In today’s fast-paced business world, maximizing sales productivity is crucial for staying ahead of competitors and driving growth. With many tools available in the market, it’s essential to identify and leverage the most effective ones that suit your unique needs.
In this blog post, we’ll explore over 20 top-performing best sales productivity software set to take center stage in 2023 – helping you streamline processes, enhance communication, and easily make data-driven decisions.
Key Takeaways
- Sales productivity tools are essential for boosting efficiency, enhancing communication, improving data-driven insights, and streamlining processes in 2023.
- The top categories of productivity tools include time tracking and accountability, communication, collaboration and training, lead generation and sales intelligence, and project management.
- Leveraging these tools effectively can result in higher conversion rates with reduced non-revenue-generating activities. Identifying the suitable device that fits your unique needs is crucial while ensuring compatibility with existing systems.
- Some of the best time-tracking and accountability tools include Toggl and Harvest. These tools offer valuable insights into how sales professionals spend their work hours while allowing managers to monitor employee performance effectively.
Why Sales Productivity Tools Are Essential In 2023
Productivity tools are essential in 2023 as they can boost efficiency, enhance communication, improve data-driven insights, and streamline processes for helping sales teams.
Boost Efficiency
In today’s fast-paced business environment, boosting efficiency is crucial for teams to stay ahead of the competition. By leveraging these tools, these teams can optimize and streamline their work processes, minimizing time spent on mundane tasks and allowing them to focus more on closing deals.
In addition to CRMs, other productivity tools, such as email schedulers or task automation apps, enhance a team’s efficiency by reducing manual efforts in organizing sales pipelines and client communications.
This empowers reps to proactively nurture leads and build strong business relationships while simultaneously meeting their targets.
Enhance Communication
Enhancing communication is a crucial aspect of sales productivity, especially with the prevalence of remote and hybrid work environments. Sales teams need to connect and collaborate effectively, internally among team members and externally with potential clients or customers.
For example, using Slack allows for seamless real-time communication among team members. In addition to facilitating quick replies and updates on prospect interactions, it enables integration with other essential productivity tools like Salesforce or HubSpot CRM for streamlined pipeline management.
This saves time and ensures that relevant information is accessible when needed.
Improve Data-driven Insights
Improving data-driven insights is a crucial aspect of sales productivity in 2023. With an ever-increasing reliance on technology and digital platforms, sales pros must harness the power of data to make informed decisions that drive better results.
For instance, Gong’s sales analytics software provides valuable insights into customer interactions and communication trends that can be utilized to optimize outreach strategies.
By monitoring metrics such as call duration, response rates, and buyer’s intent analysis—sales teams can cater their approach based on reliable data rather than intuition or guesswork.
Leveraging these analytics ensures your team makes the most effective use of resources while maximizing opportunities for generating leads and closing deals.
Streamline Processes
Productivity tools can help streamline the entire sales process, from lead generation to closing deals. By automating repetitive tasks and providing a centralized platform for communication and data management, these tools allow sales teams to work more efficiently.
For example, project management tools like Asana or Monday.com can help salespeople manage their workload and prioritize tasks. In contrast, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software such as Salesforce or HubSpot CRM tracks customer interactions and helps guide sales.
This streamlining leads to faster results with fewer errors.
Top 5 Sales Productivity Tools by Category
Time Tracking And Accountability
One of the most crucial aspects of improving sales productivity is time tracking and accountability. With so many tasks to prioritize, it’s easy for sales people to get sidetracked by non-sales activities, resulting in lost focus and decreased productivity.
Using time-tracking tools like Toggl or Harvest, businesses can gain valuable insights into how their teams spend their work hours and identify areas where they can improve efficiency.
These tools enable managers to set clear expectations for employee performance and establish accountability measures ensuring everyone meets their targets.
According to recent statistics, sales reps spend only 59% of their time selling.
Communication, Collaboration, And Training
Effective communication and collaboration are essential components. These tools enable teams to communicate in real time, share ideas, and collaborate on projects from anywhere globally.
The ability to work together seamlessly is essential when remote working, which has been made more prevalent due to the pandemic. Collaboration tools like Slack and Zoom allow teams to conduct meetings virtually as if they were in person.
According to recent studies, companies with strong collaboration and communication exhibit a 20-30% higher success rate than those without these capabilities. Additionally, sales organizations that use training programs outperform those without by approximately 50%.
