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Managing a sales pipeline is difficult. You have to keep track of mountains of lead data, manage hundreds of contacts and follow up with leads on the right schedule.
With so many administrative tasks required of your sales team, it's easy to lose track of things. More importantly, spending precious time tracking down and organizing sales information means less time to connect with prospects and land sales.
Luckily, there are tools that can help offload some of the administrative overhead eating up your sales team’s valuable time. With the right sales management software, you can track team member performance, spotlight sales opportunities and automate recurring tasks so your team can focus on closing deals.
If you're ready to equip your sales team with a sales management tool, you have a lot of options.
First, let's define what sales management software is, then we’ll take a look at the best tools available so you can find the right fit for your team.
What is sales management software?
Sales management software allows you to gather sales intel, information and analysis in one place. This can include contact details for potential leads, product announcements, market research, lead scoring and more.
Many modern sales management tools also give team leaders the ability to track team member performance and offer targeted training and coaching. Several platforms also give leaders ways to motivate sales teams with contests or challenges and reward top performers with recognition.
Task or project management features are often built in to help teams stay on track, and a few sales management tools automate repeat tasks, such as sending follow-up emails. Many sales management platforms also include communication tools that let you call or text leads directly from the platform.
No matter the size of your sales team or the productivity challenges they face, there’s a sales management tool that’s right for you — and many of them are available to try for free.
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The 13 best sales management tools
Many sales management systems share common features, but each is unique in its own way.
Every company has different needs, goals and challenges. You'll want to consider which software solution is the best fit for your sales team.
1. HubSpot
HubSpot offers a suite of software solutions on everything from marketing and sales to customer service and web analytics. One particular tool you'll want to check out is HubSpot's free customer relationship management (CRM) platform.
As with most CRMs, this tool includes:
Contact management
Lead scoring
Deal stages and sales funnel design
Task management
One additional consideration with HubSpot is the option to integrate other free and paid tools as you need them. There's certainly more to explore with HubSpot, although the free version does limit some features.
2. Bitrix24
Bitrix24 is free, but you have the option to upgrade and unlock more features. Its free version provides a kanban view of pipeline management and activity timelines.
This user-friendly interface makes tracking leads easy. Also, Bitrix24 provides built-in calling with unlimited lines, call-tracking and a handful of task management tools.
Bitrix24 also offers a suite of features that can help your team manage your sales pipeline across multiple channels, including:
Website builders
Project management tools
Contact center software
If you upgrade to the paid version, Bitrix24's pricing varies based on the number of users and which features you want to include.
3. Kiite
Kiite is a free content hub that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help your sales team develop playbooks and a sales toolkit.
Kiite's AI generates playbooks by drawing from your favorite external resources and your own internal content. By comparing and analyzing different sales strategies, Kiite's AI can identify the best performing methods.
Another strength of Kiite is its easy-to-navigate hub. The tool allows you to organize lead information by various criteria, such as company size.
This gives your team a quick and easy way to target high-quality leads instead of wading through hundreds of disorganized data points.
4. Taimer
Taimer offers several helpful business management solutions. From Taimer's dashboard you can:
Contact leads
Quote prices
Track expenses
Chat with your team
Taimer is free for up to two users, making it an excellent option for sole proprietors or very small teams.
After two users, the price jumps to $13 per user per month. Their paid plans also come with access to more advanced features like time tracking and billing.
5. Flowlu
Flowlu prioritizes contact management and meticulously tracks customer data at every point in your funnel.
It organizes this information into an easy-to-read interface so you can clearly see performance at every stage. This helps leaders identify areas of opportunity and stages of the funnel that are performing less efficiently than others.
Flowlu also offers integrations and add-ons for:
Project management
Lead record management
Finance and payments tracking
Flowlu is free for up to two users. After that, it offers paid plans based on the number of users.
6. Freshsales
Freshsales centralizes all of your lead information into one hub. From this single interface, you can find everything you need to know about your leads, including:
Demographics
Past conversations
Notes
Future appointments (Check out this article for more appointment booking apps.)
Documents (such as contracts)
Using lead scoring and this streamlined pipeline, your team can quickly identify the most promising leads and access all the information they need to close a sale.
Freshsales offers a free trial and paid versions start at $12 per user, per month.
7. Workbooks
This CRM platform includes helpful tools for several of your departments, including marketing, customer service and sales. This makes it a good solution for companies that thrive on cross-departmental collaboration.
Workbooks allows your sales team to record interactions with leads, track lead activity and integrate with email.
The platform lets them automate some administrative tasks, such as automatically generating a contract or invoice. It also offers digital signature capabilities for a seamless buyer experience.
If you need a little help getting set up in Workbooks, their implementation team will guide you through the process. This can be especially helpful for busy sales teams without a lot of IT or project management support.
