Best sales software to transform your sales strategy

As sales is critical for business growth, organizations spend a lot of resources on maximizing their sales performance. The right sales software provides your organization with sales tools that can help make selling efficient. It improves sales performance, enhances decision-making, and informs sales strategy. 

In this article, find out what sales software is, why it matters, how businesses use it, and all the options available today.

What is sales software?

Sales software is a set of tools that helps sales managers and team members effectively manage and monitor their sales processes. 

These solutions are designed to streamline the sales cycle, from lead generation and customer relationship management to deal closure and analytics. 

Sales software empowers sales professionals with tools to manage leads, track customer interactions, and monitor deal progress. It also facilitates communication within sales teams, allowing members to collaborate seamlessly and share valuable insights that can lead to higher conversion rates and improved customer satisfaction.

One of the key features of sales software is its ability to automate repetitive tasks, such as data entry and follow-up emails, freeing up sales reps to focus on building relationships and closing deals. Additionally, these tools come with reporting and analytics capabilities, enabling businesses to gain valuable insights into their sales performance. By analyzing data on conversion rates, revenue trends, and customer behavior, sales teams can make informed decisions and adjust their strategies to maximize sales growth.

As a salesperson, you gain insights into crucial metrics such as emails sent versus received, average call duration, deal wins versus lost, sales forecasts, and more. Staying on top of these attributes can help you take charge of your sales process and maximize revenue.

Why is sales software important for businesses?

The benefits of using sales software are multifold, as they impact various aspects of your business.

1. Improve customer relationship management

Sales software can help you attract, engage, nurture, and retain customers. It lets you store customer data organized as unique customer profiles. Many solutions also provide multiple engagement channels, such as phone, email, chat, and text messaging, to help sales reps engage with customers. Sales software records every sales call, email interaction/response, and deal status. The organized data allows sales teams to track deal progress and save valuable time, as they don’t have to log each detail manually. They can follow up with customers faster, answer sales queries, and close deals effectively, enhancing customer satisfaction. 

2. Increase sales efficiency and productivity

Many sales software include workflow automation, helping organizations automate their sales processes. Automating repetitive tasks can improve seller productivity and sales efficiency. For example, sales software that allows you to auto-assign prospects to your salespeople when they enter your system can drive faster engagement. This also saves time for the sales manager, who doesn’t have to assign them manually. Sales force automation positively impacts various aspects of the sales cycle.

3. Streamline data management

Sales software helps organizations move away from spreadsheets and project management tools to manage their sales processes. Many sales software and CRM programs provide a 360-degree view of customers with all past interactions, deals, and queries organized into a customer profile. Similarly, deals and accounts can be organized with associated data, conversations, and documents. Pipeline visualization can make it easy to understand sales at a glance. SaaS sales software ensures this data is available on demand in real-time. This acts as a single source of truth for the entire organization, enhancing collaboration.

4. Enhance decision making

Sales software programs include reporting and analytics features. These let you quickly pull sales or marketing reports based on specific parameters and KPIs. You can understand sales performance, pipeline generated, deal conversion rates, and other important metrics you want to track. Analytics help organizations derive data-driven insights that help with faster decision-making.

Essential features you should look for in sales software

When evaluating sales software, you may come across these features and capabilities.

1. Customer relationship management (CRM)

CRM centralizes data, storing and managing customer data like contacts, purchases, and interactions. It empowers reps to understand prospects better, ensuring personalized engagement.

2. Lead and opportunity management

Sales software captures leads from web forms, social media, and emails. It can help you categorize, score, and assign them to reps for follow-up. Automated workflows enhance conversion rates through lead nurturing.

3. Sales process automation

Sales reps automate tasks like follow-up emails, scheduling, and CRM updates with sales software. This saves time for building relationships and understanding prospects and ensures consistency in sales processes.

4. Sales analytics and insights

Sales software tracks metrics like conversion rates, pipeline progress, and revenue trends. These insights drive data-driven decisions, helping businesses identify areas for improvement and optimize sales strategies.

5. Integrations with business applications

Sales software integrates with other sales tools, such as email providers, phone systems, and messaging apps, enabling reps to communicate directly from the interface. It logs all communication history in the CRM for a comprehensive view of the customer journey.

How to choose the right sales software for your business?

