Time is money, my friend. And cliches are the best blog article openers, apparently. Cliches aside, this short article contains useful tips on, what I and many salespeople I’ve worked with consider to be, the best sales software tools to streamline and scale your sales processes.
So what makes a great sales tool? Well firstly, it must be relatively easy to use, fit in well with a salesperson’s workflow, add something cool to the sales process, provide the lead or prospect with an excellent experience and ultimately help close more deals faster,
Let’s dive in!
Can you imagine doing sales calls without sales appointment scheduling software? I certainly cannot. There are tonnes of scheduling tools on the market, but none of them are as suitable for salespeople as 10to8. Believe me, I tried a fair few before I started working here.
10to8 makes it a breeze for prospects to book a call with you, and thus, they are more likely to get in touch. I include my personal booking link in the outreach emails, they book a convenient time slot in my diary, we both get notified of the upcoming appointment and jump on a call. Can’t get simpler than that.
10to8 was developed together with sales professionals, both our internal team and our existing customers, who use 10to8 for sales or customer support calls, helped to make the product achieve perfect product-market fit. I can tag customers, deal with time zone differences, sync my calendars and integrate with Zoom and Salesforce.
A powerful CRM is vital for small sales teams, and Salesflare provides just this. Designed for B2B companies, this intelligent client management platform allows you to focus on your customers – instead of constantly worrying about data.
So much of the day-to-day tasks of a salesperson will become automatic by using this tool. It will automatically populate your contacts by gathering information from their email signature and automatically logs all your calls, emails, and other actions in the system. Salesflare will create an automatic to-do list of all actions that need to be completed and will systematically organize your files for you. Just think of how much time that will save you!
Plus, with a 14-day free trial, there’s really nothing to lose by giving it a go!
Inputting data and other manual tasks is one of the least enjoyable elements of sales. And, as Salesflare manages to simplify this, we believe it can help a lot of sales people increase their productivity, get more done, and ultimately, make more sales.
I can highly recommend Pipedrive for smaller sales teams that are looking to perfect their pipeline management. With a ‘pick up and play’ user interface, anybody can learn how to use it in no time.
With amazing new features being introduced constantly, Pipedrive is the agile choice for agile sales teams. The regular feature releases are backed up with a friendly and helpful support team to assist with whatever question you might have.
Using Pipedrive is actually quite enjoyable, as the interface is very easy to navigate. There are new features introduced quite frequently, which you get notified about via in-app messages. I found the email syncing particularly simple and was quite happy using Pipedrive’s email client.
Salesforce is THE solution for scaled-up sales teams, as it offers plenty of app integrations and customization options.
This is a beast of a program. The wide range and depth of features can be rather overwhelming for newbies, but once you tailor the interface to your liking – and you can go nuts with customizations – Salesforce will streamline your workflows.
Getting used to the in-depth setting options can be quite a shock, but once your data is imported to the system, you will never have to look back and you will most certainly never consider another tool. Salesforce is the king of Sales CRM solutions for a reason.
Close is another fantastic CRM tool for salespeople. It is an all-in-one customer relationship management tool with lead management, predictive dialer, calling and email automation. It helps streamline your workflows and close more deals, which is the ultimate goal of any ambitious salesperson.
If you do lots of outbound sales, you will love the features Close offers, such as the Power Dialer, automatically logged calls and the one-click voicemail tool. I can highly recommend Close to SDRs (Sales Development Representative) who haven’t yet found their CRM-BFF (Best Friend Forever).
Close’s user interface is very clean and simple; it takes no time to get the hang of the software and learn to navigate it. Close also integrates with apps like Clack, PandaDoc and other software tools via Zapier, which is always a big plus.
I don’t know any other sales video software that is easier to use than Zoom Video Conferencing. Simply share your meeting link with your prospects or clients, join your audio, and you’re ready to sell!
Zoom is becoming the most popular choice for online meetings for a reason. Screen-sharing is non-negotiable nowadays, so it is recording. This video software actually helps you host product demos that speed up the sales process.
I almost feel like Zoom was tailor-made for sales professionals as it facilitates sales calls so well. Plus, since it integrates with 10to8 Scheduling Software, I wouldn’t even consider using another tool.