Lead Generation And Intelligence
Effective lead generation and sales intelligence tools are crucial for businesses to identify, target, and convert potential customers. With the help of SaaS (Software as a Service) products like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and ZoomInfo, teams can access accurate contact information, organizational hierarchy data, and other critical insights to optimize their prospecting efforts.
These tools allow reps to personalize outreach based on buyer persona characteristics such as job title, industry experience, or company size.
Businesses can streamline their lead nurturing process and optimize pipeline management by leveraging these technologies alongside CRM integrations with platforms like Pipedrive or Hubspot CRM.
According to research by Gartner Inc., companies that use AI-powered B2B prospecting solutions will increase their revenue by 30% in 2023 compared with those who don’t utilize such technologies.
Project Management
Tools that aid project management can significantly improve a team’s efficiency. These tools streamline workflows, enhance collaboration, and enable easy access to important project-related data for prompt decision-making.
Some of the best project management tools for teams include Monday.com and Asana.
Monday.com is ideal for managing complex projects across different teams. It offers customizable templates, Gantt charts, and timelines. It allows team members to comment on tasks or tag specific colleagues for assistance.
On the other hand, Asana is suitable for smaller teams working on similar projects since it has an intuitive user interface that simplifies task assignments and tracking progress while offering workflow automation features such as reminders, dependencies, and custom fields.
Best Time Tracking & Accountability Tools
Toggl and Harvest are two of the best time-tracking and accountability tools for sales teams. They allow remote workers to track their project time efficiently while providing managers with detailed reports.
Toggl
Toggl is a highly-rated time tracking and accountability tool that offers task-specific search, allowing salespeople to focus their energy on selling. In contrast, the app takes care of repetitive tasks.
This popular productivity tool can save reps 5+ hours per week in administrative work by syncing notes and pipeline updates to SFDC. Toggl offers an easy-to-use interface, making it simple for teams to track and assign specific tasks throughout the day, all while providing valuable insights into how much time is spent on productive activities versus less important or distracting ones.
Harvest
Harvest is an ideal productivity tool that enables businesses to track their employees’ billable hours, send invoices and estimates, create custom reports, and integrate with other tools like Basecamp.
This easy-to-use time-tracking software helps managers understand how much time a project takes and whether it is profitable. Harvest can automatically categorize people’s tracked hours into specific tasks for better organization and budget optimization.
With the help of Harvest’s timesheet approval system, team leaders can review their teams’ work logs before submitting them for invoicing while keeping track of remote workers during virtual meetings.
Notably, according to [IMPORTANT FACTS], the US market share of productivity tools increased from 45.81 billion US dollars in 2019 to over 89 billion US dollars in 2020, signaling how essential these productivity tools have become for businesses worldwide.
Paid plans for productivity tools like Weflow and SalesLoft start at $39 and $125-165 per user/month, respectively.
Best Communication & Collaboration Tools to Boost Your Sales
Two essential aspects of a successful team are effective communication and seamless collaboration, and there’s no better way to achieve this than by utilizing the best tools available.
Slack
Slack is one of the most popular communication and collaboration tools that sales teams should consider using to boost productivity in 2023. With Slack, sales representatives can collaborate effectively and swiftly without requiring long email threads or time-consuming meetings.
The app offers real-time messaging, file-sharing capabilities, audio and video calls, screen-sharing features, and integrations with other work tools like SFDC and Trello.
According to recent studies, companies that use communication tools like Slack report increased employee productivity by up to 30%. As more businesses shift towards hybrid working models due to the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on traditional office structures globally, apps like Slack have become increasingly important for organizations looking to maintain seamless communication across different locations.
Zoom
Zoom is a highly recommended communication and collaboration tool for boosting sales productivity in 2023. With over 300 million daily participants and a 41% market share in the video conferencing industry, Zoom enables better coordination among team members through virtual meetings, webinars, and video conferencing.
Online collaboration tools like Zoom facilitate file sharing and project collaboration to streamline workflows. Sales reps can save up to five hours weekly on administrative work by syncing notes and pipeline updates to Salesforce using Zoom.
