A starter guide to what sales tools you need

As a Business Development Representative, it’s my job to reach out to new organizations and tell them what SurveyMonkey Apply is doing in their space. Getting people engaged and excited about my company draws in new opportunities to expand our reach.

When I started in this role however, I was a recent graduate making my way into the software sales market. I felt like a small fish in a big pond filled with theories on sales best practices, tools, and methods all promising to ensure my success in the trade.

Despite my efforts to hit the ground running, I quickly learned that no matter how you sell the product, your strategy is only as good as the sales technology you use to implement that strategy. The sales technology stack we have created at SurveyMonkey Apply allows me to execute on my strategy and stay a few steps ahead of the competition-and even ahead of myself.

These sales tools help me to stay on top of new business and craft a strategic process that saves me hours of time.

Time-Saving Sales Tools to Help Achieve Peak Sales Productivity

Data Management

There are a lot of moving parts to the sales process; from prospecting and discussion to final closing documents and making the sale. Keeping track of prospects and opportunities is crucial to a smooth sales process, and allows each rep to stay on top of the information they need to engage with new and continuing business.

Salesforce

As a multi-platform organization that constantly shares contacts and data across multiple global teams, Salesforce has been a critical component of how we manage sales at SurveyMonkey. Salesforce makes it easy to see what everyone else in the organization is doing, from prospecting to closing off the sale, and allows you to easily pass leads through the funnel.

At the same time, Salesforce allows you to integrate with other tools such as Marketo, LinkedIn and Outreach so that there’s not too much heavy lifting when you reach out to a new prospect. Having all the information you need in one central view saves time and ensures consistency across all tools.

Prospect Intelligence and Engagement

In tandem with Salesforce; Marketo and Outreach play a big part in prospect intelligence, nurture and engagement. The benefit of having these three tools work together is the ability to help the sales team organize and manage their prospect touch points so that each outreach is calculated.

Marketo

Amongst other functions, Marketo helps keep track of how long an account has been stagnant for, and can send nurture emails to your prospects if it seems like they’re going dark. This allows for efficient marketing automation.

Outreach

What Marketo does for your marketing automation, Outreach does for your sales automation. Outreach helps initiate prospect engagement, and keeps you on top of each account by making sure you have scheduled outreach and multiple touch points over the lifecycle of that account. Outreach also works alongside Salesforce to keep data consistent across platforms, and offers a Google Chrome extension to streamline engagement.

With Outreach and Marketo working seamlessly alongside Salesforce, nothing goes missing and there’s no opportunity for you to miss your chance at engaging with a prospect. The tools also work together to ensure that your prospects aren’t getting sales emails and nurture emails, for a more seamless user experience.

At the same time, Outreach and Salesforce allow you to sync up with your LinkedIn profile to make sure that you can reach prospects from every angle.

Peak Sales Productivity Tools

Outbound sales take time, and when that time is spent effectively it can be used to maximize sales productivity and drive numbers forward.

Snippets by Outreach

Outreach also saves me time by allowing me to ‘shorthand’ phrases that I use frequently in my emails, such as “thanks for taking the time to speak with me today.” This feature can be used to expand phrases and ensure that you’re not wasting time in your day-to-day reach outs.

PointDrive

Getting personalized materials out to prospects in a fun, attractive way is also a huge part of interacting with your target audience. It can also be a roadblock for many sales teams who struggle to easily find and utilize the resources they have. PointDrive allows you to quickly create engaging content using your current in-house resources like videos and one-pagers. It saves time that would normally be used in a more manual software, and allows you to get personalized content out to prospects fast.

As you can see, it takes a village! What sales tools can you not live without? Let me know in the comments; I'm always looking for good tips.