6 Types of Sales Tools You Need to Close Deals in 2024
What’s an hour worth to your sales team?
By utilizing different types of sales tools, this hour might be used for a cold call that leads to a trial or a product demonstration that persuades a doubtful lead to become a customer. It might also be spent writing a series of follow-up emails that attract 10 new prospects. Without these sales tools, it might be spent on just data entry.
Efficient use of time leads to more closed deals, yet most sales agents spend only a third of their time actively selling. The ideal sales tools keep your sales team organized, allowing them to focus on profitable activities while providing you with the necessary metrics to back them up.
Gone are the days of only utilizing cold-calling and rolodexes. Succeeding in sales in the 21st century is not easy. In this article, we’ll introduce you to 6 types of sales tools for each stage in the funnel that will help your sales teams close more deals, work efficiently & outperform their peers.
What are Sales Tools?
Sales tools are software products designed to assist in the selling process, making it more effective, efficient, and manageable. These tools can help your sales team identify & track potential leads, automate parts of the sales process, provide valuable analytics & improve customer relationships.
Sales tools work by integrating with existing sales workflows, bringing together disparate pieces of data. They also help in automating repetitive tasks and providing insights that assist in strategic decision-making. With the right sales tools, a sales team can increase its productivity, close deals faster, and ultimately drive more revenue for the business.
A sales tool is a broad term that covers various technologies, such as CRM, sales management, and sales prospecting among others which we’ll uncover today.
Why do B2B Companies Need Sales Tools?
According to LinkedIn state of sales, 94% of sales professionals say sales tools help them close more deals, highlighting the importance of sales software tools for B2B companies.
Sales tools assist sales teams in qualifying prospects who are most likely to benefit from their products and services. They also help in determining the optimal time to reach out, and understanding what to discuss with them. Sales tools also save time on tedious tasks, allowing the team to focus on their core responsibility which is closing more deals. These tools are the X factor that can make the difference between good sales teams and great ones.
1. Sales Management Tools
Sales management software are tools that provides sales managers with detailed overviews of the sales pipeline and processes. It simplifies team activities, monitors individual sales team member performance, and the status of deals. These types of sales tools help sales teams connect the tools they use daily, such as messaging apps and CRMs.
A sales management tool allows sales managers to quickly access the information needed for improved decision-making and fine-tuning any aspect of their team’s sales workflow. This results in enhanced sales performance and pipeline management. It’s almost like a second brain for the sales managers and team leaders, a type of tool that acts like a map used to navigate.
These sales management tools are the operating system for modern, efficient and high performing sales teams. Combining key tools including a sales CRM software tool, built-in calling, email automation, lead management, and reporting. Adding these features into one space ensures that everyone—from your individual sales agents to the sales manager—has the tools they need to do their best work.
2. Sales Prospecting Tools
Sales prospecting is the first step of the lead generation process. A good salesman knows his prospect very well. He wastes no time pursuing wrong personas, making his planning and effort worthwhile. It’s the process of pre-sales that makes all the difference, knowing who you sell to before even reaching out to them. The pre-sales process can make or break your sale if you choose low quality leads to outreach to in the first place.
Sales prospecting is the art of finding those who most resemble your target buyer or buyer persona. To succeed in the prospecting process you need the right strategy to follow, and the right toolkit so you know what target accounts or ideal prospects to reach out to. This is where sales prospecting tools come in handy.
A sales prospecting tool is a software platform that helps your sales team automate or simplify tasks associated with lead qualification. Your sales agents could prospect by manually finding and organizing emails and scheduling meetings, but such a process would be tedious and time-consuming. Lead prospecting tools let you increase the volume of leads you convert into prospects while saving your sales agents time and sanity.
Sales prospecting tools cover 5 key tasks:
- Finding leads & their contact information
- Researching & qualifying prospects
- Crafting personalized messages
- Scheduling meetings with prospects
- Analyzing engagement
While it’s possible to conduct sales prospecting manually, using sales prospecting tools provides unique advantages. HubSpot’s Sales Strategy Survey found that 18% of salespeople cite a lack of high-quality leads as their top challenge. Any sales team may also struggle to find high-caliber prospects, which results in low-quality leads.
Sales prospecting software solves both of these problems by helping salespeople find, qualify, and prioritize leads. Additionally, these solutions help teams find accurate contact data and manage outreach.
3. CRM Software
A CRM or Customer Relationship Management software is a system that helps business owners track all communications and nurture relationships with their leads and clients effectively.
All the best customer relationship management (CRM) systems store customer profile information, automate time-consuming sales tasks. They also help sales managers identify lucrative sales opportunities that improve sales performance. If a sales team wants to be efficient and to succeed in sales in the 21st century, then a solid & reliable CRM system is a must-have.
But it doesnt stop here. Smart sales teams also integrate their CRMs with other tools they use on a day to day basis. Picture this; your sales team is running the business on WhatsApp. It’s their messaging app of choice where they outreach to prospects, qualify leads, and close deals. It’s vital to have your CRM connected to WhatsApp.
A WhatsApp-CRM Integration allows sales reps to message prospects and gather customer data - all from one interface. No need to multitask across multiple software applications in order to do the same thing. Also this integration between CRM & WhatsApp gives you the ability to build AI chatbots that can automatically qualify leads for you on autopilot.
In order for sales teams to do that, they first need to choose a CRM that has an integration with WhatsApp. The list of CRMs that works best with WhatsApp is long, choose the one CRM that works best for your team’s specific needs and wants.
