Closing a deal involves more than just having a top-notch sales rep. For your sales rep to be truly effective, they need immediate access to the right information. This is where the right sales enablement tools and ongoing sales training, such as Gong.io, become crucial. These tools, including AI-powered machine learning technology, provide the necessary information and help streamline processes and enhance productivity, leading to greater success for both the sales and customer success teams. 

With real-time sales coaching and objection handling, AI-powered tools can also assist in identifying areas for improvement and coaching opportunities for customer success, tech support, and other customer experience teams. These tools provide valuable insights and support in real-time, making them essential for increasing close rates and revenue growth and optimizing revenue operations.

How do sales enablement tools help improve sales team performance?

Sales enablement tools help sales teams by providing resources, content, and training to enhance their sales process. These tools enable better communication, organization, and efficiency, leading to improved productivity, higher conversion rates, and ultimately increased sales performance.

What metrics can be tracked using sales enablement tools to measure success?

Metrics tracked using sales enablement tools for success include sales conversion rates, sales cycle length, content engagement, lead response time, and sales rep productivity. Monitoring these metrics helps optimize sales processes, improve customer interactions, and drive revenue growth effectively.

With the vast array of tools available, it can be daunting to determine which ones best meet your needs. But don’t worry, we’ve done the heavy lifting for you. Now, all you have to do is select the tool that aligns with your organizational goals and objectives.

It’s good to have a suite of sales enablement tools that cover various aspects of your operations, from content management to training and analytics to reporting. Such tools ensure your sales team is well-prepared, well-informed, and capable of performing at its best.

Here’s all the information you need to choose the right tool for your goals. This selection will empower your team, streamline your processes, and ultimately drive your success.

What is a sales enablement software?

To close a successful deal, it’s crucial to ensure that every stage of the sales funnel is seamlessly connected. This involves efficient communication of information and insights at various stages of the process. Sales enablement software is designed to achieve just that. These tools offer valuable insights into the entire sales process, allowing you to make adjustments as the sale progresses.

With this, you can centralize all sales-related information, providing all stakeholders and the entire sales team with real-time insights into the progress of various aspects of the sale. These tools tag each piece of sales content with details about its target buyer persona, its use case, its position, and other necessary properties, making it an essential part of sales content management and case studies for delivering relevant information and the right content to the right audience in less time. 

Additionally, Showpad Content’s advanced AI-powered recommendations engine suggests relevant content for sales reps. It helps them find the most effective content for each specific sales situation and minimizes administrative tasks, allowing them to focus on engaging more effectively with buyers and improving their overall sales performance.

Sales enablement software, such as Brainshark, facilitates sales by providing video-based coaching, practice, and assessments to certify reps’ readiness. It also provides automated scores and analysis powered by AI, including an AI Voice Generator for creating training content, allowing for better tracking of each sales team member’s progress and readiness.

How to choose the best sales enablement software?

You wouldn’t want an inefficient sales team do you? So, they need the right tool to do their jobs right. Good sales enablement tools is crucial for aligning with your organization’s goals and objectives. The choice you make is a critical part of your B2B buying process. Here’s a checklist to consider before selecting a tool, including reviewing best practices for sales engagement:

• Identify Sales Funnel Gaps: Start by pinpointing the areas where your sales funnel is failing. Are there stages where leads frequently drop off, or are certain sales processes taking longer than they should? By clearly identifying these gaps, you can focus on finding software that addresses these specific pain points, ensuring the tool you choose will effectively enhance your sales process.
• Prioritize User-Friendliness: Any new tool requires training and onboarding. Choose software with a user-friendly interface and a short adoption period. Overly complex tools with limited customization options can frustrate your team and prolong the onboarding process. Instead, opt for intuitive solutions that offer a straightforward learning curve, enabling your sales reps to quickly become proficient and productive. Additionally, check for available training resources and customer support to facilitate a smoother transition.
• Focus on Relevant Data and Analytics: Too many metrics can be overwhelming. Begin by drafting your sales enablement strategy to identify the key objectives and metrics. Then, select a tool that offers reporting and analytics aligned with these needs. Look for features such as customizable dashboards, real-time data tracking, and insights that directly relate to your sales goals. The right tool should help you make data-driven decisions without drowning you in unnecessary information.
• Ensure Scalability for Growth: As your company grows, your sales processes will evolve. Choose a tool that can scale with your company’s growth, ensuring it remains effective as your business expands. Assess whether the software can handle an increasing volume of data, users, and sales activities without compromising performance. Also, consider whether it offers advanced features that can support your future needs, such as AI-driven insights, automation capabilities, and enhanced customization.
• Seamless Integration with Existing Tech Stack: Seamless integration is essential. A good sales enablement tool should integrate smoothly with your existing tech stack, eliminating the need for manual data import or export. Verify compatibility with your CRM, email marketing platforms, and other essential software. Integration should be straightforward, minimizing disruptions and ensuring a unified workflow across all your tools. Additionally, check for API availability and the ability to synchronize data in real time.

