Gone are the days of manual documents and spreadsheets — sales software is helping salespeople spend more time selling and leave time-consuming admin in the dust.
Staying ahead in a highly competitive space is crucial for success. One way that businesses can gain a significant edge is by honing their sales process. By plugging pipeline leaks, identifying the best prospects, automating tasks, and tracking every interaction, sales teams can focus on building stronger relationships with current and potential customers.
Sales software makes it possible to do all of the above — most importantly, driving growth and revenue. Let’s take a closer look at 12 sales software and tools that can add value to every sales approach.
What Is Sales Software?
Sales software can take many different forms, but they share a common goal: to improve the sales process (or at least some part of it).
Many sales platforms offer a range of functionalities, from lead scoring to automated follow-ups to performance data analytics. Software creates predictable, repeatable processes for sales teams to follow, ensuring they’re focusing on specific objectives or tasks and have a centralized way to organize their efforts.
Sales intelligence software, sales automation platforms, CRMs, partner management software, and document signing services are all examples of sales software.
Tip: Learn how to scale your sales efforts by reading our ultimate sales intelligence guide.
16 Best Sales Software Platforms 2024
Using sales software allows businesses to simplify, track, and even automate some of their sales functions.
Here are our top picks of must-have sales software and why we chose them:
Meltwater Sales Intelligence
Owler - Prospecting Software
Zendesk Sell
PandaDoc - Contract Management Software
DocuSign - Signature-Capture Software
Pipeliner CRM Sales Software
Keap - Lead Organization
Sender - Email Marketing Software
Freshworks - AI Sales Assistant Software
Popupsmart - No-code Popup Builder
Brainshark - Sales Enablement Platform
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Seismic Learning (formerly known as Lessonly by Seismic)
Showpad - Content Management Software
HubSpot Sales CRM
Uniqode - Digital Business Card Solution
Meltwater Sales Intelligence
As a sales professional, you know that optimizing your prospecting strategy is key. With competitive sales intelligence and sales intelligence tools like the Meltwater Sales Intelligence Suite, you can achieve higher conversions, reduce churn, and encourage customer loyalty.
- Execute more accurate prospecting.
Throwing spaghetti at the wall doesn't yield results. Improving the accuracy and relevancy of your outreach will engage the prospects that will convert. - Get back crucial time.
When you automate sales processes you not only reduce the capacity for human error, you free up your sales teams to do the things that machines can't. - Strengthen customer relationships.
Once a client signs on the dotted line, the challenge becomes keeping them invested. The key is staying relevant by leveraging the Meltwater sales intelligence solution.
The Meltwater Sales Intelligence Suite has you covered in the following fields:
- competitive intelligence
- real-time alerts
- customized insights
- contact data
Owler - Prospecting Software
Owler excels as a sales prospecting tool, ensuring your sales team receives qualified leads to speak to. This sales software tool comes into play at the very top of the funnel and offers benefits throughout the process until decision day.
Easily discover new contacts and qualify them for your sales process so you’re not wasting time on leads that never would have closed to begin with.
Owler also lets you automate certain tasks based on actions your leads take, allowing you to keep the conversation going without the heavy lifting. You can also dig deep into company data, such as revenue, employee headcount, and news, so you can have more impactful conversations with your prospects.
Zendesk Sell
Zendesk’s sales CRM specializes in the sales aspect of customer relationships. Included in its platform is a customer contact manager, lead management system, and activity tracking so you can see how your sales reps are moving the needle.
Zendesk’s user-friendly interface and customizable sales funnel make it easy to start using right away. Dashboards show you important information at a glance, such as new leads, top deals, and revenue for the month.
You can make Zendesk Sell even more powerful with a suite of app integrations, including apps for social media, email marketing, lead generation, and data analytics and reporting.
PandaDoc - Contract Management Software
PandaDoc leads the pack in contract management software. Contracts are critical tools that help sales reps secure deals. With fewer companies wanting to deal with paper, PandaDoc makes it easy to turn contracts into digital assets that clients can e-sign and send back to the sales rep.
Companies use PandaDoc to create new contracts or convert paper versions to digital copies. The tool comes with multiple templates that can be customized to fit a brand’s requirements.
PandaDoc keeps sales reps updated every step of the way, with real-time notifications when the contract is delivered, opened, and signed and automated follow-up to nudge clients who have yet to sign.
DocuSign - Signature-Capture Software
Signature-capture software DocuSign replaces the need for faxing, snail mail, or bulky email attachments when a signature is required. This software offers a variety of use cases across departments, but in the sales ecosystem, it’s a great tool for sales contracts, invoices, and agreements.
Drag-and-drop tools let you customize contracts. You can easily highlight what you need clients to fill out. Docusign will also send them a copy for their records automatically, saving your sales team several steps in the contract phase.
Pipeliner CRM Sales Software
Pipeliner CRM puts a firm emphasis on the “relationship” part of sales CRM. This feature-rich platform caters to lead management, pipeline management, and contact management, enriching each of these areas with visuals for better tracking.
Relationship maps show key connections between people in your CRM, leading to better overall account management and conversation builders. You can also see products you’ve already sold customers, what they’ve passed on, and what they have yet to hear about, which can lead to more impactful interactions. It also allows sales teams to take a project management-style approach to their pipelines and break them into tasks and objectives.
Keap - Lead Organization
Made for small businesses, Keap CRM uses simple features to move leads from one stage to the next. With small teams needing to make the best use of time and resources, Keap’s automation features relieve reps of busy work that can slow down the entire sales wheel.
