Building a tech stack: Where to start and how to progress

Building a tech stack can be overwhelming. There are hundreds of different types of software each with thousands of vendors to choose from. This makes it difficult to know what tool you should purchase first, and when to purchase.

Other times you may have inherited a tech stack and are wondering if you have the right things in place to drive results.

This article isn’t about giving personalized advice – every company and team is different, so you may need to make some tweaks to make it work for your situation.

Instead, what it will give you is a holistic view on the best-in-class tech stacks for each different level of maturity. For the purpose of this article, we will be using the SEC sales enablement maturity model.

Stage 1: Ad Hoc/Undefined

In this stage of enablement you may not yet have a defined role, or maybe have newly hired someone to build out the function. At this point in your journey, the biggest focus should be on foundational enablement programs: onboarding (if hiring), sales methodology, and continuous learning.

Likely your programs will be manual, with little tools or automation to support.

For example, your onboarding program could be a checklist in Sheets/Excel, live sessions containing coaching and training happening over Teams/Zoom or in person, and sellers send PDF content over email.

The major tech to have in place at this point is the core of all systems: your customer relationship management (CRM) system.

This allows you to start collecting and acting on data, whether it be lost opportunity campaigns, or measuring pipeline and revenue goals.

Implementing a CRM can be a big undertaking, but it’s worth it for the data it will provide.

However, the system is only as good as the data that’s put in, so it’s important to ensure that the team adopts the technology. Training sessions are a must in driving change management here, but the more your processes and compensation rely on your CRM, the higher adoption you’ll achieve.

Stage 2: Tactical/Reactive

During this stage of enablement, you have the foundational enablement programs up and running, but often much of the program creation is not yet based on targeted data points.

Instead, it’s more reactionary to negative things that happen (ie: missing targets, losing a competitive deal, etc).

At this point, your CRM is in place and reps are adopting it. Now that you have the core of your programs and tech stack, it’s time to expand to gain more insightful data and drive efficiencies.

Your next steps may depend on your situation, so here are two scenarios: inside sales emphasis and field sales emphasis.

Inside sales

If your business is focused on inside sales and does a lot of calling – whether that be cold calls or conference calls – a great next step would be implementing conversational intelligence.

This not only allows for better coaching and training, but provides even more data and insights within a deal. This tool also brings transparency and learning across the team with little to no effort from enablement or leadership.

Some of the more advanced platforms will even bring you deal insights – which has been a game changer for our business over the last year in helping us understand what ‘good’ looks like.

These insights combined with CRM data, can help you build a picture of top-performing rep traits and further your understanding of why you may be winning and losing deals.

Another great technology to implement for an inside sales use case would be a sales engagement tool. This allows your reps to move away from traditional email and spreadsheets to manage prospecting, towards having scalable cadences with targeted messaging.

In turn, making it really easy to track prospecting KPIs and understand what messaging drives results in your market.

Field sales

On the other hand, if you have a focus on field sales, the technology needed to ensure your reps are successful can be wildly different from the inside sales use case.

In this case, content management is often top of mind, as salespeople need to be able to find and share the most up-to-date content while on the go, and often in places where they don’t have internet access.

If this sounds familiar, tablets with an enablement platform focusing on content management can be invaluable. (More on implementing sales enablement technology in the next section.)

The bottom line here is don’t try to do too much, too quickly. Really focusing on getting implementation right for your business will make or break your adoption of the tool and therefore the ROI you will achieve long-term.

Phase 3: Progressive/Integrated

In this phase, the enablement function is a valued asset to the business and acts as a partner to other departments like marketing, product, and partnerships.

Your programs are starting to be more proactive and the department is more or less running as a well-oiled machine. The main objective here is to scale, without needing additional resources and the best way to do this is to implement sales enablement-specific tools.

It’s important to wait until this phase to implement enablement technology because 80% of your success in scaling will be down to your programs and people, with 20% being down to your technology.

Without strong enablement foundations and business partnerships, often this type of technology can fail due to a lack of ownership and strategic direction.

The main building blocks for sales enablement technology are:

Content management systems,
Sales readiness tools (training & coaching), and
Buyer engagement platforms (ie: digital sales rooms).

Today, many enablement platforms are all-encompassing and provide a basic level of each of these components. This is valuable as you’ll only need to manage one platform for most of your enablement needs.

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There are also specialized solutions that provide lighter or heavier versions of each feature, which is useful if you have more specific needs or budget constraints.

If you’re not 100% ready to commit to content management, sales readiness, and buyer engagement all at once, that’s ok and might be the right move for your business.

For most situations, it’s recommended to start with content management as that will form the basis for the other two building blocks.

Most of the holistic enablement platforms have dedicated resources to not only build out the technology you just purchased but also ensure that your strategy is aligned with the tool.

This is highly recommended if you want expert eyes on the foundations you’ve already created to find even more efficiencies and wins for your team.

Phase 4: Strategic/Mature

If you’re in this phase, you’ve hit enablement nirvana.

At this point, your enablement function is providing proactive support to your team and as seen as a trusted advisor within the organization.

You’ll likely now have many systems working together to create an effective environment for your sellers to thrive and for enablement to continue driving these positive results through data-driven decisions.

So what’s next here?

With all these systems, the one gap businesses have is tying all of the data and insights together in one single source of truth.

This is where business intelligence (BI) comes into the picture. This software enables leadership to make more informed decisions and really understand what’s happening in specific scenarios.

It can also help with providing measurable outcomes for sales enablement programs and tying these to metrics that sales leaders care about.

Other Options

You might be thinking this all sounds great, but we don’t have the capital to implement these best-in-class tools.

Well not to worry, here’s how to save whilst still supporting your team:

Look for holistic solutions with modular pricing - This allows you to only add new modules at your pace and in line with your company’s needs.
Think outside the box - Is there a way to “hack” a system you already have to get you 85-90% of the way there? For example, we use Notion and have built over 4 tools (in counting!) within Notion natively which has had a really positive outcome on our tech spend.
Optimize your licenses - When renewing, make sure to always renew with the lowest number of licenses you think you will need. You can always add licenses if you end up growing, but you can’t subtract mid-contract.
Look into newer players on the market - They often are more flexible with pricing as they are looking to break into the market.
Ask the SEC community - The SEC Slack is a great place to engage with others to answer questions or get introduced to new tech.

Final thoughts

If you take one learning away from this article, let it be that technology is not a magic wand and won’t solve all of your problems.

It’s expensive, and time-consuming to implement correctly, but when done well and at the right time, it can really help scale your efforts and drive meaningful results for your team.

Need some additional guidance? Discover our sales enablement tech stack checklist. 👇