To increase conversions, enhance customer success, and maximize sales outreach, merchants should rely on sales technology. These solutions are incredibly diverse, so each business can easily find the ones that ideally meet its needs.
Such automation tools can improve the efficiency of sales teams with a broad amount of features. These help with closing deals, improving customer interactions and collecting customer data, keeping track of relevant materials, and improving general sales intelligence.
What Are Sales Tools?
Sales tools are software solutions that simplify the workflow of sales teams and enable them to perform better. Many sales tools automate routine manual processes, such as filling in the forms of customer relationship management software (CRM) with customers' contact details or transcribing phone call records.
Others rely on AI and machine learning to generate profound insights on key metrics that marketing and sales departments should use to enhance their performance. Such solutions don't replace live human professionals but make their lives easier by taking over repetitive tasks and driving greater customer satisfaction.
How to Choose a Sales Tool?
The best sales tools should meet the following criteria:
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Meet the demands of your particular organization
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Be easy to use
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Integrate seamlessly with the software that you already use
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Facilitate your workflow as well as sales funnel and not make it overly complex
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Make sales data more actionable
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Help you to improve your sales team members' KPIs
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Enable your new sales managers and reps to onboard and train quicker
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Deliver financial returns
If sales enablement platforms create more questions than answers, you should avoid it. Also, it shouldn't take too much admin time or make simple projects and administrative tasks harder to accomplish.
Most modern sales tools feature free trial periods. It would be wise to use this opportunity and compare multiple solutions before investing in them.
Types of Sales Tools
Professionals can use sales tools in the following spheres:
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Account-Based Sales and Marketing
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Business Intelligence Analytics and Dashboards
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Buyer Enablement
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Communication/Conferencing
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Content Sharing and Management
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Contract Lifecycle Management
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Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
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Systems Data Networks
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Email Management
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Lead Generation and Sales Prospecting Tools
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Performance Management
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Sales Enablement
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Sales Engagement
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Sales and Market Intelligence
Below, you'll find a hand-picked selection of the best sales tools in each category.
Account-Based Sales & Marketing
Demandbase
This account-based customer success software pulls CRM information, correlates lead management data to accounts, activates marketing automations, measures engagement impact and provides insight on how to prioritize accounts relying on real-time data and AI.
Lucidchart Sales Solution
This sales engagement platform was built to help entrepreneurs to align their sales and marketing teams. You can use it as a roadmap to coordinate, communicate and execute your account-based selling strategies.
PFL
It offers a set of marketing and sales productivity tools that will enable your employees to close more deals, hyper-personalize email campaigns, revitalize stalled engagements and create top-notch content to boost conversion and improve sales performance.
RollWorks
It's a good CRM software for B2B lead generation and outbound sales communication. Compile your ideal client profile and the database will offer you millions of verified prospects. In-built machine learning algorithms and sales automation features will choose the best moments to send emails and follow-ups to your potential customers.
Terminus
With the help of this account-based marketing software, users can run campaigns to generate demand and accelerate sales efficiency. You'll be able to effectively coordinate complex marketing and sales efforts, track deal progress and results, and fine-tune your campaigns on the go.
Business Intelligence Analytics and Dashboards
Aviso
This is one of the sales analytics tools that relies on data science, machine learning and cloud technology. It should help you to boost your sales performance, make smarter decisions and execute strategies more efficiently. Your sales process and pipeline management will become more predictable and transparent.
Bombora
Bombora is a representative of sales enablement tools that processes large bulks of information from multiple sources to detect which of your prospective businesses are currently looking for your goods or services. You'll get exhaustive profiles of your potential paying customers.
Clari
This sales software analyzes your prospects' readiness to purchase, relying on sales playbooks, data science and AI. Feel free to use these insights to compile accurate forecasts and detect the weak points of your selling strategy that you could improve.
Crystal
It employs AI to predict the personalities of your potential customers, judging by their online footprints. This information enables sales teams to compile an optimal communication strategy for each person.
