If you want to succeed in B2B sales, you need a strategy to attract qualified leads and close deals quickly. B2B organizations are leveraging various digital tools to achieve this goal, with 50% of businesses using sales emails, 45% using videos, and 44% using email newsletters, according to Demand Gen Report’s 2022 Lead Nurturing & Acceleration Benchmark Survey.
In a digital-first era, B2B sales tools can help employees save valuable time, work more efficiently, and meet prospects where they’re most likely to make key buying decisions.
[Read more: B2B Sales Techniques for Building a Loyal Customer Base]
Why use B2B sales tools?
B2B sales tools can help you develop a more streamlined and effective sales process, allowing you to find and close on the right opportunities. Some benefits of B2B sales tools include:
- Increased efficiency. B2B sales tools can automate repetitive processes, particularly as AI tools become increasingly commonplace. This automation can free up valuable time and brain space for other crucial sales tasks.
- Data tracking. With tracking and analysis of your sales data, you can identify what’s working and what can be improved upon, then take action accordingly. Some tools also come with sales forecasting, allowing you to make informed decisions and adjust your strategy as needed.
- Improved prospect management. Rather than trying to keep track of leads in various stages (and of potentially varying quality), B2B sales tools can help you stay organized and prioritize the most promising prospects. They can also help streamline communications with potential and current customers.
Here are 14 valuable B2B sales tools that can help you meet your goals:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is one of the most powerful analytics tools available, and, best of all, it’s free. It allows small businesses to track website visitors and analyze how customers and prospects are interacting with their company. It can also help you identify any weak spots in your marketing strategy and areas where you might be losing potential customers.
[Read more: 4 Tips for Building an Effective B2B Sales Strategy]
Hunter
Hunter makes it easy to track down the email addresses of prospects you want to connect with. The software is free to use, and if it can’t find the correct email address, it will create a “best guess” based on the template the domain uses.
You can also use Hunter to launch and personalize cold email campaigns, as well as create custom workflows that integrate with other popular tools like Google Sheets.
Salesforce
Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, and it has long been considered the gold standard for CRMs. The company’s cloud-based services are among the most comprehensive sales solutions available right now.
You can use Salesforce to track your leads, sales funnel, sales conversions, and more. And the company is always updating the platform to make it more accessible to its customers.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
If you work in B2B sales, you’re likely already on LinkedIn. To maximize your efforts on LinkedIn, however, consider signing up for LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s paid sales solution, and it allows you to do advanced searches on leads and companies you’d like to work with. The platform will also recommend target accounts that seem to be a good fit for your business.
Most conveniently, the platform automatically integrates with your CRM. That way, you can save and track all your new leads.
Hubspot
If you’re looking for the right CRM for your business, Hubspot is another good option. The CRM comes with a variety of tools, including email templates, email integrations, and document libraries. Hubspot also offers premium tools, like live chat and traffic tracking on your prospects and leads.
IFTTT
IFTTT is a free web-based tool that allows you to create simple conditional commands that are known as applets. Applets make it easy for you to automate simple tasks that you otherwise would have completed manually.
For instance, you can use IFTTT to automate tasks like updating your social media accounts or posting the same content across several different platforms.
Drift
Drift is an AI-powered platform that helps your business build relationships with prospects even when you’re done working for the day. If a prospect visits your website after hours, the chatbot will engage them in conversation based on automatically built, personalized playbooks. Drift’s chatbot can also prompt users to schedule a meeting with you, and then notify you of the meeting time.
Drift will also let you know when a prospect opens your emails or interacts with your website, as well as how engaged they are. This information can help you see what’s working and what areas you need to improve in.
All businesses need a way to conduct competitor research, and Owler is one of the best tools to help you do it.
ClickMeeting
For many B2B companies, webinars are a staple in their marketing strategy. ClickMeeting is one of the best ways to create live or pre-recorded webinars.
You can easily customize your webinar room and incorporate branding features. Participants can sign up through a registration page, where they can gain additional insights about their attendees.
Owler
Competitor research will help your company stay more agile and respond to changing marketing conditions. All businesses need a way to conduct competitor research, and Owler is one of the best tools to help you do it.
You can sign up to follow specific competitors on Owler and receive notifications about any industry news or insights surrounding the company. Then you’ll receive regular updates about funding announcements, leadership transitions, and top news stories. All of this will help you stay more competitive and on top of industry changes.
Zoom
It’s never been more important for companies to have a way to reliably connect with prospects and build relationships with other team members. When it comes to video-conferencing software, Zoom is one of the best options available.
Zoom lets you schedule meetings, share your screen, and offer chat options. You can also host webinars, one-on-one meetings, or large group conferences.
Crunchbase
Crunchbase is a prospecting tool that helps you easily connect with the right companies and their key decision-makers. You can leverage its live data and narrow down your search by job title or industry, then segment groups and develop your strategy accordingly.
Crunchbase’s pricing begins at $29 per user per month for the Starter package and $49 per user per month for the Pro package; a free trial is available for either package. Those interested in the Enterprise package will need to contact Crunchbase’s sales department for a custom quote.
Pipedrive
If you’re looking to streamline your sales process and close more deals, Pipedrive could be the solution for you. This CRM software can automate nearly every aspect of the sales process, from lead nurturing to creating real-time sales reports, and it stores all of your sales information in a single dashboard. Pipedrive also integrates with over 400 apps and can import data from spreadsheets or other CRMs.
Pricing ranges from $14.90 per user per month for the Essential package to $64.90 per user per month for the Power package. You can also sign up for a free 14-day trial of your preferred plan.
Monday sales CRM
Monday.com is a popular cloud-based project management system that allows users to build their own apps and project management software. While monday sales CRM doesn’t require coding to get up and running, it’s highly customizable to your business’s needs, making it easier to find and nurture qualified leads. Monday sales CRM has hundreds of templates and custom automations and integrates with several software applications to centralize your sales process.
If you purchase monday sales CRM, you’ll also have access to monday.com’s core project management platform. Pricing begins at $8 per seat per month for the Basic plan.
NetSuite CRM
NetSuite CRM allows you to manage the entire customer lifecycle in a single place. NetSuite CRM leverages its advanced automation capabilities to track customer data in real-time, allowing sales teams to make informed decisions and improve the customer experience. It can also provide recommendations on upselling to existing customers based on their buying patterns.
In addition to sales-specific tasks, NetSuite CRM can help you develop marketing campaigns, provide customer support, and forecast and analyze financial performance.
[Read more: 5 Ways to Manage B2B Customer Expectations]
This article was originally written by Jamie Johnson.
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