There are so many cool sales tools at the moment. Here at Companda we are always excited about discovering these tools and sharing them with you. Marketing used to lead the pack when it comes to innovative software, however sales has been catching up in recent years. On average, organisations now have 5 to 10 sales tools in their technology stack! And no less than 88% of organisations indicate that they will invest in their stack in 2022.
Why teams invest in sales tools
All those sales tools, are they really necessary for sales? Yes, they are… The fact is that with massive home working and video calling, fewer spontaneous prospects walk in the door. Where your agenda previously filled itself with introductions based on spontaneous brainstorming sessions, working remotely canceled all that. At the same time, sales suffers from inflation. More and more calls are needed to book an appointment. And email open rates aren’t improving either.
What does it all mean? Sales teams have to do more for the same result. You can work harder to increase your output, or you can work smarter using the right technology.
The good news is that there are countless sales tools to accelerate your sales cycle. The solution? Look beyond a CRM and video calling application and build an innovative sales stack that will put you ahead of your competitors. Whether you start compiling company lists, approach contacts or want to motivate your sales team; there’s an app for that!
41 sales tools for more leads, appointments and revenue
In this article you will find a list with 41 tools to increase the output of your sales team. We have categorised them according to the most important phases of the sales process. This way you can quickly see which tools are relevant to your company.
- Prospecting – 6 tools to find prospects
- Outreach – 7 tools to approach new contacts
- Nurture – 7 applications to warm up your leads
- Qualify – 8 tools to select the right leads for follow-up
- Appointments – 6 applications for more and better appointments
- Deals – 7 tools to help you close more deals
Prospecting
Sales tools for building lead lists
Your sales process often starts with prospecting. The sales tools in this first category help you compile company lists, find relevant contacts and enrich data in your CRM.
#1 Companda
We kick-off with our own solution. Companda helps you identify website visitors in real-time and turn them into rich company profiles. This way you can easily compile prospect lists for your sales team based on anonymous website traffic.
#2 Vainu
Prospecting starts with a good company list. Vainu is basically a large company database that is enriched with relevant data. This way you can make smart selections based on more than 100 company filters and easily transfer your lists to the other sales tools you’re using.
#3 TechTarget
Is your company in software? With Techtarget you not only create company lists based on company data, but you can also do this on the basis of ‘Buying intention’. How it works? The company database is linked to major comparison websites such as Capterra, Forrester and TrustRadius so that you can see per company whether they are actively looking for a new software supplier.
#4 Revergy
With large sales deals you often have to deal with complex decision processes and multiple decision makers. Sounds familiar? Then take a look at Revergy. This tool helps you map out the Decision Making Unit (DMU) so that sales quickly find their way within the organisation.
#5 Hunter.io
You have found a relevant contact, now all you have to do is find out the email address. Hunter.io is one of the most popular Chrome plugins with which you can easily find email addresses of people within companies. An indispensable sales tool.
#6 Lead Genius
Have you found a prospect on LinkedIn? With the Chrome extension from Lead Genius you can conjure up much more data and sync the contact with your CRM.
Outreach
Sales tools for approaching cold contacts
You make the first contact with new prospects based on an effective outreach. With these tools you realize more opt-ins, replies and your connection requests on LinkedIn are accepted more often. Let’s go!
#7 Lavender
Which sales copy realizes the most replies? Lavender gives you real-time suggestions to improve your sales emails. This sales tool indicates how effective your text is and comes with concrete improvements based on artificial intelligence (AI).
#8 Chorus
Do you make the first connection via telephone contact? Chorus is a tool that records, analyses and dictates your conversations. You even get real-time tips on how to best close your conversation. The tool is used to professionalize sales teams or to train new talent more quickly.
#9 Hyperise
When you first approach your prospect, you want to make it as personal as possible. With Hyperise, you can automatically enrich standard videos and images with company logos, first names and more. You then use this personalised content in, for example, your email and social selling activities. The tool claims to be able to improve conversions by a factor of two.
#10 Woodpecker
Most CRMs are not designed to handle large numbers of leads. Woodpecker is a simple yet powerful sales tool to manage your outreach via phone, email and LinkedIn. You can use it in addition to your CRM.
#11 Vidyard
Personalized video is increasingly being used to approach prospects. With an extension you can easily create a short video pitch that you can process in your email. With Vidyard you are guaranteed to get more responses to your outreach.
#12 Octopus CRM
Octopus CRM is a valuable tool to automate your LinkedIn activities. The only thing is, LinkedIn isn’t too happy about it. With Octopus CRM you can send invitations, endorsements, likes and messages on autopilot. And despite LinkedIn in 2020 tightening the screws when it comes to sending invites, Octopus manages to work around it with devious tricks. This is one of the better sales tools, but promise not to pass it on. You don’t have this one from us.
