Introduction
Sales teams have always functioned somewhat independently. Reps work alone or in small teams to close deals and meet quotas, while managers ensure everything stays on track.
But when sales reps work on an island, you can run into inconsistencies and complications. If your sales team is using their own processes and systems, leads can get lost or multiple reps could end up trying to close the same deal. Not only is this frustrating for your reps, but annoying for leads and potential customers.
A lack of alignment on processes can also make things like training, onboarding, and documentation even more difficult. Empowering your team to do their best work becomes a complicated matter that you just can’t win.
While implementing sales tools might require some additional training to get everyone on the same page, the investment is ultimately worth it. With the right sales tools, your team can be more productive, aligned, and successful.
Sales tools that empower teams
There are hundreds (if not thousands) of sales tools out there, each designed with a specific purpose in mind. When you first start to build your sales tool stack, it can feel overwhelming — how do you know which tools are worth your time and money?
Finding the right tools for your team will require research, trial and error, and testing. Each team is unique and therefore will need a unique combination of tools to do their best work. However, this list of top sales tools that empower teams to do their best work is a great place to get started.
- Hubspot Sales Hub
- Gong
- Scribe
- Revenue.io
- People.ai
- PandaDoc
- ActiveCampaign
- Proposify
- Scratchpad
- Salesloft
Benefits of using sales tools
Not quite sure sales tools are right for your team? Here are the top five benefits of creating a tool stack that works for your team.
- Increased productivity. Sales tools to keep your teams organized so they can work more productively. All the information they need to effectively close deals is right at their fingertips, allowing them to do more in less time.
- Better communication. Although many sales reps work independently or in small teams, reps still need to stay in touch with one another. Communication can prevent leads from slipping between the cracks or ensure you don’t contact the same lead multiple times. Sales tools help improve communication to keep everything running smoothly.
- Stronger lead and customer relationships. Maintaining positive relationships with leads and customers is crucial for building a sustainable business. With the right sales tools, it’s easier to stay in touch, respond to questions, and keep track of the details of each lead or customer and their unique needs or requirements.
- Easier and more efficient onboarding. Bringing on new sales reps involves educating them on your offerings and getting them up to speed on the processes and methodologies your sales team uses. This process becomes even more difficult without proper documentation, file sharing, and education tracking tools.
- Reduced knowledge and data loss. When a member leaves your team, all their knowledge and data go with them — unless you have an efficient way to collect and store that information. Sales tools help you create a centralized spot to house your knowledge and data, so things aren’t lost when someone moves on.
Key features of sales tools
With such a wide range of sales tools available, understanding what to look for can be complicated. But whether you’re looking for a new documentation tool, a customer relationship management (CRM) system, or a data connector, here are some features to look out for.
- Easy to use interface. Teams often face resistance to new tools when the tool they have to use is overly confusing or complex. Look for sales tools that are intuitive and easy to use, regardless of experience level or technological skill.
- Mobile friendly. Sales teams often work on the go, checking in on their mobile devices before meetings or phone calls. To ensure your team always has access to the information they need regardless of where they are physically located, choose tools that have mobile-friendly capabilities.
- Tech stack integrations. Teams usually need to use a few different tools to keep everything running smoothly. Still, if you need to move data from one tool to another, things can get lost, forgotten about or incorrectly translated. Integrations help data move freely from one tool to the next.
- Access and shareability. Sales teams can require a lot of documentation and sharing, but they don’t need to be bogged down with information or content that isn’t relevant to them. Different shareability features can ensure everyone gets what they need without seeing what they don’t.
The best sales tools to use in 2023
1. Hubspot Sales Hub
G2 Rating: 4.4/5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.5/5 stars
Pricing: Free basic plans
Hubspot is a go-to tool for sales and marketing teams, offering a variety of tools to help deepen relationships, manage pipelines, and close more deals. For sales teams, Hubspot offers a robust CRM, sales engagement tool, reporting and analytics, and more. Hubspot also has a comprehensive integration and app marketplace, making it easy to customize your features to meet your team’s unique needs.
2. Gong
G2 Rating: 4.7/5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.8/5 stars
Pricing: Custom quote
Gong provides visibility into deals, team performance, market changes, and more. Teams and leadership can easily keep an eye on pipelines to better understand the deals they’re working on and how those translate into growth for the business. Gong analyzes your customer interactions to deliver the insights they need to more efficiently close deals and reach new performance levels. Gong also offers team coaching and strategic initiatives to help you identify areas of opportunity and make team-wide improvements.
