8 Must-Have Sales Tools for Savvy Reps

Today, sales software is a sales rep’s best friend. From better prospecting to improved meetings, emerging tools have helped reps keep pace with the changing face of sales. If a sales tool can shave even the slightest amount of time off the average buying cycle, or help reps ramp faster, it’s often more than worth the price of the tool.

To that end, the market for sales tools shows no signs of slowing—SiriusDecisions calculated that the average sales enablement budget doubled between 2012 and 2014. Clearly, companies understand that sales tools are a worthy investment. But to help decide which tools you should invest in (besides the obvious—a CRM like Salesforce.com), we polled our sales team to see what they like best.

Below are their eight must-have sales tools: 

1. LinkedIn + Rapportive

Including LinkedIn on our list was a no-brainer. The social media giant has changed the way that reps research companies and prospective customers. Even better, LinkedIn’s partner tool, Rapportive, helps source all that information faster. Simply adding an address to an email automatically populates the addressee’s LinkedIn profile so reps can correctly identify whom they’re speaking to, faster.Image from Rapportive’s website

Says Jared Hocking, a Business Development Representative at Inkling: “Sometimes people fill out demo requests or download content without putting accurate information, and Rapportive can help me identify them.”

2. Slack

Even though it isn’t specific to sales, Slack, an internal messaging app, has changed the game for company-wide communication. Not only does it make communicating with coworkers efficient and organized, but Slack’s added integrations also make it fun (how did we ever communicate without funny GIFs?!).

Overall, Slack has been really helpful to keep marketing and sales aligned, and address problems quickly.

3. Evernote

Evernote, a free tool for better note taking, is perfect for sales calls and meetings. It’s simple, but effective: logging everything in one place means it’s easier for reps to find their notes again and pull out the most important details to record in Salesforce or include in follow-up emails. Says Greg Ryan, an Account Executive at Inkling, “I keep everything in Evernote and never lose anything. Just great.”

4. DocuSign

As every sales rep knows, it’s not a done deal until the ink has hit the paper. Or, in the case of DocuSign, until the electronic signature box has been filled in. DocuSign allows users to sign contracts online securely. Gone are the days of emailing a large document, only to have a wait until your prospective customer prints off each page, signs, scans, and re-sends. To quote Chris Lutz, an Account Executive at Inkling, “DocuSign makes closing a deal much faster.”

5. GoToMeeting

Every rep needs a way to meet with and present to prospects over the web and, at Inkling, our go-to tool has been GoToMeeting. It’s easy to use, offers seamless transitions between speakers, and allows us to show what our product can really do. “It’s been great for presentations,” says Dan Cordisco, an Account Executive at Inkling.

6. ToutApp

ToutApp is a fairly new tool for us, but it has really allowed our sales team to maximize what they can do with email. Integrated tools, such as tracking read and opened emails, mean that reps can be smarter about who they contact when. Plus, we’re also experimenting with ToutApp’s ability to store and recommend content, which makes our job on the marketing team a lot easier.Image from ToutApp’s website

Says BDR Jared Hocking, “I really like the fact that ToutApp allows me to schedule one email to go out and it self-manages a campaign of three, four, or more emails on its own.”

7. SalesLoft

Across the board, our reps have been impressed with SalesLoft. The prospecting automation software helps gather large quantities of contact information and push them into SFDC. It’s been a huge help for targeted prospecting efforts, allowing reps to comb through LinkedIn profiles and build lists for the right segmentations.

8. Inkling

Of course, we couldn’t include a list of sales tools without including our own! At Inkling, we use Inkling, and it’s been especially helpful for our sales team. Using our content platform, we’ve created “The Sales Bible”—our master collection of sales training tips, product details, customer personas, and more—and are able to easily push it out to our team on all of their devices.Inkling Habitat

What’s more, the ability to easily make updates has saved us in a number of situations. Our reps trust that whatever version of the content they have is the right version, which is more than they could say with PDFs or paper.

These eight sales tools that our reps favor are by no means the only sales tools. If you didn’t see a tool that you use on the list, let us know in the comments below!