The 5 Best Sales Tools Ever

How can you improve your sales process by 200%? We have tested and assessed hundreds of sales tools over the past few years. A few rock-solid tools have remained that are so good that we use them daily.

Salesnavigator: Salesnavigator is the best known of the tool stack that I'm going to discuss with you. Salesnav has a reasonably good search function that can be linked to let the other tools excel. We use Salesnav to create a target list based on roles of decision-makers and specific characteristics of a company.

In this example we are looking for the directors/CEOs of software-related companies. We select by company size because we know that our sweet spot is here. We also exclude certain roles to prevent pollution in the target list. We only want to spend our time and energy on the prospects that fit us best. What also works well is to look at decision-makers who have changed jobs in the last 90 days. The chance that they are open to change is much greater than with someone who has been in the same role for years.

Linked Helper: This is a really interesting tool. You can automate a whole sh*tload of actions. Linked Helper is an easy way for us to quickly get the attention of your target group. You could use this very well for your awareness.

We use this tool to make 'eye contact' a few times before approaching the prospect. People are more inclined to do business with people they know. We take our target list with LinkedIn addresses and via Linked Helper we let their profile be viewed automatically a few times. You can also set it up to like the last post/article.

There are many more possibilities, such as connection requests with a personal message, event requests, and so on. Be careful, because everyone knows how annoying it is to get a connection request with a pitch. What we always keep in mind is to bring first before you can fetch.

Seamless: Seamless is an extremely handy tool to find direct email addresses and direct phone numbers. The quality of the data varies a bit per target group. With one target group every address is a hit, with another target group it can also just be 50%. In any case, we are big fans! Seamless can be used within LinkedIn, allowing you to find the information at the touch of a button. You can also have the entire target list examined by Seamless at once, so you have viewed everyone through Linked Helper and you have various options to reach them.

Pipedrive: Pipedrive fits very well with the acquisition process. It doesn't cost too much and supports enormously if you are active in prospecting. With Pipedrive you can easily set up your process, so you know exactly which contact moments have been and in which phase the prospect is. You naturally want to know which prospects will come onto the market when.

Other advantages are that you can call via Pipedrive and record all your calls so that you can listen back to them at another time, or use them for training. In addition, you can email from Pipedrive and there is an email tracker in it with which you can see if and how often your email is opened. They also have all kinds of workflow automation which allows you to let certain processes run much faster. This gives you more time to prospect.

Klenty: Over 60% of the prospects you have approached will not be in buying mode, but in learning mode. In other words, they are not currently in the market to purchase your product or service. They don't know they have a problem or that they're missing an opportunity. They work in the best possible way known to them. But they are certainly open to learning how their lives can be made easier. So these are the companies that are in the nurture phase.

How do you stay in conversation with these types of companies? You've already had contact, so you know what they find important. Based on this need, you divide the prospects and send them content that is relevant to them. We use Klenty for this. With Klenty you can create drip campaigns. Simply put, this means that if a lead enters a certain phase, they automatically receive an email every so many days. So this prevents you from forwarding general newsletter information to them, but content that fits the subject they want to learn more about.

What's great about Klenty is that you can easily a/b test and that everything is registered in your CRM immediately. And if they respond, the automatic flow stops and you can reach them personally again.

Conclusion: For €250 per month you already have a decent tool stack to properly support your new business development. The tools are of course handles to get into conversation with the prospect. Are you curious about the four crucial principles to convert conversations with prospects to the next step in the sales funnel? Then contact us, we can certainly help you further.