4. Sales Analytics Tools
Sales analytics isn’t an option; it’s a must for every organization, big or small. It unlocks insights into your sales performance, customer behavior & overall business health. With the right tools and strategies, sales analytics can help you make data-driven decisions and drive business growth.
Sales analytics has a tremendous impact on:
- Sales Performance: By analyzing your past transactions and customer behaviors, you can improve your sales strategy to drive more conversions.
- Revenue: More conversions = increased revenue.
- Customer Experience: Sales analytics allows you to understand your customers better and create sales processes tailored to their behaviors and needs.
- Planning: With historical data, you can create more accurate sales forecasts and predict future trends. You’ll make better decisions about inventory management, resource allocation, and overall business planning.
Sales analytics tools are very important. They help sales leaders identify the flaws and problems in their sales funnel and fix those problems. Which overall makes the sales funnel better and more profitable for the business
5. Sales Productivity Tools
Sales productivity tools help you manage sales in the most efficient and productive way possible. Just how do these tools help improve productivity? To answer that, let’s look at the many ways to boost productivity:
- Tools that saves your salespeople time automating a repetitive task (or helps them make better use of it) is a sales productivity tool.
- Tools that optimizes the selling process is a sales productivity tool. This could be a lead generation tool, a CRM platform.
- Tools that improves communication is a sales productivity tool. And that’s true whether it’s internal communication or client-facing.
- Tools that helps you integrate your salespeople with other departments is a sales productivity tool. This is especially true when software helps sales align with the product and marketing departments.
There are dozens of [sales productivity tools] (https://learn.rasayel.io/en/blog/sales-productivity-tools/) out there so it’s easy to find the ones that works best for your sales team.
6. Sales Enablement Tools
Sales enablement tools empower sales teams with the right assets and content throughout the entire sales lifecycle. These tools combine business intelligence, content analytics, customer experience, CRM workflows, sales automation, sales analytics, and other smaller processes to enable sales agents to make a sale.
A sales enablement tool provides a dashboard and portal for an organization to upload, organize, and curate all sales-related content. This improves visibility and provides easier access for sales teams to use the content that organizations are creating. Sales enablement tools utilize properties that tag each piece of content with its target buyer persona, its use case, where it falls in the sales funnel & additional properties that can be customized.
Sales enablement tools help sales teams find and use the best content created by product marketing and content teams. These tools provide analytics on what prospects view and what content is the most engaging and impactful.
Conclusion
That was a lot! This article is full of necessary information for all the sales managers, team leaders, and even aspiring sales agents who wanna break into the industry. We talked about what are sales tools, why they are useful, and why B2B companies need such tools.
We also discovered 6 types of sales tools for each step of the funnel. Starting with sales management, sales prospecting, CRMs, sales analytics tools, sales productivity & lastly sales enablement.
These tools are vital for every sales team. They help sales teams reach their goals faster and more efficiently. The right sales tools can take your sales process from good to great, which is the ultimate goal all sales managers dream of.
Frequently Asked Questions
Sales tools are software products designed to assist in the selling process, making it more effective, efficient, and manageable. These tools can help your sales team identify and track potential leads, automate parts of the sales process, provide valuable analytics, and foster improved customer relationship management.
They work by integrating with existing sales workflows, bringing together disparate pieces of data, automating repetitive tasks, and providing insights that assist in strategic decision-making. With the right sales tools, a sales team can increase its productivity, close deals faster, and ultimately drive more revenue for the business.
Sales tools are popping up all over the industry for nearly any part of your sales process, ranging from sales management to customer relationships and sales analytics. These handy tools and software offer numerous benefits to help your company grow and succeed.
Since sales tools are so versatile, it’s helpful to break them down into specific categories. Check out these 6 types of sales resources and examples of each:
- Sales management tools
- Sales prospecting tools
- CRM tools
- Sales analytics tools
- Sales productivity tools
- Sales enablement tools
These are the 7 essential steps in the sales process that successful salespeople master:
- Prospecting: Identifying and qualifying potential customers.
- Establishing rapport: Building trust and connection with the prospect.
- Identifying needs: Understanding the prospect’s specific challenges and goals.
- Presenting solutions: Demonstrating how your product or service addresses their needs.
- Answering objections: Addressing any concerns or hesitations the prospect may have.
- Closing the sale: Securing the commitment and completing the transaction.
- Getting resales and referrals: Building long-term relationships and encouraging repeat business and recommendations.
Those would be:
- Transactional selling: This is the most basic form of sales, focusing on a quick exchange of goods or services for money.
- Solution selling: This approach focuses on identifying the customer’s specific needs and challenges and then presenting your product or service as the solution. It involves active listening, asking insightful questions, and demonstrating how your offering can solve their problems and improve their lives.
- Consultative selling: This method takes solution selling a step further by building a trusted advisor relationship with the customer. The salesperson acts as a consultant, providing expert guidance and recommendations based on a deep understanding of the customer’s business and industry.
- Provocative selling: This method challenges the customer’s existing assumptions and beliefs, highlighting hidden problems or opportunities they may not be aware of. Choosing the right type of sales approach depends on the specific product or service, the target audience, and the sales situation.
Learn more
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Omar Nabil, a former programmer, discovered his passion for writing while working on websites. Combining analytical thinking with creativity, he crafts brand stories that emotionally resonate and inspire action.
