Sales 201: Tracking and Automation

Introduction

In Sales 101, we dicussed the basics and defined key terms. Here, we'll cover what software tools are available to help you track and automate your sales process. While all of these tools are used by sales teams, there is overlap as to which tools can help the marketing and service teams as well. We'll also point out which tools are techinically a marketing tool because they are meant to bring in new customers, but are used by sales teams to reach out to those customers. The tools in this category are generally referred to as "Go to Market" (GTM) tools as they are used by both sales and marketing teams.

Sales Tools by Category

We will break down the software tools into categories based on their primary function in the sales process. This is not an exhaustive list, but it includes some of the most popular and widely used tools in each category. By the end, you'll at least know what the differnt types of tools are and have an idea which ones could help you specifically.

CRM (Customer Relationship Management)

The CRM is the brain of your BUSINESS. Not just sales. It should drive the three core operations being marketing, sales and service. Implemented properly, it has every single interaction with a customer or prospect. It should be the source of turh for all customer data and interactions. This is the most important tool for your business.

• Salesforce: A comprehensive CRM platform that offers a wide range of features for sales
• HubSpot CRM: A user-friendly CRM that provides tools for sales, marketing, and customer service.
• Zoho CRM: An affordable CRM solution that offers a variety of features for sales
• Valstorm: The Business operating system for modern business. Out of the box support for marketing, sales and service. One tool that is a CRM and replaces tools in the other categories listed below.
• Pipedrive: A CRM designed specifically for sales teams, with a focus on pipeline management and automation.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365: A CRM and ERP solution that integrates with other Microsoft products and offers a range of features for sales, marketing, and customer service.
• Freshsales: A CRM that offers AI-based lead scoring, email tracking, and a built-in phone system for sales teams.
• Copper: A CRM that integrates seamlessly with Google Workspace, making it a great choice for teams that rely heavily on Google tools.
• Insightly: A CRM that offers project management features in addition to traditional CRM capabilities, making it a good choice for sales teams that also manage projects.

Sales Communication Tools

These are straight forward tools of the trade and the most important tools period... You can't operate a business without any way to communicate! So... We have phone systems, email, video calls, text messaging and website chat. These are the channels that sales teams use to communicate with customers. The tools in this category are focused on facilitating and improving communication through these channels. This is where Valstorm shines as we integrated all of these channels into one system that combines your Google/Microsoft account and a Phone system for calling and texting.

Phone Systems

Phone systems always allow you to call. Some also allow you to text. Additional features include call recording, voicemail, call forwarding, IVR call trees for routing, group texting, automating texts, and integration with CRM platforms to log calls and texts so you can pull up customer information.

• RingCentral: A cloud-based phone system that offers features like call forwarding, voicemail, and integration with CRM platforms.
• Aircall: A phone system designed for sales teams, with features like call recording, analytics, and CRM integration.
• Twilio: A cloud communications platform that allows businesses to build custom phone systems and communication workflows using APIs.
• Dialpad: A cloud-based phone system that offers features like call routing, voicemail, and integration with CRM platforms.
• Google Voice: A simple and affordable phone system that integrates with Google Workspace, making it a good choice for teams that rely heavily on Google tools.

Email

Some businesses continue to use their personal email accounts. It is important to get a professional email and website domain as soon as possible for two main reasons. First, the communication gold mine in your emails and meetings! Second, you will need the website and email to access the best sales tools. Some require you have your own emil and website for legal and technical reasons. The tools in this category are focused on improving email communication, with features like email tracking, scheduling, and integration with CRM platforms.

• Gmail: A widely used email service that integrates with Google Workspace and offers features like email tracking and scheduling.
• Outlook: A popular email client that integrates with Microsoft 365 and offers features like email tracking and scheduling.
• Zoho Mail: An email service that integrates with Zoho CRM and offers features like email tracking and scheduling.

Video Calls

Signing up for an email domain with Microsoft or Google will give you access to their video conferencing tools that have a ton of features and integrate into all the top CRMs. It is unlikely that you need more.

• Microsoft Teams: A collaboration platform that includes video conferencing features and integrates with Microsoft 365.
• Google Meet: A video conferencing tool that integrates with Google Workspace and offers features like screen sharing and recording.
• Zoom: A popular video conferencing tool that offers features like screen sharing, recording, and integration with CRM platforms.

Text Messaging

• Twilio: In addition to phone systems, Twilio also offers SMS messaging capabilities that can be integrated into your sales communication workflows.
• Google Voice: In addition to phone systems, Google Voice also offers SMS messaging capabilities that can be integrated into your sales communication workflows.

Sales Automated Engagement Tools

Sales engagement tools are almost always used to engage a customers automatically in a sequence. Other names that are commonly used are drip campaigns, cadences, or sequences. They generally send emails, text messages and create tasks for sales reps to follow up on. Generally the idea is to keep re-engaging a customer or get them to take the next step without the sales rep having to remember the reminders for each steps processs. This is one of the most common reasons teams buy a CRM as they are needed to feed these tools. This is a direct pain point that Valstorm solved by building drip campaigns into our system.

