![](\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/2021-landscape_Complete_mod_18-1-1.jpg\")
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Image credit: Nancy Nardin’s smart selling tools<\/p>\n
Recent research from Gartner shows that 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers<\/a> are expected to occur in digital channels by 2025 \u2013 signalling a shift from the traditional reliance on sales reps to a need for digital solutions like automation, live chat, and conversational marketing in the long term.<\/p>\n \u201cAs customers increasingly learn and buy digitally, sales reps become just one of many possible sales channels,\u201d says Cristina Gomez, Managing Vice President at Gartner. \u201cBecause of this, sales organizations must be able to sell to customers everywhere<\/a> the customer expects to engage, interact, and transact with suppliers.\u201d<\/p>\n But what does this mean for you and your business? Building a flexible sales stack helps maintain sales efficiency and sales effectiveness<\/a> while also meeting the demands of modern buyers \u2013 even as you scale.<\/p>\n Below we take a closer look at the best frameworks for guiding your sales tool selection and our recommended sales tools to accelerate your sales motions, increase revenue, and boost ARR in 2021. But first, let\u2019s start with a simple definition.<\/p>\n Sales tools are applications and software used by sales professionals to make their job easier. Sales tools come in multiple categories, including customer relationship management (CRM), sales and market intelligence, lead handling and prospecting, analytics and reporting, sales training<\/a>, and sales automation<\/a> and integration. Choosing the right tools ensures efficient and effective performance from your team and ultimately creates happier customers.<\/a><\/p>\n As you begin to build your sales stack, it\u2019s important to consider what each tool accomplishes and how they work together. Measuring twice and cutting \u2013 or in this case, implementing \u2013 once is easy advice to overlook. Not all companies have the same needs and they can vary. If you\u2019re selling a high-volume, freemium product, you may benefit greatly from a single tool that can automate manual tasks like lead qualification<\/a>. An enterprise software company, on the other hand, may need a robust suite of integrated tools<\/a> to help them manage longer, multitouch sales cycles.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen buying tools or designing frameworks consider what the process looks like from the customer’s perspective and keep their needs at the heart of your decisions\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n While it\u2019s common sense that not all sales tools are created equal, it\u2019s also true that not all companies have the same needs. Before you start contacting vendors, the first thing you should do is make a list of your core business needs. Once you\u2019ve done this, you need to see if your customers’ needs align with these. When buying tools or designing frameworks consider what the process looks like from the customer’s perspective and keep their needs at the heart of your decisions. Then, use that list to evaluate potential solutions.<\/p>\n As we emerge from the COVID-19 crisis it\u2019s important to select tools that will allow you to adapt to changing buyer behavior. Remember you can\u2019t build your sales stack on the back of \u201cnice-to-haves.\u201d Most software vendors will want to impress you with all the things their product can do, but making sure the tool meets your critical business needs while aligning with your customer\u2019s needs should be paramount.<\/p>\n Picking the right sales tools can be an easy process if you use the right frameworks<\/a> to guide your selections. These frameworks can be as simple as a few statements reminding you what a tool should and shouldn\u2019t do \u2013 for example, a tool should help you accomplish a goal like improving productivity, but it shouldn\u2019t create more work for the reps using it.<\/p>\n Here are some simple suggestions as you design your own framework:<\/p>\n Another framework we\u2019ve found useful is breaking down the work that needs to be done and then seeing what kind of tool is needed to level up. Put simply:<\/p>\n Putting this framework into practice might look like:<\/p>\n Remember any sales tool that you choose should either increase value or decrease time \u2013 and ideally both Most sales tools are either a CRM<\/a> (Customer Relationship Management) or CRM enhancers \u2013 they add a specialized functionality to your existing CRM, or they feed data into it. The six most common categories that sales tools fall under are:<\/p>\n I\u2019ve organized this list using the six categories above. At the top of each category are the tools we use at Intercom, but I\u2019ve included plenty of alternatives that might be just as good, or even better, for your business\u2019s needs. Your CRM is the center of your sales process. Choose one that facilitates a better workflow and integrates with the rest of your sales stack. This is the most important tool you\u2019ll invest in, so it may come as no surprise that the CRM category consists of 461 tools in the sales tech landscape<\/a>, so carefully assess your needs and then choose the CRM that will grow with your organization.<\/p>\n We use Salesforce<\/a> because they are the industry leader among CRMs. The platform is easy to customize, accessible from almost anywhere, has a robust report engine and offers numerous integrations, including the ability to sync data from tools that don\u2019t talk directly to one another.