More Tech, Less Selling?

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There’s an old adage in sales: give your reps the right tools, and they’ll deliver the results. It’s not unusual to find sellers juggling fifteen or more tools just to get through the day. Prospecting platforms, CRM systems, conversation intelligence, enablement libraries, sales engagement tools, forecasting software, pipeline dashboards… and that’s before they’ve even opened their inbox.

Somewhere along the way, the sales stack became a tower. A high-rise of well-meaning tech promising better performance, more insights, less admin. But like a trader with too many monitors, the modern seller risks drowning in dashboards and pop-ups, paralysed by data and robbed of the very thing that made them good in the first place: the human touch.

The paradox of productivity

Research from Gartner paints a striking picture: the average sales rep spends just 28% of their week on actual selling. The rest is soaked up by internal meetings, CRM updates, training, and – you guessed it – managing technology. When McKinsey studied high-performing sales teams, they found that one of the biggest differentiators was not just the tech they used, but how little of it they used. Streamlined stacks, thoughtfully deployed.

It’s a paradox we rarely acknowledge: more tools don’t mean more selling. In fact, they often mean less. Salespeople are now being asked to think like marketers, analysts, project managers, and systems integrators – when what they’re best at is building trust and closing deals.

The COVID effect

When the world went remote almost overnight, organisations reached for the nearest lifeboat: technology. In 2020 alone, global enterprise spending on digital transformation soared past $1.3 trillion, according to IDC. Sales teams were kitted out with new tools for virtual meetings, collaboration, coaching, forecasting, engagement – anything to replicate the rhythm of the office, digitally.

The intention was good. The reality, less so.

Now, five years on, many businesses are left with bloated tech stacks, patchy adoption, and expensive multi-year contracts that no longer align with how their teams actually work. A 2023 study by Productiv found that, on average, only 47% of licensed SaaS tools in a typical enterprise are actively used. That means over half of what’s been bought is sitting idle.

For sellers, it’s created a strange hybrid world: physically distant, digitally cluttered, and often strategically misaligned. Reps aren’t rejecting tech – they’re rejecting friction. They’re rejecting tools that solve someone else’s problem but create three new ones for them.

Signal vs noise

There’s no shortage of data. Gong can tell you who mentioned budget and when. Salesforce will forecast your quarter before you’ve had your morning coffee. LinkedIn Sales Navigator will surface the hiring manager who just moved roles. The challenge isn’t a lack of information – it’s filtering the signal from the noise.

In a 2023 report by Forrester, 65% of sales reps said they felt “overwhelmed by the number of tools and data sources” they were expected to use. And 42% said they’d missed a deal because they were distracted by internal processes or platforms. That’s not inefficiency. That’s friction. And friction kills momentum.

The hidden cost of context-switching

Every time a seller moves from their engagement platform to update the CRM, checks the AI-generated call summary, flicks to Slack to answer an enablement question, then jumps back into their inbox – they’re context-switching. And context-switching comes with cognitive cost.

A study from the American Psychological Association showed that even brief mental blocks caused by shifting between tasks can reduce productivity by up to 40%. In a job where timing, nuance, and human connection matter, that’s a tax sellers can’t afford.

So what should we be doing?

We need to stop equating technology adoption with sales maturity. The best sales leaders aren’t throwing tools at the team and hoping for uplift – they’re curating the stack like an editor. What helps reps spend more time with prospects? What reduces drag? What enhances human moments instead of replacing them?

The most effective tools do one of three things:

1. Remove unnecessary admin
2. Surface truly actionable insights
3. Enable better conversations

Everything else is noise. And often, it’s expensive noise.

Back to basics

There’s something oddly comforting about the resurgence of old-school selling tactics – real-world networking, handwritten notes (follow Dale Dupree for some interesting techniques), well-timed phone calls. Not because we’re nostalgic. But because they still work. Technology should be in service of those moments, not a substitute for them.

So do sellers have too much technology? Yes – but not because they’re drowning in tools. Because too few of those tools are built with empathy for the seller’s day. Because too many platforms are designed for the CRO’s dashboard, not the rep’s workflow. Because we’ve mistaken data for wisdom, and automation for progress.

It’s time to recalibrate. Not just how much tech we use, but why we’re using it in the first place. The future of selling doesn’t need more platforms – it needs more focus.