Modern Sales Tools Selling can be a hard gig. You need to know your customers, build relationships, sell the product or service, and even bounce back quickly from harsh rejections. And it can be more difficult if your business is a startup.
One of the main hiccups for startups sales reps is getting customers.
Sales reps need that extra help, especially now that most sales activities have become remote. Not utilizing the AI-powered sales tools can cost you as a startup founder a lot.
How can you expect your sales function to operate without it when you are even dependent on technology to get up on time? Especially when your competitors are taking all the help and more that they can get.
What are sales tools?
In an interesting new study done by Markets and Markets, they found that the global sales intelligence market is expected to grow to $3.4B by 2024 from $2.0B.
Sales tools are software that helps sales reps automate their repetitive sales administrative tasks and make their work easier.
There is no need to do the manual tasks when you can use sales tools to do it for you, and you can focus on what is essential, i.e., prospecting and reaching out to the customers.
Sales tools can help you with most sales tasks such as contacting your customers, tracking your seller’s daily activities, recording your sales calls, managing your leads and customers, sales intelligence, sales performance review, and even automating sending emails and notifications.
They even help in collaborating remotely.
Did you know only 2 in 5 startups are profitable, So if technology can help you improve your sales performance and increase revenue to help you stay in the market, why would you not invest in success tools?
8 Must Sales Tools for your Startup
A startup is crunched by budget; that is why rather than investing in all the sales tools you can find, you should evaluate your sales needs and invest in the essential tool. After scorching through the internet, we have built a list of must sales tools your startup needs to invest in:
CRM
Every sales professional knows what a CRM is. CRM helps track existing and new customers, opportunities, seller’s activities, sales, and marketing efforts. It also helps in automating internal communication and collaboration of teams.
You can consider some of the CRM are SalesForce, Hubspot, ZohoCRM, Active Campaign, Freshsales, Pipedrive, etc.
Conversation Intelligence
Conversation Intelligence is a combination of many sales tools; by investing in conversation intelligence, you can save money. Conversation intelligence acts as your sales conversation recorder, sales tracker, sales intelligence solution, sales performance tracker, sales training/sales coaching software. Obviously, it provides real-time insights about your customers, market, and competitors by recording and analyzing your sales conversations.
Some of the Conversation Intelligence software you can consider as a startup are Convin, Wingman, Chorus, Salesloft.
Video Conferencing Platform
If you are selling remotely, setting up your video conferencing platform should be your number one priority. Video conferencing is a main medium of communication, both internal and external. Choose a platform that is scalable and customizable to the needs of your customers.
The popular choice of the market right now is Google meet and Zoom Meetings. Both provide free and paid plans for startups.
Dialer or Cloud Telephony system
Just relying on a video conferencing platform could be a huge mistake your startups make. Many times prospects are available over calls; what do you do then?
As a founder and even your team, you would obviously acquire many prospects’ contact details in summits, conferences, and other sources. How do you contact them?
Set up the Dialer or cloud telephony system based on your business requirements and budget.
Some Dialers you can consider Mojo Dialer, Predictive Dialer, and Voice Broadcast Dialer, etc.
Marketing automation software
Marketing automation tools help streamline marketing framework workflows by optimizing their marketing strategy. It automates marketing tasks such as email marketing, social media posts, and lead generation. And keep track of the lead’s lifecycle in the company.
Some of the marketing automation tools you can consider are Hubspot, Active Campaign, Omnisend, etc.
Sales Performance Tracker
How do you know what your sales reps are doing daily? –The number of emails, number of calls, or emails they send in a day, what they are talking about on the call or if their performance is increasing, Or what is their conversion rate?
A sales performance tracker helps you answer all these questions to help you forecast revenue and improve your seller’s performance.
Some of the sales performance trackers you can consider are Convin, Gong, Merlin Sales securely sign or get your customers’ signsUsing
E-signature and document tracking
In short, this tool helps you put your pen digitally on documents. An additional benefit of this solution, it promotes the paperless initiative. By using this tool, you can sign or get signs of your customers on contracts and proposals. And mostly they are not that expensive.
Some of the e-signature and document tracking tools you can consider are DocuSign, HelloSign, PandaDoc, Adobe Sign, eversign, etc.
Sales Analytics and Forecasting Software
Sales analytics and forecasting solutions help you track, evaluate, and improve your sales processes and activities. And it even helps you track future sales patterns and revenue paths. They are basically integrated with your customer engagement platform and CRM.
Some of the sales analytics tools you can consider are Convin, Gong, Retail sales forecasting, Vanguard Sales forecasting.
In the past, only enterprises and big companies used sales tools, but now, sales tools are essential to even come to the market. With the rapid development of technology, the cost of acquiring these tools has also decreased, which makes it easier for new entrepreneurs and startups to start benefiting from sales tools and increasing their revenue.
But remember, before investing, a thorough evaluation of business needs and goals that you are trying to achieve from the tools should be set. It will enable you to draw maximum ROI from your sales tools.