Datahug
It will considerably save you time by automating many manual sales processes related to working in your CRM. This tool can identify and analyze your sales activities, enhance your productivity and speed up your sales cycle.
Domo
It collects data from all departments and teams of your organization and uses it to build in-depth insights. It visualizes all the relevant metrics, making them easy-to-understand for everyone, and drives decision-making.
Geckoboard
This one is famous for its superb visuals. They help teams meet their short-term and long-term objectives and keep staff members aware of their respective roles. You can use Geckoboard to minimize distractions and monitor performance.
InsightSquared
Install it to enhance the performance of your sales department. This solution will offer you actionable insights based on up-to-date business intelligence. It will draw data from your CRM, visualize it comprehensively and generate smart reports.
RingLead
It will help your sales teams to get rid of duplicates in their pipeline, reduce sales cycles and concentrate on high-priority tasks. When someone adds new data to the system, RingLead will automatically check its quality.
Sisense
This product saves you from the necessity to hire skilled human professionals. It collects and crunches data from diverse sources, visualizes it and promptly compiles insightful reports. It is remarkably easy to deploy and use.
Buyer Enablement
Boxxstep
This tool puts the consumer in the limelight. It enables you to compile detailed customer profiles. The ultimate goal is to offer every client a personalized solution that efficiently fixes their individual pains.
Communication/Conferencing
Aircall
After you install this tool, your staff will be able to carry out all their outreach activities right from the CRM. Aircall will allow them to automate post-call actions. Besides, they won't need to manually log notes in the CRM.
Chorus
This product will automatically record your sales conversations with your clients and transcribe them. It will generate insightful reports that should help your sales teams to enhance their communication strategy. Consequently, your win rates should increase.
ConnectAndSell
Thanks to patented sales enablement technologies, it will speed up your customer outreach process. Every day, your team members will be able to conduct many more conversations than they used to. Every few minutes, you can expect to get a new name on your lead list.
Demodesk
Instead of a local desktop, your team will be using a virtual display. You won't need to download anything — at the meeting start, all the files and sites will be ready. Demodesk can effortlessly integrate with your calendar and CRM.
Dialpad
As your sales teams are talking with your customers, Dialpad can provide them with coaching and conversational insights in real time. Your staff members will become more productive and will be able to close more deals.
ExecVision
You can use this tool for analyzing your calls, coaching your staff, carrying out A/B testing and hacking growth. You'll detect the elements that detect or hamper your win rates and get other precious insights.
FrontSpin
Thanks to this solution, you should be able to connect with more leads, accelerate lead generation and boost client engagement. It will centralize all the channels that you might rely on to nurture leads and close deals.
Gong
This AI-based product should enable your sales team to identify the strong and weak points of their communication strategy. It will record and transcribe sales calls and generate actionable analyses for your reps.
Jiminny
This tool enables every team member to become a sales coach. It captures all customer conversations and facilitates teamwork by integrating coaching, web conferencing and a dialer in one place.
Nextiva
With this tool, you'll be able to make and answer business phone calls from any device. Plus, you'll get access to instant messages and one-on-one HD video calls. You'll appreciate how easy it is to track your communications through the Nextiva app.
Refract
It will enable you to improve the quality of your sales coaching. Refract minimizes the risk of efforts that reduce win rates and helps your staff to hone their engagement skills. Moreover, it generates helpful insights to motivate your clients for purchase.
Salesfolks
It's a marketplace where you can outsource sales professionals. To expand your team, you don't need to hire new specialists. Just rely on this cloud-based solution to boost your sales and pay your remote assistants according to their performance.
Skype
This is one of the oldest and most recognizable tools on the market. You'll be able to exchange instant messages, hold video conferences, share screens and send files to other users.
Zoom
This one is famous primarily for its video conferencing capabilities. It's an optimal solution for webinars, distributed teams discussions and mobile communications for those who are on the road.
