10 Best Sales Tools to Boost Your B2B Sales

10 Best Sales Tools to Boost Your B2B Sales

Selling is all about hitting the numbers consistently. However, today, how quickly you get to your numbers is more important.

To skyrocket the numbers, sales reps make use of various sales tools available in the market. Some of them are free while others are paid – but all bring in enormous value to the sales process.

Investing in a random sales tool is a waste of time, money and effort. We have listed the 10 best sales tools you must be acquainted with to boost your B2B sales. 

However, let’s quickly learn the significance of the top sales tools in the 21st century. 

What are Sales Tools?

Sales tools are software and technology solutions that help sales teams automate and streamline various tasks and processes, such as lead generation, customer relationship management, and sales forecasting. These tools can help sales teams to be more efficient and effective in their work, allowing them to close more deals and increase revenue. Examples of popular sales tools include CRM software, marketing automation software, and sales forecasting tools.

Why Use Sales Tools?

Using sales tools can help increase productivity and efficiency in the sales process by automating repetitive tasks, tracking and analyzing sales data, and providing actionable insights to inform better decision-making. These tools can also help sales teams prioritize leads and streamline communication with prospects and customers, leading to more effective and efficient sales efforts. Additionally, sales tools can provide a more professional and organized approach to the sales process, which can help build and maintain strong customer relationships.

What problems do sales tools fix?

Sales tools can solve various problems faced by sales teams, including:

  1. Inefficiency and lack of organization in the sales process, leading to missed opportunities and decreased productivity.
  2. Inaccurate tracking and analysis of sales data, making it difficult to identify trends and make informed decisions.
  3. Difficulty prioritizing leads and managing a large volume of prospects and customers.
  4. Inadequate communication and follow-up with prospects and customers, leading to lost opportunities and decreased customer satisfaction.
  5. Lack of visibility into the sales pipeline and forecasting accuracy, making it difficult to plan and allocate resources effectively.

By addressing these challenges, sales tools can help sales teams work more efficiently and effectively, close more deals, and build stronger relationships with customers.

What Type of Software do Salespeople Use to Track All Aspects of Customer Interaction?

There are various tools salespeople use to track all aspects of customer interaction. Here are some of them:

  • Client relationship management (CRM)
  • Email campaign management tool
  • Visitor identification tool to track interaction with the website

CRM is the most commonly used tool out of the three.

What Is The Most Important Tool in Sales?

Sales prospecting is the primary challenge for sales reps. The reason – lack of data to identify and reach potential customers. So, data intelligence tool for prospecting becomes the most important tool in sales.

11 Types of Sales Tools You Must Know:

  1. CRM software 
  2. Marketing automation software
  3. Sales intelligence and Prospecting
  4. Sales acceleration software
  5. Sales analytics software
  6. Sales gamification
  7. Video conferencing software
  8. Account-based marketing software
  9. E-signature and document tracking
  10. Customer service software
  11. Call Tracking

These tools enable sales professionals to understand the chances of prospects to convert into potential clients, the right time to reach the prospects, and how to keep them engaged throughout the buying process.

They save your time spent on administrative tasks, allowing you to spend more time selling and ultimately increasing productivity. 

The Rising Importance of Sales Tools

  • Nine in 10 companies use two or more lead enrichment tools to learn more about prospects.
  • Using social selling tools can increase win rates and deal size by 5% and 35%, respectively.
  • Sales development reps use on average six tools.
  • The most popular sales tools include CRM, social prospecting, data and list services, email engagement, phone, and sales cadence.
  • As per research, administrative tasks are responsible for 14.8% of the effectiveness drain.

How Sales Tools Bring Value to Your Business?

The most important benefits of using a sales automation tool for your business are:

1) Improve Your Reporting

Every sales manager or VP seeks ways to improve productivity. Many non-productive activities take time. One of which is the reporting as one cannot ignore creating a report. 

Sales automation tools help you to automate report generation in the simplest and more presentable way.

