The Ultimate Sales Tool Kit for B2B Success in 2024

In 2024, there’s virtually no part of the sales process that hasn’t been affected by sales technology. 

There are sales tech tools for everything, from lead generation to data management to sales enablement tools that help close deals in the field. And most salespeople by now agree that they’re invaluable, with LinkedIn reporting that 73% of reps believe that sales tools help them close more deals.

With so many tools and features available to sales teams, it’s imperative that they choose the right ones to build a tech stack designed to meet their unique needs. 

In this article, we’ll go over the top components of a sales tool kit that will streamline your sales process and help you remain competitive in a highly digital sales age. 

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What Is a Sales Tool Kit?
• Essential Sales Automation Software
• Choose the Right Sales CRM
• Enhance Efficiency with Sales Management Software
• The Power of Sales Enablement Software
• Advanced Sales Prospecting Tools
• Leverage Sales Intelligence Tools for Competitive Edge

What Is a Sales Tool Kit?

The collection of software tools and other resources your team uses in the sales process is known as your sales tool kit.

All great sales teams have sales tool kits, but the top-performing ones know how to build theirs in a way that’s cohesive and simplifies the sales process from top to bottom. 

The best sales tool kit for your organization will depend on your team’s goals, strengths, and needs.

Successful sales tool kits might include resources to automate or support any of the following processes:

• Lead generation, tracking, and scoring
• Sales productivity
• Customer data management and analysis
• Sales forecasting
• Pipeline management and analysis 
• Automate administrative tasks 
• Sales Intelligence

(And many, many more.)

Regardless of the individual resources that make up your sales tool kit, its primary goal is to increase your team’s effectiveness, efficiency, productivity, and overall sales performance. 

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Essential Sales Automation Software

Sales automation software platforms exist to streamline time-consuming, tedious, or otherwise challenging sales tasks.  Sales automation is a broad field, and there are software tools in this category that can help your team streamline a wide variety of sales tasks and processes.

This includes (but not at all limited to):

• Data entry
• Data enrichment
• Email campaigns and follow-ups with personalized messaging
• Sales pipeline management
• Meeting scheduling
• Lead generation 
• Lead scoring
• Forecasting and analytics

Sales automation software saves time, improves productivity, and increases efficiency across the sales team, among other significant benefits. It’s a must-have for your sales tool kit.

Features to Look For

Picking the right sales automation tool can be a double-edged sword — there are almost too many tools and features to choose from.

Before you sit down to evaluate the features of various platforms, it’s important to consider factors like your goals, budget, and specific automation needs. 

In addition to that, look for platforms with:

• Scalability 
• Good customer support
• Contact management
• Lead tracking
• Email automation
• Sales forecasting
• Reporting & analytics 
• Workflow automation

Of course, it’s always important to choose a platform that will integrate seamlessly with the other apps in your sales tool kit. 

In general, look for a platform that will help you manage and nurture leads effectively throughout the pipeline in order to close more deals. 

Examples of sales automation software:

• Yesware
• Clari
• Zoho

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Choose the Right Sales CRM

For most sales teams, their customer relationship management (CRM) platform is their lifeline. It holds all of their contact data, as well as details about opportunity status, sales forecasts, and more. Choosing a CRM for your sales tool kit is a big decision. 

When properly implemented, a CRM system can generate a 245% ROI and 300% boost in conversions. 

Features to Look For

Most CRM systems today are more robust than not, and include more features than most sales teams even access on a regular basis. 

With that in mind, it’s important to prioritize only the most important CRM features for your team when considering which platform you plan to add to your sales tool kit. 

Here is a non-exhaustive list of things that may meet the needs of your team:

• Centralized data storage that everyone on the team can access, whenever and wherever they are
• Deal tracking 
• Automation of repetitive/administrative tasks 
• Ability to create forms and/or landing pages
• Multichannel outreach
• List segmentation 
• Lead scoring
• Task management
• Reports & analytics 
• Advanced search filters 
• Lead management & interaction tracking 
• Pipeline management 

It’s also important to consider how well the CRM fits your team. Some are built for large enterprise organizations, while others are built to help SMBs grow and scale with reliability and success. 

Are there a minimum number of users? And, is it easy (and affordable) to add new users as your team grows? 

How difficult will the platform be to implement? Only 40% of businesses claim a 90% CRM adoption rate. This is one of the most important factors to consider, as no CRM can be effective if your team doesn’t use it. 

What security measures does the platform take to keep your buyers’ data secure? 

The CRM is likely to be the one tool most of your team uses the most often, so it’s extremely important to make this decision carefully. 

Examples of CRMs:

• Salesforce
• Hubspot
• NetHunt 

Enhance Efficiency with Sales Management Software

Sales management software is built to support the unique challenges of sales team leadership. 

Although this platform won’t be applicable to all members of your team, it’s still an important component of your sales tool kit. 

In a nutshell, sales management software helps sales managers track and analyze sales metrics and sales KPIs. These metrics and KPIs will vary by team depending on your goals, but in general the software is there to help managers gain deeper understanding about both the pipeline and their team so they can lead effectively. 

Sales management software empowers leadership to make data-driven decisions and optimize their team’s performance. 

Features to Look For

Here are some key features to look for as you consider the right sales management platform to support your team.

