Don't Miss the 7 Top Tools for Sales Managers & Reps in 2023 Jen Samples January 16, 2023
What sales manager doesn't want their sales team to close more deals by using the right sales tools?
However, as technology continues to advance, sales teams and sales leaders are faced with an overwhelming number of tools that promise to help them boost their B2C or B2B sales and improve their team's performance. With so many options available and shrinking RevOps budgets, it can be difficult to know which sales management tools are truly worth investing in this year.
It's easy for many sales leaders to lean heavy on their sales CRM software and use it for sales forecasting or to watch their sales pipeline—they often don't think to invest in tools that will help speed up their deal velocity and sales cycles, such as mobile sales tools. They also don't invest in tools that allow them to coach their entire sales team beyond their standard sales CRM software.
Building great sales organizations includes using the right sales management software.
To help you navigate the crowded landscape of sales management tools, I've compiled a list of the 7 best sales management tools that I believe will be essential for every sales manager and sales team in 2023.
These tools have been chosen based on their ability to help sales managers automate their sales processes, track progress, streamline sales reporting, enable their sales teams to close more deals, and empower their sales reps.
1. Cognism—Simplifying the sales process with better customer data
If you are going to simplify the sales process, you need to start with relevant data for your sales team. While there are many tools for lead generation and lead management, I have personally fallen in love with Cognism, and it is one tool I am encouraging all sales leaders to invest in 2023.
Closing deals becomes easy when you are talking to the right customers, and that starts with the right customer data. Cognism helps sales leaders and their sales teams identify new leads and target their outreach. This tool uses artificial intelligence to analyze customer and prospect data from various sources, such as social media and website activity, to identify the best leads to build customer relationships.
Image. Cognism, dashboard
One thing I love most about Cognism is that it allows sales leaders to partner with their marketing counterparts so that sales and marketing teams can utilize the data in a joint GTM strategy which is a sales management best practice. One super cool feature of this sales management software is the TAM Calculator. Cognism allows you to understand your total addressable market with just a few clicks.
Cognism Prospector lets you build ideal-fit accounts and lead lists enriched with premium contextual and contact data, including the most accurate phone-verified mobile numbers on the market.
One of the things that can crush sales productivity is having to look for up-to-date contact information when bad data hygiene and poor contact management could have been easily prevented. Cognism's Enhance module starts the entire sales process off right by refreshing stale records, filling in gaps, and making sure you are using relevant data.
2. Lavender—Writing better emails as a sales management tool
2023 is the year of AI-based writing, so it is imperative for sales teams to know how to use AI-based writing tools. Enter Lavender. At first glance, Lavender is just one more business software for writing. However, I have found it to be the perfect coach for an outbound sales team. Lavender is an AI-powered sales assistant that does almost everything for your email marketing, including the laundry when it comes to providing sales intelligence for emails.
Lavender's unique machine learning AI-based platform helps speed up the sales process by getting sales reps more replies in less time. It automatically finds anything that lowers replies and fixes it. Gone are the days of low open rates and even lower reply rates. One thing I love about Lavender is that the platform provides key insights about your customers, resulting in better sales conversations.
Image. Lavender's personality insights
It is also continually learning to help improve your entire sales cycle. Not only does Lavender help sales reps to write better emails, it is one of the best sales management software for coaching. Lavender's coaching dashboard provides key performance indicators for both individual sales reps and teams. Lavender also integrates with Outreach.com and Salesloft to analyze historical data and build benchmarks.
3. Glass.io—Win more deals on your website with in-app video chats
One of the easiest parts to execute in a solid sales management system is video. Great videos make even the weakest sales professionals look stellar. Great sales management includes coaching your sales team on how to effectively use video to drive more deals.
My favorite tool for 2023 is Glass.io. Sales and marketing teams will love Glass.io, and it should be included in every B2B sales teams' sales strategy. Glass.io helps individual sales reps to identify and engage with the right prospects at the right time through video.
When a user comes to your website, they no longer have to engage with a dry chatbot. They can now engage by video with a knowledgeable sales rep. This will help speed up the sales cycle tremendously by allowing inside sales teams, BDR teams, and SDR teams to immediately engage with a prospect. Early-stage sales activities no longer have to be droll. Glass.io is going to be key to creating customer lifetime value, especially as more and more B2B organizations are embracing product-led growth as one of their sales strategies.
Image. Glass.io replaces boring chatbots with your sales team
One of my favorite features of Glass.io is their VIP Concierge solution, and it will be critical for customer success teams. New customers can interact with an assigned sales rep or a client success manager within the critical first 90 days to ensure proper onboarding and retention. If you don't buy any other sales tools this year, make sure to invest in Glass.io to win more sales.
4. Loom—Videos to enable your sales team and customers
I am obsessed with Loom videos. Many people don't think of Loom as sales management software, but in my opinion, it is low-key one of the best sales management software that sales management can invest in 2023.
Instead of written sales documents, you can create easy how-to guides using Loom videos. This cuts down on unnecessary calls of "how do I do X again?..." which frees up your time to be more strategic in how you want to guide your team. When used as a sales enablement platform, Loom can be highly effective.