Sales automation tools provide in-depth historical data to decide what’s working and what’s not. 

2) Save Time and Improve Efficiency

If your sales reps can close the deals in fewer attempts, you can cut down the extra time spent on email drafting, checking the lead qualification, etc. This will help you improve their work efficiency. 

For instance, sales tools can automate emails required at every buying stage, you can perform A/B testing using the best subject lines suggested by the tool.  

Sales tools also help sales professionals dial phone numbers from a list, drop prerecorded messages, and track every detail of your company’s phone activities.

3) Focus on High-Quality Leads

Automated lead scoring helps you filter out the unqualified leads that allow you to focus on high-quality leads. This eliminates the time spent manually sorting the leads.

That means you just need to set a time for sales and marketing.

Choose the Right Tools to Improve Your Sales Strategy

Now that you know how beneficial sales tools are, you need to focus on implementing the right ones. The market has a wide spectrum of sales tools with different functionalities; you need to pick the ones most required. 

It is important to understand your requirements, which tools your competitors are using, and what’s trending when it comes to sales tools. 

To make it easier for you, we have come up with a list of the 10 best sales tools for your sales team to improve work efficiency and productivity.

10 Best Category-based sales tools for B2B

  1. CRM software 
  2. Marketing automation software
  3. Sales intelligence and Prospecting
  4. Sales acceleration software
  5. Sales analytics software
  6. Sales gamification
  7. Video conferencing software
  8. Account-based marketing software
  9. e-signature and document tracking
  10. Customer service software

1. CRM Software

CRM is the first and essential investment that a company makes for the sales team. According to LinkedIn’s State of Sales 2018, CRM adoption by companies has grown 113% since 2016 and by 2018, 64% of sales professionals used CRM applications.

Customer relationship management is simple to use. Additionally, you can integrate your website, social media, telephone calls, chat, emails, and various marketing materials into the CRM. Due to its diversity, CRM can benefit any business – from a startup to a large enterprise.

Choosing the right CRM is a tough ask for businesses. Choose the one that offers the most simplistic yet effective user experience and gives you the UI/UX.

There are two most popular and reliable CRMs for B2B businesses – Hubspot and Salesforce. Both CRMs have a lot of features making it easier for the sales reps to track the lead status.

Here’s a list of the top 10 Best CRM Software:

  1. HubSpot CRM
  2. Salesforce CRM
  3. Zoho CRM
  4. Freshsales
  5. Netsuite CRM
  6. Pipedrive
  7. monday.com CRM
  8. CRM Creatio
  9. vCita
  10. Pipeliner

2. Marketing Automation Software

While CRM is often the first sales technology investment by any business, marketing automation is the next tool that modern sales teams need.

Marketing automation software helps companies to streamline the marketing process and refine the marketing strategy based on the data and performance. It automates daily tasks such as emails, social media posting, and b2b lead generation activities.

While marketing professionals are frequent users of marketing automation tools, it is equally important for the sales team. It helps the sales reps to automate the sales process especially when the buying process is long. 

Here’s a list of marketing automation tools that will help you generate leads, close deals, and manage your sales pipeline on auto-pilot.

  1. Marketo
  2. HubSpot Marketing 
  3. Ontraport
  4. SendinBlue
  5. ActiveCampaign
  6. Prospect.io
  7. InfusionSoft
  8. Autopilot
  9. GetResponse
  10. Drip

3. Sales Intelligence and Prospecting

Sales intelligence consists of a wide spectrum of technologies that provides contact information as well as additional information on the prospects. It also helps sales professionals to monitor and track the information on the prospects’ business.

Prospecting tools are now becoming an integral part of the sales process as more than 40% of salespeople say prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process. 

Sales prospecting software allows sales reps to conduct targeted searches for prospects using a specific set of real-time data points. These data points include firmographics, technographics, direct dials, etc.

Sales intelligence helps salespeople know precisely who they should be talking with, what they should be talking about, and when they should reach out to them. All relevant information must be in front of them when they’re having that conversation.

