Best Sales Tools for Your B2B Process
In order to succeed in B2B sales (or sales in general), there are a few tools that are necessary to generate more qualified prospects and in closing more deals successfully.
Yet, with so many tools at your or your sales reps disposal, how do you know which ones are best for your business?
Although each business might have a unique experience that requires various sales programs, we put together this list of various tools everyone in B2B sales should be utilizing in their company.
Below are the the sales tech tools we recommend for your business and the success of your sales team.
Note: This list of sales tools is listed in no particular order, so there is no preference to how we would rank these tools. They also cover a wide range of categories to help sales performance. You’ll find CRM’s, sales intelligence, sales engagement, and more.
Salesforce
One of the main tools all sales teams will be actively using is Salesforce. I’m sure most, if not a vast majority of businesses, are probably utilizing this tool. However, we still had to mention it.
In order to organize and get the big picture of your sales funnels and pipeline, Salesforce is a necessary tool for your company.
However, if you or your sales team are not currently using it or unsure of what Salesforce is, let’s dive in briefly.
Salesforce is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. Their cloud-based applications are for sales, service, marketing, and does not require IT experts to set up or manage.
They offer numerous cloud services, integrations with other programs and APIs, and they continue to acquire other companies that will enhance their software further.
Sales teams use Salesforce to do everything from managing their leads, tracking opportunities created, sales funnels, reports, sales conversations, etc.
Pretty much anything you need to do to manage your prospects and leads.
Yet, we have only scratched the surface of the capabilities of the software.
Even to this date, this is without a doubt the most popular and heavily used software for sales organizations.
SalesLoft
One of the top sales enablement platforms is Salesloft.
The software provides sales organizations a deeper understanding of needs and behaviors and deliver more meaningful engagement across the customer lifecycle.
Their platform offers sales users better email options and deliverability, live calling and text messaging features, set up sales cadences, manage opportunities and data, record and improve sales interactions, calendars, and analytics.
And the company also has a set of core values that resonate really well with our team, one of which is: Put Customers First. Always.
Learn how Dell drove an additional 150,000 shares and 45,000 clicks to their website with EveryoneSocial. Get your free case study.
Clearslide
While the majority of these tools are particular to prospecting, lead gen, or lead management, we also have included something a bit outside of that.
In our list, we had to include Clearslide.
So what is it? Clearslide is a sales engagement platform that lets users share content and sales materials via email links or their viewer’s link in a ‘Live Pitch’.
This software includes other features as well:
- Creating presentation slides
- Web conferencing
- Video mail
- Email tracking for campaigns from whatever email platform you are on
- Hosting content materials for sales calls
Our sales teams use Clearslide frequently. Especially for presentations, product demos, and sharing material relevant to our audience.
EveryoneSocial
Now, we might be a little bias here, but the numbers do not lie when it comes to the importance of an employee advocacy and social selling platform.
With employee advocacy software, you can increase the amount of content sharing by 38x and your entire company’s employees can now act as an extended sales team.
Yet, as someone on the sales team, you too are able to share relevant content to prospects, monitor your competitors and buyers, and actively engage in social conversations all through one single tool.
By using or encouraging sales to build quality relationships via social media and having a platform to do so, your company can out-perform cold calling by 72.6%.
There are quite a few platforms in this space that all have pros and cons, but figuring out which best suits your team’s need will enhance sales, reach, brand visibility and quality leads.
Related: Want to learn more about ramping up social selling and sales enablement with employee advocacy software? Learn how to build your employee advocacy program with this free guide.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Out of all the social networks, one platform that should be in your B2B sales process is the use of LinkedIn.
Since this professional social network has most of the company information and employee information you need, this is a must-use platform to build your relationships.
Yet, LinkedIn also had a specific sales feature they call Sales Navigator.
Easily save leads and create a sales lead list to focus on buyers that matter to you the most.
This sales tool also features a sophisticated algorithm to give you lead recommendations that are tailored to you, understanding your buyers, whys to personally engage, and much more.
There are also a few other features and integrations that make this a highly effective tool in your sales arsenal.
If anything though, you should definitely be using LinkedIn to interact and build your lead list.
IFTTT
So far, the majority of this list has been very sales software orientated, but we also wanted to include IFTTT, a tool that can make organization of commands and tasks easier.
IFTTT stands for “If This Then That” and is a free web-based service that people use to create chains of simple conditional statements, called applets.
That “Applet” is then triggered based on changes or updates that happen in other platforms like your Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
IFTTT can automate web-application tasks, such as posting the same content on several social networks.
They have a ton of features of commands as well as tasks that can be implemented in the most common services/apps most people use daily.
While this platform can be used by the entire organization and various departments, these applets and services can make tedious tasks quicker for sales, who will have more time for prospecting.
Owler
Owler is a pretty recognizable name for business profiles, but it needs to be included in this essential sales list.
Simply put, Owler is the largest community-based business insights platform to gain insights on the competition and uncover the latest industry news and alerts.
And, it’s completely free to sign-up and use.
