There are many things that you should first evaluate before investing in sales technology, for example, cost and the features available. Researching a range of options will ensure the best outcome for your business.
Answering questions relating to your business will help to identify any issues that are limiting growth and how sales tech can help this, questions that should be answered by your business to help determine the platform include:
- What are your business goals?
- What is blocking you from reaching those goals?
On top of these basic questions, there are many more things you should consider when investing in sales technology…
- The sale experience
- Does the platform provide a solution?
- Implementation
- How will it compare to your current tech stack?
- Return on investment
- The whole team
- Reporting and analytics
- Maintenance
The sale experience
It's important that your sales team also value and want to use the new sales technology, so you should make them a part of the decision process. The people that use the technology should think it's a worthwhile investment.
What are their problems? How could new technology fix these issues? Will staff be trained on the new tech to gain a real understanding of it? To ensure long-term success and ensure the team properly adopts the tech, support should be continuously offered to ensure a sales representative is invested and comfortable on the platform.
Does the platform provide a solution?
Before implementing any new piece of technology, first, ask yourself, does this provide a solution to any problems? And why is it important to invest in new sales technology?
When researching platforms, you should be referring back to the main goal every time and understand how this may be a solution to your pain points. Even if a piece of technology looks top of the range if it doesn't provide a solution, then what's the point?
Implementation
Bringing anything new into a business, especially technology can often be challenging to implement. So, you will need to work out how long the project will take and how much resource it will need to install.
Also, consider how long training will take and whether your staff can take time out of their schedules to do so. Make sure you account for everything needed within the implementation phase so that you are not missing out on revenue.
How will it compare to your current tech stack?
When looking for a new piece of technology, you should also look at your present stack. How do they compare? Will the new system also still align with your data, processes and teams. It should be easy to integrate with workflow tools and require little change management.
Return on investment
Assessing and measuring the ROI is very important to make sure it is actually working and provides economic value. This metric will highlight growth, if there is a likelihood of a positive financial outcome, and measure how long it should take to reach that financial goal. Other costs to be considered include:
- Initial cost
- Costs of training
- Support costs
- How much will the tech save the business
- What is the tangible return
The whole team
Not only will new sales tech impact the sales team, but the rest of the business too if all teams are aligned. Therefore, take a look at the bigger picture to ensure the whole company can adapt if needs be. Open communication and visibility is a must for the best results.
Reporting and analytics
To grow your business, measuring the success of sales technology is crucial. Although you may only be able to measure the success once you have made the investment, it's important to consider how you will report and analyse the platform. Doing so in the early stages will ensure you can get started straight away utilising the features that will be most effective.
Maintenance
After understanding whether or not the tool aligns with current systems and processes in the business, sales users should be able to see how easy or not it is to maintain with other systems.
With this, you will also want to look at costs to see how much it will be to maintain the tool. The tool should provide a useful resource to help to save time and effort. If maintenance is too difficult and time-consuming, then processes and productivity begin to slow.
Are you now ready to invest in sales technology? As a HubSpot Ellite partner we specialise in Sales Onboarding - find out more or book a call with us today.
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