The SaaS revenue tech stack can help you grow your business, but if you don’t plan carefully, you might invest in tools that aren’t helpful and don’t yield ROI. Sydney Sloan, CMO at Salesloft, shares advice for building a cohesive and effective RevTech stack for each revenue phase.
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The RevTech Guiding Principles
The sales landscape has evolved rapidly in recent years as buyers grow more independent and inclined to research before they buy. This means the customer relationship is the defining factor in a sale. As Sloan puts it, “Selling as a thing isn’t going away, but it’s changing…it’s not about the sale, it’s about the relationship. It’s about connecting buyers and sellers together to solve problems.”
This idea of connection and problem-solving should inform your planning to build a technology stack. With this idea in mind, there are a few more guiding principles to help.
- People inform the process. Process before technology. First, you need to ask what your team needs before you create a process. Then you are ready to add the technology to execute your people-first process.
- Revenue team > marketing and sales. Your sales and marketing teams should be working alongside each other. If you create too many team silos, your RevTech may be disjointed as teams aren’t communicating as seamlessly. When you think of your sales and marketing as your combined revenue team, everyone is clearly working toward a single goal which means the tech needs will be easier to pinpoint.
- Keep it simple for sales (automate). Be sure you find tools to make it easier for sales to do their work. Of course, this will look different at varying stages of growth, but keep your sales processes straightforward and bring in the right tools to help execute as you adjust your strategy and team size.
- Invest according to revenue. The key to creating the most effective tech stack is timing. Certain platforms will be a necessity right from the start, while others will be more relevant down the line as you grow your revenue.
- Democratize insights and intelligence. Business intel transparency is critical, and you need to make sure the information is easily accessible to everyone. Choose platforms that make it simple to share data across teams.
Create a tech purchase process early when your teams start acquiring technology for your company so you are constantly tracking what tools you have, who is responsible, and what it will cost.
The Right Technology for Your Growth Stage
Level One: Startup $1million to $10 million
In your early days, you are focusing on acquiring your first customers, and you must have tools to manage transactions, keep records and gather immediate insights to help your growth. In addition, sales must leverage a variety of communication and outreach tactics, including phone, email, SMS, social media, etc. Here you will hire a product marketing leader that can help craft your brand positioning and engage through your early critical channels, including website, social media, and blog content.
In this phase, you must find a CRM as well as sales data software.
Level Two: Scale-Up $10million to $30million
As your revenue grows, your communication with customers must graduate to a more sophisticated level. Your sales and marketing will incorporate more channels, including live chat, SEO/PPC, digital events, video, etc. Additionally, you will want to update your sales process and offer coaching to your sales teams to ensure a higher number of wins.
Finally, you need to invest revenue intelligence to gather information and support your infrastructure as you continue to scale.
In this phase, invest in live chat, a broadcasting/webinar platform, and AI & revenue intelligence software.
Level Three: Established $30million+
Now that your business is more established, you’ll need to figure out how to continue a personalized, relationship-focused sales process at scale. When you reach this level, you will be better positioned to pursue enterprise-level prospects through intense ABM efforts.
You will also double your sales enablement and training to account for expansion and the high-value accounts.
This revenue stage is the phase where marketing automation software becomes critical to help automate your essential sales and marketing processes and track campaign success. As Sloan mentions, “With marketing automation, you get program tracking and attribution, so you know what programs are actually working.”
In this phase, you need to adopt a marketing automation platform and an LMS (learning management software).
Key Takeaways
- Design the right experience. Understand your team’s needs, develop the process, and then implement the tech.
- Enable your team to do what they do best. Communicate clearly with them and provide the right tools to help.
- As you scale, manage and maintain your processes, adding to your tech stack when necessary.
