Running a small business is a dream come true for many.
But with the blow that the COVID-19 pandemic has dealt the world, small businesses are struggling to stay afloat. To succeed in such a harsh economic climate, you must make savvy decisions that will help you not just survive but thrive.
One of the most significant decisions you can make for your small business is the choice of sales tool you’ll use to drum up more business. Yet, picking the right sales tools for a small business can be a daunting task given that there are so many to choose from.
Here’s list of 10 small business sales tools you can use to close more deals.
3 Reasons Sales Tools are a Must for Your Small Business
Even as a small business, you need to leverage the power of technology to help you drive sales. Here are a couple of reasons you must invest in a tool stack.
Save Time and Improve Efficiency
Most sales-related tasks are repetitive. Automating them can help you save a lot of time and improve your efficiency.
Help You Create Personalized Campaigns
An important aspect of sales is lead generation. To increase your conversions at this stage, you need to create personalized campaigns or quizzes. And this is only possible through the use of tools that collect lead data.
Improve Lead Quality
Another reason to automate your sales processes is that automation helps you improve lead quality. You don’t have to go through lead data to find quality leads manually. Sales tools can automate the lead scoring process for you, ensuring that you only focus on quality leads.
Now that you know why it’s crucial to leverage the right small business sales tools let’s quickly take a look at some of the best on the market.
10 Sales Tools to Help You Close More Deals
Sales tools come in many different categories. We’ll look at some of the top categories and the best small business sales tools in those categories. This will help make it easier for you to identify the right tools you need, no matter your business type.
Lead Data Collection Tools
If your small business has a website (as every business should), you should be using it as a lead generation machine. To do that, you must integrate it with lead data collection tools. Here are two of the best:
1. OptinMonster
OptinMonster is a powerful lead generation tool designed to capture website visitors’ details.
With OptinMonster, you can create highly optimized forms to turn visitors into subscribers and customers.
Because it integrates with other tools you use in your sales pipeline, like your favorite CRMs, email marketing providers, website builders, and online course tools, it’s easy to manage and share leads with your team.
It’s also easy to nurture them down your sales funnel as the data you collect helps you create personalized campaigns.
One thing that makes OptinMonster an attractive choice for small businesses is its budget-friendly pricing that starts at $9/month.
2. LeadFeeder
Leadfeeder is another tool that makes customer acquisition easy by showing you who visited your website. And that’s even if they don’t fill out a form.
Knowing who visited your website is crucial as it enables your sales team to reach out to them proactively. Sales outreach is essential to keeping your pipeline full, and LeadFeeder makes outreach easy as it shows you who target in your outreach campaigns.
If you want to take LeadFeeder for a spin, they have a 14-day trial. And if you’re going to take your sales outreach to another level, you can upgrade to their paid plans that start at $55/month.
Personalization Tools
Whether you’re a B2C business or in a B2B industry, one element of an effective sales strategy is personalization. Personalization helps you offer your prospects the right product recommendations and create a buyer journey that’s more tailored to them.
3. Hyperise
Hyperise is a sales tool that helps you drive conversions by creating personalized campaigns.
Hyperise leverages reverse IP search and data enrichment to give you rich data on who visited your website. It then helps you create personalized text, images, and CTAs.
One of Hyperise’s best features is the image personalization function. This dynamically displays the right image to the right person. And this works on every communication channel you use at all stages of your sales funnel.
For a hyper-personalized sales funnel, you’ll need to invest a minimum of $99/month.
4. Clearbit
Like Hyperise, Clearbit gives you the data you need to create personalized outreach campaigns targeted at people who visited your website, even in anonymity.
The platform gives you data that helps you understand your customers better. ClearBit enables you to identify prospects on your website, even when they visit anonymously. This allows you to create personalized marketing and sales messaging.
Email Outreach Tools
One of the best ways to start and conduct sales conversations with your prospects is through email. In fact, research shows that 80% of prospects prefer to communicate with sales reps over email than any other platform. This makes email an essential tool in your sales tool kit.
That’s why you must invest in one of the best email service providers (ESP) for small businesses. This a role that can easily be outsourced to an email marketing expert, in case no one on your team fits the bill.
Most of these tools offer features and integrations with other tools like webinar software, ecommerce tools, sales tools, and more.
Here are two that fit that bill:
5. GetResponse
GetResponse is a powerful email marketing tool that can help you generate sales.
GetResponse is easy to set up and use and has a suite of other lead generation tools like landing page builders and marketing automation tools. This has, GetResponse has become a much-loved ESP among small business owners.
Once you get leads, you can nurture them and convert them into customers thanks to GetResponse’s beautifully designed email templates and easy to use campaign builder.
Pricing for this powerful small business sales tool starts at $15/month.
6. MailerLite
If you’re looking for an ESP that’s light on your pocket, MailerLite is it.
