Top 11 Tools to Increase Sales Productivity

In today's fast-paced business environment, it's crucial to leverage technology in order to increase sales productivity and drive success.

From software automation to CRM tools, there are tools that will streamline your processes, boost efficiency, and drive results. These tools are specifically designed to help sales professionals to close deals faster.

Whether you're a small business owner, a sales manager, or an individual contributor, these tools will help you work smarter, not harder. So, if you are someone who is tired of constantly feeling overwhelmed and not being able to hit sales targets, we have curated a list of sales productivity tools that will help you achieve your business goals.

How Tools Can Increase Sales Productivity

By choosing the right tools for your business, you can streamline your processes, increase efficiency, and drive results.

i. Sales Intelligence and Lead Generation Tools

40% of salespeople believe that prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process. These tools help you find and nurture potential customers, providing valuable insights into the market and your target audience. By streamlining the lead generation process, these tools can help you convert more leads into paying customers.

ii. CRM Sales Tools

Customer relationship management (CRM) tools provide a centralized view of your sales pipeline, customer interactions, and sales data. With this information, you can prioritize your sales efforts, close deals faster, and improve customer satisfaction.

iii. Scheduling Meeting Sales Tools

These tools automate the scheduling of sales meetings, freeing up time and reducing the chance of missed appointments.

iv. Communication and Collaborative Sales Tools

These tools help you collaborate with team members and keep track of customer interactions, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks. For example, a customer support chatbot enhances the team’s productivity along with customer experience.

v. eSigning Sales Tools

With eSigning tools, you can automate the signature process and get deals signed faster. No more waiting for contracts to be mailed back and forth. With eSigning, you can close deals anywhere, anytime.

Each tool serves a unique purpose, and the right combination of tools can help you achieve your sales goals more efficiently and effectively. By understanding how each tool can impact your sales productivity, you can make informed decisions and drive success.

Let’s have a brief understanding of a few of the sales productivity tools in each category.

I. Sales Intelligence and Lead Generation Sales Tools

1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Sales Navigator is a professional social networking platform that helps sales teams to prospect, nurture and close more deals. It provides advanced search and filtering capabilities, real-time insights, lead recommendations, and a CRM-like interface to manage sales activities and build stronger relationships.

With Sales Navigator, sales professionals can easily find and connect with the right prospects, stay up-to-date with their activities, and share content to engage them effectively.

Pricing

They have three options available, namely - core, advanced and advanced plus. Pricing starts from $64/month for a single user and goes all the way to $103.33 per seat/month for enterprise customers.

Pros

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful solution for organizing leads and gaining a comprehensive understanding of prospects and their organizations, especially in the B2B sector.

• It cuts down on time spent on prospecting.

Cons

• Lacks Salesforce Integration

• Users complain about navigation and messaging options 

• High Cost

2. UpLead

UpLead is a top solution for increasing sales productivity. It guides leads directly into the pipeline, separates them into categories, and simplifies tasks for each client.

UpLead also features an automatic client profiling system, which speeds up the process of making a list of leads.

Lead generation is their specialty and they offer businesses the opportunity to try it out with a free trial before making any changes to their sales management approach.

Pricing

UpLead offers various pricing plans to suit the needs of different businesses. The pricing options usually depend on the number of leads that a business wants to access and the features they require.

They do have the flexibility of a free trial. Apart from that, their pricing is bifurcated into three plans - essentials, plus, and professionals that charge $74/month, $149/month, and $299/month respectively.

Pros

• Automatic client profiling

• Has accurate filter features

• Support available 24/7

Cons

• Pricing is a bit too high

• App performance could be better

II. Scheduling Sales Tools

3. WotNot

WotNot is one of the most popular chatbot companies that is known for its best-in-class end-to-end chatbot solutions. WotNot comes with a number of use cases, and one of the use cases that is making a lot of buzz is automated demo scheduling chatbot.

WotNot’s demo booking chatbot automates the entire process by first asking qualifying questions to the prospects in a conversational manner.

Once the prospect is qualified as a lead, they are presented with a calendar with all the available slots. The prospects can select any slot to schedule a demo from the chatbot.

WotNot also offers several integrations which allows you to integrate popular calendars like Google Calendar, Outlook, and many more.

Now, salespeople no longer have to book meetings manually and keep a track of all by themselves, as WotNot does the heavy lifting for them.

Pricing

WotNot has a free plan that includes the basic features. For automated demo scheduling chatbot, you have to choose the paid plan that starts at $299/month.

Pros

• Eliminate follow manual follow ups for meetings

• Ensures that 100% sales qualified meetings

• Make any webpage into a demo booking page

• Distribute demos evenly in a round robin manner

• Charges are not based on no. of seats, so you can have unlimited users for free

4. Calendly

Calendly is a tool that helps you schedule appointments, meetings, or events in a simple and efficient way. You can create a personalized link to share with others, and they can choose a time that works best for them from available slots.

Calendly also works with other tools, such as calendars and email, to make scheduling easier and reduce the time spent finding a mutually convenient time.

Pricing

The basic version of Calendly is available for free. However, for additional features, they started charging a nominal fee of $8-$12 per user/month. Only $12 per user/month offers pro-level features like PayPal integration.

Pros

• Saves a significant amount of time by helping you avoid a lot of back-and-forths

• Lacks Zoom integration

Cons

• Extremely pricey, as most of the premium features are available elsewhere at an affordable rate

5. Doodle

Doodle is a tool that makes it easy to schedule appointments, events, or meetings. You can create a poll with different date and time options, then ask people to vote on the best time.