Content Sharing and Management
Allbound
This one is good for organizing and managing all your sales and marketing content from one dashboard. For each prospect, you'll be able to design a hyper-personalized landing page to maximize their engagement.
Bit
It offers great collaboration and customization opportunities to your sales rep. Also, Bit delivers detailed customer engagement metrics. Each time a potential buyer views your sales proposal, you'll receive a notification.
BrainShark
Sales professionals use this product to create on-demand training for employees with any level of experience. Your staff will be able to access useful content at any moment — and you can easily assess their qualifications.
ClearSlide
With this versatile tool, you can train and motivate your team, create the most compelling content for your target audience and enhance your clients' engagement. Besides, it features smart messaging opportunities and in-depth analytics.
Conga
You might need this one to better handle documents (such as contracts and reports). It should help you to enforce compliance standards, get rid of bottlenecks and estimate customer engagement with a native analytics engine.
Consensus
This tool will help you to better understand how your prospects perceive your messages. You'll be able to fine-tune the contents of your conversations and improve clients' engagement. Plus, Consensus comes in handy for delivering personalized documents and videos.
DocSend
Teams that rely on DocSend know how to detect the most opportune moments for delivering the most appropriate content to clients. At any moment, your employees can request on-demand data from the content library that constantly updates.
Folloze
This tool allows you to deploy account-specific content and conduct campaigns that maximize the conversion rate for each targeted account. To nurture leads across the customer journey, you'll be able to use behavioral triggers and native analytics.
Guru
Thanks to this solution, each member of your sales representatives team will get the knowledge that they need the most at the most opportune moment. Every employer will be able to personalize their knowledge base and request marketing content on demand.
Prezi
Professionals who previously used to make presentations in PowerPoint or Keynote value Prezi for its live leaderboard analytics and top-notch design customization features. The enterprise version of this product relies on HTML5 technology and offers superb collaboration instruments.
Upland RO Innovation
You should integrate this product with your CRM and other inside sales tools. It will allow your prospects to quickly find other people's feedback on your goods or services when making buying decisions.
Vidyard
If you place a video on your landing page, it might increase your conversions by over 80%. Vidyard will enable your sales department to make the most of videos — and eventually, close more deals.
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Contract Lifecycle Management
Adobe Sign
With this tool, you can create, sign and manage contracts, agreements and forms. You'll be able to access your documents from any device, which is vital for signing agreements with customers.
Better Proposals
As its name suggests, this product was designed for compiling, editing and sending convincing proposals. It features hundreds of templates and enables you to track what happens once a customer receives your document.
Concord
This solution was built to help professionals manage their contracts. You can use it to create documents, edit, sign and negotiate them. The online storage space is unlimited and collaboration tools are remarkably user-friendly.
DocuSign
It comes in handy in situations when you have signed an agreement with your client — but after a while, you both want to modify its conditions. DocuSign will accelerate and facilitate your collaboration.
GetAccept
This versatile tool will automate your email follow-ups, add electronic signature to your contracts and facilitate document tracking. Through its dashboard, you can track the progress of all your deals and decide whether you need to speed them up.
Proposify
It features a handy document constructor that includes diverse and easily customizable templates. Your sales team will be able to communicate with customers directly through the Proposify interface to promptly introduce changes.
Qvidian
This tool will automate your proposals and save your precious time. Your documentation workflow will speed up. All your content will be well-structured and stored in a single accessible library.
Signaturely
From any device, you can add legally-binding online signatures to any of your documents and send them to your customers to sign. If a client hesitates to put their signature immediately, they'll receive an automated reminder in a while.
SpringCM
This one is indispensable for document cycle automation. It guarantees a high degree of security, visibility and control. Also, it provides excellent collaboration opportunities among content creators, merchants and consumers.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems
Agile CRM
This one is recommended for small businesses. It will help you to automate processes, manage your projects and contacts, improve the quality of your marketing, sales and customer support. Also, it will facilitate your billing and work with social media.