Using this comprehensive checklist, you can make an informed decision that enhances efficiency, drives success, and supports your sales team’s performance and growth. Understanding the various categories in which these tools are segregated will also help you easily pick them out. So, let’s dive right in!

Key Account Management

Account management tools do more than just help with up-selling and cross-selling. They also play a critical role in nurturing long-term relationships with key accounts. By offering insights into client behavior and preferences, these tools allow account managers to tailor their approaches, ensuring that each interaction is personalized and relevant. Advanced account management tools also provide features like account mapping, which helps visualize relationships and hierarchies within client organizations, making it easier to identify key decision-makers and influencers.

DemandFarm

DemandFarm is one of the best sales enablement tools a specialized account planning and management tool designed to enhance key account management processes. It integrates seamlessly with Salesforce, helping organizations manage and grow their strategic accounts more effectively by providing structured methodologies and tools for account planning.

Key Features:

• Account Planning: Provides a comprehensive framework for strategic account planning, including tools for mapping out account strategies, setting objectives, and tracking progress.
• Org Chart Mapping: Visualize the organizational structure of your key accounts to better understand relationships and identify key decision-makers.
• Relationship Mapping: Track and analyze the strength and quality of relationships within your key accounts, helping you identify areas to focus on to strengthen connections.
• White Space Analysis: Identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities within your key accounts by analyzing existing product/service penetration.
• Customizable Templates: Use customizable templates for account plans, ensuring they align with your specific business processes and objectives.
• Integration with Salesforce: Seamlessly integrates with Salesforce, leveraging existing data to enhance account management without disrupting your current workflows.

Ideal For: DemandFarm is ideal for medium to large enterprises focused on strategic account management. Its tools and methodologies are particularly suited for organizations looking to deepen their relationships with key accounts and drive growth through targeted account planning and management.

Sales CRM

Sales CRM systems are essential for organizations to manage interactions with current and prospective customers effectively. These systems help collect, store, and analyze customer data, enabling businesses to build and implement more effective sales strategies. By leveraging the insights gained from CRM data, organizations can improve customer relationships, streamline sales processes, and ultimately drive revenue growth by identifying and capitalizing on sales opportunities for their sales organization. Close CRM, a leading sales enablement tool, offers a comprehensive customer relationship management system that includes a user-friendly mobile app for seamless sales management on the go. With features like automated follow-ups and easy lead management, Close’s mobile app is a must-have for any sales team looking to supercharge their sales strategy.

Salesforce

Salesforce is widely regarded as the leading sales CRM on the market. Its comprehensive, cloud-based solutions offer unparalleled flexibility and scalability, making it suitable for a wide range of organizations, from small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to large enterprises.

Key Features:

• Cloud-Based Platform: Salesforce’s cloud-based infrastructure ensures accessibility from anywhere, facilitating remote work and collaboration.
• Customization: Highly customizable to fit the specific needs of any business, with numerous add-ons and integrations available.
• Analytics and Reporting: Advanced analytics tools and customizable dashboards provide deep insights into sales performance, helping businesses make data-driven decisions.
• Automation: Salesforce automates many sales processes, such as lead management, opportunity tracking, and customer follow-ups, which increases efficiency and productivity.
• AppExchange: Access to a vast marketplace of third-party applications and integrations that can extend the functionality of the CRM.

Ideal For: Salesforce is ideal for organizations of all sizes due to its scalability and versatility. SMBs can start with basic features and scale up as they grow, while large enterprises can leverage its advanced capabilities and extensive customization options.

Insightly

Insightly is a CRM solution tailored specifically for small businesses. It offers a user-friendly interface and a range of features designed to meet the unique needs of smaller organizations. Despite its focus on small businesses, Insightly is highly scalable and can grow alongside your business.

