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Sales teams' success depends on many factors, such as understanding the audience, building a consistent sales process to capture every opportunity, developing content to reach prospects and highly skilled and motivated sales reps who can make it all work. A common thread among all these factors is the technology or the 'tech stack' used by companies to streamline processes and increase productivity. Organizations use a stack of sales tools to accomplish various tasks and keep the sales process running like well-oiled machinery.
What are sales tools and why do you need them?
Sales tools are applications designed to perform several tasks that help salespeople in their roles. It's an umbrella term that incorporates many sales-related software such as CRM, lead routing tools, sales training tools, automation tools, market intelligence tools, etc. Since every tool has a specialized and closely associated function, companies usually need more than one tool to optimize their sales processes.
According to a GetAccept survey, 67% of respondents said their tech stacks use anywhere between 4 to 10 sales tools, while 97% used at least one. Sales tools have a number of benefits, such as
- Simplifying the process of tracking progress towards goals
- Slashing time wasted by reps on performing unproductive administrative tasks
- Greater structure for the sales cycle
- Accurate sales forecasting
- Improved lead analysis
- Better customer relationship management
- Increased productivity and higher rate of closing deals
21 Sales tools you can use in your organization to optimize the sales process
This section lists a range of the best sales tools based on their category. While you won't need most of the sales tools, each one has a good fit for the different needs of all organizations.
1. Sales prospecting tools
Sales prospecting tools save enormous amounts of time for reps by cutting down their manual prospecting task, organizing emails and scheduling meetings. The lead qualification is automated in the tool so the reps can focus on the best prospects.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Rating (G2): 4.3/5
Suitable for: freelancers, small, medium and large enterprises
Drawing from the world's largest professional network, the Sales Navigator is designed specifically for sales people. By utilizing the data of more than 500 million professionals on the platform, the tool narrows down the most qualified leads for sales reps. The software can sync with all the leading CRMs to save essential lead qualification data so businesses can find the best prospects and engage with them faster.
Features:
- Lead tracking, capture and management
- CRM
- Real-time data
- Lead nurturing
- Dashboard
Pricing: Customers need to contact the team for pricing. Free trial available.
Get the LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- LeadFuze
Rating (G2): 4.6/5
Suitable for: freelancers, small, medium and large enterprises
LeadFuze is a cloud-based sales prospecting software designed to generate leads and help with marketing and recruiting operations. The platform aggregates information on professionals across all organizations and is used by salespeople, marketers and recruiters.
The data extracted is used to give the best leads so sales reps can spend their time selling to those most likely to convert. For the marketing teams, LeadFuze uses AI to automatically put together a list of the most qualified prospects so they can get the data they need for their marketing programs.
It can also help recruiters find the best-fit candidates using a range of custom criteria and also avoid duplicate data entries.
Features:
- Lead capture
- Lead nurturing
- Lead qualification
- Lead verification
- Prospecting Tool
Pricing: Starts from $ 132.30. Free trial available.
Get LeadFuze
2. Lead routing tools
Only some sales reps in an organization are the right fit for every incoming lead. The process of deciding who gets which lead is called lead routing. While it sounds like a simple task, a dedicated tool for the process can help boost conversions by matching lead attributes to the precise sales rep who is best qualified to handle it.
- Lead Assign
Rating (G2): 4.5/5
Suitable for: small, medium and large enterprises
Lead assign is a lead management and routing system designed for companies to give them easy visibility into all their prospects. The software can be used as a stand-alone tool or in integration with other tech stacks.
Lead assign ensures optimized lead routing so that every campaign has the expected ROI and the sales cycle times are shortened. Used by some of the top companies in the world, the software performs a range of functions, including lead capture, distribution, qualification, management, nurturing, etc. The tool is only supported on the web and not on mobile devices.
Features:
- Lead capture, distribution and management
- Forecasting
- Activity dashboard
- Lead nurturing
- Interaction tracking
Price:
- Starts from $ 149 per month
Get Lead Assign
- Freshsales
Rating (G2): 4.6/5
Suitable for: freelancers, small, medium and large enterprises
Freshsales is a comprehensive salesforce automation software which provides everything a sales team needs to score high-quality leads. Driven by AI, the tool engages in contextual conversations and offers essential insights for sales reps to nurture the leads for a higher close rate.