Buying sales software could be one of the most impactful things you can do for your business. Since it is a critical component to sales success, consider the following aspects when evaluating a solution.

Step 1: Identify your business requirements

Not any sales software will work for your business. You must identify what you want to accomplish with your sales software program. Prioritizing the use case you want to meet can help you refine your options.

Step 2: Examine essential features and functionality

You must evaluate the sales software's features and functionality based on your use cases. Reviewing the software’s capabilities through a live demo, research, and product trial can help determine whether it fits your business.

Step 3: Ensure user-friendliness

Sales software can only be successful when salespeople regularly use it. Choose sales software that’s user-friendly. This can help with faster user adoption and frequent usage, boosting the effectiveness of your sales program.

Step 4: Check integration capabilities

Your business may already be using certain sales tools successfully. If you don’t plan on replacing them, checking if the sales software supports your existing solutions through integrations is essential. It’s also possible that the sales software of your choice may not offer all the capabilities you are after. Again, having native integrations for popular apps can help you build a comprehensive solution for sales.

Step 5: Read user reviews and testimonials

The fastest way to determine the overall performance of the sales software you are evaluating is to look for user reviews and testimonials. Try to find reviews from similar businesses to help validate if the solution is right for you.

11 Types of sales software

With the wide-ranging scope of sales software, solutions catering to different aspects of sales are available in the market. Let’s look at some key categories of sales software you may come across in your evaluation.

1. All-in-one sales software

An all-in-one sales software is a comprehensive solution that focuses on all aspects of the sales process within a single platform. These software solutions integrate multiple functionalities, such as CRM, sales automation, lead management, pipeline management, communication, document management, and reporting. They typically include robust integration capabilities on the platform to ensure third-party apps can also work within the platform.

2. Customer relationship management (CRM) software

CRM tools focus on contact management and engagement to improve customer relationships and grow sales. Modern sales CRM solutions offer end-to-end capabilities, including lead management, sales automation, customer service and support, marketing automation, and multi-channel engagement. 

3. Sales force automation (SFA) software

Sales automation software helps businesses automate and streamline their sales processes. It provides sales teams with workflows to automate repetitive tasks such as data entry, lead assignment, and follow-ups, making selling efficient. Key capabilities may include contact and account management, lead and opportunity tracking, pipeline management, sales activities, quotes and invoicing, reporting, and analytics.

4. Lead management software

Lead management software helps businesses capture, track, and manage prospects or leads through the marketing funnel and sales pipeline. It automates lead acquisition, nurture, and conversion, enabling sales and marketing teams to work efficiently and drive revenue growth. Lead management solutions include lead capture infrastructure, including web forms, webhooks, and APIs. Lead tracking, lead scoring, auto-assignment, workflow automation, and reporting are other capabilities of lead management software.

5. Sales intelligence software

Sales intelligence software helps organizations with insights for informed decisions on sales strategy and growth. These insights could range from better targeting, engagement, and sales process improvements. Through data collection, integration, and analysis, sales intelligence tools can help attract better leads, personalize engagement, streamline conversion, and forecast sales. Some capabilities include lead and deal scoring, competitive intelligence, and customer insights.

6. Sales analytics and reporting software

Sales analytics and reporting software, often comparable to business intelligence tools, help collect, analyze, and visualize sales data. The reporting software programs give sales leaders and the organization a better understanding of all aspects of their business, helping improve decision-making and enhance sales strategy. Some key functionalities include data integration, KPI tracking, sales forecasting, sales trends, and predictive analytics.

7. Sales forecasting software

Sales forecasting software is a predictive analytics tool that helps businesses track sales performance, plan revenue, and develop sales strategies. With accurate sales forecasting, companies can optimize resource allocation, manage inventory, and improve sales performance.

8. Sales enablement software

Sales enablement software helps sales teams with the resources, tools, and information they need to sell effectively. Features of sales enablement tools and sales training software may include content management, training programs, sales playbooks, content engagement analytics, and reporting. Sales enablement solutions help improve sales performance and productivity while speeding up sales onboarding and sales training.

9. CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) software

CPQ or Configure, Price, Quote solutions help sales reps seamlessly share quotes and close the sale. CPQ tools offer product catalogs and configuration, pricing management, document management, customizable brand templates, and approval workflows for discounting. These solutions can help businesses automate the negotiation process and close deals efficiently.

