6 Types of Sales Tools You Need to Know in 2023

Is there anything better for business than hiring a top-performing sales rep? Sure, hiring a top-performing sales rep and supporting them with the best tools for sales. 

Using digital tools to automate and simplify parts of the sales process can turbo-charge your sales efforts. CRMs, productivity tools, analyzing and reporting tools, and many others can save you and your team serious time and money. Tools can help you create a well-oiled and easily maintained sales process that guides more prospects through to signing on the dotted line. 

According to a LinkedIn survey, 54% of sales reps found sales tools helped them win over more prospects. And 77% of sales professionals said their companies plan to invest more in sales intelligence tools. But with more tools saturating the market than you can shake a stick at, how do you know which ones are right for you? 

Let's look at the different categories of sales tools on the market and help you find the perfect match. 

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Sales Tools Categories

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1. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Tools

A CRM helps you nurture relationships with your leads or clients. It tracks client data, key information, and communications, allowing you to easily see customer success and sales journey. 

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a comprehensive all-in-one sales management tool. You can maintain customer info, emails, calls, meetings, quotes, and sales in one place. This means you save precious hours you used to spend updating multiple spreadsheets, apps, and databases. 

Best CRM in 2023 

• Close.com - We love Close.com, having used it ourselves for years. It’s one of the best CRMs out there with solid core features like lead and pipeline management, data import and export, and task management. It also covers emails, calls, integrations, and reporting, all while being super easy to use.

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2. Sales Intelligence Tools

Learn everything about your leads with sales intelligence software. These tools give your sales reps advanced customer data, such as job title, interests, academic history, and more. 

Gathering more in-depth information allows you to better target your prospects and make more sales. Sales intelligence tools provide valuable data on when leads are likely to purchase. You can use this info to better plan marketing campaigns, optimize outreach, or send personalized messaging. 

Best sales intelligence tools in 2023 

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator - Make customized lead lists that you can filter based on a wide variety of criteria, and connect and reach out to people all from one place. 
• Apollo.io - This comprehensive sales intelligence platform allows you to engage and nurture prospects and boost revenue.

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3. Sales Automation Tools

Automating repetitive tasks makes your sales process faster and more effective. Automation tools that are handy for sales reps involve prospecting, marketing, pipeline management, research, analytics, or managing teams. CRMs are usually, in part, automation tools. Depending on your needs, there are many other tools for specific automations. 

Examples of valuable sales automation include automating emails to prospects when they take certain actions, streamlining workflows, organizing calls and meetings, integrating tools, and creating analytics reports.  

Best sales automation tools in 2023

• Oncehub - Oncehub is a personal favorite that uses an automated scheduling tool that links up with your calendar to easily set no-code meetings. 
• Active campaign - This automates your whole lead nurturing and sales process, from sending welcome emails to receiving alerts when your prospect takes action. 

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4. Analytics Tools

Analytics software lets you quickly evaluate sales data and create reports. You can spot patterns and insights and more effectively target prospects. In contrast, manually tracking analytics is time-consuming and prone to human error, and you can quickly end up with a whole host of outdated spreadsheets in different places. 

Automated analytics tools help with data entry, analysis, and report creation, usually from one central platform or dashboard. Tools are speedy and accurate and help ensure you don’t let analytics fall to the bottom of the priority pile. 

Best analytics tools in 2023

• Groove - This runs real-time analysis of your workflows and prospects and offers insights based on what is working and what isn’t.
• Hubspot - This features a robust analytics dashboard that gives you visual and intuitive insights on all your sales and marketing data in the platform. 

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5. Social Selling Tools

Instagram, Facebook, TikTik, and LinkedIn are essential sales tools for many businesses. From direct outreach to a content posting strategy, people leverage these social media platforms in many ways to boost sales. 

Multiple tools integrate with social platforms to make the whole process smoother. Social selling tools automate posting, gather insights on your audience, automate connections and outreach messages, and much more. 

Best social selling tools in 2023

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator - It gets another mention here. Through the creation of lead lists, businesses can use connections and direct outreach to build and market to specific networks of people. 
• Hootsuite - Plan all of your social content in advance through Hootsuite as well as track analytics of posts’ performance and gain insights about your audience. 

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6. Email Tracking Tools

Email tracking software is great for understanding and optimizing your email marketing. Integrate tracking tools with your email account and gain access to crucial information such as when the receiver opens an email or clicks on a link. 

With these valuable insights, you can fine-tune your email strategy and do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. 

Best social selling tools in 2023

• Mailtrack for Gmail - Get unlimited free tracking and notifications for your link clicks. 
• ActiveCampaign - Build out your email list, create landing pages for your lead magnets, automate your email marketing sequences, and track it all. ActiveCampaign even has built-in CRM features.  

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Benefits of Using Sales Tools

75% of companies that implement sales tools reported increased sales within 12 months. Not only can they simplify day-to-day tasks and speed up the processes of your sales and marketing teams, but they will also help you create more highly converting workflows. Close more sales with less effort, and ultimately you scale your business and grow your revenue. 

Sales tools help you:

• Save time by streamlining processes
• Plan and prioritize
• Create more effective and data-based targeted sales strategies
• Understand customers’ needs and identify opportunities
• Automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks
• Make more sales and boost revenue

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How to Choose Your Sales Tools

If you want to increase your sales and revenue, choosing the right tools is vital. Sales funnels can look very different for different businesses, so there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. But follow these guidelines to discover which tools you need. 

Ask yourself the following questions:

• Where are you spending the most time? Can you automate these processes?
• Are there weak points in your funnel? If you have a high drop-off at specific points in your funnel, consider introducing a tool to help. 
• What are your main sales struggles? Choose tools that target problem areas.
• What are your goals? Do you have tools to help with significant, needle-moving activities? 

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What is the best type of tool a salesperson can use?

Salespeople can use many useful tools to work more efficiently, close more sales, and bring in more revenue. The top tool depends on the strategies and platforms you use to sell, but most salespeople can’t go wrong with a CRM. All-in-one CRMs like Hubspot and Salesforce automate and centralize all elements of the journey of nurturing a lead from acquisition to sale. They save time, offer accurate insights, and allow advanced tracking.  

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Which sales tool is most important for me?

The most important sales tool will depend on your needs and processes. If you need to track and nurture leads, a CRM will be most helpful. If you sell primarily through social media, a social selling tool will optimize your process. If you waste too much time on administrative tasks, choose an automation tool to save time on data entry, email sequences, or scheduling. If you have low sales numbers, choose an analytics or tracking tool to identify weak points in your sales funnel.

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What tools do you use to track sales?

Many different tools can track sales. A CRM program is ideal for this. You can track all of your leads and communications through the sales journey in one place. You can save time in the sales cycle through automation and easily see weak spots in your funnels.

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What is a sales productivity tool?

Sales productivity tools help a sales team get more done each day. They facilitate productivity by automating time-consuming tasks such as scheduling and tracking contacts and leads. They also integrate your different tools and apps, centralizing all aspects of the sales process in place. They could also be sales organization tools, allowing you to better document, track, and learn from your sales activities.

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Best Sales Tools for Sales Teams

The top tools for sales teams can revolutionize your whole sales process and increase revenue. However, the best tool for a sales rep depends on your strategies and needs. Your choices include CRMs, sales intelligence tools, automation tools, sales analytics and reporting tools, social selling tools, and email tracking tools. 

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