Along with routing leads to the right sales reps, the AI also gives insights into the best deals and makes forecasts to predict revenue. With built-in automation features such as phone, chat and email, the tool frees up time for the reps to focus on selling.
Features:
- API
- Access control/permissions
- Activity dashboard
- Activity tracking
Pricing:
- $15/ user. Free plans and trial available.
Get Freshsales
3. Incentive compensation management tools
Sales compensation tools automate the accounting and administration of sales rep commissions and incentives. The reps have a clear view of incentive plans and real-time info on their earnings and forecasts.
By incorporating gamification features, sales gamification tools bring fun and competitiveness into the sales process. Sales engagement tools are used to improve the well-being of employees and promote a healthy culture of appreciation and rewards.
- Compass
Rating (G2): 4.8/5
Suitable for: medium and large enterprises
Compass is the leading incentive compensation mangement software that sales teams of all sizes can use to support teams, gig workers and even channel partners. The tool helps boost engagement in sales teams with intrinsic motivation problems.
It accomplishes that by helping companies navigate the intricacies of sales and channel business through effective goal setting, alignment, communication and feedback loops which keep the teams moving towards established goals. Compass is SaaS and web-based and is supported on desktop, Mac and all mobile devices running on Android and iOS.
Features:
- API
- Activity dashboard
- Activity tracking
- Agency commission
- Audit trail
- Awards management
Pricing:
- $29/ user per month.
Get Compass
4. Sales team engagement tool
- Empuls
Rating (G2): 4.6/5
Suitable for: small, medium and large enterprises
Empuls is employee engagement software companies can leverage to set up a robust culture and bring the workplace to life. On empuls leaders bring the teams together to promote organizational values, eliminate silos and offer a platform for all employees to voice their opinion.
Companies can build a system of rewards and recognition for empuls to keep their employees motivated and gauge their engagement levels. The tool is used by over 1000 organizations worldwide to boost employee morale, reduce attrition and improve satisfaction.
With empuls teams can celebrate milestones, anniversaries, birthdays, and contributions and solicit feedback for improvement.
Features:
- API
- Employee engagement
- Employee communities
- 360 degree feedback
- Audience targeting
- Benchmarking
- Document management
Pricing:
- Starts at $2 / user per month. Free trial available
Get Empuls
5. Sales rewards management tool
- Plum
Rating (G2): 4.6/5
Suitable for: small, medium and large enterprises
Plum by Xoxoday is a tool to automate payouts, incentives and rewards while making it easy for companies to solve the problem of extrinsic motivation in employees. Plum easily integrates with some of the largest CRM, HRIS, and HRMS software to give teams the flexibility to reward without disturbing the workflow.
This sales incentive tool can be global, with the tool providing support for multi-currency and multi-region. Its scalability makes it suitable for organizations of all sizes. Plum supports all devices, including desktops and Mac and runs on all mobile devices that function on Android and iOS.
Features:
- API
- CRM
- Campaign analytics
- Customer activity tracking
- Customer surveys
- Customizable reports
Pricing:
- $299 per month flat rate
Get Plum
6. Sales enablement tools
Sales enablement is a set of processes, content and tools given to sales teams to help them sell more and sell better. Sales enable also extends into processes taken up by the marketing teams to help the sales teams close more deals.
- Mindtickle
Rating (G2): 4.7/5
Suitable for: large enterprises
Mindtickle is a top sales readiness platform used by some of the biggest companies in the world to train their sales teams. The tool's learning board enables users to track various learning metrics such as skills, updates, coaching, etc.
The software can also be integrated with other major learning platforms for the best outcomes. Sales leadership can also look into essentials such as progress in learning, interaction with content, and customized areas of improvement for individual reps. The software is supported on desktops, Macs and all mobile devices running on Android and iOS.
