Is your business getting enough leads to grow? Does your sales team have a ready pipeline of prospective customers to engage and talk to? Discover these lead generation and sales tools that you can leverage to generate more qualifying leads, distribute content marketing materials, streamline your work, book more meetings, and close more deals in 2020.
How to choose a sales tool: Features and capabilities
Ready to choose a sales tool? While digital sales tools will enable you to add deals, assign tasks, and track customer data easily, sales tools available on the market will come with different features and capabilities.
Common features of sales tools include:
| Contact management | A digital contact book that tracks customer engagements with your business, the products they bought or are interested in, their needs, and the challenges they face. |
| Deal management | A database of deals made that can be sorted by clients, dates, value, and geographical zones. Some sales tools enable you to create custom fields depending on the nature of your business. |
| Task management | Create and manage tasks that can be assigned to team members. |
| Social integration | Some sales tools are built-in with social functions to provide seamless integration between social media activities and your CRM system. |
| Email integration | Sales tools enable you to sync emails, contacts, and events, thus allowing you to work seamlessly inside your inbox. |
| Data analytics & dashboards | Analyse sales data and web visitorship on a digital dashboard and generate relevant reports. |
| Lead scoring | Prospective customers can be scored according to how genuinely interested they are in what your business has to offer. |
| Lead pipeline | View your individual and team performance, check the health of your sales pipeline, and identify potential high growth areas. |
| Meeting and email scheduling | Schedule meetings with your clients or schedule follow-up emails easily. |
| Alerts and notifications | Sales tools will notify you via email if a customer has opened your email, made an enquiry, or made a purchase. |
| VoIP | Connect directly with prospective customers from within the sales tool by making a voice call over the internet. |
| Marketing automation | Machine learning lets you send messages to target customers depending on how they interact with your business. |
Top 7 sales tools in 2020
1. AeroLeads
Image credit: FinancesOnline
AeroLeads is a powerful prospecting, sales, and lead generation software used by businesses, start-ups, as well as individual sales agents.
What AeroLeads can do for you
The software generates emails and phone numbers of relevant customer prospects by extracting them from the web in real time.
Simply install the Chrome plugin and enter your application programming interface (API) key. Next, go to LinkedIn and search by relevant terms. A sidebar pop-up will display all the potential prospects that you can add to AeroLeads.
Once your prospects are added to the Aeroleads page, you’ll be able to view their emails and phone numbers.
AeroLeads pricing
Plans are available at USD 49, USD 149, and USD 499 monthly, which will enable you to add 1,000, 4,000, and 15,000 prospects to your AeroLeads database respectively.
| USD 49/month | USD 149/month | USD 499/month | |
| Number of leads you can add | 1,000 | 4,000 | 15,000 |
| Transfer to Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Mailchimp, HubSpot, FreshSales, Zapier, etc. | No | Yes | Yes |
| Users | 1 | 5 | Unlimited |
| Support | Chat and email | Chat, email, and phone |
2. HubSpot
Image credit: PCMag
HubSpot is a multidimensional platform with a suite of sales tools that surfaces new prospects, track deals, and organises your sales activities.
What the HubSpot tool can do for you
HubSpot’s sales tools help you identify the right businesses to reach out to. Through its Prospects tool, you can identify the companies visiting your website, and view which web pages people working in those companies are engaged in. This enables you to follow-up quickly with prospects.
The HubSpot Sales tool enables you to create email templates and focus on the most engaged prospects. It also reveals the most effective email templates and approaches. Instead of manually managing your tasks and reminders, you can schedule a series of emails via its Sequences tool.
For instance, you can schedule a follow-up email to be sent if your prospective customer doesn’t reply within three days. If they respond to your emails, the sequence will automatically stop to let you take over. This automates manual and time-consuming tasks, allowing you to prioritise customer-facing work.
Besides automating emails and keeping your prospects engaged with the Sales tool, you also get to elevate your content marketing to them.
HubSpot pricing
Plans are available at $56, $560, and $1,680 monthly.
| $56/month | $560/month | $1,680/month | |
| Number of teams | – | Up to 10 teams | Up to 300 teams + hierarchical teams |
| – Email scheduling – Email tracking – Email templates | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| – Smart send time – Salesforce integration | No | Yes | Yes |
| – Predictive lead scoring | No | No | Yes |
3. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Image credit: AdWeek
One of the best sales tools out there is LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a sales management platform that enables you to tap directly into the LinkedIn network.
What LinkedIn Sales Navigator can do for you
To begin your targeted lead search, simply build your ideal client profile. LinkedIn Sales Navigator will start filtering through its extensive database. Through its advanced algorithms, the tool connects you with prospects through automatic lead generation. This means gaining access to connections beyond your network.
