Not every tool in your tech stack is meant to be kept around for the long haul. So when your tools no longer live up to the job you hired them to do, or a repeating job other tools do more efficiently, let them go. A tech stack made up of fewer tools isn’t a bad thing if the technology is better at boosting your sales team’s performance.
The sweet spot between hard and soft costs
After you’ve identified your most valuable technology, it’s time to start calculating the cost of removing some of your less utilized technology vendors. At first glance, this process might seem like you’re just assigning dollar signs. All you have to do is figure out the monthly cost difference, right? While you might think that initially, it’s a potentially significant mistake to end the analysis here. There’s also “soft” opportunity costs to consider. The soft opportunity cost combines with the hard cost to offer a complete analysis of the total cost (or savings) of consolidating technology providers, as shown in the formula below.
Soft Opportunity Cost + Hard Opportunity Cost = Consolidated Opportunity Cost
When measuring soft switching opportunity, it can be difficult at first to determine what sorts of changes are normal growing pains and what changes aren’t. For instance, while implementing a new tool, your sellers may not hit their quota as well. A portion of their energy will likely go into learning a new software, taking some time away from selling. And your company’s RevOps team may also need to dedicate more time than usual to vendor management and configuration during the initial days of implementing a new vendor. If you calculate your soft opportunity cost correctly, though, these pains will eventually fade away, and more productivity should result.
Download our Cost of Switching Technology Vendors Guide to break down these calculations even more.
Consolidating one tool might mean expanding another
Once you’ve calculated the full impact of your technology on your team’s budget, you may come to find that you need to increase the scope of another tool in your tech stack. Removing multiple tools may trigger a need to replace them with a single, better optimized one, or to update the scope of a contract you have with an existing tool.
If you do end up needing a new tool, then you’ll want to take this conversation to your CFO. For technology purchases and renewals, CFOs — and other relevant leaders who have access to your organization’s budget sheet — want all the facts. Think about value, usage of the current tech stack, and the potential to save money by consolidating redundant technology. You’ll want to prepare a few points like these to bring to your CFO’s attention beforehand. These points are good places to start:
Show how the technology will increase team productivity
Highlight how the consolidated technology you want helps your sales reps employ the right tactics, more often, and more successfully.
Share the expected tangible results (a.k.a. all the numbers)
Demonstrate how consolidating your tech stack will increase revenue and sales metrics, or result in your company needing to hire fewer reps. Using graphs and figures can help illustrate your point more clearly.
Get the C-suite on board
Turn your C-level execs into advocates, especially during tightened spending periods.
Identify existing tech and user adoption
If your already own technology with similar functionality, but it hasn’t caught fire with your team as far as usage goes, your CFO might squash the deal. Keep potential onboarding needs and user adoption in mind as a part of your soft costs.
The power of a consolidated tech stack with Salesloft
Still don’t believe in the power of consolidation? Then check out a few of these examples from real Salesloft customers. You’ll learn how we gave these sales teams everything they needed, all in one place.
Citrix was trapped in revenue limbo
Challenge: Unable to identify what types of activities resulted in positive revenue results, rep productivity at Citrix stayed stagnant.
Solution: In search of a tool that could help reps do more of the right things, more often, Citrix chose Salesloft. Using a single sales engagement platform with analytics around best practices, Citrix AEs improved their efficiency by over 320%.
Looker was stuck in a “no phone zone”
Challenge: Dealing with poor call quality and email deliverability issues, Looker AEs struggled to complete all of their desired sales activities.
Solution: With Salesloft Dialer, reps at Looker connected with buyers directly from the Salesloft platform, contributing to an increase of 672% in sales activities.
Lexmark reps were working 500 hours too many
Challenge: Due to company transformations, Lexmark AEs found themselves wasting time on manual processes and trying to keep up with change.
Solution: Salesloft Automation gave Lexmark AEs time back to focus on selling by removing 500+ hours of admin tasks from their workload.
Selling isn’t easy, but the right tools can help
Complex buyer journeys, multiple people on every buying committee, and the downturn of the economy make selling downright excruciating.
As sellers deal with unpredictable prospects and deal cycles, the last thing they need is to swivel between various tools to manually enter data that may or may not sync.
Get the tools you need to pin down the cost of your current sales tech stack and calculate the added value of consolidating that same tech stack — especially if you’re dealing with shrinking budgets, declining headcounts, and uncertain forecasts.
Like thousands of organizations, Salesloft is the lifesaver you need to get more out of your team, time, and tech. Let’s save your sales together in 2023 — and beyond!