#13 Wise Stamp
Does your sales team send a lot of emails to fresh contacts? With this ‘Signature management software’ you manage the digital signatures that are at the bottom of emails. With Wisestamp you can easily click banners together that provide more appointments, demos and downloads. It will will help you roll out a successful outreach campaign.
Nurture
Sales tools for gaining trust
Most of the companies you approach aren’t ready to buy. Likes, comments, valuable content and advice; you will have to work hard to warm up your cold prospect into a valuable lead. These sales tools help you with that.
#14 Shield App
Want to stay top of mind with your prospects? Then it is wise to regularly post updates in your LinkedIn timeline. The bad thing is that LinkedIn shows very few statistics. Shield App is for professionals who want to better understand how their content is read within LinkedIn and by whom.
#15 Datatrics
Data Management Platforms (DMPs) are mainly used in e-commerce, but B2B is also discovering its value. Datatrics is a tool that personalises the content of advertisements, websites and emails. Based on engagement, the platform determines where your prospect is in the buying process and automatically adjusts the content accordingly. This makes your nurture campaigns more relevant and therefore more effective.
#16 Yesware
How often do you forget to follow up on an important prospect in time? Start with automatic follow up, right from Outlook or Gmail. Plan your follow-up immediately after sending a proposal or pitch, for example. If you do not receive a response to your email, Yesware automatically sends the follow up.
#17 Zapier
Warming up prospects that your sales team has had contact with for the first time? With remarketing you show advertisements on LinkedIn or Instagram specifically for new prospects. With Zapier you connect your sales team’s email box to an advertising platform such as LinkedIn Ads or Instagram. This way the prospects that your sales team has contact with will also see advertisements from your company.
#18 Gmass
A birthday is often forgotten, especially one from your prospects. With Gmass, you can send your relations a birthday greeting on autopilot, directly from your inbox. You can also use this tool more widely to email your contacts in batches, directly from Gmail. Why you would want to do that? Emails sent from Gmail get delivered better than most marketing automation solutions.
#19 Google Alerts
With this tool you will automatically receive a notification when an important prospect appears in the news. With Google Alerts you learn more about the company you want to connect with. It gives you reasons to do follow up and schedule appointments.
#20 Sendoso
A nice gift has never diminished a relationship. This is no different in sales. Sendoso allows you to send gifts to prospects directly from your CRM. They even check the postal address for you so you know your gift will be arriving. This way you realise up to 4 times more response, according to the tool.
Qualify
Sales tools for qualifying leads
Is your sales machine running at full throttle? Then you want to be picky about which contacts you follow up. In this phase of your sales process, you take a critical look at leads and qualify the contacts who have the greatest chance to convert to revenue. Sales tools in this category help you score and qualify leads.
#21 Clearbit
Did you previously only have a first name and an e-mail address in your CRM; now you suddenly have a complete company profile including sector, company name, turnover indication and more. With Clearbit, qualifying contacts becomes very easy. You connect this tool directly to your CRM or you use their Zapier app to enrich data via an overwrite.
#22 Zoom info
Does your company sell software? With Zoominfo you enrich your database with relevant company data and you get insights into your contacts ‘Buying intent’. Zoominfo collects data from major news sites to software comparison sites to understand which companies are actively looking for a new software solution. This way you qualify your leads, prevent churn and find opportunities for cross and upsell.
#23 Consensus
Are the number of demos increasing at a rapid pace? Then you will notice that there are many companies that don’t match with your ideal target group. With Consensus you create an interactive demo so that leads can explore the solution themselves. And if there is still interest, the contact can still schedule a live demo with your sales team. Basically, leads qualify themselves so you don’t have to.
#24 Close
In practice, you cannot avoid (partly) manually qualifying leads. When you are dealing with large numbers, this takes a lot of time, and it is also an error-prone job. Close is a complete CRM package with a handy feature. Manual qualification is based on a todo list where you can indicate which fields must be searched for before the next contact can be qualified. This way your sales team works a lot more effectively and you prevent mistakes.
#25 videoask
A nice new tool by the makers of Typeform. With Videoask, your lead fills out a number of forms to qualify. For each question, you show a short video to explain the question you are asking. The interface merges forms with personal video. It looks great and is surprisingly effective.
#26 Sales flags
Smart marketers use website and email data to estimate how hot a lead is. For example, a lead score is automatically calculated so that sales can include this in their qualification. Unfortunately many interactions take place on LinkedIn and that is information that LinkedIn likes to keep to itself. Salesflags is a sales tool that fixes this. When a prospect responds via LinkedIn chat, places a like or comment, your sales team will receive a notification. For the time being, this tool only integrates with Salesforce.