Doodle collects the votes and shows the results in a clear way, so you can see when everyone is available. You can also add the event to your calendar with just one click, as Doodle works with calendars.

Pricing

Free with paid upgrades. For their paid upgrades they charge a minimum of $6.95 per user/month.

Pros

• Clean, simple UI 

• Free

Cons

• Can be problematic for coordinating teams across multiple time zones

III. CRM Sales Tools

6. Salesforce

As the amount of data generated increases, businesses need to adopt a platform that allows them to effectively utilize customer data. Salesforce is a popular CRM platform that meets this need and is used by a wide range of businesses, from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

It helps organizations to manage their customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, from attracting and converting prospects to retaining and growing existing customers.

Salesforce offers a cloud-based solution that can be accessed from anywhere, and it integrates with a wide range of other systems and tools, making it a flexible and scalable solution for businesses of all sizes.

Pricing

The pricing options typically vary based on the features included and the number of users. Salesforce also offers a flexible pricing model, allowing businesses to scale their usage and costs as their needs change.

Some of the available pricing options include Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, and Unlimited editions. For a more detailed overview, you need to talk with their sales representative.

Pros

• Many customizable options available

• Extremely reliable

• Great workflows

Cons

• Quite expensive than its competitors

• Steep learning curve, difficult to master

7. HubSpot CRM

HubSpot is a platform that provides businesses with a complete suite of tools for managing and growing their customer relationships. The platform is designed to be user-friendly and intuitive, making it easy for businesses of all sizes to manage their customer data and interactions.

HubSpot offers a comprehensive solution for businesses, encompassing all aspects, including marketing, sales, services, operations, and CMS. It streamlines manual tasks and results in improved sales productivity efficiency.

Pricing

HubSpot categorized their pricing into three:

Starter: Starts at $45/month or $540/yr

Professional: Starts at $800/ month or $9600/yr

Enterprise: Starts at $3200/month or $38400/yr

Pros

• Sort data through Filters

• Manage to Log Meetings, Calls, and Tasks

• Managing priority level of Business lead

• Generate Reports

Cons

• Removes outdated leads after a specified date

• Expand the filtering section with additional tabs

• Make minor modifications to the Mobile App, such as ensuring data entered from a phone is properly synced with the system.

IV. Communication and Collaborative Sales Tools

 8. Zoom

Zoom is a video-conferencing application that provides remote teams with the ability to collaborate and communicate effectively in real time. It facilitates virtual meetings, webinars, and video conferences, equipped with high-quality audio, video, and screen-sharing capabilities.

Furthermore, its integration with various tools such as calendars and instant messaging platforms simplifies the scheduling and joining process for meetings.

Pricing

Zoom does offer a free version. However, it is too limited for most businesses. Paid plans start at $14.99/month.

Pros

• Widely adopted

• Rich integrations available

• Can be used for webinars and training events

Cons

• Security concerns previously raised

• Zoom has taken measures to address Zoombombing with a new feature

9. Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is a video conferencing and collaboration tool by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft 365 suite and is suitable for personal and professional use. Teams offer audio/video calls, messaging, file sharing, virtual meetings, screen sharing, recording, and the ability to include external participants.

It integrates with other Microsoft and popular productivity tools such as OneDrive, Trello, and Asana. Teams is a popular choice for remote teams and organizations seeking a centralized platform for communication and collaboration.

Pricing

$5-20 per user/month (included with certain Office 365 plans)

Pros

• Compatible with Microsoft suite of tools

Cons

• Possible synchronization and authorization issues causing duplicity and confusion

V. eSigning Sales Tools

10. Signaturely

Signaturely is a free electronic signature tool that enables users to obtain legally binding signatures for forms, proposals, and agreements online.

Its user-friendly interface enables users to upload documents, create signature fields, and send the documents for signature to relevant parties through the platform. The signatures collected through Signaturely are legally binding.

Pricing

Along with the free version, Signaturely offers paid plans starting from $20/month.

Pros

• Easy to use

• Simplified UI

• Legally binding, compliant client data

• Integration with file sharing systems

• Scalable pricing plans

Cons

• Doesn’t have a mobile app

• Difficult to integrate with other third-party tools like CRM

11. DocuSign

DocuSign provides efficient solutions for creating online proposals and obtaining electronic signatures. It's a fast and user-friendly tool with the capability of seamless integration with other applications.

With over 200 million users worldwide, DocuSign allows individuals to sign documents from any location and provides secure cloud storage for documents.

Pricing

DocuSign offers a paid subscription for personal usage at a starting rate of $10/month and can go upto $40 per user/month for business plans.

Pros

• Digital signing

• Powerforms automation

• Acceptance compliance verification

• Great mobile experience

Cons

• Envelope transfer between DocuSign accounts

• Bulk envelope transfer isn’t available

• Terrible customer support

• Expensive

Wrapping Up

Supercharging your team's sales productivity is crucial for business success and the right tools can make all the difference. Our top 11 list, including WotNot, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, UpLead, Calendly, Zoom, Salesforce, DocuSign, etc., provides solutions for streamlining processes, improving communication, managing the pipeline, and closing more deals.

So, invest in the right technology and watch your team's productivity excel as these tools allow them to focus solely on selling. Embrace the opportunity and take the leap today to see your business soar to new heights!