Lessons From Sales History: How To Build a B2B Sales Tech Stack That Works

Let’s talk about the good and the evil of the sales tech stack. It’s up next in this episode of Closing Time Welcome to Closing Time, the show for go-to-market leaders. I’m Val Riley, head of content marketing at Insightly. and today I’m joined by Todd Caponi. He is an author and a speaker in the sales field and a self-described transparency nerd. Welcome to the show, Todd. Thanks for having me. And this topic I can’t wait to dig into because I’m also a bit of a sales history nerd, too. And there’s a lot that we can dig into as it relates to today’s sales tech stack. Which I know sounds weird, but I can’t wait to jump in. Yeah. So on our pre call for this one, Todd, you kind of blew me away the way you positioned the telephone. So I think we should start there. Yeah, I mean, it’s amazing. So today, when you look across the sales landscape, right? Technology is filling every remaining crevice that remains in the sales. Like there was a chart that I saw that had like all the different sales technologies available and the logos are so tiny on it, you’d need a high powered microscope to look. And that’s, that’s wild to me. And when you see those things, people are like, wow, we’re in a sales technology revolution. I would argue something different. I would argue that the greatest sales technology revolution actually was kicked off on March 10th of 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell made the first phone call. Right. Like sales tech revolution, the telephone was probably the biggest one of all time. And fast forward to today, the end of 2021. There were 221 million phone numbers on the do not call registry. Right. And those people they put their name on it because, I think salespeople ruined right. They ruined the telephone.. We’ve done this over and over again, where we’ve taken this technology and we’ve gotten blinded by this idea of scale and we stopped thinking about the customer and we did it with the telephone, we did it with email. We can dig into a little bit more. And I see us doing it over and over again with other technologies and, and that to me, if I was Alexander. Graham Bell, I’d be rolling over right now going, what happened? This is a great investment, a great invention. And the next thing you know, salespeople, they ruined it. And so that’s my perspective from like when we think about the future of technology, we got to think about how we’ve used technology before as a lens to how we can best optimize in the future, because I don’t think technology is bad. Yeah. You know, it took us a long time to ruin the telephone, but I feel like we ruined email pretty quickly. Yeah, you know, it’s funny. So let me tell you another little quick story. So 1916, it was July of 1916 there was a sales conference that was taking place in Detroit, Michigan, attended by 3000 people, and it was the first of its kind. So imagine a sales conference today, 3000 people. The keynote speaker was then. President Woodrow Wilson. Now that’s like imagine a conference today where like the sitting president of the United States shows up and is doing the keynote. Like why would that happen. Well in 1916, sales was actually a respected, trusted and in some cases even admired profession, meaning that at the time Woodrow. Wilson’s message and really the message throughout the sales community was listen the rest of the world is diving into World. War One, right? So they’re distracted. We as an economy and as a country had an opportunity to really take advantage of that and establish ourselves as a world power. And most people looked at the sales profession as the vessel for that to happen, sales people selling the right products to the right people at the right time, at the right price, and doing it honestly and transparently would lift all boats, because when those customers, those customers in those companies succeed, they hire more, they spend more, the economy grows, and we all grow from that. Right. And so that is the lens that I look at. What was the difference? Well, thinking about that chart that. I talked about that’s got all the logos on it, I labored and created a very similar chart. Oh, actually, it was a blank piece of paper. The technology chart in 1916. There was nothing on it. Right. That’s the difference. I think with this proliferation of technology, we’ve eroded that trust that people have with the sales profession too. And I believe it comes down to this salespeople in 1916 if you were going to sell, you had to do it face to face. You had to do it door to door, human to human, you had to look at people in the eyes. Technology allowed us to lose our face, to lose our eye contact, to lose that human to human. We can make phone calls right and even have to look at you. I could send emails. Well, I could sell a million of them in a minute. Right? That was the beginning of the end. And the erosion of the relationship that buyers started to have with salespeople. And to your point, we did it with the telephone. We needed technologies invented to help prevent salespeople from making calls like Dr. Shirley Jackson’s invention that led to the creation of caller ID. That didn’t work. We needed the government to get involved with the do not call registry. Email. Same thing, credible gift given to salespeople. We ruined it. We needed technologies created to help prevent salespeople from selling through, you know, spam filters and IP blacklists. And that didn’t work. And the government had to get involved again with 2003 CAN-SPAM Act. Right. And other countries have very similar ones. That’s because of salespeople, right? They’re a big contributor to that. I think to your point, we did that pretty fast. I look at LinkedIn. Incredible gift, right?. I can see your résumé. I can see your face,. I can see where you are. I see what you’re interested in. And my LinkedIn connection requests gross me out. Video, like all of these things. And to your point,. I think there’s an opportunity to use those gifts for good, not evil. And it’s not too late. Yeah. So I think what I hear you saying is we have to make sure we’re so human, right? We have all this plethora of this MarTech stack that can be, you know, overwhelming. But we still have to make sure we’re getting that human to human connection and then use those tools to make us more efficient in doing that, make us more effective in doing that. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think the purpose of everything is to start with the purpose of what our responsibility is as a salesperson. And we’ve talked about it in some of these other episodes, but I just viewed that the kind of the future of sales is this idea that the sales person really should act as a Sherpa. Do the homework for the buyer, help them reach a conclusion or a prediction as to whether or not a solution is worthy, whether an outcome is worthy of going after, and whether it’s with you or with somebody else. Reach that conclusion by doing the homework for the buyer. Now, when we start there and work backwards and go at what technologies will help buyers reach a better conclusion and us being able to get to more buyers so they can reach those conclusions faster, I think those are really the two lenses that we need to think about because most technology investments that I see, a lot I guess most of them are based on this idea of scale, right? Like I almost feel like scale is a dirty word where organizations are so focused on let’s get to as many people as possible pitch as many people as possible. And it’s like, you know how we ruined email, let’s send out a million emails. And even if 1% say yes, that’s 1% we wouldn’t have gotten if we wouldn’t have sent a million emails. The sales profession seems to take that same lens and use technology to do that. And I think we’ve got to reverse course on that. And again, put the buyer first. So if I’m a sales leader and I’m considering adding to my tech stack, what are the questions? What are the litmus tests that I should do before I say, OK, we’re going to add yet another platform? Well, yeah, I think it starts with analyzing your own buyer journeys that your buyers go through. It starts with that level of empathy that says, hey, as a buyer,. I’ve got a lot of priorities. It’s hard for me to make purchases. We’ve talked about this in a recent episode about this idea that consensus buying is hard. Remote consensus buying is harder. What can we do to ease that journey for our buyers? Start there, analyze that, and then start to take that lens. Whenever we’re thinking about any technology, we’re going to bring it right. Is this technology that we’re bringing in going to help buyers buy more effectively with better outcomes? A. And then if the answer is no, stop, move on. If the answer is yes, then go. All right. Is this a technology that we can bring in that’s going to make our sales organization more effective, more efficient, and help buyers reach better outcomes? And get some more buyers right? Like scale can be a dirty word. It’s blind to whether the buyer is experiencing a better outcome scale could be a great word when it’s, hey, we can help more buyers reach better outcomes and do this much more cleanly. That’s the lens. Does it help buyers if yes, go to the second question. If no, move on. The second question again is, all right, does this allow our organization to achieve better outcomes for more buyers? Do it more effectively, more efficiently, less cost. But it’s always got to start with the buyer. Those are really actionable steps for our listeners. And I actually appreciate it. I know that sometimes sales leaders might feel like if they don’t keep a pulse on like all of the sales platforms out there, that they might miss something, they might miss that next technology or miss the boat on something that can really help their team. So what are some things that sales leaders can do to make sure that they’re kind of staying on the pulse of things? But obviously, as you mentioned, so many techs out there that could get overwhelming very quickly. Yeah, I mean,. I think it’s just a matter of you know, one of the things that’s great about the 2020s is all of the communities that we see rising up everywhere. I mean, even for me personally, I’m a member of a couple where I get opportunities to ask questions and have, you know, some of these communities that people are sharing like, Hey, I just used this tech and it helped me here and right, like get involved. I think for any leader, any salesperson, any marketer, anybody that if all we’re doing is living in our own little bubble and viewing the world through only the four walls of what we do every single day, we are absolutely going to miss those. But the alternative which I see companies doing is let’s freaking buy everything right, we’ll try everything right and see how it goes. And like, I think that’s crazy, too. There’s people out there that are a lot like you that are experiencing things and getting gains that you’ve got an opportunity to interact with and share and then find those great salespeople that can be a Sherpa and aren’t afraid to tell you what the downside is along with the upside. That combination, I think, is a killer when it comes to the future of selling. But more importantly, the way that we think about growing our tech stocks, because again, some of it is really good, but a lot of it that’s good can still be used for evil. And we’ve just got to think about that. Todd, this is great. I really do feel like we gave our viewers some actionable takeaways. Thank you for your time. Yeah. And thanks for letting me get a little history nerdy, too. That was fun. I love it. The telephone. You know, I guess it’s a good thing. Alexander Graham Bell, his assistant, didn’t like kick it to voicemail or not pick up right. Would have been funny. Yes. All right, everybody, thanks for joining us on this episode of Closing Time, the show for go-to-market leaders. Don’t forget, subscribe, hit that bell for notifications so you don’t miss a thing. We’ll see you next time.