#27 Clear Slide
When you email information to your prospect, you want to know how (and if) it’s being read. Clear Slide is a content hub for sales teams. It provides an overview of relevant sales materials and keeps track of which content is read. This way, your sales team will receive notifications when a prospect is ready for the next step.
#28 Mailtrack
With this simple Chrome plugin you get a real-time notification when a prospect reads your important email. This way you know which contacts are most likely to be followed up. Mailtrack is specifically for Gmail, but the functionality is often also integrated in modern CRM packages such as Hubspot and Pipedrive.
Appointments
Sales tools for more and better appointments
No revenue without contracts. How many opportunities do you miss when trying to convert a lead to an appointment? From outreach by phone to logging call notes; these tools make sure your agenda is well-filled.
#29 Calendly
You are probably familiar with this one, and it is now widely used. Calendly is software to simplify the process of booking meetings. This way, your prospect can easily book an appointment at a time that suits them. You can indicate which blocks you are available and it blocks moments that you are in other meetings.
#30 Calendar Hero
This tool is similar to Calendly but has an extra feature. Do you often book meetings with several people? With Calendar Hero, a group indicates their preference for multiple dates. Then this tool finds the best date for the group meeting.
#31 Brainshark
How many meetings bring in revenue? Brainshark is online training for sales. With the training modules, your team works on product knowledge and pitches. This way you book more appointments (and close more deals).
#32 Zoom
This one doesn’t need an explanation, right? By now we are all professional video callers. Whether you use Zoom, Google Meet or Teams; appointments via your screen is something we will continue to do post-COVID.
#33 Cresendo
Do you have a sales team that’s on the road? Cresendo is an iPad app that allows you to create and show interactive presentations during meetings on location. You can easily share brochures, fact sheets and other custom branded sales materials.
#34 Fireflies
When you are in your sales flow, you don’t want to be logging your conversations, taking notes and updating your CRM. Fireflies is an AI assistant that automatically logs your conversations, adds notes and reports your phone calls.
Deals
Sales tools to win more contracts
Closing deals! That’s what it’s all about! From leaderboards to signing contracts; the sales tools in this list are guaranteed to generate more sales.
#35 Turtl
With Turtl, your sales team can easily personalise content without the need for a marketing team. This way you can personalise your standard brochures and fact sheets with a company name or logo on autopilot. Handy for when you want to quickly share relevant content after an appointment.
#36 Recapped
Great, your prospect asked for a proposal. But in the meantime it has been 6 weeks and there seems to be no progress. Your contact person has a hard time getting all the stakeholders on the same page. With Recapped you map out internal stakeholders, keep track of who has given the green light and which people still need attention before the scribble is put under your contract. Investors seem to like it; Recapped just raised 6 million in funding.
#37 Pandadoc
Writing winning proposals takes time. Sometimes too much time. With Pandadoc you create your own templates and quickly create proposals based on drag and drop. Your prospect can digitally sign the document and it looks good too. More deals guaranteed.
#38 Loom
Do you want to close more deals? Ofcourse you do! Adding a short, personal video has measurable effect. With Loom you can easily record a short screencast. During the video you present your proposal and explain why you are the right person for the job. A lot of times you’ll see that potential customers share the video internally with their stakeholders. This way you will close deals, faster.
#39 Dealcoachpro
Which deals will fall? And which probably not? Dealcoachpro is an extension to your CRM that helps your sales team to objectively assess individual deals. It has something of a short quiz that is completed per deal. This way you know better how much revenue you can expect this quarter.
#40 Gong.io
Probably 20 percent of your sales team brings in 80 percent of the revenue. What can the rest of your team learn from these professionals? Gong analyses all interactions with your customer based on AI and gives specific tips that should lead to more deals. Very next level.
#41 CRM Gamified
A little competition within your sales team can’t hurt. With CRM Gamified you can easily create leaderboards. This way you visualise the most important sales metrics, celebrate your teams successes and you can easily reward the best sales professionals within your team.
Your next step after reading this article
There is still so much to gain for your sales team. Did you know that the average sales professional spends 65 percent of their time on things other than selling? That’s three days a week not doing things that make them happy. With innovative sales tools, you can automate many tasks so your team can focus on connecting, making good conversations and closing deals.
This is how you choose the right sales tools
Take the first step and schedule a 2-hour appointment with one of your sales colleagues. During the meeting, you will identify the biggest challenge of your sales process. Is it insufficient prospects and outreach? Or are leads not converting into appointments? Is the number of deals lagging?
After you have defined your challenge, it’s time to browse this list of sales tools. Pick at least 5 tools you think are relevant and make a shortlist of the 3 that look the most promising based on a demo. Then plan a 2-week pilot where you try your favourite tools (usually for free). This way you will upgrade your sales process with the latest tech.
What do you think? Is new sales software an important priority item for your organisation? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.
