To close more deals, salespeople need to get smart about how they use their time. Today, hundreds of applications exist to help salespeople streamline their selling process, and self management.
If you’re unsure which sales tools your should use to streamline your workflow, you’re in the right place. In this article, we’ll look at 3 types of B2B sales tools you can use to find prospects, close more deals, and report back to management - without having to waste time.
Automate your biggest timesinks with these streamlining B2B sales tools
Finding better prospects: lead generation tools
Since setting up a KPI around the number of new leads, the sales team has kicked into overdrive, however, their sales conversion rates have plummeted. If they can’t start finding better leads, the team will fail to reach their target and growth will grind to a standstill.
According to a 2018 Forbes article, reps spend up to 65% of their time searching for prospects and doing outreach. To decrease time spent generating leads, reps can use lead generation tools.
Lead generation tools: generate accurate and up-to-date contact information for hundreds of suitable prospects spanning multiple demographics across the globe.
Good lead gen tools can integrate with your existing systems, CRM or otherwise, to ensure a new lead is properly tracked throughout the sales pipeline. To further streamline a rep’s workflow, you could investigate automated lead gen tools, which automate outreach across email and social platforms, sending content to thousands of prospects at a time.
Close more deals: lead nurturing tools
In your latest sales coaching session, one of your newest reps admits they’re struggling to make consistent progress with new leads past first contact. Unless the rep can find a better way to nurture good leads, it’s unlikely their sales performance will improve.
Lead nurturing is a crucial part of a prospect’s journey: without it, there’ll be no closed deals. Research compiled by Invesp in 2022 identified a growing trend, where nurtured leads could produce up to 20% more sales opportunities.
Lead nurturing tools: sales tools which automatically send prospects additional personalized content depending on their position in the sales funnel.
With a lead nurturing tool, reps can manage relationships with their leads in one place, tracking their journey and sending relevant material when needed. Additionally, these tools can help reps with lead scoring, where a lead’s conversion potential is rated, helping reps prioritize their leads.
Keep management in the loop: reporting tools
The last thing your reps want to do is compile a sales report on a Thursday afternoon for higher management: they can’t close more deals if they aren’t selling! Unfortunately, management can’t make solid decisions unless they’re based on timely sales insights.
Reporting tools solve this problem by automatically compiling sales data into attractive and easy-reading reports without wasting selling time.
Reporting tools: present the sales team and higher management with summaries of sales performance to help them refocus their sales efforts or predict future performance.
Details reported by these tools can include: sales KPI standings, sales metrics, sales performance for the previous period, and progress against targets. Besides alleviating this arduous task from their workflow, reporting tools can help sales reps understand their performance on a larger scale. When interpreted by their sales manager, these reports could even be used to form the basis of sales coaching.
Whether it’s finding better leads, nurturing them towards a sale, or reporting sales performance, there’s a sales tool for the job. For sales teams needing an urgent solution, we recommend a sales performance app. Learn how sales performance apps compare to CRMs here.
Sources we used in this article:
Forbes, Why Sales Reps Spend So Little Time Selling, February 15 2018.
Invesp, The Importance Of Lead Nurturing – Statistics and Trends, May 8 2022.
