If a sorcerer's power lies in the spells they master, a salesperson's power is found in the tools they wield. A well-equipped sales toolkit can make the difference between a prosperous sales strategy and one that struggles to gain traction. In this guide, we'll explore the world of sales tools, their different types, and how to choose the perfect ones to empower your sales team to perform like magical sales wizards!
How sales tools can enhance productivity and efficiency: Armed with the right sales tools, your sales team can illuminate every inch of the sales funnel and eradicate productivity-killing inefficiencies. Streamlined processes and automations can transform your team into a lean, mean, selling machine, ready to tackle every lead and opportunity with unparalleled precision.
The impact of sales tools on sales results: Imagine having the sales sorcery to predict which leads will become customers or gaining insights into your prospect's mind to close deals faster. Sales tools have the potential to not only boost team efficiency but also make a tangible impact on your company's bottom line.
CRM Tools
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools empower sales teams to manage and optimize interactions with prospects and clients. With a properly designed CRM system, you can track lead information, schedule follow-ups, and nurture your leads throughout their buying journey.
Sales Intelligence Tools
These magical orbs of business knowledge help you collect, analyze, and apply data-driven insights by gathering valuable information about prospects, competitors, and market trends. Sales intelligence tools can help you identify the right prospects, shorten sales cycles, and improve your targeting and outreach strategy.
Sales Enablement Tools
Sales enablement tools sharpen your team's sales skills by providing them with the content, guidance, and training they need to persuade and enchant their way to successful deals. These tools might include resources like sales playbooks, presentation decks, and content libraries.
Sales Analytics Tools
Analytics tools can help you extract insights and forecast outcomes by monitoring your sales performance and tracking the critical metrics that matter most. They provide a data-driven, birds-eye view of your sales pipeline and sales rep activity, giving you the intel to make informed decisions and drive strategic improvements.
Sales Automation Tools
Sales automation tools can streamline repetitive, time-consuming tasks such as lead nurturing, data entry, and outreach. They help your sales team save time by automating mundane activities, allowing them to focus more on building relationships and closing deals.
Sales Prospecting Tools
Prospecting tools enchant your lead generation process by helping you find and engage with potential customers more effectively. These tools can assist you in discovering quality leads, refining targeting criteria, and conducting powerful outreach campaigns.
Sales Communication Tools
A salesperson must wield their words like a wand, casting a spell over prospects with emails, calls, and meetings. Sales communication tools help you deliver the right message at the right time through calls, video conferencing, emails, and more, ensuring the smoothest possible journey from prospect to customer.
Sales Training Tools
The ability to learn and grow is the key to a successful sales team. Sales training tools impart invaluable skills and knowledge to your salespeople, from mastering product knowledge to refining their sales techniques.
Understand your needs
Before diving headfirst into the magical sales tool market, take a step back and assess your team's needs and pain points. Determine the goals and gaps you wish to address with the help of sales tools and prioritize the functionality accordingly.
Consider your budget
No matter how magical your team, budget constraints may limit the sales tools you ultimately choose. Determine your financial boundaries and balance quality with affordability when selecting your new set of tools.
Evaluate features and usability
Not all sales tools are created equal, and some might wield more potent magic than others. Examine each tool's features and compare them to your team's needs and prerequisites. Additionally, choose tools that are user-friendly and easy to adopt. Overly complicated systems can lead to unnecessary frustration and wasted time.
Check customer reviews and support
In the sales tools world, reputation is key. Search for customer reviews and testimonials to gather insights into usability, reliability, and customer support quality. Remember, even the most enchanting tool can lose its sparkle if it lacks proper support.
Best CRM Tools
Salesforce
This tool is a powerful CRM platform with extensive customization options.
Tony G. says "Salesforce has helped us clean up our reporting, reduced our paperwork and the number of apps that we have to use to do our daily work, and has helped us with our accounting. We worked with an outside implementer which was the only way to onboard with Salesforce, in MHO. The organization that we worked with was excellent. They were knowledgeable and helped us tremendously with the transition. The process is HUGE."
HubSpot CRM
This tool is a popular, user-friendly CRM with a free entry-level version.
Mariya M says "One of the best features of hubspot the sequences, it helps us be on top of the clients head but i hope they can increase te limit, it will be easier as well if we can send sequence from our deal contacts. it's also way easier that we can sign the quotes through hubspot. i also love the meetings but sometime im having this issue that the contact is missing so i cant contact the client."
Microsoft Dynamics 365
This is a comprehensive CRM and ERP solution tailored to various industries.
Aashu K. says "Its a weapon for my business , its simple to setup and require no technical central. It's simple to setup and require no technical expertise. It works flawlessly with all of the tools I have already have , combining accounts with ease like a financial ninja. It's so easy to use and does't have any confusing menus or hidden features , which I adore. I use it frequently for everything from forecasting and number crunching to managing sales and inventory."
Best Sales Intelligence Tools
Kaspr
Free all-in-one prospecting tool that provides enriched contact data from the profiles of leads you find on LinkedIn.
