A note from the author, Adam Goldberg, SaaS software expert:
The recent studies that I’ve examined indicate a change in the way selling is done. Many research papers that I’ve analyzed in recent years suggest that businesses must rethink their value propositions, review their content, and engage in collaboration instead of making dry sales pitches. As a SaaS expert with more than 10 years of experience, I’ve frequently advised businesses to invest in robust sales tools not only to adapt to new methods of selling but also to automate sales tasks and more accurately track and analyze sales performance. In this guide, I’m sharing the results of my research into the topic and an in-depth analysis of tons of professional sources and academic data that resulted in a list of 15 best sales software, emphasizing each tool’s features and benefits to help you make the best choice for your business.
Best Sales Software Systems for Businesses Table of Contents
The pandemic has effectively left businesses’ sales pipeline all dried up as can be seen from the drop in global retail sales. But this doesn’t mean the end for sales. There are a variety of sales tactics that companies could adopt in this age of the COVID pandemic. For example, upselling to existing clients can boost revenues while experimenting with the content of cold email scripts can increase open rates.
Moreover, recent sales software statistics show that companies are getting in the game of aligning both marketing and sales teams. This way, they can make sure both these essential functions are on the same page. And, this is really hard to do without a digital platform to help people be on the same page.
Source: statista.com
1. HubSpot Sales Hub
HubSpot Sales Hub is one of the top customer relationship management (CRM) systems in the market today. It is an easy-to-use platform that has everything you need to scope potential leads, reach out to customers, and keep track of your engagements.
Sales reps can take advantage of its innovative features such as lead management and reporting, email templates, and call tracking. HubSpot AI also helps in writing personalized emails and setting up various automation for repetitive tasks.
HubSpot Sales Hub is suitable for any business of all sizes. Those new to CRMs can try out the Free version first, equipped with all the basic features. There are also various premium versions to choose from, such as the Starter plan which costs $18 per month, the Professional plan at $450 per month, and the Enterprise plan at $1,500 per month.
Detailed HubSpot Sales Hub Review
Key Features of HubSpot Sales
- Lead management and prospecting
- Email templates and tracking
- Sales automation
- Call tracking
- HubSpot AI
- Meeting scheduler
- Deal pipelines
- Sales analytics and reporting
- Forecasting
- Quote software
2. Sales Creatio
Sales Creatio, formerly known as bpm’online, is a sales software that helps small to midsize businesses accelerate their sales cycle. It combines CRM functionalities with sales automation and lead management features, allowing you to deliver efficient service throughout the entire customer journey. As a low-code sales platform, Sales Creatio also offers you the ability to setup and automate your own workflow and optimize your business processes with little to no technical experience.
Sales Creatio also allows you to align and accelerate sales, marketing, and customer service activities in a unified sales management platform. It has powerful lead management tools that enable you to capture and manage leads from a wide range of sources. Using Creatio’s built-in best practices sales processes, you can effectively manage sales opportunities and close deals faster.
In addition, Sales Creatio offers order management and invoicing to help you manage your products and take full control over payment processes through a single platform. The software allows you to expedite all order management processes within the platform, such as scheduling supplies and payments, approval of orders, and issuing invoices.
Detailed Sales Creatio Review
Key Features of Sales Creatio
- Lead Management
- Opportunity Management
- Product Management
- Project Management
- Mobile Sales
- Field Sales Management
- System Designer
- Knowledge Management
- Orders and Invoices
- Collaboration Tools
3. ConnectWise Manage
ConnectWise Manage has also made it to this list because it is highly regarded by its users. While it is largely regarded as a project management software, it is much capable of allowing marketing and sales teams to oversee their tasks. Indeed, this makes the platform beneficial because it paves the way for seamless interdepartmental collaboration.
As a result, organizations can have clear lines of communication. Thus, they can be efficient in attending to their customers’ needs. But that is not all. ConnectWise Manage has a powerful reporting suite that gives businesses the insights they need to be successful in their enterprises.
Detailed Connectwise PSA Review
Key Features of ConnectWise Manage
- Account Management
- Help Desk
- Time Tracking and Billing
- Project Management
- Sales Management
- Marketing Management
- Agreements
- Expert Directory
- Automated Responses
- Reporting
4. Pipedrive
Pipedrive offers flexible pricing packages for companies of any size. There is also a handy free trial you can use to check if the software suits your needs.
What makes Pipedrive one of the best sales software solutions in the market? To start with, it offers a user-friendly interface and provides a clear overview of the sales pipeline. Your company’s sales professionals are sure to love the system because it has a sales pipeline methodology built into it. The platform shows your deals in their different stages, which helps you to track your team’s progress and identify the deals that need to be pushed. You can also track each rep’s progress as well as deals offered to leads.