It cannot be stressed enough; Zoom is an incredibly simple and intuitive piece of kit, and the 10to8 integration makes life even simpler. There’s no need to look elsewhere for one integrated tool, when you have one right here that makes scheduling video meetings a breeze.
Showpad is sales enablement software that can help you align your sales and marketing activities and keep your teams on the same page. It provides a centralized point to share content throughout your organization.
What’s more, sales teams can create a shared space, give access to content and share it with clients to encourage questions about specific elements within the shared folder. This gives a real-time, interactive feel to the sales process, as well as creates the image of a responsive and friendly organization.
Showpad helps even the most disorganized teams to centralize their content internally and share it externally. This software truly enables sales professionals to make every step of the sales process enriched with content.
Hunter is a great tool for sales outreach automation. A great way to grab your prospects’ email addresses, but with Hunter tools, you can also automate a lot of the sales cycle. Verifying email addresses is just the stat – you can also send them personalized cold outreach emails from the same place.
Hunter is used now by 3,000,000 professionals working in sales, marketing, human resources, and other industries. It has an easy to use browser extension that simplifies the process further, and even has add-ons for Google Sheets, MailTracker, and various integrations with popular CRM systems.
It’s a must-have tool for every salesperson who is involved in cold outreach. It makes it easier to find valid prospects’ email addresses and set up email outreach, including automating follow-ups and personalizing all emails at scale.
Consensus is an incredibly cool sales enablement, more specifically sales demo, tool that helps you provide your prospects with a fully-customized product demo. You can add video clips, documents, and other content to your demo library and create an interactive demo experience for your prospects.
You basically put together a vast library of content and your prospects, leads and even clients can guide themselves through the demo, choosing the path they want. This saves both you and them time.
I find this tool very helpful in the presales process, as it allows leads to choose what they are interested in, and I get great insights too about them. Consensus is the 21st century way of doing demos.
Sending, filling in and getting sales documents signed is part of any salesperson’s everyday job and PandaDoc for sure makes it easy. It is a simple but absolutely essential tool to have in your sales toolkit.
Any sales team that takes information security seriously should consider using PandaDoc, so they can forget about the hassle of sharing documents from a Google Drive folder where they really shouldn’t.
I cannot stress it enough how useful this very simple tool is. It seriously helps me better organize sales documentation. I can have potentially boring paperwork filled out and signed in a jiffy, without overcomplicating the process for me or the customers.
Badger Maps is an app for field salespeople to automatically plan, route, and schedule their time in the field. Sales teams using Badger can boost their productivity as it allows them to meet with the right customers at the right time. According to Badger Maps, on average, sales reps sell 22% more and drive 25% less after implementing the solution.
Badger Maps allows you to create optimized sales routes with turn-by-turn directions and live traffic data. It also allows you to easily visualize top opportunities on an interactive map and collect relevant data directly from the field.
At 10to8 we rarely do field sales, however, many of our customers specialize in field sales and so Badger Maps can be a great addition to 10to8 for them. The software can also help with lead generation as salespeople can select prospects by industry, and then overlay them with their current customers and explore new leads for their business.
If you do field sales, I’d recommend that you sign up for a free trial. Then, once you’re convinced and have decided to implement their solution, you can also benefit from their roll-out training.
It’s no longer a secret that videos are much more engaging than plain text. Plus, they have the ability to convey heaps of information in shorter periods of time. With the help of Vidyard, you can create videos for different stages within your sales process.
While experimenting with it, I found it to be particularly good for outbound sales. People are getting busier by the day with tons of virtual meetings and may not have time to read a lengthy email. A 30 second video clip however, will fit much more easily into their crammed schedule and will likely catch their eye a lot more too! Vidyard can also be used for sharing information with your colleagues, social media, and possibly product demos or training.
The biggest advantage of using SalesLoft is that it lets you manage outbound cadences with ease. Whether your sales campaign is based on calls, emails or LinkedIn, you can customize your to-do-list to fit who you’re speaking to and ultimately maximize your conversions.
It’s a useful tool to have for all the stages of your campaign; from the initial contact, to follow-ups and even re-engagement with older prospects. You can set reminders, take notes, and manage your meetings all in one place. The analytics within SalesLoft helps you A/B test messages and learn about the most successful times of the day to reach out to your clients.
I am always excited to hear about new and cool software tools that can help salespeople like me, so if you know of a fantastic software solution that I should really check out, please let me know in the comments!