7 Sales Tools for Every Small Business

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We all want to get better at what we do.

But as a salesperson or sales team manager, I’m sure you’re constantly on the lookout for the best tools to make your team more efficient.

So here are seven sales tools your small business needs.

Calendly

Calendly is all about productivity, which is essential to any sales team. It’s productive because it’s a way to passively schedule calendar events.

Here’s how it works: you set blocks of time that you’re available within your Calendly account. Then you give people your Calendly link where they can schedule an appointment during one of your predetermined times.

And it doesn’t matter how you’ll be meeting — phone, video, in-person. It’s just an easy way to schedule your days.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium account, and it is a goldmine for sales teams. It helps you find specific people, add them to an organized lead list, and then contact them directly.

Sales Navigator has many helpful features, like Account Targeting and the Buyer Circle, which tells you who the decision-makers are on certain deals.

But the feature that’s most useful to salespeople is Advanced Search. In just a matter of minutes, you can have a list of hundreds of potential leads, all thanks to the filters LinkedIn gives you.

Some of the filters include:

  • Job title
  • Company
  • Industry
  • Location
  • Employment history
  • Your products and services
  • Keywords
  • And more…

Once you find leads, you can add them to your lead list. Then you can contact them via LinkedIn InMail messages. However, InMail limits each message to 300 characters and you get just 20 messages a month.

If you want an alternative to that, you can use a LinkedIn email finder to extract the email addresses of those leads for cold emailing.

MailerLite

MailerLite is an easy-to-use email marketing platform. It’s totally free to sign up and on the free account, you get up to 1,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails a month.

And creating email campaigns is simple. They have a drag-and-drop editor. The metrics are clear to understand. And making an automation chain requires simply hitting a “+” symbol. It’s important to have an email marketing platform, especially one that doesn’t make it harder to communicate with your email list. You can add value to people’s lives with email, whether you’re using it for outbound or inbound marketing.

HubSpot Sales

A clear sales process is essential to a successful sales team. That’s why HubSpot Sales, winner of the Best Sales Software award in 2019, strives to make that possible.

It’s an eCommerce software that helps you save time by automating tasks, like follow-up emails and reminder notifications. You can even be alerted when your leads open your email and click one of the links in your email.

Here are some of the services it offers:

  • Pipeline management
  • Custom reports
  • Report templates
  • Sales automation
  • Gmail and Outlook integration
  • Inbox profiles

They have a free plan, but you can upgrade to the Pro plan to get advanced features for $50 per user per month.

Freshsales

If you want another option for automating your tasks, Freshsales is one you should consider. The most compelling feature allows you to send personalized emails to your entire email list.

But there are many other sales-centric features, including:

  • One-click phone calls
  • Trendline reports
  • Sales activity reports
  • In-depth analytics
  • 360-degree customer view
  • A visual sales pipeline
  • Prioritized email inbox

You can also track the most frequently visited pages on your website, categorizing those people based on their browsing behavior. The software will then collect leads and rank them so that you can get in touch with the most important ones first.

You can sign up for a free Sprout plan, or you can get more features with the Blossom plan for $12 per user per month. Plus, there are other premium accounts you can choose from.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a pipeline manager, allowing your sales team to stay on top of their leads and their goals.

To give you an idea of what is possible with this tool, here are some of the main features:

  • Role assignment
  • Extremely customizable
  • Strong and reliable API
  • View contact history
  • Tools for goal-setting
  • Detailed reporting

The most appealing thing about this tool is the big-picture it offers. Your sales reps can see each stage of each deal and how it’s progressing. And you keep track of the leads’ actions and reach out when necessary.

You can get a 30-day free trial, after which accounts start at $10 per user per month.

Revel Systems POS

Revel Systems POS runs point-of-sale processes, but it also does much more. You can get feedback on the customer’s experience, take care of administrative tasks, and even manage your finances.

You get instant access to data about your sales, inventory, and workforce.

Some other useful features include:

  • Items in low stock show in red
  • Purchase order management
  • Track purchase history

You get a free trial, and then you can upgrade to get all the features for $99 a month.

Author: Dam Dhood

I write about Startups and Entrepreneurship.