A great sales team can make or break a business. Effective sales connect people with your products and services, convert new leads to paying customers, and secure long-term loyalty.

Equipping your sales team with the right tools can translate into higher sales, and higher profitability. For example, productivity tools can simplify or even automate repetitive & tedious tasks, letting you get more work done quickly.

But with hundreds of sales tools in the market today, where do you even start selecting the right ones? The simple answer is: right here!

This guide provides a roundup of some of the top Software as a Service (SaaS) tools and technologies to improve sales productivity and engagement. Dive in!

What are sales tools?

Sales tools are applications, frameworks, and technologies that help salespeople close deals more quickly and efficiently. Think of them as trusty sidekicks for sales representatives which assist them in reaching their targets, crushing their quotas, and making bank.

What are the different types of sales tools?

There are many different types of sales tools that salespeople can use to improve their performance and close more deals. Here are some of the most common ones:

1. Customer relationship management (CRM) software: This type of software helps salespeople manage their leads, contacts, and deals in one place.
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2. Sales automation tools: These tools can automate repetitive tasks like sending follow-up emails, scheduling meetings, and updating contact information.
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3. Sales analytics tools: These tools help salespeople track their performance metrics like win rates, deal velocity, and pipeline health.
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4. Social media tools: These tools can help salespeople find and connect with prospects on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
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5. Virtual meeting platforms: These tools allow salespeople to connect with prospects and clients remotely through video conferencing.
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6. Sales methodologies: These are structured approaches to selling that provide salespeople with frameworks for conducting conversations and negotiations.
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7. Sales enablement tools: These tools provide salespeople with the content and resources they need to sell effectively, like pitch decks, case studies, and product demos.

By using these different types of sales tools, salespeople can streamline their workflows, improve their communication with prospects, and ultimately close more deals.

Recommended reading: Top advice for SDRs from sales leaders

Why use sales tools?

Sales automation technology can simplify a lot of different tasks associated with sales work, including customer relationship management (CRM), sales forecasting, market intelligence, and analytics.

By making these tasks easier and less time-consuming, these tools free up salespeople's time for more complex duties — like winning over potential clients. This improves sales cycle efficiency and effectiveness.

For example, take a task like sending out sales pitches for a marketing campaign via email. A customer support tool can help salespeople create and save ready-made email templates, saving time and effort. The tool can also track when initial emails are sent and provide notifications to remind salespeople to follow up. This ensures leads don't fall through the cracks.

Plus, the sales CRM tool can store data about specific customers, like what they've ordered in the past and when they ordered it. This can be useful for salespeople looking to make a pitch and close a deal — and it improves the customer experience.

Recommended resource: 11 cold email templates that will get you more leads instantly

This is just one example of sales-related processes becoming more efficient and easy through sales management software. The list below covers some of the best sales tools and can give you a better idea of the many ways technology can make life easier for sales individuals and teams.

12 top sales tools for boosting sales productivity & driving revenue

Improve your sales productivity with these technologies. They'll make day-to-day tasks easier for sales reps, helping them stay happy and focused on the job — which likely means more sales for the company!

1. HubSpot—The CRM tool the industry swears by

HubSpot is a CRM software that takes care of tedious tasks like email tracking, document management, and call tracking. It can also automate sales tasks, like sending follow-up emails. Here are some of the reasons salespeople love HubSpot:

• Generate email campaign templates for sales pitches, which you can personalize using key customer data
• Capture details of sales calls to get insights into what does and doesn't work when converting clients
• Manage both email and telephone sales in a single automation tool, covering every step of the sales pipeline

2. Yesware—Your go-to sales engagement platform

Yesware is a productivity platform designed especially for salespeople. It helps speed up email outreach with automated templates, email tracking, and follow-up. It also provides data on your success stories and failures, so you can improve in the future. Here are some key perks:

• Get metrics (like when people read, click, or open email attachments) and use analytics spreadsheets to see which emails are generating leads and conversions 
• Save top-performing emails as templates for you and others on your team to use
• Integrate the tool with your Microsoft Outlook or Gmail account for easy tracking