Sarah B. says "Kaspr is really easy to set up and understand.The data is overall accurate for most prospects. Good consumer support, they are reactive. I use Kaspr almost everyday and I am satisfied with this tool."
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
A specialized tool to identify and engage with prospects on the world's largest professional network.
Elias R. says "I love all the filters and insight provided about new leads within my industry. As a sales leader, I'm always looking to connect with others within my industry and create strategic alliances that could benefit us and the people we do business with. Sales Navigator allowed us to find other professionals in similar industries and we're able to easily connect and share ideas as well as increasing our sales since we have the information we need to match our targeted audience."
ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo offers accurate company and contact data to fuel your sales intelligence.
Derek H. says "We typically use ZoomInfo as the go-to resource when developing target lead lists for new prospect acquisition, as the information is usually spot on, and it is very easy to drill down to the individuals or teams that lead to decision makers much quicker than the other premium services out there. The "intent" tool is one of the best ways to pinpoint great opportunities from companies actively seeking out services, creating the next best thing to a warm lead. Getting a foot in the door is much easier if you know a company requires something that you can provide them, and it is an excellent conversation starter for cold calls/emails."
Demandbase
Demandbase delivers targeted market insights, combined with CRM data enrichment.
User Benjamin C. says "I wish I found it earlier but over the last few months I have been using the "Site Analysis" section because it gives me great information on what I should be using for my messaging in outreach. You can either use it by being targetted to a specific company to see where they have navigated or use the page view to see what is trending on your own website."
Best Sales Enablement Tools
Highspot
Highspot combines sales content management, training, and guidance in one platform.
Debbie R. says "Highspot is a one-stop shop for all necessary sales tools and training. It allows me to save time with quick searches for materials to close sales. Everything I need is in one place and I can customize proposals and save time. I can track emails to clients and identify what they are most interested in, which makes the sale less cumbersome. It is easy to use and very user friendly. There really are seemingly endless features, giving us the flexibility to evolve the site as needed."
Seismic
Seismic streamlines the delivery and organization of sales content.
Elli J. says "Seismic is an essential tool in our company. It provides us with a platform where we can share different docs from different teams in one place, so it saves everyone time communicating and sending each other documents all the time. Everyone knows where to go to look for content and it's a really easy tool to navigate."
Showpad
Showpad helps your sales team create interactive and visual presentations.
Sylvia A. says "Coming from a sales and marketing background, I hold Showpad Content in high regard, and believe that it can be of great use for arranging product-related materials. This ability to insert videos, books, and Word documents into customized folders is also very convenient. It's a lot simpler to communicate with customers if you hyperlink these resources directly to the customers 'emails."
Best Sales Analytics Tools
Tableau
Tableau is an advanced data visualization and analytics tool for unveiling in-depth insights.
Varad V. says "Tableau is extremely good and easy to use for getting insights about the data. The feature of tableau that allows users to collaborate in team is very unique. Prompt responses from support staff during outages and assurances of help is commendable. The best thing about tableau is it's availability in mobile version. That really helps to check and track team's progress on the go."
Gong.io
Gong.io offers real-time analytics, coaching, and deal strategy guidance for sales calls and meetings.
Erin B. says "I love the new AI features that summarize and highlight your call. It can help you write follow up emails, look quickly and the key points from the call, and there is even easy ways to share snippits of your call through slack! It is great. They have a feature that allows you to flag calls that contain certain words and will notify you. So you can review them or track who is discussing a specific product etc. Or even to see who uses customer examples etc. It really helps when wanting to search previous calls and learn what someone else did in a certain situation with a prospect. I can just type in the competitor I am up against or objection I am running into and Gong can put any call recording that has those words included."
Clari
Clari is a predictive analytics solution for tracking sales and pipeline performance.
Oscar A. says "The best part of using Clari is the ability to use a slick user-interface in tandem with AI and analytics tool to quickly and easily answer questions about the business in real-time. Gone are the days of having to wait on a team of analysts to pull data to answer a question about our revenue engine, we now have the information at our finger-tips without having to learn complex dashboarding or BI tools. Clari makes it so that every seller and sales leader has a digital chief of staff."
Best Sales Automation Tools
Outreach
Outreach accelerates and simplifies sales engagement via personalized sequences and automation.
Brian S. notes "Outreach is a great platform that integrates with many other useful tools for a sales organization. It allows for automatic email/call sequences to occur and it is very easy to use platform. I love the simplicity and navigation tools to set up sequences and call steps to properly contact customers and potential customers. I love the notifications as well. This allows me to see who has clicked, replied, and opened the emails to have "warmer" leads than initially expected too. Overall a great tool for a sales organization to have!"
Yesware
Yesware provides tools for email tracking, templates, and automated follow-ups.
Rishi B. shares "Considering many of us cannot afford 15$ per month Pro Yesware plan, they have added a nice free forever plan. This free plan allows email tracking details for emails sent less than 24 hours ago (limit of 40 events should be okay for a beginner in marketing)."
Freshworks
Freshworks is the best alternative to Salesforce and Pardot.