Airtable
This tool features numerous pre-built templates. Yet its primary purpose is to let any user create a custom database for anything with minimum effort. This spreadsheet-meets-database solution is famous for being incredibly flexible.
Close.io
Its contact center enables you to access all the communication channels from a single dashboard. Informative reports will help you to analyze the performance of your sales team as a whole and of each individual separately.
Contactually
It was designed to meet the needs of the real estate sector. Agents can use it to drive referrals within their network, identify their lead priorities and maintain relationships with their customers.
Copper
Opt for this one if you want your CRM to integrate effortlessly with most Google Apps. You won't need to get used to a new interface and you'll be impressed by the analytical and automation capabilities of the product.
CRMNEXT
The target audience of this cloud-based enterprise solution are businesses that provide banking and financial services. It's the largest product on a global scale in its segment — its user base counts over 3 million accounts.
Freshsales
This product was built to speed up the sales cycle and improve business performance. It can automate many of your routine tasks and it features an in-built AI. Use it to analyze your clients' behavior and fine-tune your sales strategy.
HubSpot CRM
This tool is spot-on for small organizations. Its primary mission is to free your sales team's time by making all the aspects of the workflow easy and intuitive.
Infusionsoft
Its target audience are small companies who strive to maximize their win rates and enhance their performance. You'll be able to automate many tasks, centralize client interactions, design efficient marketing campaigns and grow your pipelines.
Membrain
Choose this one if your company works in a B2B segment, has many stakeholders and long sales cycles. Membrain conveniently visualizes even the most complex data so that it should be easier for your sales team to analyze it.
Messagely
Using its interface, you can manage all the aspects of your customer communication. As users are browsing your site, you can get in touch with them through a live chat and gather insights about them.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM
The name of this product speaks for itself: it perfectly integrates with other apps by the same developer. It is available in on-premise, cloud and hybrid formats.
Oracle NetSuite
It combines the functionality of a CRM, an account system and an enterprise resource planning solution. It should facilitate your upselling process and make your forecasts more accurate. Plus, you can conveniently manage incentives and compensations.
Pipedrive
This customizable tool will visualize your pipeline. It will be easier for you to understand what you should do to close more deals. You'll be able to integrate Pipedrive with dozens of third-party apps.
Rollio
Your sales reps will be able to give text or voice commands to this AI-based solution — and it will automatically update your CRM within seconds. You'll need to introduce manual updates very rarely.
Salesflare
This is a niche product for small B2B companies. You won't need to type data manually in your CRM because it will synchronize with your social media, phone, email and calendar and draw all the necessary information automatically.
Salesforce
This tool has exceptionally vast functionality, offers superb collaboration opportunities and is easy to customize. You can effortlessly add it to the ecosystem of tools that you already use — and it will smoothly integrate with most of them.
Teamgate
Small and medium-sized value this solution for its ability to integrate with dozens of third-party apps. It facilitates lead and client management. Plus, it offers essential sales-related insights.
Zoho
It integrates smoothly with many popular email apps. It can boast a highly intuitive user interface. It comes in handy not only for email marketing but also for generating leads and reports.
Data Networks
Collective[i]
It relies on AI and machine learning to help businesses grow their revenues and boost productivity. It automates data collection, offers smart daily forecasts, analyzes customer behavior and features handy collaboration tools.
Email Management
Autoklose
Email automation is just one of the features of this versatile product. It can also increase sales engagement and helps companies to target the right B2B prospects. To interact with these prospects, you'll be able to modify your campaigns in real time and personalize emails that you send out.
ContactOut
This one is available as a Chrome extension. When you need to get in touch with a particular company, you won't need to use its generic email address. ContactOut will quickly find emails, phone numbers and social media profiles of employees whom you should target.
EmailAnalytics
To visualize your email activity, connect this tool to your G Suite or Gmail account. It will enable you to estimate your email traffic volume by day of the week and hour of the day as well as measure other useful KPIs.
