What is the Sales Stack and Do You Need it?

You bought a really nice, new, laptop computer and you thought to yourself, “Now I’m all set!”  But are you?  You needed a case to carry it around, a thumb drive for quickly moving files from your laptop to another, and a printer and if you have a Mac notebook, a port that will serve as adapters to your various cables.  These are your accessories.

You’ll also need cloud storage, a broadband connection, email, a browser and 20 or so software applications so your computer can help you do the things you purchased it to do.  This is your technology stack.

But now there is a sales stack too.  What is the sales stack, and should you have one for your salespeople?

The sales stack consists of CRM, gamification, lead engagement, pricing and configuration, proposal generation, e-signature, content sharing, video conferencing, video production, video server, broadcast email, social selling tools, calendar scheduling, sales compensation, and more.  These tools, along with sales and sales management training and coaching, keep sales enablement folks busy.

And therein lies the problem.

You don’t need all of these tools!  They are a distraction.  They create busy work.  They take time to learn and integrate.  Very few of them actually help you sell.  But you are told by the people that develop them that you must have these tools.  And you are told by sales enablement folks that you will be getting these tools.  After all, if you are the VP of sales enablement and you don’t keep the flow of tools, applications, integration, training and implementation of these tools coming, there isn’t much of a need for you to be there.  In order to justify your existence, you “keep ’em coming!”  Sales Enablement is the sales stack’s best friend.

The question is, if we didn’t have a sales enablement function, how many of these tools would we acquire based on the following criteria?

• They help salespeople follow their sales process
• They help salespeople stay organized in their efforts to close business
• They provide sales leadership with important, realtime data
• They provide insight and visualization into the sales pipeline
• They give salespeople more time to sell and less time doing paperwork
• They make salespeople more efficient

You would have CRM, but it probably wouldn’t be Salesforce.com.  If you have a complex sale or a 1 month or longer sales cycle I would advise you to choose Membrain.

You would have an e-signature application to streamline getting your agreements signed.  I like AdobeSign.

If your salespeople aren’t in the field or in a territory you would probably have video conferencing.  I like Zoom.

To avoid sending emails back and forth you would have a calendar scheduling application.  I like Youcanbook.me

If you run a company or lead the sales organization, those 4 tools would help your salespeople be more efficient, more effective and more focused.  Add anything else to that “stack” and you are taking away efficiency and effectiveness.

The stack won’t sell for you.  The stack won’t make your salespeople better.  You don’t want the stack for the sake of having the stack.

That’s my story and I’m “stacking” to it.  Leave your comments in the LinkedIn discussion for this article.

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