Lauturo B. says "It allows easy visualization of sales processes, including the creation of pipelines that help to close sales very easily. The application offers exceptional support and has helped me make numerous adjustments to the sales system. With its numerous advantages and attractive interface, it is definitely a powerful tool. Increasing our customer base with Freshsales is an excellent choice."
Best Sales Prospecting Tools
DiscoverOrg
DiscoverOrg is a sales intelligence platform to find high-quality leads.
Valerie P. says "Intelligence on our existing prospects and their companies using the Opps Alerts feature. Also, we were able to gather new prospects using that feature and the Advanced Search option. We were able to fill in some of the blanks in our Salesforce data, which was outdated to begin with. This product is a game changer. My only con was the issue with setting up and how long it took to get a unique bug to our Salesforce org fixed. If that had been a little faster, this would be a 10/10."
Datanyze
The Datanyze tool offers technology tracking and data enrichment for improved prospect targeting.
Aswani K. and other users have noted problems with this one's functioning. He says "It's a chrome extension that works well with linkeidn to extract the B2B database like contacts and emails. I love the user interface, I found it good to get emails and phone numbers for clients in US and Europe."
AeroLeads
AeroLeads helps you find business emails and phone numbers based on specific criteria.
Kabilan P. shares "All in all, Aeroleads has helped me close good deals and I think it's a must-have tool in every seller's pocket."
Best Sales Communication Tools
Chorus.ai
Chorus.ai uses AI to analyze calls and provide detailed feedback for sales teams.
Allison V. says "Chorus is an essential tool for any strategic seller. Not only does it let me focus on my conversation rather than taking notes, it allows me to easily share insights with my team. from a training and coaching standpoint it makes it so easy for new reps to listen in on calls and to ask for feedback from their leaders. I discovered Chorus about 4 years ago and have insisted it is in my tech stack everywhere I've been since. I love, love love this product."
Slack
Slack is a popular messaging and collaboration tool for seamless team communication.
Nino M. loves Slack, saying "I have an experience of using slack for more than 2 years in two different companies,therefore I love how easy and comprehensive it is. It gives me the possibility to communicate directly with the colleagues, creating different channels accordingly to discuss the specific topics. With that reason you cannot miss any of the chat/message in the thread. Being a Team Leader, It is extremely easy to integrate with the team members and discuss and make announcements to them in a proper way. Basically, we use Slack frequently, every day. The possibility to record voices, listen to the recording in different regimes and have calls if necessary is an advantage that many platforms do not have. Moreover, I always change statuses and can pause the notifications if needed, not to be disturbed."
RingCentral
RingCentral provides cloud-based phone systems, video conferencing, and team messaging.
Vidushi S. says "The fact that it can be linked to JobDiva, is a big win. It makes it all the more easy for me to connect with the candidates without the unnecessary hassle of switching between the two applications.
Although there are not much downsides but one thing that bugs me the most is that it doesn't work as smooth as it should. It lags a lot. Sometimes the buffer time is too long and it has nothing to do with the network connection. I would love a smoother experience."
Best Sales Training Tools
SalesHood
Saleshood is a training platform that offers content, coaching, and collaboration for sales teams.
DaMarco E. says "SalesHood's got some awesome perks! One standout is its killer training and onboarding emphasis, making it a breeze for sales teams to pick up and use new ideas. Plus, it's super cool how it brings team members together, helping them share knowledge and get better as a group. And don't even get me started on the performance tracking—it's like having a secret weapon for both individuals and managers, fueling non-stop growth in sales teams."
MindTickle
MindTickle focuses on skill development, coaching, and sales readiness.
Garba D. shares "The other thing I like about this platform is that it is compliant. This is the perfect match for me and my company. It provides that all shared information and training are to standard. The leadership training modules provided by MindTickle are extremely useful to me, helping me step up my performance. With an intuitive UI, navigating through the different modules is a breeze. This is quite necessary for quick and effective learning."
Seismic Learning (formerly Lessonly)
This tool provides training, practice, and coaching for sales teams in an easy-to-use interface.
Edgar B. says "What I like about Lessonly is it gives me the tool that I need specially when it come to product knowledge this was very helpful, Since I am in the industry of Customer Service the most important thing I should learn is the product that I am promoting aside from it is easy to use like for example I do have a coaching , practice , training this tools helps our team to expadite our knowledge about the product."
Building Your Sales Toolkit
Selecting the perfect mix of sales tools for your team can be a game-changer in achieving sales success. From lead generation to deal closing, a well-crafted sales toolkit should address the needs of your team, enhance productivity, and ultimately help unlock your team's full potential.
But no toolkit would be complete without the simple, yet powerful productivity tool Magical. With Magical, your sales team can prospect faster by instantly pulling lead info into their CRM, call up their most popular message templates in the blink of an eye, and instantly personalize their emails with contact information from their open tabs. Account executives save an average of seven hours a week using Magical. And best of all? You can add Magical to Chrome for free.
Magical has saved me an unbelievable amount of time. I can write a customized email in 10 seconds. That enables me to spend my time in my job doing the things that actually make me successful—rather than the repetitive things that just have to be done.
Lee Marcus, Mid-Markets Account Executive, Freshworks