Features:
- AI/Machine learning
- API
- Activity dashboard
- Activity tracking
- Asynchronous learning
- Attendance tracking
- CRM
Pricing:
- Customers need to contact the team for pricing
Get Mindtickle
- Bites
Rating (G2): 4.9/5
Suitable for: small, medium and large enterprises
Sharing essential knowledge with frontline deskless employees is essential for many organizations. With Bites, it's possible to train and conduct KT programs on a simple social-media-like platform that is highly intuitive and easy to use.
The training format consisting of video shorts and snippets makes bite-sized consumable content similar to much of social media in existence. Bites allow leaders to keep tabs on the training progression of employees and enable them to share information and lessons with others when needed.
The platform is supported on desktop and mobile devices to make it easy to access.
Features:
- Activity dashboard
- Assessment management
- Assignment management
- Content library
- Course management
Pricing:
- $25 / per month per user
Get Bites
7. Sales automation tools
The primary purpose of sales automation is to free the sales reps of repetitive and non-productive administrative tasks that don't contribute to selling. Several sales processes throughout the cycle can be automated, starting from lead generation to pipeline management, sales activity tracking and sales forecasting.
- HubSpot Sales Hub
Rating (G2): 4.4/5
Suitable for: freelancers, small, medium and large enterprises
Sales Hub is a robust sales automation platform with various functionalities needed for sales teams to perform at their peak. The tool is built on HubSpot CRM, a single-source-of-truth platform for customer data and all other essential metrics for the sales process.
Using the platform, sales teams can get a comprehensive insight into their leads and use the automation functionalities to close more deals. The platform helps reps secure data on the leads, record communication contextually and schedule emails for follow-ups and meetings. The CRM also records data for sales intelligence.
Features:
- CRM
- Appointment scheduling
- Activity dashboard
- Activity tracking
- Campaign analytics
- Call management
Pricing:
- $ 50 per month flat rate. Free plans and free trial also available.
Get Sales Hub
- Apollo.io
Rating (G2): 4.8/5
Suitable for: small, medium and large enterprises
Apollo is a comprehensive sales platform which excels across automation, intelligence and sales enablement. With its extensive database of contacts, the platform helps sales reps discover highly qualified leads and connect with them to start their sales journey.
The platform's AI scans through data to give insights into prospects and even make automated suggestions based on behavioral and conversation analysis. It makes it easy to build automated workflows that use rules engines, automated sequences, auto-dialer, event-triggered emails and other features. The software also integrates seamlessly with other platforms and applications.
Features:
- CRM
- Behavioral analytics
- Auto-responders
- Campaign analytics
- Collaboration tools
- Correlation analysis
Pricing:
- $49/ user per month
Get Apollo
EngageBay
Rating (G2): 4.6/5
Suitable for: Small and medium businesses, solopreneurs, freelancers, and startups
EngageBay is an all-in-one marketing, sales, and customer support software with affordable pricing. It offers robust sales automation and prospecting tools to help SMBs improve efficiency and team productivity.
EngageBay’s tools can help sales teams automate their pipelines and get insights into their performance through advanced analytics and dashboards. The built-in CRM also captures and tracks all customer interactions, offering a 360-degree view of each customer. These features help sales teams close deals more effectively.
Features:
- Sales automation
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)Sales pipelines and funnels
- Contact management
- Segmentation and personalization
- Email automation
- Appointment scheduling
Pricing:
- Plans start at $12.74/month. Pro plan with unlimited contacts starts at $101.99/month. Free-forever plan available.
Get EngageBay
8. Data solutions
Sales data involves different kinds of machine-readable information and helps sales teams prospect, understand the leads and make better decisions. Sales data can involve information about organizations and individuals that can be useful for sales teams.
- Lead411
Rating (G2): 4.5/5
Suitable for: small, medium and large enterprises
Lead411 is the most comprehensive trove of professional information available in the marketplace. The platform allows sales people to view the data of prospects using highly customized filters. They can extract various information from profiles to hiring plans, job openings, new hires, company awards, etc.
Detailed data helps salespeople narrow their search to the most qualified leads. Lead411 also allows reps to reach the target and helps companies start the sales dialogue.