3. Scribe
G2 Rating: 4.9/5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.3/5 stars
Pricing: Free basic plan
Scribe turns any process into an instant step-by-step guide just by capturing your screen. Users simply click the record button, follow through a process as they normally would, and then click again to stop — Scribe takes care of the rest. In seconds, Scribe generates a shareable link that provides detailed instructions, including screenshots or videos. Embed Scribes into web pages or share direct links with your team.
Scribe helps keep sales teams educated, informed, and appropriately trained to get the most from the sales tools they use.
4. Revenue.io
G2 Rating: 4.7/5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.4/5 stars
Pricing: Custom quote
Revenue.io is a RevOps platform that offers conversation guidance, sales engagement, live call insights, and real-time analytics to help your sales team close more deals in less time. Revenue.io helps bring new sales reps to full productivity faster so they can more efficiently meet quotas and help the company grow and scale. It reduces guesswork to keep processes moving along efficiently and can support stronger customer relationships, leading to more long-term relationships and loyal buyers.
5. People.ai
G2 Rating: 4.5/5 stars
Capterra Rating: 5/5 stars
Pricing: Starting at $50/user/month
People.ai uses actionable insights to help sales teams be more productive and maximize the outcome of every deal. The platform automates data entry, giving sales rep time back so they can focus on building strong customer relationships. The People.ai software analyzes data and behaviors to help create performance benchmarks and monitors deal health to provide reps with the support and information they need to succeed. Your team will have more confidence in the opportunities ahead of them, helping them scale more effectively.
6. PandaDoc
G2 Rating: 4.7/5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.5/5 stars
Pricing: Free basic plan
PandaDoc is an all-in-one platform for managing document workflow and keeping track of the creation, editing, and signing of documents. For busy sales reps, creating proposals and agreements can quickly become time-consuming and exhausting. With PandaDoc, teams can create unique templates that make it easy to generate new documents and send them to leads or clients within the same app. PandaDoc has real-time tracking and analytics so reps can keep an eye on if their lead has viewed the document and how much time they’ve spent with the content.
7. ActiveCampaign
G2 Rating: 4.6/5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.6/5 stars
Pricing: Plans starting at $9/month
ActiveCampaign is an email marketing, marketing automation, and CRM tool all in one, letting sales and marketing work together to create better customer experiences. For the sales team, ActiveCampaign can help create sales engagement automation processes that make it easy to provide personalized experiences to leads and customers at scale. Drive growth by working more efficiently and building stronger relationships that can make scaling easier — all while bridging the gap between sales and marketing departments so both groups can do their jobs better.
8. Proposify
G2 Rating: 4.6/5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.5/5 stars
Pricing: $49/user/month
Proposals can quickly become the most overwhelming parts of a sales person’s job — especially if they’re quickly closing deals and trying to keep track of several proposals in different stages. Proposify helps automate that complicated process while providing insights and analytics to help teams remove bottlenecks and work more productively. Reduce friction so your reps can work more productively while creating a customer experience that makes working with you more enjoyable.
9. Scratchpad
G2 Rating: 4.8/5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.9/5 stars
Pricing: Free basic plan
Scratchpad is a workspace built to make Salesforce easier and more efficient for salespeople. It’s designed with ease of use in mind, turning Salesforce’s complex and confusing database into a platform that makes communication, organization, and management easier for busy, on-the-go professionals. Your sales team can access the information, notes, and to-dos they need in fewer clicks and in less time, helping them stay focused so they can close more deals.
10. Salesloft
G2 Rating: 4.5/5 stars
Capterra Rating: 4.3/5 stars
Pricing: Custom pricing
Salesloft is a comprehensive platform that makes managing revenue and sales engagement more efficient. You can start meeting — and exceeding — sales quotas by prospecting, converting, and retaining customers more effectively. Move deals along faster to close more deals in less time and continuously improve with sales call tracking, transcription, analysis, and even built-in coaching. Robust data, analytics, and insights help optimize your sales process to drive more engagement.
Building your perfect sales tool tech stack
When choosing sales tools for your team, you’ll likely need a few different platforms to cover your bases. While there are many comprehensive tools out there, don’t put too much pressure on finding a one-size-fits-all solution to your problems. Start out small and build up from there.
Figure out your team’s most immediate needs and identify solutions to help fill gaps. What tools or processes can you implement today to make their jobs easier or more efficient? What sales tools can you introduce that work with the processes or systems you already have? Don’t feel like you need to reinvent the wheel.
Many of the tools on this list have free basic plans or trials. Take a few for a spin and see how they work with your team and needs. As you become more familiar with the sales tools available to you and how they work, you can better understand what solutions will solve your team’s needs.