In short, sales prospecting tools help sales reps to save time and replace the previously manual process of locating the relevant insights you need with automation. You can trust these tools for accuracy. They will give you a complete overview of every prospect.

SalesIntel provides millions of accurate B2B data with the most direct dials in the industry. 

In addition to the contact details of the decision-maker, you can access the technographic and firmographic data of the companies to support your prospecting.

Here’s a list of the most preferred sales intelligence & prospecting tools:

  1. SalesIntel
  2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
  3. NinjaOutreach
  4. Mattermark
  5. CrunchBase
  6. Prospect.io
  7. Zoominfo
  8. D&B Hoovers
  9. Datanyze Insider
  10. RevDriver
  11. BuiltWith

4. Sales Acceleration Software

Sales acceleration helps to speed up the sales process by automating repetitive and administrative tasks. 

Sales acceleration software aims to speed up sales by automating administrative tasks and streamlining sales processes.

The sales acceleration tools include email tracking software, analytics tools, outbound sales dialers, sales coaching tools, etc. 

People consider sales acceleration as a broader term for all the tools that help B2B sales reps spend more time chasing and nurturing qualified leads. As a result, it is tough to identify the one that suits your requirements. 

SalesLoft and Outreach are the two sales acceleration tools that are gaining traction among B2B businesses. 

Since engaging prospects using traditional methods is not yielding results, businesses are happy to invest in sales acceleration tools.

  1. SalesLoft
  2. Outreach
  3. Spotio was recently listed #477 on the Inc. 5000 list.
  4. Mailshake

Read About – Websites Like Zoominfo

5. Sales Analytics Software

Sales analytics software is useful to effectively track, evaluate, and improve sales productivity and performance. The tools are helpful to forecast the sales based on the on-going performance chart and insights.  

Especially in this age where data is considered as the major ingredient for building a marketing and sales strategy. It has helped to avoid human errors while gathering the data manually and entering it in spreadsheets. 

Sales analytics software gives you a systematic and customized representation of the reports that you can access in one place. In the age of big data, sales analytics has become an important part of every sales report. 

Here are top 10 analytics and reporting tools that allow you to monitor and analyze your key sales metrics based on your preference. 

  1. Tableau
  2. Heap Analytics
  3. Alteryx
  4. Google Analytics
  5. MixPanel
  6. Amplitude
  7. Zoho
  8. Solver
  9. Dataiku DSS
  10. KNIME

These tools offer a wide variety of customizable data visualization options and dashboard layouts.  

6. Sales Gamification

Sales gamification is trending for the last couple of years. It allows the sales managers to choose the performance metrics for their sales reps. The tool provides rank to the employees by evaluating the parameters against the metrics set by the managers. 

Some tools display real-time scores of the employees based on the data from the CRM to keep the competition interesting and healthy. 

Some tools also allow more complex team games and one-on-one challenges for individual skills and performance goals. 

It might be possible that you are already using sales gamification. If not, give it a try as it will boost motivation and sales performance to get the most from sales teams.

Here are 10 Sales Gamification tools for you:

  1. Ambition
  2. Influitive
  3. Badgeville
  4. Hoopla
  5. GetBadges
  6. Freshdesk Arcade
  7. Playlyfe
  8. Rise
  9. LevelEleven
  10. Catalyst

7. Video Conferencing Software

As businesses manage expenses in the pre-sales method, one of the major contributors to the expenses is meetings and demos at client sites. As a result, businesses are preferring video conferences for running online meetings to demo and/or share their offerings.

Along with the cost-cutting benefits, video conferencing also helps to reduce communication hiccups with remote teams, clients, or other stakeholders. 

With the recent epidemic of Covid-19, many events and conferences called off globally. As a recovery measure, businesses are preferring to arrange video conferences. 

Some tools also offer screen sharing and audio recording features for a better user experience. 

With so many free and paid tools available for video conferencing, finding the right one for your needs can be both time-consuming and stressful.

