5 Sales Tools Your Team Needs in 2022
Effective sales teams function like a well-oiled machine and like any machine, how well it works is down to how efficient and productive each component is. If one piece of your sales machine isn't working, then the entire sales process is impacted.
67% of sales teams today are using over 5 sales tools in their stack, but how do you choose the right ones for your team?
Luckily, at Lead Onion, we know a thing or two about helping sales teams smash targets with tech. We've broken down the types of tools modern sales teams need & some of our favorites in each category.
Benefits of using Sales Tools
Why should your business be using sales tools today? Here are 3 reasons why technology helps sales:
1) Close more deals – LinkedIn’s 2021 State of Sales Global report found that sales tech helps 94% of sellers win more deals.
2) Be more efficient – A whopping 21% of sales people's time is spent on tasks that aren't sales-related. For context, there are 260 working days in 2022, which means 55 days a year are being spent on tasks that don't create revenue. Sales technology helps to reduce the time sales teams spend on tasks that don't contribute to revenue.
3) Target the right accounts – Getting your sales team in front of leads that need what you sell is a surefire way to increase win rates, deal sizes & morale.
What makes a great stack?
No, we're not talking pancakes. Your tech stack is the combination of tools your teams are using to do their job. A great sales stack makes sales teams more efficient, faster & ultimately, able to win more deals. So what does a good sales stack look like? We break that down below.
1) CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Software
A CRM is where all of your customer & contact data lives. It's the repository for all of the interactions that take place between your business and your customers. It's also often where your sales team lives. From logging deal updates, forecasting future revenue, tracking progress towards targets, and managing your day – a CRM is crucial for any sales team. So crucial in fact, that the UK Government has opened up a new grant to part-fund the purchase of CRM software for UK companies.
What are our favorite CRMs?
Salesforce
The defacto CRM provider, Salesforce is the market leader in CRM software for a reason. With a robust feature set, a plethora of apps & extensions, great integration potential, and, most importantly, easy to use, Salesforce is our number 1 choice for CRM.
HubSpot
A great option for smaller companies, HubSpot's free CRM ticks a lot of boxes with neat features like managing sales tasks, scheduling meetings & integrations with Gmail or Outlook. If you are working on a tight budget, HubSpot's Free CRM might just be the ticket.
2) Sales Prospecting Software
Prospecting & sales go hand in hand, with new opportunity creation a make or break metric for sales teams.
Research by HubSpot found that 72% of companies with less than 50 new opps per month did not achieve revenue goals, while only 4% of companies that created more than 100 new opps per month missed revenue targets.
Sales prospecting software must be easy for salespeople to use, provide accurate data in a compliant way and give sales insights they can use in their outreach.
So what are our favorite sales prospecting tools?
We're glad you asked!
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
As the world's largest professional social network, there really isn't a match for LinkedIn Sales Navigator in terms of how accessible prospects are to salespeople. With more advanced filtering, search & list-building capabilities coupled with a direct way to contact new prospects via InMail it's little wonder why so many companies rate Sales Navigator so highly as a prospecting tool.
Lead Onion
Sure, we're biased – but there's a reason why we love using Lead Onion for sales prospecting. 97% accuracy on contact data, information on which technologies companies are using & a chrome extension available to pull contact information from websites or LinkedIn profiles you visit are all part and parcel of Lead Onion, plus intent data to discover accounts you should be talking to but aren't are just some of the reasons why we love Lead Onion for sales prospecting.
3) Buyer Intent Data Software
Gone are the days of the dial for dollars sales approaches, where high activity equals high results. More and more often, efficiency is the goal rather than volume when it comes to sales outreach & prospecting.
It's no surprise then that sales leaders are increasingly viewing intelligence in the form of buying intent data as crucial components of their sales strategies.
Buyer Intent Data tools help sales teams to see which companies are showing signs of potentially being in-market for a product or service. Different vendors supply intent data in different ways. Some supply what's known as 1st party data, which focuses around identifying which companies have visited your website. Others focus on 3rd party data, where they use sources not owned by you to identify companies that are searching the web for answers to the challenges and problems they face.