<\/p>\n Additionally, with the Salesforce app for Intercom<\/a>, we can keep our users in Intercom and leads and contacts in Salesforce synced. That way, our reps can move seamlessly between tools without sacrificing the customer experience.<\/p>\n Alternatives: ActiveCampaign, monday.com<\/em><\/p>\n Zoho CRM<\/a> is a customizable tool that works for B2B and B2C organizations of all sizes, helping them to convert more leads, engage with customers, and grow revenue with ease.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Sharpspring, Yesware<\/em><\/p>\n Copper<\/a> was built for G Suite users but with the native Intercom app, you can quickly track data, schedule meetings, and create and view opportunities without ever leaving the Inbox.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Sugar Sell, Streak<\/em><\/p>\n You can upgrade for advanced features, but the basic version of the HubSpot Sales Hub<\/a> is free forever and works well for new teams. It also seamlessly integrates with Intercom<\/a>, allowing you to access important HubSpot data on leads and customers right from the Intercom Inbox.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Close.io, Outreach<\/em><\/p>\n Another widely used CRM tool, Pipedrive<\/a> helps you reduce administrative overhead with their workflow automation feature. Integrate with Intercom<\/a> to seamlessly sync deals, leads, and conversations to capture and convert more leads.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Agile CRM<\/em><\/p>\n Keap<\/a> is a sales CRM and marketing tool that helps you to collect more leads with high-converting landing pages, engage prospects with targeted messages, and create custom forms that embed on your website and landing pages to capture lead information.<\/p>\n Give SDRs the information they need to close deals right from within their Intercom Inbox<\/a> with our Keap integration<\/a>.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Sales seek<\/em><\/p>\n Dynamics 365 Sales<\/a> is a robust solution from Microsoft that provides applications for each stage of the buyer\u2019s process, from sales intelligence to personalized buyer experiences. You can integrate Dynamics 365 Sales with Intercom<\/a> to access quotes & orders, view real-time sales, and quote information during the Intercom Inbox and create contacts from inside Intercom.<\/p>\n Alternatives: PipelineDeals, Pipeliner CRM<\/em><\/p>\n Salesloft<\/a> is a sales acceleration and CRM platform that helps B2B sales teams capture leads and close more deals.<\/p>\n \u201cYour SDRs can\u00a0use our integration to get access to Salesloft from the Intercom inbox\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You can automate interactions with buyers or personalize them across email, phone, social, direct mail, and video to engage customers in a way that works best for them. Your SDRs can use our integration to get access to Salesloft<\/a> from the Intercom inbox.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Nimble, Insightly CRM<\/em> Knowing a prospect\u2019s name or email is a great start, but these alone don\u2019t tell you if that person or their company will be a qualified buyer for your product. Sales and market intelligence tools help fill in the details so you can quickly make informed sales decisions.<\/p>\n We use Clearbit<\/a> to enrich visitors who chat with us via our Messenger but only leave behind a few points of information, like full name and email address.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>With the\u00a0Clearbit Reveal app for Intercom, we can uncover things like company name, location and employee count\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n With the Clearbit Reveal app for Intercom<\/a>, we can uncover things like company name, location and employee count. Then we can decide if we think the company is a good fit for our products and use cases.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Lead411, UpLead<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Need some people power behind your lead searches? LeadGenius<\/a> combines the power of machine learning with the intuition of human researchers. LeadGenius helps us ensure the quality of the lead data you\u2019re piping into your CRM.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Datanyze, D&B Hoovers<\/em><\/p>\n We use ZoomInfo<\/a> to make sure we have accurate contact information in our CRM. This tool allows us to search for companies and prospects based on industry, location, company size, revenue, and more to understand how our prospects and customers have changed over time.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Sales Intel<\/em><\/p>\n LinkedIn Sales Navigator<\/a> allows us to tap into their massive network to learn more about our prospects and identify key decision makers.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Lusha, LeadIQ<\/em><\/p>\n Groove<\/a> is a lean, omnichannel help desk that helps teams focus on delivering personal support. Quickly route, tag, or create canned replies to quickly resolve your most common queries.<\/p>\n Alternatives: XANT playbooks, Adapt<\/em><\/p>\n Generate more opportunities, get deals sooner, and increase deal size with the 6Sense<\/a> account engagement platform.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>6Sense uses AI predictions to tell you when people are ready to buy so you can leverage intent data and rich insights that allow you to proactively target the right accounts to close more deals\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n 6Sense uses AI predictions to tell you when people are ready to buy so you can leverage intent data and rich insights that allow you to proactively target the right accounts to close more deals.<\/p>\n Alternatives: VanillaSoft, Velocify<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n This powerful tool matches demographics with behavioral data to identify and score the best leads. Madkudu<\/a> seamlessly integrates with Intercom<\/a>.