Essential Tools for Sales Reps

Organizational sales growth nearly always translates to tech stack growth. But how do you figure out which sales tools to add to your collection? With close to a thousand participants in the sales tech landscape, choosing the tools your sales reps need is anything but easy.

What are Sales Tools?

Used by sales teams to make their work easier, digital sales tools are the “X-factor” for closing the right deals. They help sales reps identify qualified prospects and save time on tedious and repetitive administrative tasks. Almost 50 percent of sales professionals report using sales tools every day to close more deals. There’s no question tech is transforming sales.

The sales tools you invest in should be chosen for their ability to improve your sales process. Since all companies don’t have the same requirements, you must weigh whether a particular tool addresses your specific needs. For instance, a company that sells a freemium product would benefit from a lead qualification tool that automates manual tasks. Enterprise software companies typically need a suite of integrated tools to manage multi-touch sales cycles.

What Sales Tools Software Do Reps Need?

Before choosing your sales tools, make a list of your core business needs. It will make evaluating potential solutions that much easier. There are six main categories of sales tools which contain subcategories like gamification, sales intelligence, video conferencing, account-based marketing, and e-signature.

1. Marketing Automation Software

Sales happen one of two ways: you find a buyer, or the buyer finds you. Marketing automation tools encourage the latter. Marketing automation software lets you streamline marketing workflows and optimize strategies by automating tasks like email marketing and social media posts that build up databases of contacts through conversions.

2. Lead Generation and Prospecting

One of the most critical stages in the sales process is quickly identifying promising leads, qualifying them, and getting them to sales to be converted. Tools like Prospect.io, Marketo, and Contactually are used for lead data collection, email lookup and follow-up, form and email collection, landing page creation, and process automation.

3. Analytics

Data is only useful if you can use it to fuel growth. Tools like Tableu, Clari, and InsideSales allow you to visualize, analyze, and mobilize decision-making by making data accessible in powerful ways.

4. Training

Sales teams are always looking for ways to improve common sales processes. Training tools do everything from onboarding new reps to speeding up repetitive tasks. Popular tools such as Dooly save sales reps time with features like syncing meeting notes with your CRM.

5. Automation and Integrations

Automation helps sales teams get more done in less time. From pre-qualifying leads to instantaneous support responses, automation and integration tools create efficiencies in the sales workflows that allow reps to go from good to great.

6. CRM, or Customer Relationship Management

We’ve saved the “best” for last. Most organizations start with the most essential sales tool of all: a CRM that improves sales operations. From tracking existing customers to closing deals and helping sales teams reach targets faster, CRM software streamlines the entire sales cycle. It also helps to enhance customer relationships improve customer retention rates.

OnCourse is our multi-tiered support system that offers countless features for optimizing the sales process:

• Intuitive, simple-to-use interface.
• Email and activity tracking.
• Email sequences and templates.
• Built-in calling.
• Game-changing SMS.

OnCourse provides a simple way to manage all things sales-related in one place. Sales pipelines, customer onboarding, marketing, and client projects, it uses powerful automation to accelerate your sales efforts and dramatically increase team productivity.

Fewer Tools That Do More

Adding numerous tools to your tech stack does not necessarily make for better sales teams. To increase productivity and drive faster growth, your focus should be on finding the best tools, not the most tools. Because while technology has been a boon to sales teams everywhere, merely adding technology does not equate to success.If you’re interested in learning more about how our OnCourse CRM can be used to significantly boost sales results, request a sales demo today.