Key features:

• Ability to see a birds-eye view of your workflow
• Lead/opportunity management
• Sales activity monitoring
• Sales leaderboard
• Built-in calling and SMS messaging
• Email & CRM integration 
• Sales forecasting
• Reporting & analytics
• Advanced search filters

Sales management tools can range in price, so be sure to consider your budget as you compare and contrast features and decide what’s most important to add to your sales tool kit.

Examples of sales management software:

• Monday.com
• Zoho
• Pipedrive

The Power of Sales Enablement Software

Sales enablement is another broad term that encompasses a variety of sales tasks, processes, and resources.  Sales enablement is essentially the practice of equipping the sales team with the tools, resources, and training/knowledge required to do their jobs effectively. 

A successful sales enablement program requires capable software to support its processes. This software houses all of your team’s sales collateral, strategies, data, training resources, and more. 

Sales enablement tools should help sales reps maintain organization in the sales process, find the right resources to connect with individual buyers and access the resources they need to move deals forward. 

Features to Look For

Your sales enablement platform should be able to create, support, and/or store and organize the following:

• Sales presentations
• Whitepapers
• Product demos
• Social proof (case studies, testimonials, etc.)
• Sales training resources
• Slide decks
• Battle cards
• Blog posts
• Social media posts
• One-pagers
• Account-based engagement data
• Business intelligence & analytics 
• Lead generation
• Sales productivity data

Some sales enablement platforms also include gamification features, which can be very engaging for your sales team. 

You’ll also want to consider the following questions as you choose the right sales enablement platform for your sales tool kit.

Questions to consider:

• How quickly can sales reps onboard?
• How easily does the platform integrate with the rest of your tech stack?
• How long does it typically take to reduce time to revenue while using the tool?
• What is the process for creating content with the tool?
• What kind of reporting and analytics does the platform provide? 

Remember, sales enablement is all about making life easier and more intuitive for sales reps. While there may be some ramp-up time in the beginning, your sales enablement tool should ultimately alleviate work and tasks for sales reps, not add to them. 

Examples of sales enablement software:

• Gong
• Seismic
• Highspot 

Advanced Sales Prospecting Tools

Sales prospecting is one of the key activities that keeps your business moving forward. It helps sales reps narrow down the right leads to contact — ones who are most likely to convert to a closed-won deal. 

With over 33 million small businesses in the U.S., this is no easy feat. Sales prospecting tools can help sales teams sift through the massive amount of prospecting data and help them identify best-fit leads that have a high potential to close. 

And with most sales reps reporting that their top prospecting challenges are quantity and quality of leads, it’s worth exploring whether your team wants to add an advanced prospecting tool to their sales tool kit. 

Great prospecting platforms can also help teams score leads and prioritize target accounts based on engagement analytics. 

Features to Look For

Look for prospecting tools that support the following tasks:

• Finding leads and enriched contact information 
• Researching and qualifying prospects
• Crafting personalized email outreach messages
• Scheduling meetings with prospects
• Analyzing prospect engagement 
• Pipeline management

Not all tools will include every feature, so it’s important to prioritize the ones that matter most to your team. 

If you have plenty of leads but aren’t sure how to work them, a tool that focuses on reporting and predictive analytics may be a great next step. 

If you’re working on growing your pipeline, a tool that has impressive lead generation capabilities may help your team get off the ground running.

Examples of sales prospecting tools:

• LeadIQ
• LinkedInSales Navigator
• Yesware 

Tip: Looking for a full blueprint on successful sales tech stacks? Grab our ebook below.

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Leverage Sales Intelligence Tools for Competitive Edge

Sales intelligence also encompasses a range of processes, activities, and data that help sales reps better understand their prospects, customers, and pipeline in general. Reliable sales intelligence helps teams make better, more data-driven decisions, especially when it comes to determining which leads and prospects are worth which sales resources. 

Sales intelligence processes can be performed manually, but the software platforms available today can add a tremendous amount of power and sophistication.

These tools collect and analyze the massive amounts of data that is now an inherent part of a successful sales process and turn it into insights around what prospects are looking for, trends in the pipeline, and patterns in the market. 

Features to Look For

When you’re shopping for sales intelligence tools, look for the following features:

• Shared and collaborative access to data
• Data enrichment tools
• List segmentation 
• Data hygiene features 
• Trend analysis 
• Buying signal/sentiment analysis

Also, consider the following:

• What data are your deals lacking? Is there a specific dataset that would help your team close more deals?
• What is the current quality of your data? Do you have any issues with breadth, accuracy, or timeliness of data?
• How do you plan to use sales intelligence in your sales process?
• Will access to the platform vary by role? 

Yesware’s reporting and analytics feature offers a great example of sales intelligence features that give you the information you need, without bogging you down.

Examples of sales intelligence tools:

• Yesware
• Cognism
• Clearbit

Conclusion

An effective and well-thought-out sales tool kit can transform your business. Look for tools that complement and enhance one another instead of adding complexity just for the sake of it. And don’t be afraid to abandon tools that no longer meet your needs—there is such a thing as overdoing it when it comes to your tech stack. 

What tools do you have in your sales tool kit? Are there any you’re planning to add in the near future? 

Sign up for a free trial of Yesware to explore our streamlined and intuitive sales tools.