Key Features:

• User-Friendly Interface: The interface is intuitive and easy to use, which minimizes the learning curve and speeds up the adoption process.
• Contact Management: Robust contact management capabilities that help businesses keep track of their customer interactions and histories.
• Project Management: Integrated project management tools that allow businesses to manage projects and tasks within the same platform, ensuring seamless collaboration and workflow.
• Email Integration: Seamlessly integrates with popular email services like Gmail and Outlook, enabling users to manage communications directly from their CRM.
• Scalability: Designed to scale with your business, Insightly can handle increasing data and user needs as your business grows.

Ideal For: Insightly is ideal for small businesses that need a straightforward, effective CRM solution that can scale as they expand. Its combination of ease of use, essential CRM features, and scalability makes it a perfect fit for growing small businesses.

Sales Intelligence Tools

Among all the sales enablement platforms, sales intelligence tools are invaluable for equipping sales teams with the information they need to engage prospects effectively. These tools gather and analyze vast amounts of data from multiple sources, providing insights that can help tailor sales pitches and strategies.

Data Enrichment

Data enrichment tools add additional information to existing customer data, enhancing its quality and usefulness. One notable tool in this category is Experian, which integrates demographic data from various sources to help businesses better segment and understand their leads.

Experian

Experian is a leading data enrichment tool that enhances customer data by adding demographic, financial, and lifestyle information from various sources. This enriched data helps businesses to better segment and understand their leads, improving the effectiveness of their marketing and sales strategies.

Key Features

• Comprehensive Data Enrichment: Adds demographic, financial, and lifestyle data points to existing customer records, providing a more complete view of each lead.
• Improved Customer Segmentation: Helps businesses segment their leads more accurately, allowing for more targeted marketing campaigns and sales efforts.
• High-Quality Data: Ensures that the data added is accurate and up-to-date, reducing the chances of errors and improving the reliability of customer insights.
• Integration with CRM Systems: Seamlessly integrates with various CRM systems, enabling businesses to enrich their customer data without disrupting their existing workflows.
• Enhanced Marketing Insights: Provides deeper insights into customer behaviors and preferences, helping marketers to create more personalized and effective campaigns.

Sales Analytics

Sales analytics tools provide insights to help businesses plan and implement their sales processes more effectively. They often involve data visualization and performance metrics.

Tableau

Tableau is a powerful data visualization and business intelligence tool that enables users to explore and analyze data through interactive and shareable dashboards. It connects to various data sources, providing deep insights and enabling data-driven decision-making. Below are some key features of Tableau:

Key Features

• Connectivity: Connects to a wide range of data sources including SQL, Oracle, spreadsheets, cloud services like Google Analytics and Salesforce, and big data platforms such as Hadoop and Amazon Redshift.
• User Interface: Intuitive drag-and-drop interface allowing users to create visualizations without complex coding or scripting.
• Data Blending and Joining: Allows users to blend data from multiple sources and perform data joins seamlessly within the platform.
• Advanced Analytics: Offers advanced analytical capabilities including forecasting, trend analysis, clustering, and regression analysis.
• Data Visualization: Converts complex data sets into appealing visualizations such as charts, graphs, and dashboards that can be shared within the organization.
• Scalability and Governance: Supports large data sets while ensuring data governance, security, and compliance requirements for enterprises.

Customer Experience

Customer experience encompasses the entirety of interactions a customer has with an organization, spanning every touchpoint and channel. A superior customer experience enhances customer satisfaction, boosts retention, and ultimately drives sales growth.

Zendesk

Zendesk is a leading customer service platform designed to help companies improve their customer interactions. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools for setting up and managing ticket support across various channels, ensuring a seamless and efficient customer service experience.

Key Features:

• Multi-Channel Support: Zendesk enables companies to handle customer queries through multiple channels, including chat, email, web, phone, and social media, ensuring that customers can reach out in their preferred manner.
• Ticketing System: An intuitive ticketing system helps manage and track customer inquiries, ensuring timely and effective responses.
• Automation and AI: Zendesk utilizes automation and AI to streamline support processes, such as auto-assigning tickets, providing suggested responses, and offering self-service options through chatbots.
• Reporting and Analytics: Advanced reporting tools provide insights into support team performance, customer satisfaction, and common issues, helping businesses refine their customer service strategies.
• Integration: Seamlessly integrates with numerous third-party applications, enhancing its functionality and allowing businesses to create a unified customer service ecosystem.

