It’s kind of crazy how quickly martech spend can become unwieldy. I’ve seen it happen, you’ve seen it happen. You buy a sales engagement platform here, an intent data provider there, a second analytics tool because the first one could answer most but not all of the questions. Each one made sense at the time, but now you’re spending $3,000 or $8,000 or $15,000 a month across a stack that feels bloated.
Step 1: Make the full list
Make a list of every marketing and sales tool your company pays for. Not just the ones you use daily, and not just the ones on your company card. Every single subscription, every license, every $10 plug-in on your website. Capture it all! It’s better to be thorough and cull your list than get into a meeting with Finance and hear them say “well what about this?”
For each tool, write down what it costs per month (or per year divided by 12), who on the team uses it, and what they use it for. Note the contract terms and keep an eye out for any upcoming renewals. Platforms with an imminent renewal are your evaluation priorities.
How much should we be spending?
What matters is whether you can account for what you’re paying for and what it brings to your business. A $15,000 monthly stack where every tool is used, integrated, and feeding a decision is in better shape than a $3,000 stack where half of it hasn’t been opened since the person who bought it left.
You’ll find benchmarks published as a percentage of marketing budget. They’re drawn mostly from large companies, they blend business models that have nothing to do with each other, and the ranges are wide enough to accommodate almost any answer. If your stack runs 20% of your marketing budget, you can find a source telling you that’s healthy and another telling you it’s far too much.
Step 2: Sort into three categories
Core. These are the tools that your daily operations depend on. This is stuff like your CRM, marketing automation platform, website CMS, intent platforms, pipeline analytics tool(s), etc. These cannot be deactivated without serious consideration. If you turned these off, work would stop.
Supporting. These make your core tools work better. Enhanced reporting dashboards, integrations, data enrichment. They add value but they’re not foundational, and you use them sometimes, but they’re not mission critical. Maybe they were at one point! But what’s most important is recent usage trends. If you don’t depend on this tool, it’s worth asking if it should stay.
Marginal. These are the tools that sounded promising but don’t get used consistently. If you turned them off, most of your team wouldn’t notice for a week. Items on this list (especially those that have an upcoming renewal!) are the lowest-hanging fruit for cost savings.
Step 3: Ask three questions about each tool
Is more than one person using this regularly? If a tool is only used by one person once a month, it may not be a necessity. But if that one person is using that tool to drive decisions for the rest of the organization, the calculus changes. So who uses this, how often, and what is the business value of this usage? The answers to those questions will reveal whether the tool is actually bringing value to your company.
Does this integrate with our core stack? A tool that lives on its own island and requires manual data transfer to be useful is usually creating work vs. saving it. Ask one core question first: Is this tool integrated? If it’s not, is the data being transferred manually? If a platform doesn’t connect to your stack, the data it generates may not be making it into your decision-making. And if that’s the case, it should go on the “cut” shortlist.
Could we do this with a tool we already pay for? This is a big one. Many modern CRMs and marketing automation platforms can do 80% of what the specialty tools do. Tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, and DemandBase launch new native tools and features all the time. Be on the lookout for these releases! Specialty tools may do some things better, but sometimes it’s only slightly better, and that might not be worth $5,000 a year and the complexity of maintaining another integration.
Step 4: Make the cut list
For every tool in the “marginal” category and every tool where the answer to all three questions above was unfavorable, put it on the “cut” list. Don’t cancel everything right away. Start by checking the contract terms, including the notice window. Plenty of annual contracts renew automatically unless you cancel 30 or 60 days ahead, so the decision to drop a tool in March may actually be due in January. Make a plan to shut things down as terms and team capacity allow.
Step 5: Document what stays and why
For every tool you keep, write a short internal doc that covers what it does, who owns it, how it connects to the rest of the stack, and what you’d need to do if you had to replace it. This sounds tedious, but it takes maybe 20 minutes per tool and it saves you from having the same “wait, why do we have this?” conversation a year from now. Revisit this document regularly, ideally twice a year minimum. Quarterly is even better!
Step 6: Make the case
Lead with the total, annualized, and when it starts. “I recommend cutting four tools, it saves $31,000 a year, and it lands between now and October as contracts end.” Then, be prepared for three questions:
What breaks if we cut this? Answer it for every tool on the list before you walk in, because “I don’t think anyone uses it” will not survive contact with the one person who does. Step 3 already gave you this answer!
What data does it store and do we have a plan to archive it? Every tool holds something, even the marginal ones: call recordings, form submissions, email history, attribution data. Export what you need before you cancel, because access usually dies with the subscription and some vendors won’t let you pull anything once the plan lapses. Decide what’s worth keeping while you’re at it, since not all of it is.
Can we cut more? Know your floor before you’re asked. If the core list is the core list, say so plainly and explain what each tool does and what happens without it. The document from Step 5 is your defense.
A note on consolidation
There are specialized tools for nearly everything in marketing and sales. Some of them are genuinely worth it, especially for companies in niche industries. That being said, many B2B companies under 250 employees can run their sales and marketing operation on fewer tools than they may think. Every single additional tool should justify both the cost and the complexity of maintaining it.
When to do this
If you haven’t audited your stack in the last 12 months, make a plan to do so. If you’re about to renew a major contract, definitely do it before you sign. And if you just raised a round and there’s excitement to buy new tools, do it first so you don’t add to the pile.