Loom videos also enable you to easily keep your remote sales teams informed and provide key training while reviewing analytics of who actually watched the video and when. Loom is one of the best sales management software tools for keeping your sales team updated on the latest product roadmap information.
Image. Loom, product roadmap
I also like using Loom videos as a way of sending a message to clients and prospects. It's easy to make a how-to video for prospect enablement, as well as for a sales rep to introduce themselves prior to a discovery call.
Image. Introductory email from a sales rep
5. Groove—The most robust sales management software in 2023
If I could give any sales tool or sales management software the award for best all-around sales software in 2023, it would be Groove. The best sales management knows that sales reps hate inputting data into Salesforce, and they look for ways to support their sales teams. Groove is the answer.
If you are a sales manager that wants to eliminate friction from your sales process, focus on closing deals and drive peak performance in every sales rep, then invest in Groove. Not only is Groove one of the hottest sales management tools in 2023, it will be one of the best sales management software you will ever use. Recently ranked a leader in the G2 Winter '23 report for sales engagement, Groove helps make the sales process easier for sales reps resulting in a bigger sales pipeline.
One of Groove's really cool features include email, calendar, and activity tracking. It will automatically log all emails, meeting, calendars, and Linkedin directly into your Salesforce CRM software making contact management a dream and capturing all of your sales data in the right place.
Groove's Omnidialer and Call Logging module helps your sales team make and log their sales calls automatically into your Salesforce account. While conversational intelligence may seem like one of the hot new sales trends of our decade, Groove's CI tool provides key metrics and like sentiment, competitors, and differentiation directly into Salesforce to give you and your sales team up-to-date information on what's happening in your sales pipeline.
Image. Groove dashboard
Lastly, Groove is one of the best sales management software tools for revenue intelligence. It allows the sales management and revops teams to be able to rely on real-time Salesforce reporting, collaborate on account lists, better understand the full buying committee, and run live, interactive pipeline reviews directly with sales reps.
6. Ambition—Coaching paired with gamification for the win!
Winning is more than achieving sales quotas in 2023. The best sales management software allows sales leaders to be coaches, and great coaches know that sales management is more than helping your team hit their numbers. This is why I love Ambition as one of the best sales management software in 2023.
Ambition is a sales performance management platform that helps sales management track team and individual reps performance. Ambition gives sales management teams an edge on coaching by providing performance intelligence and coaching orchestrations that allows you to automate coaching processes. Ambition's metrics engine is more than just a sales dashboard; it provides data to help you measure performance in real-time. One of the sexiest sales management software features of Ambition is gamification.
It is really hard to incentives reps, and many sales leaders just don't want to invest the time to manually create sales contests, which is what makes Ambition extra special. This sales management software helps sales management by actually driving long-lasting behavior change. Ambition claims that its Sales Gamification decreases time spent running sales competitions by 96%. This helps sales management teams run sales spiffs at a higher frequency while optimizing sales management time. With the functionality to automate competition setup and reporting, celebrate wins in real-time, and incentivize reps at every skill level, this sales management software will help your team be excited again about sales and winning.
Image. Ambition, sales gamification
7. Chili Piper—productivity-enhancing sales management software
I recently coached a sales organization and was astonished that the sales management team was not advocating for a calendaring tool for their sales team. While there are a ton of shiny new objects for sales managers in 2023, one thing is for certain, make sure you are investing in the basics to help your team thrive.
I recommend every sales team I coach use Chili Piper. It's incredibly important for sales managers to help increase productivity amongst their reps, and this even means cutting down on time to do manual tasks like schedule meetings. Scheduling meetings take an inordinate amount of time. There is so much back and forth to get a meeting scheduled manually. When you use Chili Piper's Instant Booker feature, you are giving your team a competitive edge and more time to focus on deal strategy.
Image. Chili Piper instant booker
Chili Piper is a great way for marketing and sales management to partner on demand generation. Chili Piper allows you to route inbound leads to the right rep which allows you to stop manually entering objects into Salesforce and ultimately helps streamline your workflow.
In closing, sales managers need to be proactive about software in 2023
In 2023, sales management tools go beyond the standard sales CRM software. The best sales management knows that you have to pair the right sales management system and processes with the right sales management software. This includes having the ability to monitor the sentiment of a sales conversation, track team performance, analyze sales behavior and empower their sales team to drive deal velocity and build customer relationships.
Whether your sales team is selling to enterprise businesses or small and medium businesses, the right sales management tool is what will increase sales performance and make you look like a sales management rockstar because your sales team exceeded their sales quotas.
Jen Samples is a seasoned sales professional with over 20 years of experience. She has a proven track record of exceeding sales targets and building strong relationships with clients. An expert in developing and implementing successful sales strategies, and skilled at identifying and capitalizing on new business opportunities, Jen is known for being a trusted advisor for Enterprise clients. She is passionate about integrating sales, marketing and product strategies into a cohesive growth plan. Jen is currently CEO of 715 Edge, a boutique consultancy where she helps clients develop their revenue and marketing strategies for growth.
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