Features:
- B2B lead integration
- CRM
- Built-in database
- Campaign planning, management and analytics
- Auto-responders
Pricing:
- $99/ user per month
Get Lead411
- Swordfish
Rating (G2): 4.6/5
Suitable for: small, medium and large enterprises
Swordfish is the world's most comprehensive person search engine. The platform aggregates data from various sources such as Experian, Dun & Bradstreet, Hovers, and many other independent outlets and social media feeds to give the most updated information about people.
The tool is used by some top recruiters and includes information from everyone in high corporate to individuals and freelancers. Sales teams leveraging the data can easily determine the pool of prospects and highly qualified leads.
Features:
- Activity dashboard
- API
- Data import/export
- Lead database integration
- Lead management
Pricing:
- $99 per month based on usage. Free trial also available.
Get Swordfish
9. Sales intelligence
Sales intelligence platforms crawl millions of publically available pages to gather data and build profiles of individuals. They can also gather data from third party aggregators and allow sales people to analyze and evaluate the data.
- Outreach
Rating (G2): 4.3/5
Suitable for: freelancers, small, medium and large enterprises
Outreach is powerful sales intelligence software that integrates various aspects such as revenue intelligence, conversational intelligence and sales engagement into one platform. The outreach, a dominant vendor in the category, also made it to the Deloitte Technology Fast 500.
Trusted by some of the biggest brands in IT, the software helps personalize prospects' journeys throughout the buying cycle. The AI-powered software can join live meetings, capture real-time information, transcribe conversations and deliver critical product information needed at the moment.
Features:
- API
- Activity tracking
- Audio/video recording
- Auto-dialer
- Content delivery
- Data management
- Lead capture, management and qualification
Pricing:
- Customers need to contact the team for the price.
Get Outreach
- UpLead
Rating (G2): 4.7/5
Suitable for: freelancers, small, medium and large enterprises
UpLead is software that specializes in lead generation and sales intelligence. It helps generate leads for sales reps in the B2B setting and uses real-time tracking to verify opportunities for engagement.
The platform takes data from emails, calls and other forms of communication to let sales teams build B2B lists and assists in engaging with the prospects in real-time. UpLead automatically captures data needed for sales enablement and helps prospecting using various data points it gathers.
Features:
- API
- CRM
- Contact database
- Lead generation/capture
- Prospecting tools
- Third party integrations
Pricing:
- $74 per month flat rate.
Get Uplead
10. Reporting & analytics
Sales reporting and analytics tools are used by sales reps, team leads, project leads and VPs to make extensive reports on different sales cycles. The reports have selected KPIs and use a system of storage and dashboard that integrates with other data sources to generate plots that show growth, revenue and other metrics.
- Tableau
Rating (G2): 4.4/5
Suitable for: freelancers, small, medium and large enterprises
Data visualization and forecasts using data plots are essential to business these days. Tableau is designed to do just that and more for companies that routinely make data-driven decisions. The software can connect to hundreds of local and cloud data sources to help sales teams with their presentations, forecasts, calculations and a line of other tasks.
The feature-rich software helps reps understand data, make discoveries and dig out opportunities with its insights that could easily slip by in manual analysis.
Features:
- API
- AB testing
- AI/machine learning
- Ad hoc analysis, query and reporting
- Association discovery
- Bayesian analysis
Pricing:
- Customers need to contact the team for the price
Get Tableau
- Datapine
Rating (G2): 4.6/5
Suitable for: small, medium and large enterprises
Datapine is another powerful data analytics, business intelligence and reporting tool used by companies to visualize, analyze and explore all their data on one platform.
The software's most important features include the ease at which it can be used and the ability to connect to different sources of data to generate reports, insights and forecasts with my non-technical staff. The platform is supported on both web and mobile devices.
Features:
- Activity dash
- Ad hoc reporting
- Benchmarking
- Charting
- Collaboration tools
- Data discovery
- Forecasting
Pricing:
- $249 per month flat rate
Get Datapine
11. Sales content management
Sales people always work with data and generate data throughout the sales cycles, which can be in numbers, images, documents and a list of other formats. This content must be managed systematically, requiring specialized tools to handle the job.