Mixmax
It is based on Gmail. It allows you to check who opened each message and when, add templated messages in one click, schedule messages to send later and schedule meetings right from messages.
Opensense
Using this product, your sales reps will be able to add hyper-personalized banners into their emails to impact the recipients' purchasing behavior. Banners will remind your customers about your brand and products.
ZynBit
This Outlook and Gmail add-on allows you to check valuable information from your CRM right in your inbox. This should simplify your workflow, boost your productivity and give you peace of mind.
Lead Generation and Sales Prospecting Tools
Apollo
You won't need to design your ideal customer persona manually — Apollo will do it for you, based on a scientific approach. Besides, it's an excellent instrument for enhancing your team's performance.
Conversica
This tool will start nurturing your leads at the initial stage of the communication, before a live human specialist joins the process. This AI-based solution talks very naturally, so customers would hardly guess that it's a bot. Then, a human professional will close the deal.
DataFox
This solution will find those businesses that fit the characteristics of your ideal client. It will process data from thousands of sources, relying on machine learning. It will suggest to you only those prospects who should be likely to buy your product.
Drift
It will link your email messages to the live chat on your site. When customers visit your site, they will be able to carry on the dialogue that they started in their inbox. If they need to talk to a live specialist, Drift will promptly connect them to the right rep.
Hubspot
This brand has built multiple solutions that might come in handy for your sales department. Yet it's most famous for its tools that boost customer reach and engagement.
SalesWings
This solution will help you to analyze your leads' responses to your messages. Also, you'll get to know how people perceive your products and brand. When SalesWings detects that a person is ready to purchase, it will notify you.
Performance Management
Bigtincan
Integrate this product with your CRM — and it will deliver valuable real-time intelligence to your sales team. Its in-built AI will analyze customers' engagement with your content and give your recommendations on how you could improve your content.
HireVue
With its help, you'll be able to distribute roles within your sales team more efficiently. Also, this solution is perfect for coaching and it allows you to use video content for training.
LevelEleven
Install this one if you want to make data-driven decisions. It will analyze your clients' engagement and behavior as well as the performance of your salespeople. You'll be able to close more deals and increase your revenue.
SAP Commissions
This tool will help you to improve your rewards program and automate compensations. Thanks to an honest and transparent approach, your staff will always be motivated to perform better.
Xactly
This cloud-based enterprise-grade tool will facilitate the process of distributing compensations and incentives among your staff. This should be especially helpful when your business begins to scale.
Sales Process Enablement
Accent Accelerate
Salespeople tend to make most of their mistakes in such situations when they can't get exhaustive information about the consumer. Accent Accelerate should fix this problem and point out all the lucrative opportunities.
Highspot
This product perfectly showcases the opportunities of AI and machine learning in the sphere of sales enablement. For each individual engagement scenario, it can deliver the most opportune content that should allow you to quickly close the deal.
Klyck
It's a great tool for creating interactive presentations. You should integrate it with your CRM to seamlessly receive the most up-to-date information. To find the necessary data, you'll be able to use filters and an in-build search system.
Seismic
This enterprise-grade solution provides excellent content recommendations and accurate predictions. Based on this information, you'll be able to customize the messages that you send to your clients and better fix your customers' pain points.
SetSail
This one is targeted not at your customers but at your sales professionals. It will incentivize your reps and encourage them to stick to the right behaviors. Each employee will be doing their best to sell more and earn more.
Showpad
This product will help you to prepare the most opportune content for any business situation. This content will be convincing, relevant and measurable — and it will motivate consumers to make purchasing decisions.
Veelo
Install this sales tool one to onboard new sales reps quicker and facilitate their training process. Thanks to Veelo, they should make rapid progress within your company. This sales tool relies on behavioral science, machine learning and AI.
Sales Engagement
Bloobirds.com
Your sales process will become more intuitive and your sales department won't need to fill in the CRM software manually. Instead of losing their time on tedious admin duties, your staff will be able to concentrate on high-priority sales-related tasks.