Best Lead Generation & Intelligence Tools
Two of the best lead generation and intelligence tools in 2023 are LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which provides extensive access to LinkedIn’s network for prospecting, and ZoomInfo, which offers a database of over 50 million contacts with accurate information on companies and decision-makers.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Another essential tool for sales productivity in 2023 is LinkedIn Sales Navigator. With over 700 million users globally, LinkedIn is a treasure trove of potential leads and contacts that can be tapped into with this tool.
Its advanced search filters allow for targeted prospecting based on criteria such as job function, seniority level, company size, and location.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s integration with CRMs such as Salesforce allows for efficient lead management and pipeline tracking directly within the platform. Additionally, its InMail feature enables direct messaging to prospects, not first-level connections, without using up one’s monthly allocation of messages on the free version of LinkedIn.
ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is a must-have in any tool kit for 2023. This platform offers comprehensive data and insights, allowing sales teams to make data-driven decisions at every sales process step.
ZoomInfo provides accurate contact details, company information, and buyer intent signals that help reps personalize their pitches and outreach efforts.
One of the best things about ZoomInfo is its omnichannel support for lead generation and nurturing.
Best Project Management Tools
Are you looking for a reliable and efficient project management tool? Check out our top picks, Monday.com and Asana, to seamlessly manage your team’s workflow.
Monday.com
One of the top project management tools for sales productivity in 2023 is Monday.com. This highly customizable CRM offers a variety of features that can streamline the sales process, including lead tracking, task automation, and integrations with popular communication platforms like Slack and Zoom.
With a user-friendly interface and robust reporting capabilities, Monday.com allows teams to collaborate effectively while providing executives real-time insights into performance metrics.
Additionally, Monday.com’s trial version allows businesses to test its functionality before committing to a subscription plan starting from $10 per seat per month.
Asana
Asana is one of the best project management tools for boosting sales productivity. Its collaborative features allow teams to track and streamline their workflows, ensuring everything runs smoothly during the sales process.
With Asana, team members can assign tasks to specific individuals, set deadlines, and see progress in real-time.
Moreover, Asana integrates with other tools useful for sales productivity, like Toggl time tracking software which gives visibility into how much time individuals spend on every task within individual projects.
Team members can also easily create new tasks from emails using Gmail or Outlook integrations without leaving their inbox, making it more convenient.
Best Scheduling Tools to Boost Your Sales Productivity
Calendly and Chili Piper are two of the best scheduling tools, offering customizable meeting types, automated reminders, and integration with popular calendars and email platforms.
Calendly
Calendly is a powerful sales scheduling tool that can automate the tedious task of setting up meetings and reduce back-and-forth communication. With features like customizable meeting types, availability preferences, and timezone detection, Calendly makes it easy for prospects to schedule appointments without hassle.
Calendly offers reasonably priced plans ranging from $8-12 per user/month, depending on the features needed. The platform’s compatibility with popular tools such as Pipedrive, Salesforce, and HubSpot CRM ensures smooth integration into existing workflows.
Chili Piper
Chili Piper is a powerful sales scheduling tool designed to help sales organizations boost productivity. With its intuitive interface and wide range of features, Chili Piper makes it easy for salespeople to schedule meetings, demos and calls with prospects and customers.
What sets Chili Piper apart from other scheduling tools is its ability to offer real-time calendar availability, custom workflows for different types of appointments or calls, automatic timezone detection for global teams, and queue-based routing, ensuring the right lead is matched with the right rep every time.
Additionally, Chili Piper has a high G2 rating of 4.6 out of 5 stars. They offer different plans for various sales purposes, starting at $22.50 per user/month.
Best Reporting And Analytics Tools – Answer Questions About Sales
Understand your sales performance better and make data-driven decisions with the best reporting and analytics tools like Gong and Tableau.
Gong
Gong is an analytics tool that is among the best reporting and analytics tools associated with over 20 productivity apps. It’s a highly rated tool with a G2 rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars among 4,865 reviews.
Gong can help cut the sales cycle in half according to its G2 rating. This tool provides valuable insights that can significantly help improve productivity and efficiency.
With Gong, you can gain deep visibility into every aspect of your deals, including hidden risks and opportunities for improvement. Plus, it helps you analyze calls or demos at scale to identify patterns that lead to successful outcomes.
The software offers real-time coaching suggestions and automated note-taking so no details are missed during critical interactions with prospects or clients.
Tableau
Tableau is a powerful data visualization and analytics tool to enable sales professionals to make more informed decisions. It provides real-time insight into sales performance, allowing teams to stay on top of their pipeline and avoid missed opportunities.