Every six seconds, members of the Owler community contributes unique competitive insights, such as private company revenue estimates and CEO approval ratings to make sure the information on businesses is always relevant.
Then you are delivered three types of emails:
- Instant insights of funding announcements, acquisitions, and leadership changes
- A weekly showdown that provides performance benchmarks on web traffic, CEO approval ratings, press coverage, social follows, and more.
From that above information, you can see how this would be valuable to your B2B sales process.
Gong.io
Over the last few years, Gong.io has become a leader in improving sales conversations and revenue for B2B organizations.
With Gong, the platform automatically records and transcribes everything first. By using artificial intelligence, your sales reps and team will get detailed analysis and insights into how they can improve their pitches.
Essentially Gong is like your sales coach that supplies you with everything you need to close more deals and win more often.
It can capture emails, phone recording, and videos which can then tie into your CRM for detailed information. There is plenty more to it, but certainly one of the best sales tools out there currently.
Terminus
If you are in marketing or sales, you probably are very aware of account-based marketing or “ABM.” A few years ago, you could not escape the lingo and people talking about the strategy.
While the idea may have cooled down since, it’s still a very active strategy for marketing and sales.
Terminus is one of the leading account-based marketing and account-based sales tools out there.
Ideally, sales and marketing should work together on ABM, because it can be used for demand generation but also to move prospects through the sales funnel faster.
For example, you can target very specific companies and work departments. Or you can narrow it down to companies in certain buying stages and target key personas to help close the deal.
Of course, that’s only scratching the surface as there are tons of various campaigns you can run.
Outreach
If you are in touch with the sales tech industry, you’ve probably come across Outreach. The company has an amazing story, which was on the verge of shutting down to now having a billion dollar valuation!
Outreach sequences help reps execute their best playbooks by creating a measurable series of touch points that drive deeper engagement with prospects and customers.
Some product features include:
- Calendar features that helps you book meetings with less clicks and steps.
- Conversational intelligence and live call coaching
- Customizable tiles that provide key insights on your prospects and customers
- Automation and insights powered by Machine Learning
And you can integrate Outreach into your CRM, so all your activities and information is automatically added for you, saving time and improving efficiency.
Zoom
Communication in the workplace and outside is important for all areas of the business. But having the proper communication tools is key for sales reps, especially via video conferencing to get that much needed facetime.
Zoom is one of the top choices, which helps sales teams build relationships with their prospects and easily demo products.
Now, I can’t just bucket Zoom as video conferencing because they have expanded to chat, mobile communications, webinars, enterprise cloud phone services, and private conference rooms for internal discussions or big meetings with prospects.
HubSpot CRM
While we all know about Salesforce, it was only a matter of time before another vendor would build a sleek and modern CRM.
However, HubSpot CRM might have been a surprise considering the platform was primarily a marketing automation tool.
But it makes sense HubSpot would get in the CRM game and their sales solution is solid. They removed the complicated friction from learning Salesforce and simplified it all.
HubSpot CRM logs emails, can record calls, and manages your data. But some of the highlights are automated emails, create and share email templates, notifications when prospects open or click emails, live chat options, track pipeline deals, and tons more.
The cool thing is you can get a basic version for free, so if you work for a small business it can be a great way to save some money. Of course, if you want all the product goods you’ll need to upgrade to a paid tier.
Drift
In the last few years, conversational marketing and chat bot tool Drift for sales became a hot topic. And for good reason, as it was making chatbots smarter and easier for sales teams to book meetings 24/7.
These workflows can help qualify people and help you book meetings that matter most.
So if you can’t chat because of after work hours or you are currently busy, a bot can take over and help you still book that lead.
Drift also uses data enrichment to identify your ABM targets and alert you the moment they land on your website, even if they’re anonymous.
You can also get notified when your prospects open or click your emails so you can engage while you have their attention.
They also have “Conversation Analysis”, where you can analyze how customers are actually interacting with your team, what’s working, and what may need improvement.
Final Thoughts
Generating more leads and closing more deals are always the priority for B2B sales teams.
Luckily there are a ton of new tools on the market to help ensure your sales acceleration and team’s overall success.
While each business may have unique needs for sales, this post covered the sales marketing tools all sales teams should definitely be utilizing within their organization.
Each one of the tools listed above can and will improve multiple aspects of B2B sales. This includes lead generation, outreach, brand visibility, relationship building, increasing win rates, and improving ROI.
What are the best sales tools?
There are tons of sales tools to choose from, we only listed a handful here. But some of the best ones include Zoom, Drift, EveryoneSocial, Outreach, HubSpot CRM, and Gong.io. However, which sales tools you pick is based on your organizational needs and preferences to get the job done.
What is the best app for sales reps?
There are quite a few apps that sales reps can use to manage and exceed in their work. EveryoneSocial is a great option because of the ease of access to content, improved social sharing on the go, analytics, and access via Salesforce.
What are the various sales tool categories?
There are many categories of sales tools, each with various purposes. Some of the popular ones include CRM’s, sale analytics, sales enablement, social selling software, sales intelligence, contract management, and video conferencing.