10. Sales performance management software

Sales performance management involves tools that help organizations with sales planning, performance tracking, and optimization. By including incentive management and analytics, sales organizations can optimize sales strategy, motivate sellers, and grow business. Goal setting, incentive and compensation management, sales coaching, and sales performance tracking are some key capabilities.

11. Email tracking and automation software

Email tracking and automation software enable sales reps to automate customer engagement and lead nurture. Some key features include two-way email sync, email metrics and reporting, email templates, segmentation, personalization, A/B testing, email domains, and journey builder. By automating sales and marketing initiatives, these solutions can increase the scale and efficiency of the lead management and sales process.

11 best sales software for businesses 

With a brief look at the types of sales software available in the market, let’s take a closer look at the best sales software examples to help you evaluate the best solution for your business.

1. Freshsales

Freshsales is versatile sales software that offers a range of features to empower sales teams and streamline their sales. One of its key strengths lies in lead management. It provides a 360-degree view of customer interactions, which helps salespeople personalize their engagement and improve conversions. 

Freshsales uses contact scoring to prioritize prospects based on their engagement and conversion potential, ensuring that sales reps focus on the most promising leads. The software also supports automated lead nurturing through customizable workflows, enabling personalized engagement and follow-ups.

Freshsales is also known for its robust sales automation capabilities. It automates routine tasks like email follow-ups, appointment scheduling, and data entry, allowing sales reps to save time and focus on building meaningful relationships with potential customers. The software's flexibility extends to workflow automation, making it adaptable to various businesses, industries, and sales processes.

Another standout feature is its analytics and reporting functionality. Freshsales provides comprehensive insights into sales performance through detailed reports and analytics dashboards. Teams can monitor metrics such as conversion rates, deal progress, and revenue trends, enabling informed decision-making and strategy refinement. Real-time reporting offers immediate visibility into the sales pipeline and customer interactions, making Freshsales a valuable tool for businesses of all sizes looking to optimize processes, enhance productivity, and drive revenue growth.

Pricing:

• Growth: $9/user/month billed annually

• Pro: $39/user/month billed annually

• Enterprise: $59/user/month billed annually

2. Zendesk Sell

Zendesk is primarily known as a customer service and support platform. Zendesk allows sales teams to centralize customer information, including contact details and communication history. This functionality enables sales reps to manage leads, identify potential upsell opportunities and collaborate with customer support teams to ensure a cohesive customer experience.

Zendesk also provides a ticketing and task management system that can be adapted for sales. Sales teams can create and assign tickets for sales inquiries, track task statuses, and ensure timely follow-ups with leads and prospects. This ticketing system aids in organization and prioritization, ensuring that no sales opportunity is overlooked. This system includes automation features that can be used to enhance efficiency.

Additionally, Zendesk offers reporting and analytics capabilities that can be used to tailor sales approaches and identify areas for improvement. It provides valuable data for tracking customer engagement, sales-related support inquiries, and overall team performance. For businesses seeking to integrate customer support and sales processes, Zendesk serves as a versatile sales software solution with features that can help manage customer relationships and streamline sales tasks.

Pricing:

• Sell Team: $19/agent up to 5 agents/month

• Sell Growth: $55/agent up to 5 agents/month

• Sell Professional: $115/agent up to 5 agents/month

• Sell Enterprise: Starts at $169/agent/month

3. HubSpot

HubSpot is a sales management software platform that empowers sales teams with a range of essential features. At its core, HubSpot offers a robust CRM system, allowing businesses to centralize customer data, track interactions, and effectively manage leads and contacts. With features like lead scoring, task management, and pipeline tracking, HubSpot helps sales professionals prioritize leads and opportunities, enabling personalized, efficient communication.

HubSpot also excels in sales automation, providing a suite of tools that streamline tasks and save time. Sales reps can automate email outreach, lead nurturing workflows, and appointment scheduling, ensuring consistent and timely communication with prospects. HubSpot's automation features enhance productivity and help sales teams engage with leads at the right moment in their buying journey.