One example of how Tableau can be used in sales is by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rates, deal closure rates, or average order value. By visualizing these metrics over time, sales leaders can quickly identify trends and areas for improvement.
Additionally, the software has built-in forecasting capabilities, which could help businesses predict future demand based on historical trends.
Best Email Outreach Tools
Two of the best email outreach tools to consider for your team in 2023 are Mailchimp and Outreach.io, which help streamline personalized messaging at scale and track engagement metrics for effective follow-ups.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a popular email marketing platform that provides individuals with the tools to create and send effective email campaigns. With its user-friendly interface, a wide range of customizable templates, and automation features, Mailchimp makes email outreach more efficient and targeted.
To optimize future campaigns, you can use Mailchimp’s analytics to track campaign metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. Integrations with other apps, such as Pipedrive and SFDC, make Mailchimp a versatile tool for sales professionals at all levels.
Whether you’re just starting or have an established business, Mailchimp’s pricing plans offer options for every budget, from free plans to advanced enterprise-level features.
Outreach.io
Outreach.io is one of the best email outreach tools for boosting sales productivity in 2023. With its advanced automation features, Outreach.io can help sellers create customized email sequences and follow-ups that drive results.
The software offers a range of templates for different stages of the sales cycle, making it easy to personalize emails at scale.
Businesses can optimize their workflows and save valuable time by integrating tools like Outreach.io with a CRM system such as SFDC or HubSpot.
Best Prospecting Tools
Boost your lead generation game with these top sales prospecting tools, including Hunter.io and VoilaNorbert.
Hunter.io
Hunter.io is one of the best prospecting tools available in 2023. It offers accurate lead generation, allowing teams to identify and target potential customers quickly.
Hunter.io simplifies the process by providing easy-to-use search capabilities to help salespeople find what they need for their pipeline. Hunter.io’s email verification service allows users to verify emails almost instantly rather than manually searching through databases or waiting for responses.
This way, reps can focus on selling and growing revenue rather than wasting time on tedious tasks like verifying email addresses.
VoilaNorbert
VoilaNorbert is a top provider of sales prospecting tools that can boost sales productivity in 2023. With its accurate contact tracking and lead enrichment services, VoilaNorbert can helps reps streamline their outreach efforts and focus on closing deals rather than searching for leads.
VoilaNorbert’s B2B prospecting features include email verification, buyer’s intent analysis, and personalized emails tailored to each recipient.
According to recent studies, sales teams use an average of 13 tech tools to increase productivity. VoilaNorbert stands out by seamlessly integrating CRM systems like SFDC or HubSpot CRM.
This helps businesses better manage their contacts and organize information so it’s always readily available when needed.
Sales Tools For Training And Onboarding
Lessonly – by Seismic
Lessonly explicitly focuses on automating training and onboarding. This software reduces the time it takes new hires to become productive by providing customized learning paths, progress tracking, and certification programs.
With Lessonly, companies can ensure that all team members receive consistent training regardless of location or skill level. This saves valuable time and promotes better cross-team collaboration and alignment with organizational goals.
MindTickle
MindTickle provides an all-in-one platform for teams to improve training and onboarding, leading to higher productivity. With MindTickle’s software, sales reps can engage in interactive demos, get real-time feedback, and practice scenarios.
What sets MindTickle apart from other apps is its integration with various CRM systems, such as Salesforce, ensuring minimal task-switching between apps that can decrease mental productivity.
By streamlining the onboarding process with MindTickle’s features, like content management and customizable dashboards for team members, businesses can focus more on lead generation and closing deals while easily tracking KPIs.
Best Video Communication Tools
In the dynamic digital landscape of 2023, two tools stand out in video communication – Dubb and Drift. These platforms empower teams to streamline personalized video messaging at scale and track engagement metrics for effective follow-ups.
Dubb
Dubb is a comprehensive video sales system that allows businesses to improve content creation, client trust, and sales processes. With its ability to attract your ideal client profile through value-driven video email, SMS, LinkedIn, and website communication, Dubb brings the personal touch back to your entire sales process for more connections, conversations, and conversions.
Key Features
- Improve Content Creation: Attract your ideal client profile with value-driven video email, SMS, LinkedIn, and website communication.
- Improve Client Trust: Do more than screen text. Create a visual connection that elicits emotion and demand for your offerings.
