Leveraging technology the right way to drive sales

According to HubSpot’s 2023 Global Sales Survey, building personal relationships is the most important part of selling — but most sales teams have too much on their plate to be able to prioritise connecting with prospects and customers. On top of that, sales leaders are dealing with challenges related to productivity and they’re being asked to do more with less.

To make matters worse, many are overwhelmed dealing with cumbersome, bloated tech stacks that their teams are not making the best use of — sales reps only use 62% of their tech stack — especially if additional tools were brought on hastily, such as during the pandemic.

The future of selling is in building better relationships and technology is helping sales teams facilitate better connections. Here’s how.

Choose the Right Sales Automation Tools

By using tech platforms built for selling and relationship-building, like HubSpot's Sales Hub, sales teams can drive productivity and connect meaningfully with prospects. 39% of sales leaders from HubSpot’s 2023 Global Sales Survey feel that increasing the amount of time reps spend on selling will move the needle most. To do so, they need to automate the manual tasks like logging calls, tracking down prospect information, and crafting outreach messages.

Once you’ve established the right CRM, outreach, and prospecting tools, audit your tech stack. Invest in training and enablement to ensure that teams get the most value out of paid tools and get rid of tools that don’t integrate seamlessly with the rest of the stack, and especially your CRM.

Thomas Jeng shared that Aspire uses HubSpot as their single source of truth for teams across the organisation, alongside other integrated tools like Slack and Google Suite ensure a consistent flow of information across the company. 

And at fast-growing fintech Volopay, when the team needed a robust CRM to help increase revenue and grow sales, they implemented HubSpot’s Sales Hub which boosted productivity by 30%, increased their close rate by 20%, and saw a 40% time savings for sales management.

Test AI-Powered Tools that Automate Repetitive Tasks

Scott Pugh from Figma shared the only way to truly build trust and understanding with customers is to build actual relationships with them. The text of an outreach email can be partially crafted by an AI tool, but relationship building is purely human talent.

72% of sales professionals in Singapore who use AI to assist with prospect outreach say the response rate is higher, and they’re also saving a ton of time.

Keep Sales Teams Engaged, Even in a Hybrid Environment

Uma Thana Balasingam is the Vice President, Partner & Commercial Sales Asia Pacific & Japan at VMware. She shared, “In Asian corporate culture, the measure of an employee's productivity and success was once gauged by who stayed at their desk the longest or left the office last. However, the pandemic shifted this perspective, emphasizing actual results: it's now about who can forge strong relationships and seal more deals, regardless of where or how they work”

“The secret to leading successful sales teams in any setting is to distinguish between mere participation and genuine engagement." Uma shared. Asia Growth Forecast co-host Romka Walkowiak agreed, and shared that tech can help. “Invest in platforms that help people access information immediately so that collaboration is smooth, and everybody feels let in on a subject instantaneously,” she said.

To learn more, listen to Sales Disrupted: Navigating Asia’s Changing Landscape with Uma Thana Balasingam.

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