ales operations have been revolutionized by a range of modern software. From CRM, to sales enablement, to data management and analytics, modern sales teams are empowered more than ever before. Yet, those same software stacks that empower teams, also have begun hurting productivity.
Wait a second. Hurting productivity? Well yes, and here’s why: An average sales organization has 10 tools in their sales stack, and plans to add at least 4 more each year. With all of these tools, it’s no wonder that workers lose 32 days(!) per year in productivity due to switching between apps.
Those same tools that are empowering you to do more, are also crushing your productivity. And those lost hours turn into lost revenue and less deals being won!
So what is a busy sales team to do? In this article, we’ll discuss the challenge and potential solutions in more detail.
Bigger Stacks = Less Productivity
As sales organizations grow and mature, they need to move beyond the basic CRM. Some popular CRM leaders include HubSpot, Salesforce, and Microsoft Dynamics. This is where their software “stack” comes into play. They begin investing in new software to connect into the CRM. It might include sales enablement tools, meetings and scheduling software, demoing tools, e-signature software, and team communication software.
In short, as sales teams’ needs grow, companies add more software to the stack. Yes, your sales team can do more than ever. But the cost is that it introduces more complexity and more tasks to manage.
Suddenly, instead of being able to manage all your tasks from your CRM, your tasks span across a dozen or more tools. But, there’s no longer one dashboard or one task list for everything that needs to get done. Inevitably, key tasks get missed – like signing a contract to close that big deal, or replying to a top prospect’s email. And worse, your team is stuck switching between different apps all day long, losing valuable hours where they could be selling.
Obviously, adding more tools to your stack is critical to your team’s success. So how do you ensure that you don’t impact productivity in the process?
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Project Management Tools: An Incomplete Solution
Sales teams have begun to turn to traditional project management software to help close the gap. And yes, those tools can be great for managing work, but there are two major downsides. First, even the simplest ones are needlessly complicated for sales teams. Your team wants checklists and reminders – not GANTT charts and resource prioritization. Second, these tools require manual data entry. You need someone to take everyone’s tasks, from every software system, and manually enter them.
At best, project management tools are an incomplete solution. Yes, they ensure that all the work gets done. But only as long as someone is manually entering every task, every day.
What happens if that person is out of the office? Or what if they incorrectly prioritize a task, resulting in a key deadline being missed?
Managing Sales Operations Tasks in a Better Way
Imagine if your sales team had a single dashboard for all of their tasks, across all of their systems. And imagine if Artificial Intelligence automatically did the data entry and prioritization for you.
This reality is already here. An AI-Driven Productivity Hub like MetaSpark makes it easier than ever to reign in your software stack.
The AI part is really important here: it does all of the work for you. You simply integrate the software into your existing tools. The AI brings everyone’s tasks, from every system, into a single screen. Unlike complicated project management software, it is all done automatically.
So for example, your sales team can access from a single dashboard:
- All of their important emails and follow up reminders
- All of their tasks and reminders from CRM
- All of their documents that need reviewed or signed
And by centralizing everyone’s tasks into a single, easy-to-use dashboard, their productivity is restored. No more tabbing between different software tools. Their work is presented in a clear and prioritized way, so your sales team can focus on what’s truly important: getting more sales.
Want to learn more about how MetaSpark can help improve efficiency in your sales operations? Get a demo today.
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