MailerLite offers many tools that you can use to build a sales funnel that converts. From popups and landing pages to sales emails, you can have it all in one easy-to-use sales tool.
Whether it’s generating new leads or selling to existing customers, MailerLite is one tool you can trust to help you generate more revenue.
One of the biggest advantages of this small business sales tool is that it’s pocket-friendly. Paid plans start at $10/month for up to 1,000 subscribers.
For more on the best email marketing tools, be sure to check out this in-depth guide.
Contract and Document Management Tools
One of the highlights of the sales process is signing a contract with a new customer/client. The tricky part of contracts is that they require a lot of sensitive information from the parties signing the contracts. As a small business, this poses two problems:
- Ensuring that data is safe
- Managing multiple contracts efficiently
That’s where contract management software for small businesses comes to play. The right tools will ensure that all information is secure. They also improve the efficiency of your contract management.
7. PandaDoc
PandaDoc is one of the best contract and document management tools on the market.
From sales proposals to quotes to contracts, the platform enables you to streamline every process in your sales funnel requiring documentation.
PandaDoc makes it easier for your sales team to create beautiful branded sales documents complete with an e-signature functionality. The platform also furnishes you with insights and data you can use to create a scalable pipeline.
The rich feature set you get from PandaDoc results in an improvement in your customer experience (CX), which, in turn, snowballs into higher close rates.
While the e-signature feature is free, other features require you to upgrade to one of the paid plans. These start at $19/month/user.
8. DocuSign
Founded in 2003, DocuSign is one of the oldest and most trusted small business sales tools as long as contract life management (CLM) goes.
Small businesses love DocuSign because it’s a flexible platform that creates legal documents and provides secure cloud storage for users. You also won’t have to worry about compliance as DocuSign is GDPR compliant.
From custom contracts to e-signatures to streamlined business workflows, DocuSign helps you save time by automating the agreement process. You also get detailed analytics to help inform your decisions and help speed up your workflow.
Paid plans start at $10/month.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Customer relationship management (CRM) software has become an essential component of every sales team’s tool stack.
That’s because CRMs enable you to keep all the data you collect on your prospects and leads. This is essential for two main reasons:
- It makes it easier to hand over a lead
- It enables you to create personalized campaigns
Contrary to popular belief, CRMs are not just reserved for large businesses. Even small companies can benefit greatly from the efficiency they afford.
Let’s round out our list with a few of the best CRMs for small businesses.
9. Close.io
Close.io is a CRM that was aptly named as it was built from the ground up to help you close more sales.
Close.io is a powerhouse when it comes to helping you and your sales team sell more. It has many features that help you with both internal and external communication.
These include in-built multi-channel communication channels such as email, phone, and SMS, among others.
You also get to easily keep tabs on your team’s performance and how leads are moving along your sales pipeline.
With Close.io, every detail of the deal flow is at your fingertips. This allows you to ensure that each lead gets the full attention it deserves.
Close.io’s paid plans start at $65/month, making it one of the best small business sales tools as far as value for money is concerned.
10. Hubspot CRM
Hubspot is a very well-known CRM platform. One reason for its popularity is the 100% free CRM.
Hubspot’s free CRM is a great place to start if your leads keep falling through the cracks. That’s because it helps you keep track of your leads easily. More than that, the platform allows you to create a sales funnel that will help you efficiently move each lead through each stage.
To get more out of Hubspot, however, you must add the Sales Hub to the CRM. Sales Hub comes with additional features such as predictive lead scoring, email workflows, multiple deal pipelines, and many more.
Sales Hub plans start at $45/month, making Hubspot a very attractive CRM for small businesses.
How to Choose the Right Sales Tools for Your Business
Now that you’ve seen some of the sales tools for small businesses let’s look at how you can decide which tools are best for you.
Determine Your Goals
The first step to knowing which small business sales tools you need is to determine your sales goals. Whether your goals are to generate more leads or improve your conversion rates, they decide which sales tools you need.
Think About Your Customers
When investing in a sales tool, you must think about your leads and customers first. In short, make sure the tolls you settle for help improve the customer experience (UX). Studies show that with the stiff competition between brands, one of the most significant brand differentiators is CX.
Determine How Much Hand Holding You'll Need
Some small business sales tools can require a steep learning curve to use, while some can be downright complicated. If you’re not tech-savvy, such tools may end up being a hindrance.
You must always leverage free trials to see if you’ll need a lot of hand-holding from customer support or whether you’re capable of using the tool yourself.
Leverage Small Business Sales Tools to Thrive
Many small businesses have taken a hit to their revenue due to the coronavirus pandemic. The key to surviving and thriving in this harsh economic climate is to pivot well. But pivoting doesn’t just mean finding another niche to exploit. It could also mean re-evaluating your tool stack and investing in tools that help you become more efficient.
By leveraging the right small business sales tools, you’ll be in a better position to thrive, no matter the economic environment.