- Improve Sales Process: Simplify and scale with best-in-class sales practices like video, automation, and client journey tracking.
Whether you’re just starting or have an established business, Dubb’s pricing plans offer options for every budget, from free plans to advanced enterprise-level features.
Drift
Drift’s Conversation Cloud is a platform that helps your marketing, sales, and customer teams easily connect with customers through conversations that build trust and grow revenue. With its advanced automation features, Drift can help sellers create customized video sequences and follow-ups that drive results.
Key Features
- Conversational Marketing: Engage with every website visitor on their terms.
- Conversational Sales: Build a more quality pipeline with qualified buyers.
- Conversational Service: Deliver support experiences that reduce the burden on your team and delight your customers.
Businesses can optimize their workflows and save valuable time by integrating tools like Drift with a CRM system such as SFDC or HubSpot.
My current favorite tool
ChatGPT
ChatGPT is a game-changer for sales professionals. It’s not just about saving time, it’s about scaling your efforts. With ChatGPT, you can draft more emails, write more content, and reach more prospects in less time. It’s like having a personal assistant that never sleeps. The AI can generate persuasive sales copy, follow-up emails, and even content for your website or blog. This allows you to be more productive, focusing on closing deals rather than writing. It also ensures consistency in your communication, which is key in maintaining a professional image. In a fast-paced sales environment, ChatGPT can be the tool that gives you the edge.
How To Choose The Right Sales Productivity Tools For Your Business
To ensure you’re making the most of your investment in these productivity options, take some time to assess your needs and goals, evaluate compatibility with existing systems, consider scalability and ease of use, and determine pricing options – read on for more tips!
Identify Needs And Goals
Before choosing any product for your business, it’s essential to identify your needs and goals. Ask yourself what areas of your sales process could use improvement and what outcomes you hope to achieve with the right tools.
For example, suppose you need help with a scattered CRM system or chaotic communication channels among team members. In that case, a project management tool like Asana or Monday.com may be the right choice for streamlining processes and increasing collaboration.
By identifying precise needs and goals beforehand, you can ensure that anything you choose aligns with your company’s unique challenges and objectives. This maximizes ROI and helps save time on products that don’t address key pain points within your sales process.
Evaluate Compatibility With Existing Systems
It’s crucial to consider compatibility when choosing solutions for your business. Switching between apps can be time-consuming and may disrupt workflows.
Please be sure to look for tools that integrate with or complement your existing systems to minimize any potential friction.
In addition, some products offer customization features that allow you to tailor the product’s functionality to suit your specific needs. Pipedrive, for example, lets users create custom fields that match their sales process stages and deals progression.
Consider Scalability And Ease Of Use
When choosing productivity tools for your business, scalability, and ease of use are essential factors. A tool that works well for a small team may not be suitable for a larger one with more complex needs.
Ease of use is also essential since complicated systems can hinder productivity rather than boost it. If a tool requires extensive training or takes too long to set up, there may be better fits.
For example, Monday.com offers customizable templates that make starting easy without requiring extensive setup time.
By considering scalability and ease of use when selecting solutions, you can ensure your team has the right resources to work efficiently and effectively while minimizing wasted time on administrative tasks.
Assess Pricing Options
Choosing the right products for your business requires carefully evaluating pricing options and other factors. While some tools are free or charge a minimal fee, others can be expensive and may not fit your budget.
Some tools offer flexible payment plans depending on the usage or size of the business. It’s important to consider whether the app is worth its price tag based on its value and potential return on investment.
For example, while Salesforce might be more expensive than other CRM options, its extensive features and capabilities could justify its cost for more prominent businesses needing robust solutions to manage their sales pipelines efficiently.
According to essential facts, choosing appropriate productivity software can save up to 5+ hours per week in administrative work while reducing lead processing time by 30-50%.
Conclusion
In 2023, these tools will continue to play a crucial role in boosting efficiency and streamlining processes. We’ve explored the top categories of devices, from time tracking and accountability to project management, communication, collaboration, training, lead generation, and sales intelligence.
With so many powerful options at your fingertips, including Toggl for time tracking or Zoom for communication & collaboration – there’s no excuse not to take advantage of these valuable resources! By identifying your needs and goals while considering compatibility with existing systems and pricing options, you can find the perfect fit for your business.