Workbooks offers a free edition and multiple paid plans starting at $30 per user per month.
8. VanillaSoft
VanillaSoft specializes in maximizing the number of leads you contact and shortening the sales cycle. It helps identify the next best lead for your team members to target so they can work quickly and efficiently.
Not only does VanillaSoft house and score lead information, the platform equips salespeople with tools to engage prospects, such as auto-dialing for calls, lead routing, and call recording.
It also boasts a feature called logical branch scripting that guides sales team members through complex conversations. As a sales rep asks qualifying questions, the script provides the appropriate response to keep the conversation heading in the right direction.
VanillaSoft’s paid plans start at $80 per user per month.
9. MindTickle
MindTickle is a sales management tool with a strong focus on your internal team's development. With MindTickle, leaders can analyze their team's skill gaps, provide one-on-one coaching and motivate them with points and badges.
You can use the platform to create your own training programs that teach team members how to ask the right questions or handle objections. If you see a particular team member struggling in a certain area, you can even create a personalized coaching program to help them improve.
MindTickle is also a great fit for hosting onboarding programs for new sales reps or micro-learning videos to give your team quick updates on any changes.
MindTickle works with companies of all sizes and pricing is available upon request. Contact the company for more details.
10. Ambition
Ambition's byline is "Enterprise gamification for sales teams."
By integrating with your current CRM and tech stack, Ambition pulls scattered and overwhelming data together and presents meaningful insights to your sales team.
Additionally, Ambition makes it easy for leaders to train team members and refine sales practices.
It gives leaders performance metrics on every rep and enables one-on-one and team coaching capabilities. Leaders can also create structured programs to neatly keep track of progress.
Ambition natively integrates gamification features that aim to make sales more fun and competitive for your team.
Public leaderboards that track sales dollars and win/loss ratios, team sales challenges and celebration alerts for reaching individual or team goals help motivate team members.
Ultimately, Ambition's gamification makes sales more enjoyable for reps as it drives behavior change.
Ambition offers four levels of paid plans with pricing available from the company on request.
11. Gryphon Networks
Gryphon Networks is primarily an intelligence platform for sales leaders. Leaders can use its dashboards and training features to educate, coach and develop sales team members.
From one dashboard, you can see all of your marketing and sales activities with key metrics, performance analysis and goal measurement across individuals and teams. With these powerful insights, leaders can determine which strategies work and which don't.
Once an effective strategy is identified, the platform makes it easy to standardize it and share it out to the rest of the team.
With activity reporting and call recording, team leaders also have greater insight into the performance of their teams. The platform features observation and virtual coaching tools along with integrated learning and training resources to help sales team leaders train more effectively.
Gryphon Networks also offers some gamification and team scoring features to keep sales reps motivated.
Pricing varies based on number of users and which features you need included. Contact Gryphon Networks for more details.
12. LevelEleven
LevelEleven tracks key metrics on every sales team member so team leaders can provide customized coaching sessions and training programs.
Personalized score cards let you review team member performance and easily track their improvement, making everyone’s life easier at performance review time.
This sales management software also includes a feature that lets you easily spin up sales challenges and contests between team members. Progress on these contests can be shared via RSS feed, social media or in-house channels in real time to help motivate the team to perform their best.
LevelEleven's pricing varies, so you'll have to contact the company to know the specific costs.
13. Hoopla
Hoopla is another sales management tool that specializes in motivating your sales team.
Like similar software tools, Hoopla understands the importance of encouraging sales team members. For example, team leaders can share inspirational quotes or recent achievements via Hoopla’s cross-platform communication channels.
The platform includes the ability to easily create team goals and track progress against them. Sales contests and challenges between teams or individuals help spur some friendly competition and keep reps hustling.
Hoopla’s user-friendly interface integrates with other tools you’re likely already using, such as SalesForce, Slack or G Suite.
For pricing, Hoopla asks for your information and it will give you a personalized quote. Hoopla says that its tool works well for companies of all sizes, from a one-location startup to a thousand-member team spread across the globe.
Choose the right sales management software for you
No two sales teams are the same. Every business has a unique combination of circumstances, goals, budgets and challenges.
To choose the right sales management software for your business, start by identifying the major pain points and challenges your sales team faces.
If communication is a big roadblock, you may want to choose a tool that prioritizes seamless, easy communication across multiple devices in real time.
If identifying the most promising leads and working them first is your biggest challenge, seek a tool with robust lead scoring and automated task management or queuing capabilities.
Once you have a good idea of what your challenges are, it's time to choose a software tool that has the right features and pricing.
But one thing is certain — consistently landing sales is a difficult challenge. You can make it easier for your valued sales team members by giving them a solid sales management system that will help them shine.
With the right sales management software, you can supercharge your sales numbers, motivate your team and boost revenue, all at once.
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