Among Keap’s most notable features are email and text marketing, business lines for personal smartphones, and lead collection and organization. Reps can schedule appointments, invoice customers, convert and upsell clients, collect reviews, and keep a running record of their interactions, all from a single place.
Sender - Email Marketing Software
Sender provides affordable email and SMS marketing software designed to boost sales for startups, small businesses, and ecommerce stores.
The platform helps you capture quality leads with high-converting popups, automate your email and SMS campaigns, and create professional emails in minutes using its drag-and-drop email builder and responsive templates.
The sales and marketing software also offers advanced segmentation features that enable you to group customers based on their preferences and behavior. This way, you can target them with personalized emails that boost engagement and sales.
Moreover, you can effectively track your campaign’s performance with Sender's detailed analytics and reports. This includes understanding how your audience engages with your emails, which leads to better targeting and personalization strategies.
With such a data-driven approach, you can ensure that your sales and marketing campaigns always align with your business goals, maximizing the return on your investment.
Freshworks - AI Sales Assistant Software
Freshworks incorporates AI into its sales CRM to help sales professionals sell more, faster.
This AI sales assistant software finds the best deal opportunities for sales teams so they can focus their time and energy on leads that are most likely to convert.
It can also predict future revenue to ensure you’re meeting critical targets and shows you next best actions to keep productivity high.
Popupsmart - No-code Popup Builder
Popupsmart, a no-code popup builder, excels in helping sales reps collect potential customers' contact information, address cart abandonment, allow direct phone calls, gamify marketing campaigns via popups, and even offers email automation for Shopify brands to improve consumer engagement.
Its easy interface lets sales reps pick from over 350 templates or design custom popups.
With advanced targeting options, Popupsmart ensures the right popups reach the intended audience based on their visit history, language, or the traffic source they navigated with. This effectively boosts the impact of sales messages.
Brainshark - Sales Enablement Platform
Brainshark is a sales enablement platform that caters to the entire sales spectrum. It gives reps data-driven insights into their performance and color-codes performance issues so reps can see where they need to step it up. The platform also includes multiple content creation features for interactive learning and selling.
Sales leaders can also use the tool as a coaching and feedback tool to share areas of opportunity with their teams. Leaders can provide feedback in the form of videos or text to coach or train employees and assess what they retain during trainings.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn has become a mainstay in modern B2B selling, so it’s no surprise its Sales Navigator platform creates a powerful bridge between sales reps and prospects. This data-driven platform provides insights into the accounts where reps should be spending most of their time.
Sales reps can use the platform to find target buyers at moments when they’re ready to pull the trigger. And with a mountain of LinkedIn data to support it, sales reps can find hidden connections between prospects to help them nurture and grow their relationships. (Sales is all about who you know, after all.)
Reading Tips: The Full Guide To LinkedIn Management, How to Create A Successful LinkedIn Marketing Strategy.
Seismic Learning (formerly known as Lessonly by Seismic)
Successful selling starts on the very first day of work, when your sales rep is learning your process and integrating into your team. Seismic Learning removes much of the guesswork from the onboarding phase and streamlines the learning curve so reps can start producing faster.
This learning and content delivery system is made with the sales department in mind. Brands can create a systematized approach to training, offer self-guided content, provide skills assessments, and deliver personalized coaching from one platform.
Showpad - Content Management Software
Sales and marketing software unite in Showpad, a centralized tool that spans every stage of the buyer journey.
In this content management software, sales reps gain instant access to content that can help them sell and adapt it to the buyer’s needs at a moment’s notice.
Sellers can also create shared spaces with decision-makers to talk shop and share in immersive experiences. It’s a great sales tool when you have a product or service to demo and put it into context for your prospects.
HubSpot Sales CRM
HubSpot is a leading name in sales CRM for good reason: It combines all your sales processes into one tool.
Visualize your sales process at every stage and know where all of your prospects are at any given time. You can also automate some steps, like contract creation and signing, to free up more time for sales-driven activities.
HubSpot also arms your team with a wealth of data, such as content, battle cards, call scripts, and brand positioning guides. They’re empowered to speak with leads every step of the way to move deals from nonexistent to paying customers.
Uniqode - Digital Business Card Solution
Uniqode’s Digital Business Cards streamline your sales teams' networking and lead-generation process. With a user-friendly interface, customizable templates, and advanced features like Two-Way Contact Sharing, they simplify contact gathering and management.
Uniqode’s built-in analytics features allow you to track card usage and interactions and measure the true ROI of your networking effort. Uniqode supports integration with 5,000+ CRM and marketing automation tools like Salesforce, centralizing lead management and nurturing.
What to Look For in Sales Software
Every business has its own priorities for choosing sales software. However, many businesses will benefit from software solutions that offer the following:
- Reporting and analytics. Your sales team needs a way to make sense of all the data they’re feeding the software.
- App integrations. Connecting with other apps you use ensures a well-rounded sales ecosystem.
- Mobile access. Being able to respond to customers at any time can help you maintain a competitive edge.
- Customization options. Businesses should be able to tailor workflows, form fields, and processes to meet their needs.
- Service and support. Customer service can take various forms, including phone, email, chat, and self-service resources.
Most modern sales software will include these options, but it’s worthwhile to see how they work and whether they align with your expectations.
The Best Way to Choose Sales Software
Getting specific about your sales needs and what features will make the most impact can help you narrow down your options. But when it’s go time, the best thing you can do is to see how sales technology works in real-time.
Take advantage of free trials, demo videos, and related content to see how you can adapt software for sales into your existing processes. The smoother the transition, the sooner you can start using your sales technology to your advantage.
Learn more about the Meltwater Sales Intelligence Suite by filling out the form below and get a free demo:
