded materials is straightforward.
• Aligning sales and marketing. As marketing can create and share content with sales directly, branding will be more consistent.
• Reviewing customer response. Providing data on customers’ interactions with your content gives a marketing team strategic insight into what works and what needs more work.
• Tracking team usage of training materials. Leaders can see how individual team members are using training content and then monitor their progress.
• Automating admin tasks. Time is money, and your sales team’s time is valuable. Sales enablement software can automate lengthy administrative tasks.
• Onboarding faster. Create a cohesive training process using your sales enablement software. You’ll be able to get new team members up to speed in no time.

Your team is the backbone of your business. As the collaboration between marketing and sales is what drives revenue, providing them with tools to extend their skills, reach and content is essential for growth. Supporting your team is paramount, so make sure to pick a high-grade platform like Ingage. As a leader in sales enablement software, Ingage comes with all the features that your team needs to close more deals.

Communications

In the modern business environment, communication isn’t necessarily straightforward. And the rise of remote and hybrid work has thrown company communications another curveball. There isn’t yet an accepted, one-size-fits-all method of interacting with teams across multiple time zones.

Recently, attitudes have shifted away from micromanagement, unnecessary meetings and continuous availability. Employees are encouraged to provide feedback to leadership. And with the push for greater work-life balance, people are looking for ways of communicating that match new ideas about the workplace.

Video conferencing, instant messaging and customer communication through email marketing automation are all common forms of professional communication. However, every workplace is different, and some require unique methods of communication. For instance, presentation software platforms allow teams to collaborate on materials in a way that helps create a cohesive brand voice. Ultimately, you should implement communication channels that reflect your professional culture and your needs as an organization.

Project Management

When you’re overseeing the collaboration of multiple sales teams, it can be hard to stick to your vision and stay on schedule. Project management software is designed to assist in the development and implementation of new sales strategies. This means you can implement tools that help you monitor progress and keep the project workflow on track.

Here are three reasons to provide your outside sales team with project management software.

• Set strategies. Align teams with your project strategies by breaking up tasks and setting individual assignments. Start by creating scheduled milestones to keep your sales team motivated and ensure continuous progress.
• Track team members. With project management software, you can set deadlines for team members. Further, you’re able to monitor their customer outreach and adjust strategies based on results.
• Boost productivity. Use the software to strengthen your workflow and drive progress. By setting clear goals, expectations and deadlines, you’ll help your team stay on schedule.

Scheduling and Calendar Management

You want your team to be ready to assist customers, especially as they move through the sales pipeline. Integrating an automated scheduler with your tech stack not only reduces time-wasting manual processes but also makes it easier for customers to get in touch with your outside sales team.

The goal is to achieve higher closing percentages by making the process as simple as possible for prospective customers. People often overlook scheduling tools when building their tech stack—don’t make the same mistake. By integrating calendar management software, you’ll support both your team and their customers as they navigate the sale. An easier means of scheduling a call or meeting could make the difference between a lost customer and a closed deal.

Digital Signature

Going above and beyond what’s expected to keep customers happy requires attention to detail. Of course, your products, customer service and outreach are all important, but it’s the little things that really stand out.

Digital contracts are secure, convenient and easy to organize.

Digital signature tools allow you to send legal contracts to your clients via email. It’s much more convenient than asking them to sign in-person. Moreover, it’s likely to result in more signatures too. This is another way in which simplifying the sales process saves time and helps maintain your buyer’s motivation.

Demo and Presentation

Your outside sales team needs to be able to effectively explain and demonstrate your product out in the field. Presentation software is the single most effective tool in their arsenal—provided you’ve chosen the right package.

Integrating interactive presentation software can make a huge difference to your sales. Jeff Kay, CEO of East Coast Roofing, leveraged Ingage’s presentation software to improve consistency across sales teams’ pitches. The results were staggering. In the first six months of using Ingage, East Coast Roofing brought in an additional $900,000.

Presentation software comes with a number of other benefits. For example, Status Solutions was struggling to explain the intricacies of their products to clients. After integrating with Ingage, they were able to effectively convey the complexities of their products with interactive presentations and follow-up materials. However, two of the greatest benefits they’ve seen are a decrease in onboarding time and the ability to track team members’ presentations and keep them accountable.

Ingage creates sleek, professional presentations, as you can see in these samples. Here are some of the features that set Ingage apart:

• Interactive presentations. Capture and hold attention. Customers will be able to interact with your presentation software to better understand you brand and messaging.
• Shareable material. Keep your outside sales team’s materials and messaging up to date with multi-device sharing.
• Measurable results. Track your team’s presentations and outreach. Moreover, you can monitor the ways in which customers engage with your materials to optimize messaging.

Creating with Ingage is intuitive. Start by checking out the Design School to see how easy it can be.

Reach Your Outside Sales Quotas With Ingage

Seeing all the benefits that a tech stack can bring to your brand is exciting. And although your outside sales team can help you grow in leaps and bounds—you first need to invest in their infrastructure and growth. Ingage provides superior, cloud-based presentation software that will make your content stand out and help your team close deals. Have a look at our demo to find out more.

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