Essential B2B Sales Tools for Scalable Success

Sales tools are a must for any B2B sales team that wants to streamline their process, improve efficiency, boost sales, and achieve scalable success. 

The good news is that there’s seemingly no limit to the number of options available to sales teams. There are B2B sales tools to optimize every stage of the sales process, every buyer experience, every sales forecast, and everything in between.

That being said, the wide range of possibilities can sometimes be a double-edged sword. More sales tools in your tech stack don’t always equate to more sales, and many teams find themselves bogged down with a disjointed, unnecessarily complicated suite of sales tools that end up making things harder than they should be. 

In fact, according to Salesforce, 66% of sales reps report being overwhelmed by the number of sales tools they’re expected to use.

Sales tools are a must, but learning how to choose the right ones is what will dictate a sales team’s success. In this article, we’ll go over everything you need to know about choosing the essential sales tools for B2B success. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• The Essentials of B2B Sales Tools
• Top Sales Tools Every B2B Company Needs
• How to Choose the Right B2B Sales Tools for Your Business
• How to Implement B2B Sales Tools for Maximum Impact
• Future Trends for B2B Sales Tools

The Essentials of B2B Sales Tools

The definition of a sales tool in a B2B sales context is relatively straightforward but also quite broad: any software, technology, or application that directly or indirectly helps an organization close more deals. There are B2B sales tools for just about every aspect of the sales process for which you could ever possibly need one, including (but not limited to):

• Lead generation
• Managing customer relationships
• Sales forecasting
• Lead tracking
• Lead scoring/prioritization
• Analytics and Reporting
• Internal team communication

Regardless of their specific role in the tech stack, the overall goal of any B2B sales tool is to automate processes (especially manual and repetitive tasks) to improve efficiency and productivity for sales reps. 

Sales tools provide valuable data and insights to the sales team, allowing for better-informed decision-making. 

Ultimately, effective B2B sales tools should help sales teams close more deals.

B2B tools in your inboxSource leads, automate outreach, and track activityTry Yesware Free

Top Sales Tools Every B2B Company Needs

While there are plenty of specialized software options that can improve specific parts of the sales process, there’s also a specific subset of platforms that should be considered non-negotiable in the tech stack.

CRM Systems

The CRM (customer relationship management) system is the backbone of the sales team and the entire sales process. This is the most important software your team will use and should be your first (and most careful) investment. 

Your CRM is where your team stores all of its potential and current customer data, including demographic details, internal notes about recent sales interactions, sensitive buyer information, and more. It provides a single, centralized location that everyone on the team can access to get information about the pipeline as a whole, their own progress toward quota, individual prospect profiles, and more. 

According to LinkedIn’s State of Sales, most sales reps (69%) who already use a CRM system agree that this software is “very important” in helping them close deals. 

Your CRM platform will hold a tremendous amount of data. Look for a platform with an easy-to-use, but robust UX/UI. Here are a couple of our favorites. 

Vendasta Sales CRM

Vendasta’s Sales CRM software analyzes data and extracts insights so you know what prospects need before they do, increasing conversion and saving time while providing insights.

With Vendasta’s CRM, sales and marketing teams can find and nurture leads with intent, move them through the funnel faster, prioritize the right opportunities at the right time, and accelerate your company’s growth. 

Salesforce CRM

Salesforce offers easy-to-read dashboards that everyone on your sales, marketing, and customer success teams can access. 

The Opportunity Management feature makes it easy for teams to prioritize deals in the pipeline, and the platform emphasizes an outstanding experience for all buyer-facing interactions as much as it does one for its sales rep user base.

Hubspot

Hubspot’s CRM has built-in “hubs,” making it easy to collaborate between teams. 

This tool is also known for making it easy to scale their software as your team grows and has a very user-friendly mobile app. 

Email Outreach Tools

Email outreach tools integrate with your email service provider (ESP) to add personalization and automation to marketing and sales email campaigns. 

More than 85% of businesspeople prefer to use email when communicating, so sales teams need to have a reliable sales tool that can help them track all the various incoming and outgoing messages and multi-channel conversations.

