There’s a good reason optimizing productivity is the holy grail of the sales world right now.
You just know you can do a lot more if you use software to automate repetitive tasks that eat up your resources.
Related: How RFP software helps you streamline RFP responses
One of the biggest challenges in sales is to organize information from multiple data sources, identify priorities and act on them.
If you’re reading this, then you already know you can tackle this issue (and others connected to it) with the right tools. But with a schedule like yours, it’s hard to find the time to build a list of potential solutions.
Assemble your tool stack from the list of options below to improve productivity and streamline your sales process.
How software sales tools get you in control of your time & resources
Whether you’re searching for leads or closing customers, your sales team needs all the help it can get.
The entire sales process can become significantly more effective when you:
1. Optimize the time you spend on repetitive tasks
The right platform integrates activities like emailing, calling and progress-tracking to keep salespeople engaged and boost productivity.
Instead of dealing with mindless tasks over and over again, empower them to achieve more. Give them the tools to use their skills, knowledge and time to close deals.
2. Automate manual tasks to increase your productivity & focus
Limit your sales software stack to just a few tools to avoid tech overhead and process disruption.
What really moves the needle is automating tasks such as outreach, follow-up, and reminders for key activities. [
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3. Collaborate in real time and disseminate best practices faster
When you keep information in silos, salespeople waste time testing approaches their colleagues already (in)validated through practice.
Build a scalable path to success by making it easy for sales reps to share their findings and collaborate in real time.
Look for software that can:
- auto-assign leads
- show you a deal’s status instantly
- allow salespeople to reply to each other’s unanswered emails in a common team inbox.
4. Improve consistency across your sales collateral
Mix sales with marketing & customer service to get higher success rates when pitching exigent customers.
When your sales proposals, e-signatures, reports, sales presentations, case studies or brochures look polished, you look more professional, too.
Implement tools salespeople can use to collaborate on creating and personalizing these assets fast and scalably, and reap the rewards.
5. Promote prioritization & faster decision-making
Some of the best sales tools on the market fixate on helping sales teams focus on what’s important.
Sales reps plan their time & efforts effectively when they have access to:
- complex lead scoring
- contextual insights
- behavior-based segmentation
Rich details about their prospect’s activity help skillful salespeople engage leads at the right moment and close deals faster.
6. Track progress effectively and gain more visibility
Another way you can use online sales tools to keep your pipeline flowing is to monitor progress with greater efficiency.
Use the right tech to integrate your data sources & sales activities, so you have one clear view of the process. Become better at setting realistic goals and forecasting revenue.
What makes online sales tools a good fit for you
Once you pinpoint the benefits you’re looking to get, consider these factors when evaluating your options.
The best apps for sales reps should:
- Have a strong onboarding process
- Include detailed documentation & help articles
- Feature user-friendly, intuitive design
- Have strong data security & privacy policies
- Provide automation for repetitive tasks
- Include robust features that work well together
- Be flexible and support customization
- Carry collaborative features that stimulate action
- Be compatible with your culture, needs & existing tools.
The software sales tool you choose should not:
- Have too steep of a learning curve
- Require spending more time to manage it than it saves
- Lock you into a closed ecosystem
- Create unnecessary burdens for IT & managers in charge of operations
- Require expensive custom development to integrate with your current setup
- Clutter your existing CRM with additional, useless custom fields
- Have obvious shortcomings that hinder your current sales process.
Some adjustment to new technology & processes is inherent when you implement new software, but that’s just in the short-term. Once they’re up and running, new tools should produce overwhelmingly positive results.
Now let’s dig into the options and see which of the sales tools below match your criteria.
Browse the best sales tools for your needs
The best tools for lead generation & prospecting
The selection of tools below covers a wide range of needs. From access to millions of GDPR-compliant leads to data enrichment, these software options can skyrocket your sales performance.
Features include:
- Prospect-tracking during key events, such as promotions or job changes
- Automated lead validation through AI-fueled sales assistants
- Surfacing new companies worth adding to your sales pipeline
- Quick & fair sales territory mapping
- Speeding up outreach with sales sequences and email & content templates
- Automatic confirmation of the lead’s intent to buy, and many more.
Which of these tools has the right combination of features for your sales team’s profile?
