When my co-founder and I started building our product, we set out with a simple goal: to build the best sales enablement tool.
Very quickly, we realized that answering what “the best” actually means is not simple at all.
It is easy to say that the best sales enablement tool is the one that supports sales enablement most effectively. The challenge is that sales enablement itself keeps evolving and technology supporting it changes even faster.
To me, a sales enablement tool is technology that makes sales enablement actionable. This is a definition I once heard from a leader at the Sales Enablement Society, and it has stuck with me ever since. But sales enablement can focus on very different areas. These include sales training, sales planning, collaboration between marketing and sales, analytics, and fast, reliable access to content and presentations, especially for teams working in the field.
This is why, when you search for “the best sales enablement tool,” you will find solutions that are very different from one another. Everything from CRMs, to sales training platforms, to presentation tools and digital content briefcases is often grouped under the same category of sales enablement tools.
In this article, I focus on what a sales enablement tool means for most people in the industry. In particular, for teams that support mobile sales professionals. These are teams that work on the road, visit customers, and attend trade shows regularly.
That is the group we belong to, and that is the group we focus on.
Sales Enablement Tool – An Unmet Need
Some products are born from bold, revolutionary ideas. Others emerge naturally from real and practical needs.
Around 2010, many large and tech-savvy companies equipped their teams with a new generation of mobile devices, iPhones and iPads. Much like today’s belief that AI will transform every aspect of work, there was a widespread expectation at the time that mobile devices would make traditional laptops largely obsolete.
That vision did not fully materialize. However, for certain groups of workers, mobile devices proved to be transformative. Sales teams were among the most impacted.
Traditionally, salespeople traveled with trunks or suitcases full of printed materials. These included brochures, product catalogs, order forms or contract templates.
Suddenly, sales teams were handed iPads. But the devices alone did not solve any problems. What they really needed were applications that could replace paper with digital equivalents. They needed a sales enablement tool that could store, update, access, and present sales materials easily and reliably.
That unmet need led to the creation of an entirely new category of software. A new type – a sales enablement tool – was emerged to solve a specific problem for a specific group of users: how to manage and present digital sales collateral anywhere and at any time.
The Foundation of Modern Sales Enablement Tools
Those early years were foundational. They shaped what we now recognize as modern sales enablement software. Nearly all sales enablement tools started as simple content briefcases. These were apps that allowed salespeople on the road to access digital documents such as PDFs, spreadsheets, and multimedia files.
Some vendors built their own cloud storage from scratch. Others, like us, chose a different approach and focused entirely on deep, native integration with existing cloud platforms such as SharePoint, Google Drive, Box, and Salesforce.
Offline access quickly became critical. Sales teams needed documents to be available without an internet connection and automatically synchronized to the latest version. This gave marketing teams a powerful advantage. They could ensure that only up-to-date and relevant content was used. For sales teams, a sales enablement tool became a single, reliable app for curated content that was always available.
Presentation was the next major pillar. It was not enough to simply access documents. What mattered was how content could be presented, how well the sales enablement tool reflected the company’s brand and visual identity, and how easily it supported related tasks such as sharing materials or updating records in a CRM.
Offline search became essential. In the paper world, there was a natural limit to how many documents a salesperson could carry. Once content became digital, that limit disappeared. Sales teams could store hundreds or even thousands of product sheets, manuals, and instructions. Fast and offline search became a core requirement for any serious sales enablement tool.
Document editing or annotation followed naturally. If a salesperson could send a document directly from an iPad, it made sense to allow customization, annotation, or signing before sharing.
Analytics became another key component. Marketing teams wanted insight into how content was used. They wanted to know which documents were opened, shared, and presented, and which content actually supported sales outcomes. Analytics became a defining feature of the best sales enablement tools.
Customization as a Differentiator
From the start, we designed Crescendo to be flexible. We have always believed that a sales enablement tool should not be closed. Instead, it should provide a strong core while remaining easy to adapt to each client’s specific needs.
This belief led us to design Crescendo from the ground up with white-labeling in mind. Our clients could create their own branded version of the sales enablement tool, complete with custom integrations and tailored workflows.
Later, we introduced an even easier way to customize Crescendo through custom web apps that run inside the platform. Even without a full white-label setup, clients could add small, purpose-built tools that work offline. Examples include lead capture forms, contract generators, and calculators.
For many years, this flexibility was what set Crescendo apart. White-labeling was rare among sales enablement tools and almost unheard of at a reasonable price point.
The Best Sales Enablement Tool in 2026 and Beyond
By 2026, the landscape has become even more dynamic, largely thanks to AI. Extensions and integrations are now faster and easier to build than ever before. The rise of AI assistants and agents is already making traditional search feel outdated.
So where is the sales enablement tool category heading next?
Our belief is that while none of the existing needs will become obsolete anytime soon, AI will fundamentally change what people expect from the best sales enablement tool.
We see sales enablement tools evolving into knowledge hubs and dispatch centers. In this model, AI becomes the primary interface to find, structure, and deliver the right information instantly.
We have already deployed an AI Assistant and other AI-powered features. Early implementations have confirmed our intuition. Companies, and sales teams in particular, often struggle to fully unlock the power of AI on their own. But once they see what is possible, they quickly want more.
For these clients, Crescendo, once a customizable collateral briefcase, becomes a gateway to entirely new opportunities. It connects documents in SharePoint with data from internal databases and content from company websites. All of this becomes searchable and accessible through an intelligent assistant or agent.
We are excited to see how this evolves. Being the best sales enablement tool has always been our goal, and it still is. Today, more than ever, AI is pushing all of us to rethink what the best sales enablement tool should be.