Ideal For: Zendesk is ideal for businesses of all sizes looking to enhance their customer service capabilities. Its scalability and multi-channel support make it suitable for companies aiming to provide a comprehensive and efficient customer experience.

IBM Tealeaf

IBM Tealeaf is focused on monitoring and analyzing customer experience at a granular level. It collects detailed data on server-side requests and responses as well as browser-level customer behavior, providing deep insights into user interactions without impacting site performance.

Key Features:

• Customer Behavior Monitoring: Tracks user interactions on your website, capturing detailed data on how customers navigate and interact with your site.
• Server-Side Data Collection: Gathers server-side requests and responses, offering a comprehensive view of the technical aspects of customer interactions.
• Real-Time Insights: Provides real-time analytics, enabling businesses to quickly identify and address issues that affect the customer experience.
• Session Replay: Allows businesses to replay user sessions to understand customer behavior and pinpoint areas for improvement.
• Performance Optimization: Monitors customer experience without compromising website performance, ensuring that data collection does not hinder user experience.

Ideal For: IBM Tealeaf is ideal for medium to large enterprises seeking to gain detailed insights into customer behavior on their websites. Its advanced monitoring and analytics capabilities make it perfect for businesses that need to understand and optimize every aspect of their online customer experience.

Sales management and operation

Sales management operations refer to the effective implementation of sales techniques and processes within an organization. These operations are crucial for optimizing the sales cycle, managing leads, and improving overall sales performance.

Infusionsoft

Infusionsoft, now known as Keap, is a marketing automation tool designed specifically for small businesses. It simplifies the sales cycle by offering features that help track and segment leads, making it easier to manage and prioritize them.

Key Features:

• Lead Scoring: Automatically score leads based on their interactions and engagement, helping you prioritize those most likely to convert.
• Pipeline Management: Visualize and manage your sales pipeline, ensuring you can track the progress of every deal and take action when needed.
• Marketing Automation: Automate follow-up emails, campaign launches, and other marketing activities to keep leads engaged and move them through the sales funnel.
• Contact Management: Maintain a detailed database of your contacts, including their interaction history and other relevant details, to personalize your communication.
• Integration: Integrates with various third-party applications to enhance its functionality, allowing for a more streamlined sales process.

Ideal For: Infusionsoft is ideal for small businesses looking to streamline their sales and marketing processes. Its focus on lead scoring and pipeline management helps small teams manage their leads effectively and prioritize their efforts.

HubSpot Sales

HubSpot Sales is a component of HubSpot’s comprehensive inbound marketing software suite. It works seamlessly with HubSpot Marketing and HubSpot CRM to provide a holistic approach to managing and improving your sales operations.

Key Features:

• Rich Insights: Gain deep insights into your prospects’ behavior and interests, helping you tailor your sales approach and engage more effectively.
• Multi-Channel Communication: Connect with prospects through various channels, including email, phone, and social media, ensuring you can reach them where they are most active.
• Email Tracking: Track email opens and clicks to understand how prospects are interacting with your messages and follow up at the right time.
• Sales Automation: Automate repetitive sales tasks, such as follow-up emails and meeting scheduling, to free up time for your sales team to focus on selling.
• Seamless Integration: Works alongside HubSpot’s marketing and CRM modules, creating a unified platform for managing all aspects of your sales and marketing efforts.

Ideal For: HubSpot Sales is ideal for businesses of all sizes that are already using or planning to use HubSpot’s marketing and CRM tools. Its integration with other HubSpot modules provides a comprehensive solution for inbound marketing and sales.

Clari

Clari is a sales enablement platform designed to improve sales planning and forecasting accuracy. By enhancing pipeline management, Clari provides better visibility into the sales process, helping organizations make more informed decisions.

Key Features:

• Sales Forecasting: Leverage advanced analytics and AI to create more accurate sales forecasts, reducing uncertainty and helping you plan effectively.
• Pipeline Management: Gain a clear view of your sales pipeline, including potential risks and opportunities, to manage your deals more strategically.
• Visibility and Insights: Real-time insights into sales activities and performance metrics help you understand what’s happening in your sales process and why.
• Collaboration Tools: Enable better collaboration among your sales team with tools that facilitate communication and information sharing.
• Predictive Analytics: Use predictive analytics to identify trends and patterns in your sales data, helping you anticipate future outcomes and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Ideal For: Clari is ideal for medium to large enterprises that need advanced tools for sales planning and forecasting. Its focus on pipeline management and predictive analytics makes it suitable for organizations looking to enhance their sales strategy with data-driven insights.