• Outreach: A sales engagement platform that helps teams automate and optimize their communication with prospects.
• Salesloft: Another popular sales engagement tool that provides features for email tracking, call tracking, and analytics.
• Custom Builds: This is common. Many companies use salesforce flows, Zapier, n8n or some other platform/tool to build on outreach on top of their CRM. These are usually fragile, hard to maintain, and cost more or as much as buying a dedicated tool.

Sales Analytics Tools

Really, these are just reporting tools. Top CRMs have customizable reports on the data inside the CRM. Salesforce has a pretty powerful system for this. Generally teams buy these tools when they want to pull data from multiple sources. This is one of the least important categories of tools until your team is truly data driven and has a dedicated analyst or data scientist on the team. If you are in the early stages, you can get by with the reporting tools in your CRM.

• Tableau: A powerful data visualization tool that can help sales teams analyze their performance and identify trends.
• Looker: A business intelligence platform that allows sales teams to create custom reports and dashboards to track their KPIs.
• Zoho Analytics: A more affordable option for sales analytics that offers a range of features for data analysis and visualization.
• Google Data Studio: A free tool that allows you to create custom reports and dashboards using data from various sources, including your CRM and sales engagement tools.
• Microsoft Power BI: A business analytics service that provides interactive visualizations and business intelligence capabilities with an interface simple enough for end users to create their own reports and dashboards.
• Salesforce Einstein Analytics: A tool that provides AI-powered analytics and insights directly within the Salesforce CRM platform.
• Databricks: A unified data analytics platform that can be used for advanced analytics and machine learning on sales data.
• Sisense: A business intelligence software that allows sales teams to easily analyze and visualize their data to make informed decisions.
• Domo: A cloud-based business intelligence platform that provides real-time data visualization and analytics for sales teams.

Sales Intelligence Tools

Sales intelligence tools are used to gather and analyze data from conversations that happen between your team and the customer. Their value is that they bring the notes and insights from those conversations to the team that otherwise would be lost. There are options for real time feedback, but the majority of the value is in transcriptions, summaries and action items after the call. The insights from these can lead huge improvements to your marketing, sales and service processes. The challenge is which channel the tool monitors as you will talk to customers across calls, texts, emails, video calls, in person, website chat, and social media. Calls, texts, emails and video calls are the most valuable to monitor with the quickest implementation and return on investment. Other channels are more niche and difficult, with less engagement anyways. You can conver the main 4 channels with Valstorm and a Google/Microsoft integration, but there are also dedicated tools.

• Gong: A conversation analytics platform that uses AI to analyze sales calls and provide insights on how to improve. You can receive real time feedback during video calls, transcriptions, summaries and action items after the call, and use the data to coach your sales team and improve performance. It typically costs $1,200–$2,400 per user/year, plus a mandatory platform fee of $5,000–$50,000.
• Chorus: Similar to Gong, Chorus provides conversation analytics to help sales teams understand their interactions with prospects and customers.
• Gemini: Gemini can listen into your google meetings to provide transcriptions, summaries and action items after the call. This is an extremely powerful tool that costs pennies compared to Gong and Chorus.
• Microsoft copilot: Essentially the same as Gemini but built into Microsoft Teams.
• Fireflies.ai: A tool that can record, transcribe, and analyze meetings across various platforms, providing insights and action items to improve sales conversations.
• Otter.ai: A transcription and note-taking tool that can be used to capture and analyze sales calls, providing insights and summaries to help sales teams improve their performance.
• Fathom: A tool that provides real-time transcription and analysis of sales calls, helping teams identify key moments and insights to improve their sales process.

Prospecting/Enrichment Tools (Marketing Tools)

Commonly, people refer to outbound marketing as "outbound sales". These truly are "marketing tools" but your sales team will be the ones using them, so we include them here. They start the process of identifying and reaching out to potential leads. This starts to land in what is being called the "Go to Market" (GTM) space which is a blend of sales and marketing. These tools are used to find potential customers and gather information about them before reaching out.

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator: A tool that helps sales professionals find and connect with potential leads on LinkedIn. It doubles as a place for research and outreach.
• Apollo: A lead database for finding contact and company information. They have built in outreach tools, but many people use it just for the database and then use other tools for outreach.
• ZoomInfo: Similar to Apollo, ZoomInfo provides a large database of contact and company information. It also offers features for lead generation and sales intelligence. It is the expensive and inflexible option compared to Apollo.
• Clay: A tool that generally teams will use to enrich contact data from MANY different sources after having already grabbed them from Apollo, LinkedIn, or ZoomInfo.

Cold Email Tools (Marketing Tools)

This neede a category of its own because cold emails are one of the most scalable in terms of output. There are a lot of nuances. If you are B2C, just skip this entirel as it is illegal and no cusumer cares about their email like a business email. B2B companies who are still building trust and brand awareness with their customers will get the most value out of cold emails. There are a lot of opinions and data around cold email, so we'll link you to resources to learn more about the best practices and strategies for cold emailing.

• Lemlist: A cold email tool that allows you to create personalized email campaigns and track their performance.
• Mailshake: Another popular cold email tool that provides features for email tracking, scheduling, and analytics.
• Reply.io: A sales engagement platform that includes cold email capabilities, along with other sales automation features.
• Instantly: A cold email tool that focuses on deliverability and provides features for email verification and tracking.
• EmailChaser: A tool that helps you track and manage your cold email campaigns, with features for scheduling, analytics, and follow-up reminders.