Pipedrive stands out from other sales software because you can use it as your personal sales manager to select the right deals and activities to concentrate on. For this reason, the tool is a big boon to sales managers and business owners. You can use the system’s Timeline View to identify promising leads and close more deals. Plus, the app is highly secure and is used by thousands of customers around the world. The vendor offers nightly backups in multiple secure locations as well as robust hosting infrastructure.
Detailed Pipedrive Review
Key Features of Pipedrive
- Sales Pipeline View
- Workflow Automation
- Lead Generation Tools
- Product Feature
- Scheduler
- Full Customization
- Sales Reporting
- Email Tracking
- Contact History
- Built-In Caller
5. Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM is one of the most popular business solutions used by companies of all sizes across industries. This is because it integrates the deeply-connected functions of sales, CRM, and marketing in one platform. Its key modules include those for managing leads, accounts, follow-ups, workflows, and sales. It also has great features for productivity management and reporting.
Moreover, the product, as its name suggests, has a robust CRM module covering different channels, including social CRM, mobile CRM, and CRM on Google Apps. This way, customers can easily connect with the company on any of their preferred channels.
The platform also offers powerful automation tools, including those for report generation. These include pipeline analysis, quota management, real-time forecasting, and competitive analysis. All these features are fitted in an easy-to-use interface.
Furthermore, you can manage your work on the go, thanks to Zoho CRM mobile apps for Android and iOS devices. Moreover, it features more than 400 integrations and extensions, especially with other Zoho products. External integrations include those with Microsoft Office 365, Shopify, and PayPal. Premium plans start at $18 per user per month.
Detailed Zoho CRM Review
Key Features of Zoho CRM
- Salesforce Automation
- Lead Management
- Pipeline and Competitive Analyses
- Account Management
- CRM Workflow Management
- Sales Opportunity Management
- Agreements
- Expert Directory
- Automated Responses
- Reporting
6. LeadSquared Sales + Mobile CRM
LeadSquared helps businesses streamline their sales processes. Its extensive sales pipeline management, lead tracking, and customer engagement tools make it a distinct sales proposition. LeadSquared enables companies to create custom workflows, automate sales and marketing operations, and track team performance in real-time.
LeadSquared offers a wide range of sales pipeline management solutions. Examples include lead generation and management, marketing automation, analytics and reporting, and integrations with Mailchimp, Salesforce, and Google Ads. The platform’s user-friendly interface assists businesses in launching and scaling CRM initiatives.
The pricing flexibility of LeadSquared is a significant benefit. The platform’s pricing tiers are appropriate for small to medium-sized businesses. Basic, Standard, Professional, and Ultimate programs are available to businesses. LeadSquared is also available to businesses for free.
Finally, LeadSquared easily integrates with popular third-party apps to improve sales processes. It integrates with Salesforce, Zoho, Mailchimp, HubSpot, and Marketo. Businesses can use LeadSquared’s open API to integrate their custom apps.
Detailed LeadSquared Sales + Mobile CRM Review
Key Features of LeadSquared
- Mobile CRM
- Sales Automation
- Sales Tracking
- Sales Execution
- Lead Tracking
- Lead Qualification
- Lead Distribution
- Email Integration
- Contact Management
- List Management
7. Pipeliner CRM
Pipeliner CRM combines sales and CRM functionalities in one simple, easy-to-use solution to help businesses manage their sales processes more efficiently. Built with a sales-friendly interface, the software empowers sales representatives with the right tools and assets to support their interactions with customers and prospects. Its main features include lead management, opportunity tracking, sales performance management, and collaboration and productivity tools.
With Pipeliner, you can manage and organize your sales processes in a breeze. It lets you create as many sales pipelines as necessary, enabling you to keep track of all the stages in your workflow, from prospecting and lead nurturing to tracking opportunities and mapping out sales-related tasks. Pipeliner also provides AI-generated insights and guidance to help your sales team better understand and evaluate the quality of your leads.
Detailed Pipeliner Review
Key Features of Pipeliner CRM
- Social Selling
- Buying Center
- Document Management
- Contact Management
- Dynamic Target
- Account Hierarchies
- Multiple Pipelines
- Various Pipeline Views
- Template Designer for Forms
- Bulk Updates
8. Ortto
Ortto is a marketing automation platform with an extensive list of features for streamlining sales and marketing workflows. One of the most useful features of the platform is that it unifies customer data from sales, customer support, marketing, and CRM software. With all customer data on one platform, sales and marketing teams can easily personalize customer journeys.
Ortto allows users to build customer segments through any combination of event-based, transactional, and demographic customer data. These segments are automatically updated over time so sales teams can focus on more important tasks.
Moreover, Ortto comes with various features to help sales teams capture and nurture leads. Through the software, users can create engaging pop-ups, surveys, forms, and spin wheels to collect information from site visitors. Users can also created automated workflows for following up on leads.