Moreover, HubSpot offers robust reporting and analytics capabilities that provide valuable insights into sales performance. Users can monitor key metrics through dashboards and reports. These insights facilitate data-driven decision-making, enabling businesses to refine their sales strategies and achieve sales success. HubSpot's reporting tools support better forecasting, goal tracking, and optimization of sales processes, making it a powerful tool for businesses looking to drive revenue growth through efficient sales operations.

Pricing:

• Starter: Starts at $18/month

• Professional: Starts at $450/month

• Enterprise: Starts at $1,500/month

4. Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a comprehensive sales software suite designed to enhance efficiency. It focuses on CRM and has features like customizable pipelines, lead scoring, and automated lead nurturing workflows to help sales teams prioritize leads and tailor their communication to individual prospect needs. Zoho CRM's ability to integrate with other Zoho applications and third-party tools creates a unified platform for managing customer relationships.

Zoho stands out in sales automation, providing tools that automate repetitive sales tasks. This automation liberates sales professionals to concentrate on building relationships and closing deals. Zoho also offers flexible workflow automation capabilities that allow businesses to create customized workflows that align with their unique sales processes, guaranteeing consistency and efficiency in sales operations.

Additionally, Zoho offers advanced analytics and reporting features that offer deep insights into sales performance. These insights enable data-driven decision-making, assisting businesses in refining their sales strategies and staying adaptable in changing market conditions. Zoho's reporting features also facilitate better forecasting, goal tracking, and overall optimization of sales processes, making it an invaluable tool for organizations seeking to maximize their sales potential.

Pricing:

• Standard: $14/user/month billed annually

• Professional: $23/user/month billed annually

• Enterprise: $40/user/month billed annually

• Ultimate: $52/user/month billed annually

5. Active Campaign

ActiveCampaign is a sales software that not only assists with sales automation but also excels in marketing and customer relationship management. It offers a comprehensive set of features designed to help businesses streamline their sales processes and drive revenue growth.

Sales automation is one of the strengths of ActiveCampaign. It allows businesses to automate sales processes, from lead nurturing and follow-ups to personalized email campaigns and task management. Sales teams can set up automation workflows to engage with leads at the right moment, ensuring timely and relevant communication. ActiveCampaign's automation capabilities help sales professionals save time, improve efficiency, and maintain consistency in their interactions with prospects and customers.

ActiveCampaign also offers extensive CRM capabilities that integrate seamlessly with its automation and marketing features. It provides lead scoring, pipeline management, and deal tracking to help sales reps prioritize their efforts and move leads through the sales funnel. The CRM also facilitates collaboration between sales and marketing teams, ensuring a unified approach to customer engagement.

Pricing:

• Plus: Starts at $19/month

• Professional: Starts at $49/month

• Enterprise: Starts at $99/month

6. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a user-friendly sales software designed to optimize sales processes for businesses of all sizes. Its simplicity, visual interface, and customization options make it a compelling choice for sales teams looking to streamline their processes, prioritize tasks, and drive revenue growth. Whether you're a small business or a large enterprise, Pipedrive provides the tools needed to achieve efficient sales operations and maintain a clear view of the sales pipeline.

At its core is an intuitive pipeline management system that allows sales teams to create customized sales pipelines that reflect their unique sales processes. This visual interface enables easy tracking of leads and deals as they progress through each stage of the sales funnel. Sales reps can efficiently prioritize tasks, ensuring no opportunities are missed, and gain a clear overview of the sales process to identify areas for improvement.

Pipedrive's lead and contact management capabilities provide a centralized repository for organizing lead and customer information. It offers tools for lead scoring and segmentation, helping sales teams identify high-potential leads and tailor their sales efforts accordingly. Automated lead capture and tracking simplify lead management, allowing sales professionals to focus on leads with the highest conversion potential.

Pricing:

• Essential: $14.90/user/month billed annually

• Advanced: $27.90/user/month billed annually

• Professional: $49.90/user/month billed annually

• Power: $64.90/user/month billed annually

• Enterprise: $99/user/month billed annually

7. Dynamics 365 Sales

Dynamics 365 Sales is a sales software solution offered by Microsoft that combines CRM, sales automation, and advanced analytics to help businesses manage leads, automate tasks, and make informed decisions. Its integration with Microsoft's suite of productivity tools and cloud services makes it the ideal choice for organizations that regularly use Microsoft platforms.

