SalesTech adoption rates and spend continue to increase according to a recent SalesTech study of 268 B2B sales and marketing managers conducted by Smart Selling Tools. Only 3% of respondents are planning on reducing their SalesTech spend in 2020 while 6% plan to spend significantly more in 2020 and 41% slightly more. Expanded spending will be focused on the top and middle of the funnel followed by management and reporting. Skills Development, Onboarding, and Bottom of the Funnel expenditures have a lower priority.
Over the past year, SalesTech spend per user has increased significantly. In 2017, only one-third of respondents spent in excess of $150 per user, but two years later, 65% spend more than $150 per user. As the average number of sales tools in use rose only modestly from 4.5 to 4.9 over the past two years, the spend per product has likely increased. The number of applications that are used by a majority of respondents trebled to six (CRM, Online Meetings, Lead List/Database, Social Selling, Account Targeting, and Skills Training & Reinforcement) with an additional four at 47% or higher. CRMs are used by 75% of respondents, lead/list databases by 65%, and social selling by 60%. The one category that dropped in usage was online meetings.
Adoption rates of technologies were fairly even by company size with large firm (500+) employees more likely to have adopted Sales Enablement, Skills Training & Reinforcement, and Sales Performance & Compensation. Conversely, firms with fewer than 500 employees were more likely to have adopted Prospect Engagement (Sales Engagement) solutions.
Account targeting tools for ideal customer prospecting grew from 4% to 51% over the past year, a clear indication that ABM strategies have been adopted. Lead Engagement (communicating at scale with early-stage, unqualified leads) grew from 11% to 49%, while social selling grew from 10% to 60%.
“The significant increase in
Smart Selling Tools founder Nancy Nardin.usage of sales tools across the board indicates a trend (likely irreversible). If your organization is slow to take up the use of sales tools, you could get left behind. Even so, we don’t recommend adding new sales tools without considering what’s required to keep them up to date and who will be responsible, having a plan for measuring success (what does “Good” look like?), and deciding what’s required to establish and grow user adoption.”
The top three industries represented in the study were technology (42%), Financial Services (9.3%), and Manufacturing (8.7%).