- Paperflite
Rating (G2): 4.8/5
Suitable for: small, medium and large enterprises
Paperflite is a comprehensive content management and sales enablement platform that helps sales teams to organize, store, distribute and track their content. The software enables teams to view the document's journey, the views it has had and other metrics.
Sales reps can gauge how the content they've shared with prospects has been accessed and how the user interaction occurs when viewed, shared or accessed. The platform supports web and mobile devices running on all operating systems.
Features:
- CRM
- Asset library
- Asset sharing
- Activity tracking
- Contant management
Pricing:
- $ 50/ user per month
Get Paperflite
- DocSend
Rating (G2): 4.6/5
Suitable for: small, medium and large enterprises
DocSend by Dropbox is built on a robust system of data storage that is widely used around the globe. DocSend enables users to set custom safety preferences for every user and the software even notifies them when the file is opened and reveals who has viewed the document.
The platform has over 17,000 users and is supported on web and mobile devices. The mobile versions make it easy for sales teams to review and sign documents or share them with coworkers or vendors. DocSend also allows sales reps to make presentations and create sales decks to pitch to potential clients.
Features:
- Access/ control permissions
- Audit trail
- Bulk uploading
- Content delivery
- Document management
- Customizable branding
Pricing:
- $15/ user per month
Get DocSend
12. Email management
Email management software helps sales reps organize, store and track emails for sales enablement, sales intelligence and maintaining contact with prospects. Marketing teams also use email management to automate campaigns, send mass emails, and track opens and click-through rates.
- QuickMail
Rating (G2): 4.6/5
Suitable for: small, medium and large enterprises
QuickMail is an automation tool for email outreach in marketing and sales. The software allows sales teams to send emails to cold prospects and generate leads. The automation feature of the software takes the cumbersome task off the hands of the sales reps and even follows up with those who have yet to reply or drop out after showing interest.
The tool's best feature is its ability to send highly personalized emails based on existing data on prospects and companies.
Features:
- Audience targeting
- Auto-responders
- Campaign management
- Customer database
- Customizable fields
Pricing:
- $59 per month flat rate
Get QuickMail
- EmailAnalytics
Rating (G2): 4/5
Suitable for: small, medium and large enterprises
EmailAnalytics is a comprehensive analytics tool for the emails sent out by marketing and sales teams. It monitors performance parameters such as click-through rates, response time and other metrics essential for different teams. It gives an overview of the success of email marketing campaigns that can be shared as reports with the management. The tool syncs seamlessly with existing email platforms.
Features:
- Email tracking
- Campaign tracking
- Email monitoring
- Email analytics
Price:
- $15/ inbox per month
Get EmailAnalytics
13. Sales document management software
Sales document management software simplifies the entire sales cycle by providing professional documents like quotes, estimates, purchase orders, and invoices. It also includes customizable templates, automated calculations, client communication tracking, and reporting capabilities, empowering businesses to optimize their sales operations effortlessly.
- Billdu
Rating (App Store): 4.8/5
Suitable for small and medium businesses and freelancers
Billdu is an intuitive sales tool designed to streamline invoicing, estimates, quotes, and expense tracking for small businesses and freelancers. With its user-friendly interface and robust features, Billdu enables users to create professional invoices and estimates quickly, track expenses efficiently, and manage client communication effortlessly. Moreover, its mobile app ensures accessibility, making it a convenient solution for busy professionals managing their sales processes.
Billdu also provides payment reminders, which ensure timely payments by sending automatic reminders to clients, simplifying cash flow management for businesses and sole traders.
Features:
- Automated Reminders
- Customizable Templates
- Expense Tracking
- Mobile Accessibility
- Client Communication
Pricing:
- Starts at $3.99 per month
Get Billdu
Conclusion
The exhaustive list of sales tools mentioned above has dedicated functions that are helpful across a range of organizational settings. Simple tools can automate routine tasks and save time for reps, while automation-based tools can provide deep insights and contextual inputs for every prospect to help in their purchase journey. While some significant enterprise-level platforms have features built into them that can replace smaller specific tools, the latter have a niche use.
