5 ways to boost your sales tech stack and close more deals

Our recent research highlighted that virtual selling is here to stay. Although reps are well aware of the benefits this format offers, they can’t deny the unique challenges it brings. Identifying warm leads, building meaningful prospect relationships, and managing sales processes can be a lot more challenging in virtual environments than in-person settings. And with an abundance of tech tools out there, it’s no surprise that remote workers spend way too much time switching between SaaS platforms during their workday. 

This type of inefficiency is an absolute no-go for fast-moving sales teams. As the saying goes, time is money, and salespeople don’t want to lose either. As sales tech stacks across companies continue to grow, it’s easy to get caught up in the allure of the hot new tool. This is a slippery slope to reps spending more time managing tech than crafting a strategic follow-up. 

A sales rep’s tech can make or break the deal, but the answer may not lie in giving reps more tools, but rather in tools that do more with less. We’ve put together five simple ways to boost your sales tech stack and close more deals – with tools you’re likely already using.

1. Get notified instantly when a lead visits your DocSend link 

Outside of bluebird deals (an unanticipated, incredibly profitable sale), surprises have no place in the sales process. DocSend’s Zapier integration lets reps build automations between the tools they use most – keeping them in the know whenever a prospect has viewed their link. 

This customizable Zap brings prospect visibility directly to a place where it’s more readily available for the individual rep. Some reps never put down their phone. Some swear by email while others sleep in Slack. No matter your preferred communication method, you can receive instant updates when your shared link is opened.

It’s known that quick follow-up is key to closing the deal, but the best part of this Zap lies in its lesser-known benefit: the ability to identify new stakeholders as soon as they engage with your link. 

Imagine this scenario: your prospect says they’re the main decision-maker, but then forwards your collateral to their boss, the real decision-maker. DocSend lets you know when prospects engage with your collateral, and with whom they share it. You’ll know exactly when your documents are forwarded to and viewed by other stakeholders within the company.

Armed with this knowledge, sales reps can follow-up strategically and avoid being blindsided by unexpected stakeholders during the next call.

Top Zaps: 

• When a prospect visits your link -> Send yourself a direct message from the Slackbot

• When a prospect visits your link -> Send a message to a private Slack channel 

• When a prospect downloads your data room -> Send yourself a text

• When a prospect visits your link -> Create and send an email

• When a prospect visits your link -> Create and send an email

2. Automatically add new DocSend visitors to your CRM

Updating email lists and contacts within a CRM might be one of the most tedious tasks in existence. It’s definitely not something that reps should be spending lots of time on. 

Let’s say you’re a Biz Dev representative (BDR) and are sending out a ton of touches. Save yourself hours with a Zap that automatically adds or updates contacts based on how they engage with your shared collateral – all without ever leaving your preferred CRM.  

Automate email reminders, send prospect thank-yous, or add contacts to workflows as soon as someone engages with your DocSend content. If you’re feeling really fancy, you can even set up multi-step Zaps.

Favorite Zaps: 

• When a prospect visits your link -> Create or update contact

• When a prospect visits your link -> Add contact to a specific list, campaign, or workflow

• When a prospect downloads your data room -> Create or update contact

• When a prospect downloads your data room -> Add contact to a specific list, campaign, or workflow

3. Access detailed insights across mass email campaigns

The power of using DocSend to boost your sales tech stack doesn’t end with adding and updating contacts within your CRM. In fact, we’re just getting started.  

As a sales rep, you’re probably all too familiar with running email drip campaigns and sending mass personalized messages. Email outreach is an essential component of any sales process. But, tracking opens across sent emails isn’t enough to accurately measure prospect engagement. If that’s all you’re relying on, you’re missing out on analytics that give you real insight into prospect behavior. While a number of sales enablement tools have popped up to help reps scale email outreach, they don’t answer the critical question regarding how to improve deal negotiation. It’s impossible to track engagement with content you share in email sequences down to the target account and contact level.

To truly understand prospect behavior, you need detailed insight into not only when your collateral was viewed, but how often, for how long, if it was shared, and with whom. And you’re not going to get that by measuring email opens alone. 

DocSend’s document analytics gives sales reps x-ray vision into exactly how prospects are engaging with your collateral. This insight enables reps to craft compelling, strategic follow-up that speaks directly to their lead’s pain points. When sellers reach out at the right time, with the right content, it has the potential to win key accounts, and turn prospects into paying customers. 

