Modern sales reps know that the tech Stack you have in place affects every part of your sales and prospecting process—yet many B2B sales stacks aren’t built with the intentionality they need to actually help you do your job better. A lot of the content that covers this topic offers sales professionals a big, generic list of tools and software to pick and choose from. But pulling from a haphazard list of tools doesn’t help you build a cohesive tech stack that actually works for you and your team members. Instead, you need to put together a deliberate set of tools that work together to make your sales process and your output better. That’s why we’re sharing the actual stack our sales team uses here at Leadfeeder. Below, our Sales Manager Alicia Murphy explains the three categories sales organizations need to find a solution for, plus her tips for building your own Sales Stack. Note: Does your sales stack need a tool to help you identify new leads and learn more about them? Sign up and try Leadfeeder free for 14 days to see the companies that visit your website, plus behavioral details about the pages they visit and more. Leadfeeder’s Own B2B Sales Stack Alicia believes there are a few key functions sales teams need to solve for with their stack—three of them, to be precise: Customer relationship and lead management Prospecting and getting to know leads Internal and client communication Our own sales stack solves for those three categories, each of which plays a specific and vital role in helping our sales activities move quickly and smoothly. Below, Alicia explains each function, and we share the tools we use for each. 1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Leadfeeder uses: Pipedrive Sales managers know that the right CRM software is the cornerstone of every sales technology stack. Your CRM is where your team stores lead data, tracks sales cycles and sales pipeline, and collaborates with other teams across the organization (like marketing and customer support). It’s a vital piece of your sales stack and one that most reps will use multiple times every day—so it’s important to find a CRM that ticks all of your team’s boxes. For us, that’s Pipedrive. We use our CRM to: Manage tasks and opportunities Store key lead and sales cycle information Score lead generation based on internal criteria On top of that, we also use Pipedrive’s dialer to integrate directly with our email client (Gmail), which further streamlines the outreach and follow-up process. 2. Prospecting and Getting to Know Leads Leadfeeder uses: LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Leadfeeder (of course) In B2B sales, a deep understanding of who you’re selling to is the foundation on which every deal is built. You need to know the basics—like the company details, where they’re located, etc.—but you also need to get to know leads on a deeper level, including: Technographic data (the tools and software they use) Company financial data (like annual revenue) Buying intent signals Their specific and unique needs To that end, Alicia and her team use LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator tool to identify and get the basics on qualified leads and decision-makers. We also use our own visitor identification software to: Personalize demos based on website behavior (i.e. Did they look at a specific feature or integration page?) Map website browsing behavior to the information in our CRM (via the two-way Pipedrive CRM integration) Narrow in on the leads and opportunities that are most engaged (if they looked at our pricing page or read through our testimonials, for example) We also use a tool that our team built internally to better understand how trial users are using our software. It helps us keep track of the features used often, the integrations connected, and the volume of leads identified—so we can better personalize and craft our pitch for when their trial ends. Note: Does your sales stack need a tool to help you identify new leads and learn more about them? Sign up and try Leadfeeder free for 14 days to see the companies that visit your website, plus behavioral details about the pages they visit and more. 3. Client and Internal Communication Leadfeeder uses: Intercom, Slack, Calendly, and Zoom The way our team looks at it, there are three main types of communication sales teams need to solve for: Internal communication with the rest of the sales team Communication with other teams in the company (like marketing, support, and sales enablement) External communication with leads and customers Since our needs for each of these types of communication differ, we use a handful of tools here. We use Slack to communicate with our own team as well as with people from other teams across Leadfeeder. For example, we have a channel where the product team keeps sales updated on new changes and launches. We use Calendly to schedule, track, and attribute (via UTM codes) sales meetings and demos—and Zoom to conduct meetings with customers. The last communication tool we use is Intercom. This part of our stack is largely driven by the support team, but by integrating the tool into our day-to-day, we’re better able to work with support to create a coherent, channel-agnostic experience for existing accounts and leads. We can tag individuals and companies, for example, so if someone contacts our support team via Intercom, their sales rep gets notified in Slack. From there, they can follow the conversation to stay up-to-date or tag in to chat with the lead or account themselves. Our Sales Manager’s Tips for Building Your Sales Stack Right In building our own sales stack from the ground up, we learned that it isn’t always easy to build a tech stack that fulfills all your needs and works for everyone on the team. When we asked Alicia for her advice on this part, most of her insights centered around putting in the work upfront—so you can simplify your process down the line. For more details on what that looks like, here are her three biggest recommendations on building your sales tech stack: Understand Your End Goal and Work Backward From There With new software and tools coming out what feels like daily, it’s easy to find yourself getting seduced by the newest, coolest, or flashiest sales software. But how does that software actually serve the core needs of you and your sales team? That’s one of the key questions Alicia recommends asking yourself. Another question to consider: What do you need to see in order to renew that software again next year? What does it have to add to (or take away from) your process? In short, every tool that you add to your sales stack should flow directly from your end goals. The trick is to start there, with your goals, and then work backward to fill in your stack wherever your process could be faster, easier, or otherwise better. Do More Qualitative Research (and Trial) With all of the free trials and quick ‘n easy signup flows of most of today’s sales software, it’s easy enough to just try as many tools as you need in order to find the right solution for your team. While that isn’t the worst idea, it does require a lot of effort and time investment to onboard salespeople and implement the solution—that’s a waste if the tool doesn’t end up working for you. To mitigate that process, Alicia recommends doing more qualitative research upfront. In addition to researching things like features and pricing, take a look at what other customers say about a tool on third-party review websites (like G2 or Capterra). Then you can use that information to identify the benefits and drawbacks your specific team may see from the solution. Another option is to make trialing the tool a part of your research process. You can consider rolling out new software to a smaller section of the whole team to see how it goes. If that goes well and you implement across the broader team, you should regularly gather feedback over the first few months, to ensure the solution is working as you want it to. Look for Ease of Implementation and Integrations When in doubt, Alicia recommends prioritizing how easily your team can get started with a sales tool and how well it can fit into your existing stack. The easier a tool is to implement and onboard the rest of the team, the less you have to lose when giving it a try—and the faster your team will reap the benefits. On top of that, the most capable, robust sales software in the world doesn’t help your team much if it adds to their process, instead of streamlining it. That’s why building a cohesive stack full of tools that play really well together is so important. Building Your Perfect B2B Sales Stack A capable sales stack has the power to streamline your entire sales funnel, making your team faster and more effective at turning leads into customers. That’s why it’s vital to avoid cobbling together a bunch of disparate tools—and build a cohesive tech stack that directly addresses your team’s goals. With the three categories we outlined above (plus Alicia’s tips for putting together the ideal sales stack), you can build a system that works for you.