These B2B sales tools can also help reps stay on top of follow-ups, which can have a significant impact when it comes to closing deals; most deals require four or more follow-ups to close, but less than 10% of sales reps follow through to that point.  Email outreach tools can help keep track of who needs a follow-up message and when, and some can even automatically send a personalized message at exactly the right time. They help increase engagement and have been shown to boost conversion rates. 

Yesware

Yesware can do all of those things and more. 

Our email tracking and attachment tracking give reps real-time alerts, right inside their inbox.

The tracking feature also provides detailed analysis reports about how recipients are engaging with their messages and campaigns. 

Yesware can also schedule and send personalized, multi-channel campaigns at scale (with automated follow-ups).

Our Email Template feature saves reps time by allowing them to save and send their best sales emails with just a couple of clicks. 

Yesware gives sales reps the tools they need to manage their email effectively, without the bulk of complex and unnecessary features. 

The best part is you can use Yesware for free → download it here.

Quickmail

Quickmail is designed primarily for cold email outreach. It helps sales teams generate more warm leads.

Quickmail also offers a free Lite plan that allows users to send 3,000 emails per month. An account at any price tier entitles your team to as many users as they need (including adding more as time goes on). 

Reporting and Analytics Tools

B2B sales tools that offer analytics and reporting help teams collect, evaluate, and interpret complex sales data in a sophisticated, action-oriented way. 

Sales teams that use analytics and reporting tools can make data-driven decisions about sales strategies, including ways to improve productivity, efficiency, and overall performance. 

They can also play a big role in sales forecasting.

Just like your CRM system, your analytics and reporting tool is responsible for synthesizing a massive amount of data. Look for a platform that offers easy-to-read dashboards and, if possible, customized reports. 

Tableau

Tableau is a visual analytics platform that is designed to make understanding data more intuitive. It uses patented technology, VizQ, to “[perform] analytics the way you think.”

This platform offers a unique feature called “CRM Analytics” that would be a great asset to any team wanting to understand how effectively they’re using that crucial system. 

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a great option for teams that already use Gmail as their ESP.

It does, however, require some coding to set up tracking capabilities, which may not be the right fit for teams who aren’t resourced with a particularly tech-savvy rep. Google offers free online courses for anyone who wants to understand how to use the platform. 

Automation Tools

While virtually all B2B sales tools can automate tasks, there are some platforms that excel in it — especially where it matters most to sales reps. 

Most salespeople are only afforded about one-third of their time for selling activities. Much of the rest of their time is monopolized by manual and repetitive tasks that could be easily automated. When sales teams adopt automation tools in their tech stack, they often see significant improvements in their productivity. 

Marketo

Marketo is an Adobe platform designed to help marketing and sales times align effectively. Its specialty is cross-channel campaigns that help teams “acquire, nurture, expand, and retain customers.”

Marketo tracks all touchpoints and uses AI to build predictive audiences and segments. 

Active Campaign

ActiveCampaign helps sales teams automate the processes of lead prioritization and contact management. The platform offers email and SMS messaging, as well as other CRM features.

This platform also impressively integrates with over 900 marketing tools, and advertises that it can help teams of any size. 

Yesware

Yesware helps sales teams automate all things email. 

First, Yesware lives directly in your Gmail or Outlook inbox, so there is no need to toggle between apps.

Yesware also integrates directly (and in under 5 minutes) with Salesforce, LinkedIn, and many others, eliminating the need to transfer or re-enter sales data. 

Yesware users can automate various sales tasks, such as scheduling meetings, directly from within email messages. This live meeting link automatically syncs to your calendar, showing only available times, and then auto-populates into both your and your prospect’s calendars. 

Yesware easily automates personalized, multi-channel campaigns, tracks them, and then provides detailed reports about their performance.

This B2B sales tool automates the mundane, complex, and repetitive parts of email outreach so sales reps can spend their time getting to know buyers and learning how to meet their needs.