In addition, LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides sales insights that enable you to access updates on your sales accounts and leads in real-time.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator pricing
Plans are available at USD 64.99 and USD 103.33 monthly.
| USD 64.99/month | USD 103.33/month | |
| – 1,500 saved leads – Extended LinkedIn network access – Advanced lead and company search – Lead and account recommendations | Yes | Yes |
| – +3,500 additional saved leads – Organic marketing alerts – CRM integrations – Usage reporting – Invoicing | No | Yes |
Need tools for content marketing as well? Find out the essential tools to get here.
4. Albacross
Image credit: FinancesOnline
Albacross is a B2B platform that increases lead generation based on your site’s web visitors.
What Albacross can do for you
The software is designed to give you specific information on every person who visits your website, including the company they work for, how many times they visited your site, which pages they visited, and the time spent on your site.
You can then use the data as a sales lead to reach out to your prospects, thereby converting anonymous traffic into leads.
Based on these user data, you can also customise the user journey and content marketing on your website for a more personalised experience.
Albacross also enables you to perform account-based marketing by targeting high-value customer accounts. The tool focuses on website visitors who are interested in your products or services and lets you sort them by industry, keywords, revenue, employees, and geographical location. This helps you zero in on decision-makers and key representatives.
Albacross pricing
Plans are available at EUR 40, EUR 400, and EUR 1,000 and above monthly.
| EUR 40/month | EUR 400/month | EUR 1,000/month | |
| Number of users | 1 | 10 | Unlimited |
| – Activity data – Filters and segments – Email reports – Slack workflows | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| – Advanced filters and segments – Workflows via Zapier & Webhooks – Native CRM integrations | No | Yes | Yes |
| – Account-based marketing service – Custom API integration – API for website personalisation | No | No | Yes |
5. ClinchPad
Image credit: ClinchPad
ClinchPad is a simple cloud-based CRM and sales management tool that’s built for small teams and businesses to track leads.
What ClinchPad can do for you
ClinchPad enables you to track and filter leads on a centralised platform, identify bottlenecks in the sales process, and attach relevant emails to each lead.
This transforms the traditional way of tracking sales on spreadsheets, while enabling teams to view their sales pipeline on a visual interface and collaborate virtually.
Leads can also be categorised by products and services that you offer, lead generation sources, and geographical zones.
ClinchPad pricing
Plans are available at USD 9, USD 19, USD 49, and USD 99 monthly.
| USD 9/month | USD 19/month | USD 49/month | USD 99/month | |
| Number of users | 1 user | 5 users | 15 users | 33 users |
| Storage | 2GB | 5GB | 10GB | 20GB |
| Unlimited leads | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
6. Better Proposals
Image credit: Better Proposals
Better Proposals is a web-based proposal writing software that offers a variety of professionally-designed customisable templates.
What Better Proposals can do for you
Better Proposals allows you to build and edit proposals with customisable templates easily. Proposals that have been successful and effective can be shared and recycled through the proposal library.
Besides simplifying the proposal preparation process, this tool sends you an email each time your proposal is opened, forwarded to someone else, or signed. This enables you to follow up with your prospective customers at the most opportune time.
For your proposals, you may leverage Better Proposals’ intelligent pricing tables which enable you to set recurring fees, bill multiple items at once, or add optional line items.
Better Proposals pricing
Plans are available at USD 19, USD 49, and USD 129 monthly.
| USD 19/month | USD 49/month | USD 129/month | |
| Number of users | 1 user | 3 users | 3 users |
| Number of proposals | 10 | 50 | Unlimited |
| Other features | – Custom domain – CRM integrations – Payment integrations | – Zapier Project management integrations – Company report | – One-to-one training – Custom setup service – Custom pricing |
7. Salesforce
Image credit: Salesforce
Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM software with an array of sales tools that enable sales, marketing, and customer support teams to work collaboratively online.
What Salesforce can do for you
The Salesforce Sales Cloud is a leading CRM software that allows you to deliver personalised customer journey for each of your customers. For instance, it allows you to gain insights into your customers based on their activity history, as well as connect you with key decision-makers faster.
What’s more, Salesforce offers software that can support your marketing and customer service effort.
The Salesforce Marketing Cloud increases customer engagement by allowing you to personalise the customer journey at various touchpoints. Its email marketing, content building, and data studio capabilities will also complement the content marketing services that you have.
Another Salesforce tool, the Salesforce Service Cloud, allows you to offer your customers multi-channel support via phone, email, social media, and web chat. Data analytics programmes are also available to help you access visualised aggregated data and predictive insights in order to act quickly to improve your overall sales and customer service.
Salesforce pricing
Plans for its Sales Cloud are available at USD 25, USD 75, USD 150, and USD 300 monthly.
| USD 25/user/ month | USD 75/user/ month | USD 150/user/ month | USD 300/user/ month | |
| Account, contact, lead, and opportunity management | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Lead registration and rules-based lead scoring, and collaborative forecasting | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Workflow and approval automation | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 24/7 support and configuration services | No | No | No | Yes |
Learn more about how emerging tech can shake up digital marketing and increase your sales here.