Detailed Ortto Review
Key Features of Ortto
- Audience segmentation
- Visual customer journey builder
- Lead generation
- Lead capture
- Lead scoring
- Sales dashboards
- BI reporting
- Customer data platform
- Marketing and sales playbooks
- No-code integrations
9. EngageBay
Next on our list is EngageBay, an all-in-one marketing and sales platform that’s perfect for small and medium businesses. It offers a powerful sales automation tool that streamlines your processes and creates intelligent email sequences, landing pages, and forms. It also simplifies contact management, giving you a complete view of your leads, clients, and companies all in one place.
Another nifty feature is the lead nurturing tool, which helps you turn interested leads into buying customers. By using personalized emails, creating a discount system and offering freebies, you have greater chances of retaining loyal customers. Moreover, a predictive lead scoring easily parses through various data points and predefined scoring criteria to automatically identify valuable and qualified leads.
Detailed EngageBay Review
Key Features of EngageBay
- Sales and Marketing Automation
- Email Marketing
- Autoresponders
- Simple Designer
- Segmentation
- Analytics
- Deals
- Appointments
- Proposals
- Live Chat
10. CrankWheel
CrankWheel is a specialized screen-sharing sales software tool. It is mainly used by B2B sales professionals to present technical details remotely. It is a go-to product in the web service industry. Its screen-sharing capability is very robust. Sales leaders can share their screens with prospects via desktop, laptops, and even mobile. Moreover, the product even works over bad connections, unpopular devices, including old browsers.
The web-based product also has high out-of-the-box usability. Its easy-to-use interface ensures sales teams will only have to practice and perfect their pitch and not flounder around using the tool.
It also includes a widget for instant demos where users can add a “Call Me Now” button on their websites to connect prospects with agents directly. Moreover, it has a remote control function that is useful for providing prospective clients with first-hand experience of your web service.
The product integrates seamlessly with other platforms, including Salesforce and Zapier. Moreover, it offers multiple API options to allow users to connect CrankWheel with other solutions. The software provider offer a free plan supporting unlimited users with a maximum of 15 meetings per month. The lowest-tiered plan supporting 100 meetings per month costs $89 monthly.
Detailed CrankWheel Review
Key Features of CrankWheel
- Screen Sharing
- Instant Demos
- Remote Control Access
- Personal Branding
- Custom Domain Name
- Usage Reports
- Content Filter
- Public Links to Meetings
- Restricted Sharing
- Audit Log
11. Clickpoint (SalesExec)
Clickpoint, formerly SalesExec, is an all-in-one sales lead management software and communications platform popularly used in call centers, travel, home services, franchise, and mortgage industries. It supplies sales professionals in these industries with tools to better engage prospects and loyal paying clients.
These tools include an outbound dialing module with the option to leave pre-recorded voicemails. Moreover, it also comes with a local presence feature. Other key features include automated lead prioritization and real-time actionable reporting. It also has a Text SMS communication center that allows sales teams to engage clients and prospects on mobile.
The product has a free trial available so you can check out how its features can help your sales team and also get a first-hand experience of the usability of its interface. Moreover, the product is also available via its native apps for Android and iOS devices. Thanks to its API, it works very well with other business solutions, including LendingTree and Zillow. Pricing starts at $450 a month for teams of five users.
Detailed SalesExec Review
Key Features of Clickpoint
- Power Dialing
- Local Presence
- Pull Lead Dialer
- Sales Script
- Call Recordings
- Lead Management
- Text SMS
- Detailed Reports
- Email Marketing
- Call Routing
12. DejaOffice
DejaOffice PC CRM is an integrated CRM and sales solution flexible enough to be used in sales for a wide variety of industries. The product is only available via on-premise deployment but it syncs with its native mobile apps so you can take it on the go.
Its key features include contact management, task management, deal management, and expense tracking. The product is only available via on-premise deployment. It also has communication tools with history logs so agents can always be in the right context with every client. Other features include smartphone dialing and query filter.
The product integrates with other business solutions including Outlook, Goldmine, Exchange, and Salesforce. It is available via one-time payment plans starting at $49.95.
Detailed DejaOffice Review
Key Features of DejaOffice
- Contact Management
- Deal Management
- Task Management
- Interactive Calendar
- Communication History
- Mobile App Sync
- Smartphone Dialing
- Expense Tracking
- USB, Bluetooth, and Cloud Support
- Color-Coded Profiles
13. Salesforce CRM
Salesforce CRM is an award-winning B2C CRM solution. It is easy to understand why: the platform unifies customer data and interactions to allow quick access to pertinent information. Because of this, marketers and sales representatives alike can make data-based decisions. Thus, they can be more effective in attracting new customers and in converting more leads.