For more on what intent data actually is & how sales teams can use it today, check out a detailed guide on the subject here.
So what intent data software do we like here at Lead Onion?
Kickfire
A 1st party intent data provider, Kickfire helps businesses to de-anonymize their website traffic and understand which companies are visiting their website. We love their live data feeds, which give sales teams real-time insight into companies visiting their website so they can reach out before it's too late.
Leadsift
Specialists in contact-level intent data, Leadsift uses social listening technology to identify people & companies interacting with other brands on social media, attending events, or talking about certain keywords. The ability to see a build-up of social buying signals that occur towards the end of a buying cycle is one of the reasons we like Leadsift data.
Lead Onion
Maybe it's our bias talking again, but with the most complete set of intent data available inside one tool on the Market – from 1st party web traffic, 2nd party review data & 3rd party social & topic-based intent – there's no other Buyer Intent Data tool we'd rather use than Lead Onion.
.png)
With integrated B2B contact data also included, Lead Onion helps companies to not just discover the accounts they should be talking to, but to find contact information for the right people as well. Our customers agree – SecureAuth uses Lead Onion's intent data tools and generated £250,000 in 3 months! You can do it too, read about it here.
4) Sales Automation Software
Sales excellence often boils down to stellar execution of the repetitive tasks that make a deal happen. Sales Automation Software helps sales teams to mechanize the parts of the sales process that are the most repetitive and time-consuming, freeing salespeople up to focus more effort and energy on closing and getting paid!
Sales Automation Software can help to open conversations with potential prospects, send reminders about upcoming meetings or demos, send timely and impactful follow-ups and even remind reps of what they need to do next to win the deal.
We're big believers in automating at Lead Onion, and here are just a few of our favorite tools to do it.
Zapier
While not strictly a sales automation tool, Zapier is a fantastic way to connect apps that wouldn't normally talk to one another. Use a shared sales@ inbox to manage inquiries, but your team forgets to check it regularly? Use Zapier to sync Gmail to Slack, so that everyone gets notified when a new inquiry comes in via email!
DuxSoup
DuxSoup helps sales teams to automate their LinkedIn outreach strategy. Available as a simple chrome extension starting at £11.99 per month, users can create personalized InMail & connections sequences to run at scale. Profile view data can be stored, exported, and uploaded into Lead Onion to generate verified B2B email addresses and telephone numbers for the prospects you're connecting with on LinkedIn – seamlessly bringing your email, phone & LinkedIn Sales channels.
5) Scheduling Software
In today's world, the buying process needs to be made as easy as possible for prospective customers. One simple way sales teams can reduce friction is by using meeting scheduling software to make it easy to find time to meet with prospects and customers.
Scheduling software makes it easy for salespeople to share their availability with prospects, or for prospects to quickly book a call at their convenience without playing email or phone tennis to find a time that works.
Here is a handful of our favorite scheduling tools.
Bookafy
Unlike most 'free' tools on the market, Bookafy doesn't put the majority of what you need behind a paywall. For more in-depth users, paid plans are available, but their free plan offers more than any other appointment scheduling tool we've seen.
Calendly
Calendly is synonymous with appointment scheduling, and its ease of use makes it loved by over 5,000,000 users! One thing we love about Calendly is how it integrates into Gmail & Outlook – meaning you can share your availability directly into your email so prospects can book meetings without ever leaving your email.
Lead Onion empowers your sales team to identify, prioritize & connect with the accounts you should be talking to but aren't.
Sales at scale require sales teams to constantly be talking to new prospects that need what you sell. LeadOnion shines a light on the places online you can't see to find the companies you don't know about that need you.
See how it works here:
Book a demo of Lead Onion today to see:
– How sales & marketing teams are scaling lead generation without increasing spend or resources.
– A detailed report on your target markets, including a sample of companies your team should be talking to.
– Transparent pricing with a 90-day, low ticket trial.