To round out the year, we’ve talked to a number of our favourite sales experts to get a glimpse into their industry insights. This is the first blog in a series that will showcase their answers to a number of different questions. Today, we asked the experts “What is a high-impact sales tool you have used this past year?”
Here’s what they had to say:
At Bridgit, we are really focused on making sure each prospect is properly worked and isn’t forgotten about. Tools like Outreach and Salesloft are extremely powerful to build and monitor multistep outreach programs to engage both inbound and outbound prospects. The challenge with these tools is that reps can become “lazy” and rely on email as the only channel of outreach. I recommend that reps call into heat identified by opens and forwarded emails and recommend that target based on persona and research about the prospect. Tools like LinkedIn Navigator and ZoomInfo are also extremely helpful to gain targeted insights about potential clients.
– Jonathan Jones, Business Development Manager at Bridgit, @JonathanJones88
DiscoverOrg is really providing key insights into our target accounts.
– Marlene Keay, Senior Manager Business Development at Virtual Causeway, @marlenekeay
We focused this year on making sure we maximize the benefit of the tools we have rather than looking for more. The tool is primarily Salesforce.com to get better intelligence, workflow, and execution.
– Carlos Hernandez, Regional VP at Sandvine, @CAHernandezR
Our CRM (Salesforce) is by far the most impactful tool we use. From managing contacts and sales leads, to working the opportunity life cycle, to running reports and analyzing key metrics, it’s a tool that is used daily by anyone who touches sales. As a large company with multiple divisions and sales teams one challenge we had up until recently was visibility into all opportunities across the company. Given the nature of our products it’s common to have multiple sales teams working with the same customer account (different contacts and products, but same customer). We were sometimes stepping on each other and definitely weren’t leveraging our common messaging. Bringing the entire sales unit onto the same CRM has now given us that visibility across the customer, we’re much more successful leveraging each other and more importantly customers appreciate the ‘one company’ approach.
– Greg St. Louis, Vice President Sales at Wolters Kluwer Health
Vidyard Go Video. Use it frequently to bring a lot more context to responses and ideas. Clearly I’d rather talk then type!
– Chad McCaffrey, Entrepreneur in Residence at Communitech, @cjkmccaffrey
We’ve moved everything to hubspot; marketing, sales and client success, it’s working extremely well
– Ryan O’Grady, President at Fotaflo, @OGradyProd
ConnectLeader Auto Dialer
– Dan Wardle, Head of Emerging Business & Business Development at Vidyard, @wardledan
This past year we made the move from Salesforce to Hubspot Sales CRM. We really like the ease of use, the email features, and the cost.
– Mark Elliott, Co-founder VA Partners, @markeelliott
Zoom – the video conferencing tool. While we’ve used a bunch of conferencing tools (Uberconference, Join.me, GoToMeeting, etc.), the prevalence of video with Zoom has made a huge difference for us. It forces reps to be completely focused on the client (no checking cell phone or zoning out) and develops a more personal relationship with them.
– Shane Gamble, Head of Sales at Smile.io, @ShaneGamble01
Hubspot has added a lot of features to automate processes. It has come a long way.
– David Carter, Executive Director at the Innovation Factory, @dkrcarter
In my current role in change management at BDC, I’m not using many sales tools. I am a fan of using LinkedIn and helping startups get up to speed on the basics of Hubspot!
– Ryan McCartney, BDC Communitech Partner, @rmccartney323
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
– Tim Davison, VP Enterprise Client Development at Morneau Shepell, @davison_tim
Check out our other expert blogs for 2019:
What was your highest impact B2B sales tool from 2018? Please add your feedback in the comments section below.