- Aircall
- Apollo
- CircleBack
- Close
- CloudSponge
- Cognism
- Conversica
- DataFox
- DealSheet
- DealSignal
- GetProfiles
- Groove
- Growbots
- Growlabs
- Leadfeeder
- LeadFuze
- LeadGenius
- LeadSquared
- LeanData
- MapAnything
- Nudge.ai
- Outreach
- PersistIQ
- RingResponse
- SalesWings
- ToutApp
- Vainu.io
- Velocify
The best software for your sales team’s productivity
Break down data silos across your entire company with these integration & automation platforms:
These are some of the best sales tools to capture & analyze customer-facing conversations. You can use them for both phone & video calls. Plus, they feed the details & notes into your CRM!
Use these encrypted file-sharing services to send larger sales collateral safely to your customers:
Create collaborative & flexible workflows for your sales team using any of these tools:
Help your sales reps collect valuable insights from your customers with professional, customizable and user-friendly surveys & forms:
Onboard new sales reps faster and share best practices across your team by recording & analyzing your sales videos. These software solutions help you personalize your outreach and add the human touch that can make the sale:
Get a lot more out of your email sales pitches with software tools such as:
- Cirrus Insight
- eMail-Prospector Pro
- FullContact
- GetResponse
- If No Reply
- Mailshake
- Nimble
- Opensense
- Reply
- Sales Navigator for Gmail
- SalesHandy
- Streak
- TruCadence
- Yesware
You can also try specific tools that increase productivity such as:
- Share your unified, real-time availability
- Save hundreds of hours spent on back-and-forth emails with AI-automated availability matching
- Capture & annotate screenshots, then share them securely
- Use screen recording to explain complex ideas
- Keep all your sales collateral in accessible, safe cloud storage
- Get personality insights to use in sales calls & meetings
- Improve response rates for cold outreach through deep personalization
The most powerful software apps for content sharing & management
Almost half of your customers (47%) consume between 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep, studies show.
With that in mind, it’s clear that a high-performing sales team needs a strong process to create & share sales enablement collateral.
Here are some of the most effective online sales tools to help you build & leverage professional, polished content assets.
Make it easier for your customers to close the deal with these software options for sending & signing documents:
Eye-catching sales collateral (such as presentations, proposals, case studies & one-pagers) plays a big role in showcasing what you excel at.
With the right tools, you can respond to RFPs faster, reduce your reliance on designers, and improve brand consistency & compliance across your assets.
Collaborate with your colleagues and showcase the level of quality prospects can expect from you when they become your customers with these software tools:
- Adobe Spark
- Bit.ai
- Canva
- Haiku Deck
- Infogram
- Lucidpress
- Piktochart
- Prezi
- Proposify
- Qvidian
- Slidebean
- Slides
- Visme
Create & deliver high-converting sales videos that speak to your customers’ needs and inspire them to act:
Make sure your sales materials are impeccable and optimized for increased readability:
Outstanding customer relationship management (CRM) systems
A complex yet flexible CRM is the beating heart of any sales team. Our list of online sales tools wouldn’t be complete without it.
From dominant players who set the standard to AI-fueled options, this list has it all.
Which one of these solutions will speed up your sales process?
Leading performance management software for processes & training
No matter how much technology helps, managing & training your sales reps plays the biggest role in sales success.
These are some of the best tools to manage your sales reps and ensure they can focus & feel motivated to close deals:
- Altify
- Always Hired
- Ambition
- Betts Recruiting
- Detective by Charlie
- HireVue
- Hoopla
- LevelEleven
- Showpad
- Veelo
- Xactly
The most advanced analytics & reporting sales tools
Extracting insights from your ongoing sales process fuels your improvement & growth. As a result, this makes reliable & accurate reporting essential.
Sales reps can track their performance and find key ways to upgrade their approach with these analytics & reporting tools:
- 6sense
- Aviso
- Bombora
- Clari
- Datanyze
- FullStory
- Hotjar
- InsideSales
- People.ai
- Tableau
- Voogy
- Whoisvisiting
The best sales forecasting & market intelligence software
If you’re looking for the most reliable sales forecasting tools on the market, the list below will point you in the right direction:
- Artesian
- Clearbit
- DiscoverOrg
- D&B Hoovers
- Emissary
- EverString
- FirstRain
- MadKudu
- Mattermark
- ProfitWell
- Prospect.io
- TrendWatching
- ZoomInfo
Key takeaway
Sales software goes far beyond CRMs nowadays. There are plenty of robust tools to increase response rates & sales volumes. Guide your actions and help your sales team prioritize their prospects with data-driven insights, and you’ll gain a significant competitive advantage.
There’s no time like the present to leverage artificial intelligence & powerful integrations to drive better results.
