In the era of the Internet, online sales and Covid restrictions, the world of sales has undergone a true revolution! Traditional methods and tools of selling have become obsolete, and replaced by technologically advanced selling tools which accelerate, improve and facilitate all promotional and sales processes.
The market for modern tools of selling became truly crowded. New tools, applications and software pops up every day! Most of us can admit that it is difficult to find your way in this maze of endless possibilities! We'd like to share most fundamental on different types of selling tools, as well as suggest the ones that are useful and effective.
What are tools of selling?
To trigger productivity and boost earnings, sales reps and agents require effective tools to improve their sales results. They need a digital sales tools that cover all aspects of the selling process. Well, selling tools are anything that assists a salesperson or manager in creating an offer, collecting data, planning, making appointments, or presenting it to potential customers.
A sales automation tool involves programming that streamlines the collection, analysis and distribution of data in a sales pipeline process. Sales automation tools can be used to create contacts, aggregate data, mine data, prioritize leads and create reports and many, many more. There are various sales tools to choose from, which vary in terms of sophistication, capabilities and functions. We are about to find out what they are exactly.
What types of selling tools can we choose from?
Salespeople need a range of different solutions to help them reach more potential leads, present their products, or communicate with employees. Software for customer relationship management and prospecting, but also marketing platforms and tools for implementation and training will come in handy. To put it briefly, the arsenal of selling tools of a professional salesman in 2022 can be really abundant! To start with, however, one should opt for one of the basic types of sales tools.
Sales Enablement tools
What is sales enablement? It's the strategy of equipping sales reps with everything they need to make sales, from content and training to data analytics and document tracking. A quality sales enablement tool provides your staff with a one-stop solution, so they can complete multiple tasks at once without compromising on quality. Facilitating collaboration between marketing and sales is crucial to effective operation, but often difficult to achieve.
It succeeds when both systems are unified within a sales enablement platform. Marketing can seamlessly communicate new content to sales, who can then measure and analyse how potential customers are interacting. Sales enablement tools work on many levels offering ready-made solutions and methods for reaching customers, such as ready-made templates for messages or product presentations, and the framework for understanding the expectations and characteristics of potential customers in order to use this information to create effective sales and marketing strategies. All this is designed to endow salespeople with all the information they need to increase revenue and maintain relationships with their most promising customers.
Examples of Sales Enablement tools
The best sales enablement tools offer comprehensive and complex data storage and presentation services, available to salespeople both online and offline. Our favourite Crescendo, works without the requirement of an internet connection and allows for visually appealing data presentation, as well as the ability to search within materials. Crescendo allows for the complete sales data analytics, while maintaining the highest level of information security.
Communication tools
Communication is the essential component of any business. Employing representatives who can hold friendly, informative and factual conversations in a foundation of success in sales. However, human inclinations and communication skills alone may not be enough. It is hard to imagine an effective salesperson who does not use the tools of selling, instant messaging, videoconferencing, emails and other tools which can improve external and internal communication.
What types of communication tools are there to choose from? The basic types include transcription and recording software, instant messaging, sales presentations and message templates. Yet it's essential to remember that the best communication tools are those that enable sales reps to achieve more.
Interesting examples of Communication tools of selling
When it comes to communication software from the tools of selling category, there is no single piece of software that suits everyone. However, it is clarity and ease of use that counts most with this type of software. Among the most popular, we can mention Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord and Zoom.
Customer Relationship Management tools
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, as implied by the name, assists in managing a company's relationship with clients. This type of software supports the sales team in monitoring and enhancing relationships with existing customers, improving customer retention, maintaining sales and marketing efforts and automating communications.
CRM systems are a contemporary must-have for all types of companies, whether they work in the online or traditional realm. CRM software provides users with a single source of information on everything related to the customer, from contact details to purchase history and stages of the sales process, and any other information potentially needed to move the deal forward. Inside these tools of selling, there are special databases created for each customer interaction, which can be stored and accessed. CRM software offers users one-stop source for everything related to the customer – from contact data to purchase history and the stages of the sales process.
Interesting examples of Customer Relationship Management selling tools
Which CRM systems do we recommend? Those that have the most interesting functions at relatively low prices, are convenient and easy to implement in a company of any size. In our opinion, these conditions are met all of the popular tools in this space; Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zendesk or Zendesk, Sugar CRM or Zoho.
Onboarding tools
When we consider our options when it comes to the selling tool, it's easy to forget the importance of onboarding software. However, side-lining onboarding and coaching can ultimately negatively impact the effectiveness and support of salespeople, especially in an area where motivation is at the core.
Therefore, onboarding tools that support the introduction of new employees to the company and facilitate the engagement and education of sales representatives are crucial in any sales company. Such sales tools are crucial not only for sales representatives, but also for sales managers, as they optimise and facilitate the processes of creating harmonised teams, their training and verification of the quality of their work.
The interesting examples of onboarding tools
Implementation and training functionality can be part of other tools, such as sales enablement tools, or be a separate software. Depending on your situation it might be more opportunistic to invest in an onboarding tool that is separate from your sales enablement solution. In some cases, having 1 single tools that serves both purposes makes more sense. Some examples of onboarding tools are Intro.js, Shepherd.js, Wistia and Vimeo.
E-signature and document tracking tools
Nowadays, no company, especially those planning to conquer foreign markets, can do without an electronic signature and document tracking tools. These tools speed up and improve the quality of every transaction. Electronic signature and document tracking software ensures that users can safely collect signatures on electronic documents such as sales contracts and quotations. This kind of software solution contributes to streamlining administrative tasks and cutting costs by providing a unified representation of the processes involved in each agreement.
One additional bonus of electronic signature technologies comes in the form of allowing you to create a paperless and environmentally
friendly business.
Interesting examples of onboarding tools
There are many different high-quality electronic signature tools on the market. Nevertheless, the most popular are DocuSign, HelloSign, Adobe Acrobat Reader DC and Docsketch. These vary in price and capabilities, so consider your budget and needs when choosing.
These are all must haves in our opinion when it comes to the tools of selling necessary in 2022. What would you add to this list?