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Leadspace, PipeCandy<\/em><\/p>\n Turn anonymous Google Analytics visits into actionable sales data. Leadfeeder<\/a> reveals the companies that your website visitors work for so you can look for matches in your CRM.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Kickfire, Albacross<\/em><\/p>\n Infer<\/a> is an artificial intelligence SaaS platform that leverages machine learning for predictive lead and account scoring. Hyper-segmentation of profiles enables you to personalize your sales motions and identify your most sales-ready leads.<\/p>\n Alternatives: EverString<\/em><\/p>\n Find prospects on social media or spreadsheets, and then let Prospect.io<\/a> find their email address. It also includes tools for automated outreach campaigns and integrates with Intercom using the piesync app<\/a>.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Slintel, Autopilot<\/em> Perhaps the most important part of any sales motion is quickly identifying promising leads, qualifying them and getting them into the right hands to be nurtured and converted into a sale. The tools below will help you do just that.<\/p>\n At Intercom, our sales reps use live chat to proactively engage, qualify, and convert website visitors in real time<\/a>. We can even hop on a discovery call, demo our product, or schedule a follow-up meeting with high value leads while they\u2019re live on our website. With our growing App Store<\/a>, Intercom can now be connected to hundreds of other tools, making it an even more valuable player in our sales stack.<\/p>\n Alternatives: None <\/em>\ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n LeanData<\/a> is a powerful tool that helps us route leads<\/a> to the right rep and attribute new business to sales and marketing campaigns. The drag-and-drop functionality means we can quickly build complex routing logic for leads and contacts along with opportunities and accounts. We can also create and edit round robin logic, establish territories, and put reps on vacation to make sure prospects are never left waiting.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Bizible, Marketo Engage<\/em><\/p>\n Salesloft<\/a> allows us to streamline, automate and quickly personalize our sales outreach. For prospects that don\u2019t come in through live chat, we use Salesloft to put them into an email cadence and proactively follow up<\/a> with them to gauge their interest.<\/p>\n Alternatives: PersistIQ<\/em><\/p>\n Demandbase<\/a> is an ABM platform that provides a 360 overview of your accounts so you can engage the right people with the right message at the right time.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Rollworks<\/em><\/p>\n This is a complete solution for sales teams making outbound calls. Aircall<\/a> includes everything from call recording to data analysis to CRM integrations and works right in the Intercom Messenger<\/a>.<\/p>\n Chili Piper<\/a> is an advanced scheduling software for time-strapped sales teams.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>Chili Piper routes conversations to the right team and round robin rules ensure leads are fairly distributed across team members to ensure a positive customer experience\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n It allows SDRs to schedule customer meetings and sync them with their CRM in a single click \u2013 translating to more time to focus on more valuable interactions with leads and prospects. Chili Piper routes conversations to the right team and round robin rules ensure leads are fairly distributed across team members to ensure a positive customer experience. Schedule them straight from your Intercom Inbox with our handy integration<\/a>.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Terminus ABM Platform<\/em><\/p>\n Hook Bonjoro up to Intercom<\/a> (or your CRM of choice), then get a prompt to send a quick, personalized video to each new lead. It all happens in Bonjoro\u2019s<\/a> mobile app, making it easy to add a human touch to the sales process.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Loom, Vidyard<\/em><\/p>\n Andrew Chen cited workplace collaboration apps as a prime candidate for network effect growth tactics<\/a>.<\/p>\n CloudSponge<\/a> enables users to tap into address books to invite colleagues to collaborate with them so you can generate more leads and referrals.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Skrapp.io<\/em><\/p>\n Sales collateral is now in the cloud and easy to track. Use DocSend<\/a> to send case studies, presentations and other content \u2013 and then track prospect engagement in its dashboard.<\/p>\n Alternatives: GetAccept<\/em><\/p>\n Mailshake<\/a> is a cold-email outreach tool that includes sales email templates and automatic follow-ups.<\/p>\n Alternatives: BuzzSumo<\/em><\/p>\n This is a tool that helps you build an outreach process. Outreach.io<\/a> uses a feature called Sequences to drive further engagement with prospects. These workflows keep reps on tasks so that no lead is ever forgotten.<\/p>\n Alternatives: RingDNA<\/em><\/p>\n Wistia<\/a> allows users to record their webcam and their screen.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>With the\u00a0Wistia app, you can send your leads and video data straight into Intercom\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Make your pitch or give a demo, then share the video with a link. With the Wistia app<\/a>, you can send your leads and video data straight into Intercom.