This sales software has a powerful CRM that allows businesses to centralize pertinent customer data. Dynamics 365 Sales is highly customizable, allowing sales teams to tailor workflows and processes to meet their needs. A comprehensive view of customer information enables personalized communication and informed decision-making.

Dynamics 365 Sales also excels in sales automation, providing features like lead scoring, workflow automation, and email tracking. These automation capabilities simplify sales tasks and processes. The platform's predictive analytics identifies high-potential leads and recommends actions to move deals forward, ensuring that sales teams prioritize their efforts effectively.

Pricing:

• Sales Professional: $65/user/month

• Sales Enterprise: $95/user/month

• Sales Premium: $135/user/month

• Microsoft Relationship Sales: $162/user/month

8. SalesRabbit

SaleRabbit is a field sales management solution that focuses on door-to-door sales and field sales operations. It offers a range of tools and features to improve sales efficiency and effectiveness through lead management, territory management, collaboration, and performance tracking.

Specialized features such as data-driven canvassing help field sales teams excel at territory management, lead generation, and lead scoring. A calendar scheduler helps sales reps book meetings, and make the most of their workday. Tailored contracts and proposals ensure sales reps are empowered to close deals quickly, on the spot.

SalesRabbit also offers sales enablement solutions, goal setting, and sales performance tracking to help sales managers optimize territory sales growth. The solution also offers integrations with popular contact management, CRM, marketing automation, contract management, and industry-specific lead management solutions to help unify customer data and streamline the sales process.

Pricing:

• SalesRabbit Lite: $29/user/month

• SalesRabbit Pro: $39/user/month

• SalesRabbit Enterprise: Pricing on request

9. DocuSign

DocuSign is a popular electronic signature (e-sign) and digital transaction management platform that helps businesses send, sign, and manage documents securely. By automating the signing process of contracts, agreements, and other documents, DocuSign can help sales teams streamline deal closure.

Docusign eSignature helps sign documents virtually, ensuring a completely digital agreement workflow. It supports multiple signature types and electronic devices. It offers document templates to help businesses prepare documents and customize them according to their legal and branding requirements.

Agreement workflows automate the signing process, helping sales teams close deals faster without any guesswork. Integrations with popular CRM solutions and sales management software make DocuSign appropriate for sales teams. Beyond the speed and efficiency of using e-sign solutions such as DocuSign, they also help businesses with security and compliance and make auditing easier.

Pricing:

• Personal: $10/month (1 user only)

• Standard: $25/user/month

• Business Pro: $40/user/month

10. Salesmate

Salesmate is a comprehensive CRM software for small businesses that helps streamline their sales, marketing, and customer support. The solution improves sales outreach, driving enhanced customer relationships and business growth.

Salesmate features comprehensive lead management capabilities, including web forms, chat, and scheduler tools that help sales attract and convert leads. The all-in-one CRM also offers marketing automation tools that help nurture leads and boost conversion rates. Sellers on Salesmate can engage customers across phone, email, chat, and text messaging channels to enhance customer relationships.

Salesmate is an excellent option for businesses looking for a user-friendly sales solution for lead management and customer relationship management. Small businesses can make the most of its comprehensive capabilities.

Pricing

• Basic: $23/user/month

• Pro: $39/user/month

• Business: $63/user/month

• Enterprise: Custom pricing on request

11. Monday sales CRM

Monday is primarily a project management solution but also offers sales and CRM tools. The Monday.com sales CRM is generally considered easy to use, especially for users unfamiliar with CRM solutions. It’s also highly customizable and offers multiple productivity tools to enhance sales efficiency.

Monday.com UI/UX is very customizable, allowing users to track multiple deals and sales pipelines at a glance. The CRM can be tailored to fit different sales processes without any coding or development. The sales process automation solutions on Monday feature workflows for tasks, notifications, and automation for lead

management as well as deal management. It also offers generative AI capabilities to help generate content and sales reports and prioritize tasks.

For sales teams used to tracking sales on spreadsheets, Monday sales CRM can be a great fit. Businesses tired of complex software get a simplified user experience. Small businesses with relatively complex sales processes can also benefit from the solution.

Pricing

• Basic: $9/user/month

• Standard: $12/user/month

• Pro: $ 19/user/month

• Enterprise: Pricing on request