A Winning Sales Tech Stack, According to G2

It’s the most wonderful time of the year quarter: G2 report time.

We’re taking a look at what a “winning” sales tech stack looks like, according to G2’s Spring Grid and Index reports. 

(Disclaimer: bear in mind that G2 should be just one of several inputs a buyer’s purchasing decision — and because reports are updated quarterly, “leaders” are apt to shift around. Typically, there are multiple solid options in each category, depending on your size, budget and needs.)

A Perfect Sales Tech Stack

We’ve put together a curated tech stack that only includes G2 leaders. Each vendor is personally vetted — and in many cases, used — by Ambition. Without further ado, here are our Spring 2020 picks.

• CRM Software: Salesforce

• Sales Engagement Software: Outreach.io

• Conversation Intelligence Software: Chorus.ai

• Sales Enablement Software: Highspot

• Sales Gamification Software: Ambition

• Sales Coaching Software: Ambition

• Sales Training and Onboarding Software: Lessonly

• Sales Compensation Software: Xactly

Read on for a breakdown and description of each category and vendor.

BEST CRM SOFTWARE

CRM Software: Salesforce 

• G2 Category Description: CRM software (customer relationship management software), sometimes referred to as sales force automation (SFA) software, helps businesses track and manage customer interactions in a single system of record. A CRM will record interactions between a business, its prospects, and its existing customers.

• Why Salesforce: This probably isn’t a surprise to anyone. It’s safe to say that the vast majority of mid-market and enterprise teams we work with are using SFDC. With that being said: there are other notable leaders in the category, like Hubspot and Microsoft Dynamics (which is part of the reason we built Ambition to integrate with Salesforce as well as other CRMs).

BEST SALES ACCELERATION SOFTWARE

As we mentioned above, there are several great — and necessary — tools that fall under Sales Acceleration. Our two must-have picks: Email Tracking Software and Conversation Intelligence. 

1. Email Tracking Software: Outreach.io

• G2 Category Description: “Email tracking software allows users to track emails and collect analytics such as email open rates, the volume of clicks on links in emails, and the number of downloads of email attachments.” 

• Why Outreach: Outreach provides email tracking, cadence, and sales automation features for use by sales teams. Outreach is all about driving deeper engagement on your sales team by helping reps execute their best playbooks with sales sequences, multi-channel communication and personalization.

>>> DOWNLOAD FREE SALES COACHING TEMPLATE FROM OUTREACH <<< 

2. Conversation Intelligence Software: Chorus.ai

• G2 Category Description: “Conversation intelligence (CI) software...helps sales orgs optimize and improve their ability to close deals. CI software records sales calls and facilitates playback, transcriptions, and scoring, so that both sales representatives and sales managers can identify highs and lows.”

• Why Chorus.ai: With Chorus.ai, all your calls and video conference get automatically recorded and accurately transcribed in real-time. Sales teams leverage conversation data for note-taking, follow-ups, coaching, and onboarding. AI-based insights help track deal risks, next steps, talk track adoption, and surfaces what works or doesn’t work for a specific company’s sales cycle.

BEST SALES PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

Sales Performance Management is an ever-evolving category. “Legacy” players focus on territory planning and compensation; newer tools are all about sales coaching, motivation, and training. Our opinion: both SPM “generations” could very well have a place in your tech stack. 

1. Sales Gamification Software: Ambition

• G2 Category Description: “Sales gamification software enhances the sales process by adding competition and recognition as additional motivation for sales representatives. Sales departments indicate the metrics by which their team will be judged, and the tool ranks employees based on their success against those metrics. Rankings are displayed publicly with employees’ scores based on data pulled from the team’s CRM system.”

• Why Ambition: Ambition is a powerful system for managers and leaders to change behavior and build culture.The product specializes in the alignment of KPI goals across business segments, roles, teams, all the way down to the individual rep. Within the gamification platform, both remote and in-office managers have a series of levers to ignite competition and action — like sales floor TVs, a flexible competition engine, and real-time alerts for celebration or course correcting.

2. Sales Coaching Software: Ambition

• G2 Category Description: “Sales coaching software gives salespeople and managers the ability to analyze and collaborate on sales calls and emails to help refine technique, establish best practices, and improve sales close rates. Sales coaching tools enable continuous training with features such as conversation intelligence, live feedback from observers, and the signalling of upsell or close opportunities.”

• Why Ambition: With Ambition Coaching, sales managers structure formal, consistent and effective coaching programs — automatically. They also have the power to coach beyond their 1:1s, recognizing wins in real-time and stepping in when their reps need it most. Features include automated 1:1, sales scorecards, action plans and integrations with other sales tools that can support your coaching conversations, like Chorus.

3. Sales Enablement Software: Highspot

• G2 Category Description: “Sales enablement software provides a repository for marketing collateral and sales playbooks to supply sales representatives with content that is productive, useful, and opportune during all aspects of the selling cycle. Sales enablement tools ensure that any sales representative can find the proper content, submit it to prospects, and track prospect engagement within that piece of content.”

• Why Highspot: Highspot combines intelligent content management, training, contextual guidance, customer engagement, and actionable analytics. Go-to-market teams use Highspot to deliver a unified buying experience that increases revenue, customer satisfaction, and retention.

4. Sales Training and Onboarding Software: Lessonly

• G2 Category Description: “Sales training and onboarding software helps newly hired salespeople learn the ins and outs of their organization’s sales processes and gradually ramp up their selling abilities.”

• Why Lessonly: Lessonly is powerfully simple training software that helps teams share knowledge, develop skills, and reinforce best practices. The result is faster onboarding, higher NPS scores, more closed deals, and a superior customer experience.

5. Sales Compensation Software: Xactly

• G2 Category Description: “Sales compensation software automates the accounting and administration of commissions and incentive plans based on several customizable rules such as employee role, tenure, or sale type. It also allows salespeople to view their quotas and progress while enabling management to generate reports to gain high-level insights into sales performance.”

• Why Xactly: Xactly Corporation provides enterprise-class, cloud-based, incentive compensation solutions for employee and sales performance management. Xactly Incent gives enterprise companies robust features and capabilities to successfully design, implement, and manage their compensation programs. With powerful functionality and an extensive module suite, Xactly Incent lets organizations increase ROI with optimized plans, improved efficiencies, and greater accuracy.

>>> DOWNLOAD FREE SALES SCORECARD TEMPLATE FROM XACTLY <<<

Working remotely? See why managers use Ambition to hold their remote sales teams accountable to goals.