3. OSlash text expander—Automate sales messaging & access sales resources instantly

Whether B2C or B2B sales, a sales job is largely about information sharing. OSlash simplifies the information-sharing process by transforming complex links and frequently typed text (snippets) into easy and unique shortcuts. Perks include:

• Replace URLs for your sales collateral with OSlash shortcuts. Find sales plans, OKRs, proposals, contracts, and more at your fingertips
• Create shortcuts that expand into full-text instantly. Automate your repetitive typing for faster outreach and deal closure
• Templatize frequent cold emails, follow-up emails, and other sales communication instead of retyping them from scratch for each prospect
• Keep shortcuts organized by grouping them in collections with set tags

Recommended reading: Using a text expander to simplify sales communications & CRM success

4. Hunter – Your go-to sales outreach platform

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Hunter is a complete sales outreach platform that helps you succeed with outbound sales through email. It helps you find valid email addresses from your prospects, build lead lists based on engagement, craft personalized cold email campaigns, measure performance, and manage all inboxes from one dashboard. Here are some key perks: 

• Integrate Hunter with CRMs such as Hubspot and Pipedrive and automation tools such as Zapier that enable integrations with hundreds of tools.
• Finding and verifying emails in bulk saves time, especially if you work on large prospect lists.
• Save top-performing email sequences as templates and let your team use them.
• Measure the performance of your email campaigns and manage all inboxes from a unified dashboard. 
• Build lead lists and segment your leads based on engagement with your campaigns.

5. Calendly—The scheduling tool your salespeople need

Meetings are a huge part of any sales job — informational meetings, follow-up meetings, training meetings, etc. The list is neverending! Keeping track of all those appointments is tough. Busy salespeople can use Calendly to make appointment scheduling less of a headache. Here's how:

• Create a simple, sharable link to a calendar tool with your availability, so people can schedule meetings in a free slot
• Sync Calendly with your digital calendar, so booked meetings are automatically added to the agenda
• Schedule diverse meetings, including individual, group, and multi-host meetings — all without endless email communications

6. Zoom—Video conferencing made simple

These days, sales meetings don't have to be face-to-face. Zoom's video conferencing tool makes it easy to hold remote sales and informational calls, saving sales teams hours of commute time. Here's why Zoom has won over sales teams:

• Zoom whiteboards offer a collective space where people can visually brainstorm ideas together using a virtual whiteboard
• Zoom lends itself to many meeting types, including one-on-one calls, group calls, webinars, tutorials, virtual events, and more
• Zoom IQ allows sales teams to gather sales call data, transforming conversions into actionable insights you can use to improve future sales

7. LinkedIn Sales Solutions—Get sales intelligence served on a platter

LinkedIn is no longer just a professional networking platform! LinkedIn's Sales Navigator tool is a sales intelligence platform that lets sales pros quickly target potential leads, understand consumer behavior, and engage with promising potential customers via InMail. Perks include:

• Access LinkedIn's extended global network of decision-makers, getting unlimited searches with advanced options like region, industry, seniority, etc.
• Use Sales Spotlights, which automatically flag potentially useful search results for you
• Track people and companies automatically and get real-time alerts when changes occur

8. Proposify—Automate sales proposals like a pro

You must complete a proposal before closing a sales deal. Proposify helps design and manage proposals, ensuring consistency. Use the tool to create, send, and track proposals, simplifying the process needed to close deals. Here's how salespeople benefit:

• Create error-free, interactive quotes for potential customers
• Ramp up the sales cycle by automating tasks like proposal generation and electronic signature functionality
• Create consistent contracts and cover all the key points needed to seal the deal

9. LeadIQ—Simplify outbound sales prospecting

Prospecting for leads is one of the most time-consuming parts of sales. LeadIQ simplifies outbound sales prospecting by recording contact information in one click. It eliminates busywork by automatically completing prospect profiles, so you can prioritize qualified leads — and approach them with a personal touch. Here are some of the advantages of the prospecting tools:

• Streamline the prospecting workflow by quickly capturing comprehensive data about new sales leads, allowing for easy prioritization within your list of sales contacts
• Use the analytics dashboard to monitor salespeople's activity according to details like region and title
• Integrate with lead generation tools like Salesforce, avoiding repetitive data entry