DocSend not only gives you these detailed insights per viewer, but you can instantly access them at scale by leveraging our Mail Merge and Campaign links. 

“DocSend’s analytics really help you prioritize. If you’re reaching out to 100 people, you’re going to go after the first 10 that open that link. Just adding DocSend links into email campaigns gives me so much visibility into the individual that clicked, and how they engaged with the material. It’s so powerful.” - Paul Koelle, Dropbox DocSend

Mail Merge links

Use DocSend Mail Merge links directly in your message templates within your marketing automation tool of choice. Since Mail Merge links are tracked in the same way as DocSend links, you’ll get access to all the same insights, no matter how many leads you email the link to. 

It gets better: Collect in-depth visitor insights without having to prompt them for their email. That part is already configured on your marketing automation tool through the merge tag.

Campaign links

DocSend’s Campaign links take Mail Merge links to the next level. Reps can create a unique link to share content in their unique email cadences, without ever leaving workflows in either tool. Detailed prospect insights are now accessible at scale, and with virtually no effort. 

Campaign links function like robust Mail Merge links. You can target a specific set of prospects or accounts, which are configured within your marketing automation tool and mapped directly back to DocSend. 

DocSend Campaign links are available across a variety of CRMs, but if you’re using Outreach or Salesloft, the process goes from easy to ridiculously easy.

From inside either Outreach or SalesLoft, simply open the DocSend Chrome extension, select the content you want to share from the dropdown, and the Campaign Link will automatically be copied to your clipboard.

The best part? If you have a configured recipient list, you won’t have to ask visitors to provide their email before accessing your collateral, but you’ll still be able to see exactly who is viewing your content in DocSend.

Accessing unique prospect insights at scale (a note on Spawn links)

If you’re wondering what the heck a Spawn link is, we don’t blame you. Spawn links are how DocSend is able to independently track engagement and visits for each prospect under each target account. These new links are generated as visits occur with any Campaign or Mail Merge links emailed out. Don’t worry – you’ll still be able to keep track of which links are associated with which email blast, since each Spawn link’s URL will reference the original campaign link.

4. See exactly which collateral helps close deals

Having x-ray vision into prospect engagement with your content is game-changing. Being able to access those analytics at scale and identify macro-level trends? Sounds impossible. However, DocSend delivers both, directly within your CRM. 

At DocSend, we leverage our native Salesforce integration to track our content across every stage in the buyer’s journey. We can see how specific pieces of content (like our old vs new sales decks, case studies, whitepapers, etc) impact prospect engagement, and finally understand which pieces of content actually drive conversion. If you’re not using Salesforce, you can leverage our Zapier integration to pull similar reports into HubSpot, Marketo, or another CRM. 

The list of what you can track and analyze is endless. If you're managing a sales team and you want to know when your reps are creating links, you can track that and get automated alerts. You can track how many visits are received for a particular rep, and then from a particular account and cohort. 

Once you get enough visit data, you can begin to build really interesting reports that correlate ROI with content pieces. For example, if you see that a specific whitepaper or case study generated 10 opportunities and 8 closed deals, you can make decisions based on that. It justifies greater spend on whitepapers or case studies since you can actually tie data to them. 

In the past, we would have no way of knowing the ROI on the sales content we were sending out. Now we’re able to track content throughout the entire sales process, all the way to deal size, win rate, and revenue attainment. We’re able to easily map all individual prospect activity in DocSend at the account-level back to our CRM. 

5. Get deals signed faster with a seamless eSignature experience

Ah, the moment of truth. If you’ve made it all the way to the final stage of a deal cycle the last thing you want is friction. Or worse: to be ghosted this late in the game. Our research shows that deals are closing faster than ever, with sales contracts getting signed about a day after they’re sent out for signature. 

DocSend arms sales reps with the power to securely share, track, and analyze critical sales documents and truly understand prospect behavior. Why not use the same tool to get those documents signed? Seamless and simple, DocSend gives you the insight you need to get your prospects through the funnel, and the speed you need to get them to sign. Within seconds, you can convert any document in DocSend into a signable one. It couldn’t be easier. 

Eager to explore what DocSend has to offer? Take our free trial for a spin.