Sales Productivity Tools

Sales productivity tools are essential for ensuring your sales team’s time is used efficiently and effectively. These tools streamline various aspects of the sales process, enabling your team to focus on what they do best: selling. Here are our top three picks for sales productivity apps.

DocuSign

DocuSign is a leading electronic signature software that simplifies the process of exchanging and signing documents electronically. By eliminating the need for physical paperwork, DocuSign helps sales teams stay productive and close deals faster.

Key Features:

• Electronic Signatures: Secure and legally binding electronic signatures streamline the signing process, reducing turnaround time and eliminating the need for physical document handling.
• Document Management: Easily prepare, send, and manage documents for signing from anywhere, on any device, ensuring seamless workflow and greater flexibility.
• Integration: Integrates with various CRM and business applications, allowing sales teams to send and manage documents directly from the tools they already use.

Ideal For: DocuSign is ideal for sales teams that need to handle a high volume of contracts and agreements. Its electronic signature capability and integration with existing tools make it perfect for businesses looking to enhance their document management processes.

GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting is a robust conferencing software that facilitates seamless communication with prospects. It offers a range of features designed to make virtual meetings and calls as effective and engaging as in-person interactions.

Key Features:

• Easy-to-Use Interface: User-friendly interface that simplifies the process of scheduling and joining meetings, ensuring that sales teams can focus on their presentations without technical distractions.
• High-Quality Audio and Video: Provides high-quality audio and video capabilities, ensuring clear and professional communication during sales calls and presentations.
• Screen Sharing and Collaboration Tools : Features such as screen sharing, white screen for highlighting important points, drawing tools, and recording options enhance the effectiveness of virtual meetings, enabling more interactive and engaging presentations.

Ideal For: GoToMeeting is ideal for sales teams that frequently conduct virtual meetings and presentations with prospects. Its ease of use, high-quality communication tools, and collaborative features make it perfect for maintaining productive remote interactions.

Mail Related Tools

E-mails play a crucial role for sales teams, serving as a primary channel for reaching out to prospects and nurturing leads. Utilizing mail-related tools can significantly enhance email efficiency and effectiveness. Here are two top picks for sales email productivity tools:

Sales Handly

Sales Handly is a robust sales enablement tool designed to optimize your email outreach by providing detailed tracking and analytics. It helps sales teams understand recipient behavior and streamline email campaigns, ultimately improving engagement and conversion rates.

Key Features:

• Email and Document Tracking: Track when recipients open emails and view documents, providing valuable insights into engagement and helping you prioritize follow-ups.
• Mail Merge Campaigns: Easily create personalized email campaigns at scale, ensuring that your messages are tailored to each recipient while saving time.
• CRM Integration: Seamlessly integrates with your existing CRM system, enabling you to manage and track your email interactions within your current workflow.

Ideal For: Sales Handly is ideal for sales teams that want to enhance their email outreach with advanced tracking and analytics. Its integration with existing CRM systems makes it perfect for teams looking to streamline their email processes and improve engagement.

Boomerang

Boomerang is a popular Gmail plugin that enhances email productivity by allowing users to schedule emails and set reminders for follow-ups. Its simplicity and effectiveness make it a valuable tool for managing email communications efficiently.

Key Features:

• Email Scheduling: Schedule emails to be sent at optimal times, ensuring your messages reach recipients when they are most likely to be read.
• Follow-Up Reminders: Set reminders for follow-ups, helping you stay on top of your email communications and ensuring no lead falls through the cracks.
• Inbox Pause: Temporarily pause incoming emails to focus on important tasks without being distracted by new messages.

Ideal For: Boomerang is ideal for sales professionals who use Gmail and need a straightforward tool to manage email scheduling and follow-ups. Its ease of use and powerful features make it a must-have for anyone looking to improve their email productivity.

Accelerate growth with the right sales enablement software

Sales Enablement Software has been undeniably catching on with enterprises at a very fast pace. It helps companies increase revenue by harnessing the resources and knowledge of the company to support the selling process and improve customer engagement in real time. Sales enablement tools also help in empowering sales management to identify and immediately improve costly mistakes and missed opportunities that the sales teams make every day, ultimately increasing sales effectiveness. 

DemandFarm has been a leader in the key account management space since 2016. If you’re interested in seeing our product suite in action or consult with one of our KAM experts, you can get in touch with us here.