Let’s backtrack five years ago. The year was 2019, and in-person sales meetings, even door-to-door sales, were still ‘a thing.’ The culture of sales was human, but technology was becoming a part of the process. Fast-forward to today and tech is embedded in every step of sales processes. Yet the art and the culture of sales is still, inherently human.
My father was a sales professional, and I learned the most I ever have in my life by just listening to him on calls and trying to mimic how he told stories to get to the heart of what his prospects needed.
I still believe that the most valuable thing a sales team member, whether it’s the one person at the top, your team lead, sales manager, or brand new sales development representative can do, is to listen to their customers more.
So the question becomes if I think the best thing a salesperson can do is to make more human connections, where does technology fit into the picture?
And the answer, at least how I see it, is to use technology as an addition, not as a distraction, to the art of sales, so every interaction you have is more impactful.
Recapping McKinsey’s Technology Trends Outlook 2023, the organization states:
“By focusing on only the most hyped trends, [organizations] may miss out on the significant value potential of other technologies and hinder the chance for purposeful capability building. Instead, companies seeking longer-term growth should focus on a portfolio-oriented investment across the tech trends most important to their business.“
In a way, the art of sales has become the science of sales, deciphering what elements are right for your business. We now live in an era where technology must be integrated into the process to amplify human connection.
When bringing new technology into your sales team’s day-to-day process, the best thing you can do is to be intentional about what you’re doing. Think of the different buckets of technology and how you can break these down into what your team and your salespeople and your business needs. For example:
And how that helps individuals do their job better, how it helps your team do better, and how it ultimately delivers more revenue to your company.
Our 2023 State of HubSpot report looked at how revenue and marketing leaders were considering advanced tools to strengthen their tech stack, as 95% of companies surveyed have identified gaps in their CRM/CMS operations.
The main players were:
Artificial intelligence (42%)
Customer success software (39%)
Analytics and reporting platforms (38%)
Your individual team members might use something on their own and then bring it to their manager to see if it can be adopted team-wide, and then that gets brought to the organization to see if they can fund it.
When discussing that third layer, as a sales leader your job is to understand and prove that this investment makes your organization better and will significantly impact how your organization reaches its goals.
I think you're seeing more and more leaders that are conscious of those levels, so they’re making the right investments for the individual, the team, and the business.
There’s a statistic from HubSpot that says sales representatives spend less than 30% of their time actually selling.
While it seems surprising, it shows how much the world of sales has evolved and, importantly, how technology can serve as an incredibly valuable member of your team. Going back to the past, if you go back that five or ten years, there were probably two or three sales tools that touched the entire sales process.
And now? Depending on where you get your stats, sales teams use anywhere from 10 to 13 tools to close deals.
A study from Mindtickle reported 28% of organizations use 10 or more tools to drive sales productivity, but most still aren’t happy with their quota attainment and ultimately, their revenue results.
Put simply: Our sales teams are floundering — and some, even failing — because of the mass amounts of tech they need to ingest. Or rather, that they think they need to ingest.
As leaders guiding our sales teams to success, we need to think about how to consolidate that tech stack and be as efficient as possible, while opening the door to new, emerging technology our team needs to hit their goals.
We should be looking at technology in a spectrum:
Because customers equal revenue, so the best thing you can do is look at an organization through the flywheel that HubSpot made so famous, putting your customers at the center of your decisions, and that includes what technology to invest in.
At the end of the day, I want technology to empower my team to be the best at solving for my customer.
Will this technology help my sellers understand what their customers need?
Will this technology deliver speed to value for our customers?
Will this technology free my sellers up to do more for our customers?
If you need help thinking through how you can consolidate your own tech stack or bring in the tools that will maximize efficiency and productivity, I’m here to help you work through these puzzle pieces. Let’s chat.