At the same time, Salesforce CRM offers a complete overview of an agent’s or team’s productivity. This is because it has a customizable dashboard that allows a representative to measure his or her own performance. It also enables a team manager to determine whether they are underutilizing assets.
Detailed Salesforce CRM Review
Key Features of Salesforce CRM
- Account and Contact Management
- Sales Data
- Opportunity Management and Score
- Lead Management
- Visual Workflow
- Web-to-Lead Capture
- Process Builder
- Case Management
- Real-Time Visibility
- Collaboration Tools
14. Salesmate
This all-in-one CRM solution is designed to help small businesses and startups grow their sales without the tough learning curve common with other similar apps. Salesmate provides businesses with robust tools and a user-friendly platform for managing contacts, the sales pipeline, productivity, sales goals, and more. With Salesmate, you can directly communicate with prospects, leads, and existing customers using its built-in phone system. You can also record calls and voicemails for quality checking and coaching purposes.
Salesmate also helps keep your operations efficient by giving you automation options that you can customize based on your workflow and how you conduct sales. Keeping up with your team members’ productivity is also easier as you have a complete view of not only every stage of the sales pipeline but also their email communications with contacts and customers via shared inbox. If you are using other email services like Gmail or Outlook, Salesmate allows for the two-way synchronization of emails, so you can stay up-to-date with what’s going on even when using your preferred email service provider.
This CRM solution supports third-party integration with more than 100 applications, including G Suite, Slack, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, Shopify, Invoice Ninja, and more. And if you are using an app that is not included in its extensive list of integrations, you can take advantage of Salesmate’s public APIs to facilitate efficient integration.
Detailed Salesmate Review
Key Features of Salesmate
- Sales Pipeline
- Goal Tracking
- Product Management
- Sales Workflow Automation
- Deal Management
- Data Entry Automation
- Deal Management
- Team Inbox
- Sales Forecasting
- Google CRM
15. Freshsales
Freshsales from Freshworks is a top end-to-end sales system that is mainly valued for providing context-driven sales capabilities to their clients. The platform does not only offer users the chance to personalize engagement but also have a 360-degree view of their sales operations. In fact, its analytics module can rival the best standalone business intelligence tools for small businesses.
End-to-end modules include those for managing contacts, leads, accounts, marketing lists, tasks, time-based workflows, and many more. It also provides companies the chance to set up a seamless omnichannel backend that covers channels like cloud telephony, emails, and chats. The product is also highly customizable. You can set your own workflow rules and automations like chat auto-resolve parameters.
Moreover, Freshsales is also available via its native applications for iOS and Android devices. It also integrates with other systems, especially the Freshworks suite, including Freshdesk. It also works seamlessly with other applications like Google Apps, Zapier, and Slack.
Freshsales has a free plan, which costs nothing forever. Paid plans start at $18 per user per month. Annual plans have discounts.
Detailed Freshsales Review
Key Features of Freshsales
- Contact and Account Management
- Behavioral Segmentation
- Lead Management
- Visual Sales Pipeline
- Sales Goals
- Product Catalog
- Built-In Phone and Chat
- Chat Assignment Rules
- Email Scheduling
- Follow-Up Tasks and Appointments
Which sales software product is the best fit for you?
When it comes to the best sales platform that integrates with other key business functions, HubSpot Sales Hub is our leading choice. It has a comprehensive set of features including predictive contact scoring, activity timeline, sales goals setting, collaboration tools, document creation, lead management, and so much more. In fact, it is a sales, CRM, and marketing software solution rolled into one. And, for salespeople-driven organizations, this just might be the best software solution around.
However, being the best when it comes to feature comprehensiveness is enough. The software product you should choose should be the one that best fits your company and your needs. For instance, if you are in the manufacturing business, Katana could be a great solution. With its end-to-end production to sales management features, it just might be the central hub that your business needs. Or, if you prefer an open-source platform that is highly customizable, then you should look more into vtenext.
Moreover, there are different types of sales solutions and you can stack them together to expand your service capabilities. For instance, if you are in the web service industry, you can use Pipeliner CRM for lead and team management but also use CrankWheel for powerful on-the-spot screen sharing for demos with client remote control capabilities. This way, you won’t just have the tools to manage your sales processes but provide your salespeople with unique tools that could better engage your prospects giving you a competitive edge.
The best way to understand how this works is the be up to date with sales software trends. By being in the know, you will have a general idea of the best practices in using sales platforms and the direction as to how new technologies will better enhance the sales process.
I am in the process of developing my first online business. This article was very helpful but I feel the need to see some of these programs in a trial format or have a meeting with other business they are successfully working for. A guide for amateur online commerce may be helpful. Could someone kindly advise me towards a good guide?
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