Top 10 video conferencing tools for B2B businesses: 

  1. GoToMeeting
  2. CyberLink U Meeting
  3. Zoom Meetings
  4. BlueJeans
  5. Lifesize
  6. Google Hangouts Meet
  7. WebEx
  8. Skype
  9. Microsoft Teams
  10.  Zoho Meeting

Master the art of b2b selling - ebook

8. Account-Based Marketing Software

Account-based marketing (ABM) has helped B2B businesses to take an account-specific approach and build scalable, personalized marketing campaigns. Additionally, it also measures the results against a set of key performance indicators.

To succeed with the account-based marketing strategy, you need to back your marketing strategy with the prospecting tool that will give you accurate data. 

With a clearly defined target audience and data, marketing departments can better categorize and evaluate leads and move them further along the sales process.

SalesIntel helps you develop your ideal customer profile using a powerful combination of firmographic, technographic and behavioral data points across the USA, UK, Australia, and Canada region. 

If you stick to the basics and have the right B2B data, the essence of Account-Based Marketing is nothing to fear.

Top 10 Account-Based Marketing (ABM) tools:

  1. SalesIntel
  2. Marketo
  3. LeanData
  4. Act-On
  5. ON24
  6. Sendoso
  7. Terminus ABM Platform
  8. Engagio ABM Platform
  9. Triblio
  10. Bizible

9. E-signature and Document Tracking

For those who are not aware of this type of tool, e-signature and document tracking tools are replacing the putting pen to paper method. 

The tool helps users securely collect signatures on sales contracts, project charters, and proposals.

The market has started to see more e-signature and document tracking solutions pointed out for sales teams. These tools can be useful also for sending out any sales and marketing collateral.

Docsketch is a popularly used E-signature tool that also tracks and maintains an audit trail of all the important activities related to your documents.

  1. PandaDoc 
  2. SignRequest
  3. Zoho Sign
  4. SignNow
  5. DocuSign
  6. e-SignLive
  7. Qwilr
  8. eSign+
  9. RightSignature
  10. Sertifi
  11. Signable

10. Customer Service Software

Lastly, a tool to ensure the best and most convenient after-sales service. 

Customer service tools ensure smooth inbound and outbound communication across multiple channels and resolve issues.

Tools for help desk, live chat, social customer service, and ticket management mold into this category of software. 

To improve customer experience, most vendors include features such as call-routing, auto-attendance, and case management.  

Chatbots are the most popular these days as it aims to qualify new leads and book new meetings for the salespeople’s calendars. 

There are hundreds of different customer service software available to choose from. They vary by scale, industry use, platform type, compatibility, and features. So, you can start with the free ones.

10 best customer services software:

  1. Nextiva
  2. FreshDesk
  3. Zendesk Support
  4. Kayako
  5. Salesforce
  6. ZohoDesk
  7. HubSpot CRM
  8. LiveAgent
  9. HelpSpot
  10. AzureDesk

11. Call Tracking

Call tracking helps you analyze marketing campaigns that drive calls to your business.

It also tracks and sorts information about all incoming phone calls. You can use it to attribute each phone number to specific marketing channels. These include SEO, paid ads, and other online and offline campaigns.

These phone numbers capture data from the calls and help you understand how many calls each of these channels is driving. It also allows you to extract necessary demographic information about each caller.

It is one of the most advanced solutions that can be integrated with your CRM systems. Thus, helping you measure key metrics like call drivers, quality of each call, and conversion rate.

Here is a list of call tracking software that will help you

  1. CallRail
  2. CallHippo
  3. Invoca
  4. DialogTech
  5. CallTrackingMetrics
  6. RingDNA
  7. Vonage Contact Center (formerly NewVoiceMedia)
  8. Marchex
  9. ResponseTap
  10. CallSource

Get Started

Now that you have a list of sales tools that can boost your sales process and offer a better customer experience, start using them. 

Request for a Free Trial today and fast-track your prospecting.