The Perfect Stack of Tools for Your Sales Team in 2020

The tools and products your team uses can make a huge difference to your results while saving you a great deal of time and effort. Selecting the right tool for your team deserves its due diligence.

If you read, research, download trials, get on demos, and choose a tool that will scale with your team’s growth, then you’ve done yourself a favor by picking a product that you won’t have to worry about for the next five years (maybe more). 

With over 1000 sales and sales-related tools in the market right now, it could be a gravely daunting task to come up with a stack of tools that could potentially be “perfect” for your business. We know this seems like a huge task, but the best part is that you don’t have to do it all at once. It is good to have a basic CRM in place, but it is better when everyone is actually using the CRM, instead of it just being another task on their EOD checklist. So take your time, get your team used to the tools, and most of all, make sure it is making life easier for your team, and not the other way around. 

Types of Sales Tools

Most sales tools are either CRMs or CRM enhancing tools–something to support and better your CRM. Below are the most common categorization of tools in sales:

CRM

What is a CRM? 

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a technology for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers. It enables you to have all your communication with potential customers in one place. They help you streamline your processes, and improve profitability through better management. 

How much should you invest?

A good CRM should definitely be considered an investment. Cut on other costs if your budget is low, but buy a good CRM for your team. This also ensures all your contacts are in one place, and you don’t have to maintain any manual reports to keep track of what you and your team are up to. 

What we suggest:

Salesforce: We chose Salesforce because they are the best in the market right now. There is a reason Salesforce is so widely adopted in spite of their price point. They have a wide range of functionalities that enable high customization and collaboration. And, their dashboard is one of the most useful tools for Sales and Marketing professionals. Most of the tools in the market support integration with Salesforce which makes sourcing data from other sources a breeze. The biggest challenge with any CRM is adoption, and with Salesforce being the most widely used tool, sales reps are generally familiar with Salesforce, thereby reducing the adoption time.

Sales and Market Intelligence

What is a Sales and Market Intelligence Solution? 

Sales and Market Intelligence tools take you one step beyond just email addresses and phone numbers of contacts. You might have huge lead lists, but they are a complete waste if you cannot make sense of the data. Intelligence tools help you get actionable insights from the data you currently have so that you can make informed decisions. 

How much should you invest?

You should think about putting a decent amount of investment here as well. You will be able to get pretty cheap tools in the market for this, but choosing a good solution will ensure a steady and high-quality inflow of prospects you can actually target. This solution will help you find your Ideal Customer Profile, and get prospects based on that criteria. 

What we suggest:

Slintel: Slintel helps companies uncover 3% of active buyers in their target market. Slintel evaluates over 100 billion data points and analyzes factors such as buyer journeys, technology adoption patterns, and other digital footprints to deliver market & sales intelligence. Their customers have access to the buying patterns and contact information of more than 17 million companies and 70 million decision makers across the world.

Sales Enablement

What is a Sales Enablement Tool? 

Sales enablement is providing your team with the right kind of resources like content, tools, and information which help them sell better. It helps sales reps find the best content for prospects based on things like their persona, industry, and stage of the buying process. Most Sales enablement software have prospect engagement tracking as well, which helps you reach a better quality of messaging. 

How much should you invest?

Sales Enablement is becoming more and more important given how much we are concentrating on target selling now. If you have run out of budget, not to worry, there are a lot of affordable solutions out there too. We are suggesting something in that range as well, so you don’t have to shell out the big bucks to get the best for your team. 

What we suggest:

Outplay: Outplay is a Sales engagement platform that helps sales professionals automate prospect engagement using a truly multi-channel approach. Their features boast of email tracking, website tracking, In-built dialer, and intelligent automation. And the best part is their pricing: $70/month. There are no tiers and this is a flat fee, so no hidden fees slowly creeping up on you. One of the most effective solutions with all the bells and whistles of an expensive Sales Enablement Tool.

Training 

What are Training Tools?

The first month or two are the most crucial for new reps, and where training plays the most important part. Training tools can help you onboard new team members efficiently, and quickly. Moreover, they can help reduce friction, improve processes, and in turn save you an immense amount of time- and headaches. To find more training resources, check this list of 11 free training blogs, courses and resource websites here.

How much should you invest?

Again, no need to worry about the price here. Something mid-range will work perfectly fine, and you can get a quality tool for within $100/month.  

What we suggest:

Wingman: Wingman allows you to coach your team at scale. It just doesn’t help your record and analyze your calls, it gives you insights while on the call, and after. It helps you with unique insights like time spent listening vs speaking during the call and see your team’s performance stats. The Wingman manager tells leaders about the calls that should be reviewed based upon various internal and external factors like the quality of the call, deals stuck at a particular stage and more insights.

Closing

What should you look for in a Closing Tool?

A normal E-signature software should do the trick for a closing tool. You need something which is extremely secure, and which can be integrated with essential third party applications like Google, DropBox, and more. 

How much should you invest?

Usually, you can find good software with limited capabilities for free. But if you do want to go for the pro version, the price is minimal and within $20. If your ticket size is huge and you have 2-3 deals closing a month, you could get by with some free software. 

What we suggest:

HelloSign: HelloSign is a tool that lets users sign documents with legally binding e-signatures. It is a web-based program that also allows users to upload documents with a drag and drop interface. It is a simple and straightforward software, and they boast of tight “banking standards” data security

Team communication

What is a Communication Tool?

Communication tools enable smooth interactions between your team members, and lets you identify and segregate based on products, processes, and projects. They let you chat with your team, share files, and use different integrations, as well as stay up to date with notifications, all the while taking your communication away from your email inbox. 

How much should you invest?

There are some great tools in the market with a free basic plan and some which are completely free. You could try Skype, it's a completely free tool, with a lot of good features but for a more modern solution, you might have to end up paying about $3-$5 per person, per month.

What we suggest:

Slack: Slack has changed the communication game, and if you don’t trust me, try out their free version for yourself. They are fun to use tool, with a count of features to the sky. It is basically a huge group chat with your whole company and helps you be connected with them at all times of need. Plus they have some cool features like channels for different purposes, custom emojis for fun, and quick commands.

Building the perfect B2B stack for your company

All the tools that we have mentioned here might make sense in some way or other to you, but whichever tool you select should be aligned with, and customizable to your business needs. You don’t want to end up paying big bucks for software that you only use for 1 teensy little task. Analyze each part of your sales cycle to define what technology you need to increase performance and boost revenue. If you are a manager or sales head, check this eBook for an in depth analysis on building an SDR team.

While some tools might need a bit of an investment, don’t skip on those as basic tools like CRM can end up increasing the productivity of your team and make processes smoother. You can skip or get away with a free version of tools which don’t have a lot of function. There are a lot of cheap alternatives in the market, and especially now when there is a huge demand for cost optimization. See what fits with your team vibe, and have a go at it!