More automation tools here: Sales Productivity Tools

How to Choose the Right B2B Sales Tools for Your Business

When it comes to choosing the right B2B sales tool for your business, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The tools your team needs will depend on a number of factors, including:

• Company size (current and projected)
• Organizational goals
• Sales cycle complexity
• Integration requirements
• Ease of use
• Budget
• Target market expectations

For some sales teams, it also helps to understand which sales tools their competitors are using — even if only for research purposes. 

It’s also important to consider the likelihood of successful adoption when you’re choosing the right platform for your team. A sales tool can only be effective if your team uses it faithfully and correctly, so consider your team’s professional needs and preferences when it comes to choosing platforms. 

How to Implement B2B Sales Tools for Maximum Impact

While it’s normal to encounter a hiccup or two when implementing new sales tools, it’s important that the process is an overall smooth, productive, and positive one. Sales reps will be hesitant to go all-in with a sales tool that’s hard to use or doesn’t fit in with their existing workflow. 

Keep the following tips in mind as you integrate new sales tools into your sales process. 

Align Sales and Marketing

The benefits of aligning sales and marketing are true even beyond implementing new B2B sales tools, but the practice is particularly important when introducing new technology. 

Today’s B2B sales process is rarely linear, and sales and marketing are equally likely to interact with buyers at various stages of the sales process. 

To that end, both teams need to have a common understanding of how to use each tool in their tech stack. 

Each team also needs to understand their particular responsibilities when it comes to properly using each tool.

Look For Tools That Are Easy to Integrate

This might sound like an obvious tip, but it’s worth mentioning because not all platforms are created equal when it comes to integration-friendliness and user experience. 

Look for tools that are build to integrate easily with an existing tech stack. This will help speed up the time it takes to integrate after purchase, and also make it easier to add new sales tools as needed in the future. 

Train Your Team

One of the most important things you can do to increase the chances of successful sales tool implementation is to train your team properly. 

Even the most straightforward software platforms require sales training; in fact, it’s a disservice to the tool and the team to neglect training on how to fully leverage the features and capabilities of the tool your organization invested in. In a Richardson study on the effectiveness of sales technology training, the results showed a 10% average increase in weekly margins in teams who received training, versus those who used the technology with no training. 

Future Trends for B2B Sales Tools

Here are some trends we’ve been keeping an eye on when it comes to the future of B2B sales tools. 

Tools Will Become More Personalized

Today’s B2B buyer expects more personalization than ever. In the future, we expect more sales tools to prioritize scalable personalization features. 

More Tools for Inside Sales and Social Selling

Sales was already becoming increasingly digital, but the pandemic amplified that shift exponentially. Now, the post-Covid sales world is largely online. 

With that in mind, many sales teams are already in need of sales tools that are designed specifically for the remote seller, who is selling to a remote buyer, in a remote sales world. 

Social selling is a subset of this digital shift but has become so disruptive to the sales industry that it will certainly generate its own set of sales tools in the coming years. 

Privacy, Data Security, and Ethical Business Practices

For as much as B2B buyers expect personalization, they also expect extreme care and consideration when it comes to their data. 

And, with more of their data available to sales organizations than ever before, it’s up to sales teams to be extremely proactive about how they manage their buyers’ data.

Expect to see more B2B sales tools coming onto the market that deal specifically with data privacy and related topics. 

AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) in sales can hardly be called a “future” trend because it’s already very present in the various aspects of the field.  According to Hubspot’s State of AI in Sales, sales AI helps sales reps: 

• Spend more time on revenue-generating sales activities
• Make their work more personalized
• Enjoy their jobs more
• Understand their customers better

We anticipate more sales tools entering the market with AI capabilities. 

Conclusion

B2B sales tools can help sales reps with just about any aspect of the sales process. While on paper, it may sound like a great idea to have a solution for everything, an overloaded tech stack can do more harm than good. 

Look for sales tools that are innovative and will help you stay ahead of the curve. 

Try Yesware for free today to experience firsthand how our email outreach software can revolutionize your email outreach and sales process.