9 Ways Tech Stacks Can Backfire on SDR Teams

Sales technology can certainly be helpful, but we’ve found it often slows down your sales teams, specifically your SDRs. How can your team utilize inside sales tools to improve the performance of your SDRs and boost sales? Let’s find out.

What is a tech stack?

Simply put, the tools and applications your sales team uses to do their job. Often technology for sales teams should reduce the admin load, which includes data entry, emailing prospects and customers, scheduling calls, enriching leads, creating reports with the necessary data for leadership, and managing proposals – to name a few.

Most sales technology platforms and apps fall into the following categories:

• Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - Helps SDRs record and reference interactions with customers and prospects.
• Email Tracking Software - Helps SDRs track open rates and link clicks within sent emails. These typically integrate with whatever email application your team may use.
• Sales Intelligence - Helps SDRs discover contact and company data.
• Analytics Software - Helps SDRs and sales leaders track progress, metrics, and impact.
• Productivity Apps - Help SDRs with task management, automation, and process streamlining.

What’s the impact of technology on sales teams?

Sales technology should boost productivity, improve lead coverage, provide a better understanding of prospects and customers, enhance data reporting to leadership, and utilize time efficiently and effectively.

Specifically, sales tech helps automate, streamline, and organize sales processes and reduce the admin load we mentioned above. It should also help your SDRs work smarter to do what they do best: Build meaningful touchpoints at scale, book meetings, and advance deal stages.

9 ways technology often backfires on SDR teams

We’ve sung sales technology’s praises, but now we have to recognize that it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. Though technology is supposed to help your SDR teams, it often doesn’t. So, how does technology backfire on your SDR team?

1. Removes personalization, turning your SDRs into robots. 71% of consumers expect personalization and 76% are frustrated when there isn’t personalization. Technology can unfortunately make the friendliest SDR sound like a robot. Most sales technology seeks to automate communication, solving a major challenge for SDRs. But automation sometimes reduces personalization causing fewer open rates and less successful relationships with prospects and customers.
2. Causes tool overload and excessive toggling. Is anyone else tired of having 10+ tabs open and numerous applications running? SDRs sure are. Most companies are purchasing 27 sales tools on average and have 5 applications in their tech stack. Technology meant to optimize ends up cumbersome and hard to track when your SDRs time is spent learning dozens of systems and jumping back and forth between multiple tools.
3. Disrupts current workflows. Introducing new technology will disrupt the workflow of your team, no matter how much the tool will improve it. Your team has to learn and adopt this new technology and then take weeks, often months, to become fully comfortable with the platform or software. Sometimes, your team may never fully learn the tool and it will just become more of a hindrance than a help.
4. Takes more time – not less. But wait, isn’t technology supposed to reduce time-consuming tasks, not add more? Yes, you’re right. But unfortunately, technology often adds more time to your SDRs day – especially when it’s clunky and hard to understand or simply doesn’t solve their problems.
5. Costs more than it saves. Aside from the fees you already expect, new technology often has hidden costs like technical experts that are necessary for implementation, training, and ongoing support. The time it takes for everyone to be trained and adopt the technology (and that’s not just SDRs, we’re talking AEs and sales leadership) can also prove costly. In the end, your technology may be costing you more than it’s saving you.
6. Doesn’t play nicely with other platforms and apps. It’s likely your team’s tools don’t all integrate seamlessly, which leads to duplicative data entry (and wasted time), miscommunication, misalignment, and lost information.
7. Isn’t built for your SDRs. A lot of sales technology is not built with SDRs in mind. Instead, most tech is built for sales managers and sales ops leaders and is not intended to increase productivity or help convert leads to opportunities.
8. Doesn’t get fully utilized. According to SBI’s 2021-22 SalesTech Audit, less than half of commercial leaders believe their teams are utilizing the full potential of their sales tools. Countless features that could be helping your SDRs work smarter and better may be overlooked or ignored.
9. Bought at the wrong time for the wrong issue. An important part of finding the right sales technology is understanding how it works, what it solves, and what gaps it would fill in your organization. The right technology depends on many factors like company size, audience, pain points, goals, and industry. When your team adds the wrong tech to their stack, it backfires.

How to win with sales technology

Now that you know the pros and cons of sales technology, how do you utilize it to improve the performance of your sales team and empower your SDRs?

• Reduce your tech stack with the right technology. You shouldn’t need 5+ tools to have a successful sales process. Often all you need is 1-2 great tools. And sometimes, you really just need to add one. Say hello to Sellular. Sellular gives your SDRs the tools they need to do their job – all in one easy-to-use sales engagement platform. From automated task management to personalized outbound prospecting at scale, Sellular is the one-stop shop for productive sales development. And you can also manage your Salesforce admin in it too, so say goodbye to slogging through Salesforce.
• Automate and personalize your workflow. A key to improving your SDRs’ performance is to automate their admin load. And while you do so, don’t forgo your SDRs’ personal touch. With Sellular, your SDRs can personalize prospecting at scale through multiple channels like email, call, and text. They can also create customized sales sequences to simplify outreach and automate data entry with a two-way Salesforce integration.
• Do your research. When choosing tech for your SDRs, do your research. Choose software and apps that are simple and easy to use. This will reduce training time and increase adoption. And the simpler your tech, the more likely your SDRs will feel empowered to utilize the tool and give you more bang for your buck.

Choosing the right technology for your SDRs will improve their performance. Period. With the right tools, your SDRs will produce results, excel in their role, schedule more meetings for your AEs, and build the pipeline faster. Don’t choose technology that’s going to backfire on your team. Choose Sellular and bypass the backfires and head straight to the wins. Request a demo today.