Cirrus Insight
When writing an email, you might need to switch to CRM from time to time to get some information about the recipient. Cirrus Insight allows you to stay focused on the message and automatically delivers all the data that you need.
Mailshake
You should get this tool if you frequently resort to cold email marketing sales strategies. It will facilitate your communication with clients through other channels too, such as social networks or phone. You'll be able to control all these sales processes through one dashboard.
Outreach
After you integrate this sales tool into your CRM, it will automatically log all your activities. You'll be spending more time on sales processes that can't be automated, such as meeting clients and partners in person.
PersistIQ
All your communication channels can be synchronized to this CRM. You'll never miss a follow-up and you'll be losing very few prospects. This tool should help your sales department to stay better organized.
Reply
This tool will help you to personalize your relationship with each of your clients. It will keep tracking each customer's behavior over time and come up with smart insights. Eventually, you should be able to make better decisions and improve your KPIs.
SalesHandy
Feel free to use this tool for email marketing (both hot and cold). You'll be able to schedule your activities and automate sales pipeline follow-ups. You'll maximize your client engagement and will close more deals than before.
SalesLoft
This product helps sales professionals to track emails in real time and respond to purchasing signals immediately. It features an in-built versatile contact center that can record calls. SalesLoft is the best sales software for collecting patterns that you can employ to boost your sales.
VanillaSoft
You sales teams won't need to choose which lead to get in touch with next — this tool will propose an optimal candidate. It will make the right decision based on the previous behavior of this lead and characteristics from its profile.
Yesware
This tool synchronizes with your CRM and operates in the background of your email client. By analyzing your customer interactions, phone conversations, messages and presentations, it can give you insights on how you could improve your communications.
Sales and Market Intelligence
Artesian
Businesses value this tool for its informative insights about consumers, their tastes and lifestyle. The better you understand your market, the more efficiently you can cater to it and the higher profit you can make.
Clearbit
If you want to know more about a certain prospect from your database, this tool will provide you with relevant and up-to-date information. If you would like to find new leads, Clearbit will offer you a lot of high-quality ones.
D&B Hoover's
It is ideal for identifying prospects with immediate needs. Thanks to this product, you'll know the demands and preferences of your target audience inside out — and you'll be able to offer them what they want.
DiscoverOrg
Use this tool to add more high-quality leads into your pipeline and make the most of behavioral triggers. You'll be able to accurately detect those prospects who are likely to purchase your products.
Emissary
It enables you to get to know more about those prospects that have the highest value for your business. You'll be able to boost their engagement and efficiently fix their problems.
EverString
It will speed up your sales cycle thanks to insights provided by in-built AI. You'll get exhaustive information about every person in your database — and your sales reps can use these facts to maximize their win rates.
FirstRain
This tool enables companies to strengthen their relationships with their clients. It tracks your customers' financial and social activities. Then, it offers valuable insights on what you can do to motivate these people to buy your products.
Intricately
If you want to know information about spend, usage and adoption of a certain digital product, you'll be able to do it in real time. Also, you can prioritize your leads according to how much they spend on a certain product (or other parameters).
Lead411
This one will help you to detect consumers who are highly likely to buy your goods or services. It should be easier for you to outperform your competitors and expand your client base.
Mattermark
It will automatically add useful customer information about your target businesses to your database. You'll get to know where they are registered, how numerous their staff are and so on. Plus, you'll better understand your prospects and will be able to fine-tune your sales strategy.
TAM Calculator by Cognism
This product enables you to estimate the size of your prospective market. All you need to do is to fill in the form with some basic information about your business. Based on the results, you should be able to make smarter decisions.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully, this information came in handy and now you better understand which sales tools to choose to achieve specific goals. Before installing a particular solution, you should analyze the metrics of your sales process and detect the aspects that you would like to improve.
Also, you should organize a meeting with your sales team and let your employees talk about their pain points. After you select one or several sales tools from this article, make sure to conduct training for your staff on how to use the new instruments.