Recommended resource: 50 cold email subject lines your prospects will actually click

10. Dialpad—The sales communication hub for your team

Sales is all about communication — both internally within teams and externally with customers. Dialpad brings both worlds together, providing one central hub for team member and customer communications. Other perks include:

• Leverage artificial intelligence to finetune sales outreach
• Choose from various communication channels, including voice, video, and chat
• Benefit from Dialpad versions for niche industries, like health care and real estate, catering to large and small businesses alike

11. PandaDoc—An all-in-one solution for e-signatures

The final stage of the sales funnel: Getting the customer's signature on the dotted line! PandaDoc makes this last hurdle even easier, offering an all-in-one tool for creating, editing, and signing documents. You can easily edit contracts in the cloud with no back-and-forth emails needed. You'll also love these advantages:

• Capture legally binding e-signatures securely and conveniently
• Duplicate existing workflows to create, send, and track documents in a simplified approvals process
• Leverage API integrations to quickly merge your data with ready-made templates, creating personalized documents fast

12. Salesforce—The household name for CRM software

Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM tool that comes with seemingly limitless features to help businesses succeed by lowering the cost and effort involved in customer service. Major perks are:

• Real-time insights to help businesses track customer behavior, monitor sales performance, and identify areas for improvement
• Peerless workflow automation that allows sales reps to automate many repetitive tasks, such as sending emails, creating reports, and updating records
• Highly customizable and scalable

Recommended reading: The ultimate guide to Salesforce automation using a text expander

This list serves only as a starting point while you go shopping for the best sales tools for your team. It is by no means exhaustive. If you're looking for a handy checklist that will help you choose the right sales tools for yourself, take a look at the section below.

How to choose the best sales tools for your company?

Choosing the right sales tools can be a daunting task, but here are some key factors to consider:

1. Identify your specific needs: Start by understanding what challenges you are trying to solve and what processes you need to optimize. For example, if you're struggling with lead management, a CRM tool may be a good fit.
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2. Consider your team's workflows: Look at how your sales team operates and what tools will fit best with their existing workflows. Make sure the tool you choose is easy to use and integrates well with your existing tech stack.
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3. Think about scalability: Choose a tool that can grow with your business and adapt to changing needs. Consider the costs of scaling up or down and how easy it is to add or remove users.
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4. Check for compatibility: Make sure the tool you choose is compatible with your existing software and systems. Check for potential conflicts and ensure that the tool is secure and compliant with any regulations.
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5. Read reviews and get feedback: Do your research by reading reviews and getting feedback from other sales professionals. Look for testimonials from companies that are similar to yours to see how they have benefited from the tool.

By considering these factors, you can choose the right sales tools that will improve your sales processes, streamline your workflows, and ultimately help you drive higher revenue and profits.

Find sales assets instantly & automate frequent sales messaging with OSlash text expander

Salespeople need to be "on" all the time. For example, if a customer asks for an informational link, you don't want to waste time hunting it down. And of course you don't want to spend the better part of your day typing the same cold email for the hundredth time.

In both the scenarios, OSlash is the answer. It will help you get things done in seconds, not hours. completely eliminating such busywork that comes in the way of actually making that sale!

This tool creates easy-to-remember and simple-to-share links in a snap. Our intelligent browser extensions for Chrome, Safari, Brave, Firefox, or Edge allow users to transform any URL into a simple, intuitive shortcut. Handy OSlash sales shortcuts include o/sales-plan, o/playbook, o/leads, o/demo, and o/contracts, to name just a few. And don't forget o/wins for sharing sales team success stories to keep people inspired!

Plus, you can quickly search all your apps to find the content you need to share with co-workers and customers. The last thing you want in the middle of a sales call is to be fumbling trying to remember a link. Trust OSlash to help you connect others with the page you need in a fraction of a second.

Lastly, you can also use OSlash text expander to transform all your most-used snippets into automatic shortcuts. The next time you have to type the same thing out or copy-paste it, well, you don't have to. You can simply type o/cold-email, for instance, and let OSlash insert the snippet of text you saved, in a jiffy. Talk about typing superpowers, huh!