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Brightcove, Dolby.io<\/em><\/p>\n GetAccept<\/a> allows you to create video prospecting messages, sales enablement content including sales decks and case studies, and live chat messages to engage prospects. Workflows allow you to effortlessly send documents and capture e-signatures from clients.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Reply<\/em> Data is next to useless until it\u2019s actionable. These tools allow you to visualize, scrutinize and mobilize decision making by making data accessible by stakeholders in impactful ways<\/a>.<\/p>\n Is it any surprise that Google Analytics<\/a> made this list? This powerful analytics tool is used by sales teams to identify where leads bounce, the content they\u2019re engaging with the most, how they found you, and where they are coming from to allow your team to identify new opportunities to engage prospects or strengthen sales enablement content to help reduce churn.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Adobe Analytics<\/em><\/p>\n Heap<\/a> is a powerful analytics tool that contextualizes user actions with behavioral analytics to help sales teams make more impactful decisions.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>Sales teams can leverage Heap to identify the actions and behaviours that produce long-term retention and increase activation rates\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Their software empowers product, marketing, and customer success teams to understand their users\u2019 behaviors so they can provide a frictionless experience. Sales teams can leverage Heap to identify the actions and behaviors that produce long-term retention and increase activation rates.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Looker<\/em><\/p>\n InsightSquared<\/a> equips sales operations with actionable, real-time intelligence on sales KPIs. This tool powers more accurate forecasting, pipeline management, and customized sales rep coaching based on individual performance.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Aviso<\/em><\/p>\n Tableau<\/a> is critical to enabling those of us in sales operations to see and understand our data. We\u2019ve connected Tableau to a variety of data sources, including our CRM, our backend data warehouse and our Intercom app<\/a>, so we can visualize a treasure trove of customer data<\/a>. Tableau allows us to process a lot of data, which is important as we scale.<\/p>\n Alternatives: InsightsSquared, Domo<\/em><\/p>\n Using Bombora<\/a>, we have the ability to understand which of our prospects are actively searching for Intercom and pair that with firmographic information. Bombora makes it easy for us to uncover the key decision makers we should be reaching out to and move deals forward.<\/p>\n Alternatives: SignalHQ<\/em><\/p>\n Clari<\/a> allows you to gamify the sales process to boost rep productivity. The tool also provides insights on buyer intent so you can more accurately create sales forecasts<\/a> and help your team track toward closing business.<\/p>\n Alternatives: People.io<\/em><\/p>\n Record every visitor session on your website, then rewatch and analyze to see where they get stuck. FullStory<\/a> is great for customer support, but sales teams can use the FullStory app for Intercom<\/a> to look for missed opportunities in content marketing, lead capture forms pricing pages, and more.<\/p>\n Alternatives: Domo<\/em> Improving your most common sales processes can save your team immense time \u2013 and headaches. These tools help you reduce friction, speed up common tasks, and onboard new sales team members quickly.<\/p>\nWhat are sales tools?<\/h2>\n
How to choose your sales tools<\/h2>\n
Simple frameworks for choosing your sales tools<\/h3>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Sales-tools-framework.png\")
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![](\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Sales-tools-framework-2.png\")
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\n<\/a><\/p>\nThe six types of sales tools<\/h2>\n
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The 55 best sales tools<\/h2>\n
\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\nCustomer relationship management (CRM) tools<\/h2>\n
1. Salesforce<\/h3>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/salesforce-create-lead.png\")
<\/p>\n2. Zoho CRM<\/h3>\n
3. Copper<\/h3>\n
4. HubSpot Sales Hub<\/h3>\n
5. Pipedrive<\/h3>\n
6. Keap<\/h3>\n
7. Dynamics 365 Sales<\/h3>\n
8. Salesloft<\/h3>\n
\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\nSales and market intelligence tools<\/h2>\n
9. Clearbit<\/h3>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/sales-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n10. LeadGenius<\/h3>\n
11. ZoomInfo<\/h3>\n
12. LinkedIn Sales Navigator<\/h3>\n
13. Groove<\/h3>\n
14. 6Sense<\/h3>\n
15. MadKudu<\/h3>\n
16. Leadfeeder<\/h3>\n
17. Infer<\/h3>\n
18. Prospect.io<\/h3>\n
\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\nLead handling and prospecting tools<\/h2>\n
19. Intercom live chat<\/h3>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/salesho2-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\n20. LeanData<\/h3>\n
21. Salesloft<\/h3>\n
22. Demandbase<\/h3>\n
23. Aircall<\/h3>\n
24. Chili Piper<\/h3>\n
25. Bonjoro<\/h3>\n
26. CloudSponge<\/h3>\n
27. DocSend<\/h3>\n
28. Mailshake<\/h3>\n
29. Outreach.io<\/h3>\n
30. Wistia<\/h3>\n
31. GetAccept<\/h3>\n
\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\nAnalytics and reporting tools<\/h2>\n
32. Google Analytics<\/h3>\n
33. Heap<\/h3>\n
34. InsightSquared<\/h3>\n
35. Tableau<\/h3>\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Tableau-Salesforce-data.png\")
<\/p>\n36. Bombora<\/h3>\n
37. Clari<\/h3>\n
38. FullStory<\/h3>\n
\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\nProcess and training tools<\/h2>\n
39. Gong<\/h3>\n