2021 TOP SALESTECH
This exciting guide showcases the hottest sales tools for 2021. It's the ultimate list of solutions that should be in your sales stack.
<img src="https://cdn.fs.turtl.co/pagpne22TtOslA9nktqZ" width="180px">
TOP SALESTECH
of 2021
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TECHNOLOGY THAT SHOULD BE IN YOUR SALES STACK FOR 2021
Smart Selling Tools • Top Sales Tools of 2021
ABOUT THIS YEAR's GUIDE
It's an exciting time to be in Sales. Never before has there been so much innovation in the world of SalesTech and so many options for building out your sales technology stack.
In our annual Top Sales Tools of the Year guide, we've named some of our favorite solutions for growing revenue. This year, we've added several categories of technologies (see 3D Value-Selling Models and Mutual Action Plans to name just a couple).
We're confident that you'll find the perfect solutions for your organization.
It's been my pleasure pulling this annual list of Top Sales solutions together. I recommend that you start at the beginning and work your way through the guide end-to-end so you don't miss the perfect solution for today's modern way of selling.
Be sure to click on the vendor logos to be taken to more detail on their solution and complete their form if you're interested in knowing more.
Sincerely,
Nancy Nardin
Founder & CEO | Smart Selling Tools
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Smart Selling Tools •
Top Sales Tools of 2021
LEARNING
It's common wisdom that sales organizations consist of the top 20% of reps, the bottom 20% and the middle 60%. When upskilling, the focus should be on the middle performing reps so they perform like the top, "Moving the middle" can have a significant impact on your revenue.
You do that by way of better coaching and onboarding and by offering continuous learning, practice, and reinforcement.
Learning includes:
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Skills Development & Reinforcement
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Conversation Intelligence
-
Virtual Sales Coaching
Learning: Skills Development & Reinforcement
It’s hard for Managers to know which salespeople need coaching, when, and why, if they don’t have the tools to identify what improvement is needed.
Learning exercises and scenarios offer salespeople the chance to acquire new skills and to perfect those skills. over time Built-in quizzes, learning resources, practice and feedback functionalities are offered in quick, engaging formats for no-excuse learning on the go. Simulated virtual sales coaching adds new scalability.
How important will Skills Development & Reinforcement be for your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Learning: Conversation Intelligence
If you want to know what works on sales calls, you have to know what’s being said on sales calls. Conversation Intelligence solutions record, analyze, transcribe, and even produce a list of next steps for each sales call. You’ll learn which reps need coaching and in what way (What’s the ratio of rep-to-customer talk-time? Are they bringing up price too early?)
I like that recordings can be used in onboarding to show new reps best-practice examples and that they can also be shared with customers.
How important will coaching via Conversation Intelligence be for your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Learning: Virtual Sales Coaching
Virtual sales coaching solutions use an AI-powered coach that is trained on your perfect pitches. Then your seller has a simulated conversation with the virtual coach to practice their own pitch.
The AI-powered coach prompts the rep during the session by asking leading questions. A grade is automatically delivered based on the pitch. Trainees are benchmarked on what terms or phrases they use to reflect their knowledge about the positioning and benefits of the assessed solution.
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How important will Virtual Sales Coaching be for your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Smart Selling Tools •
Top Sales Tools of 2021
PRIORITIZING
PRIORITIZING functions on three levels; the lead level - which leads get attention next; the account level – which show the most buying intent for your solution types; and the buying-group level – who are they and what do they care about.
Simply increasing the volume of leads and activities generates diminishing returns due to buyers being inundated. Technology is partly to blame as it allows more sales reps to each make more communication attempts. A better approach is to ensure that both the lead/prospect and the activity required for each produce better outcomes.
Prioritizing includes:
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Account & Contact Purchase Intent
Prioritizing: Account & Contact Purchase Intent
Most companies will benefit from having a well-defined list of target accounts. Target accounts are those that met your ideal customer profile (ICP). However, just because an account is likely to buy, doesn’t mean they will buy ‘now’.
The best account targeting solutions will help you know who’s likely to buy now and why that’s the case. This is referred to as ‘purchase intent’. It’s now possible for salespeople to know which prospects in your ICP intend to purchase.
How important will prioritizing based on purchase intent be to your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
Smart Selling Tools •
Top Sales Tools of 2021
ENGAGING
There are many interesting technologies that encourage prospects to engage with your sellers. Of course, it’s important that sellers have an easy way to prepare the perfect presentation. They may want to present videos, documents, slideshows, and web-pages.
What you share and how you share it can also differentiate your company. Offering content in new and interesting formats, and offering interesting ways to share content with prospects has also become more important than ever.
And finally, giving more and more timely prospect demos is also important especially in a product-led growth model where the product needs to sell itself.
Engaging includes:
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Presenting
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Field Selling
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Response-Worthy Content
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Sharing
-
Demo Automation
These content presentation solutions go beyond the ability to store, organize, and serve-up content for sellers. They also make it possible for salespeople to easily prepare for meetings by compiling the most relevant documents, presentations, videos, web pages, and ROI tools ahead of time improving the outcome of each call.
Preparation is critical for success in B2B sales. Salespeople can not afford to simply show up and present the same information to everyone. Differentiation is created when salespeople elevate their performance during calls and after calls with their follow-up. These solutions help salespeople make the best impression.
How important are presentation solutions to your business?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Although field sellers maybe temporarily landlocked, left to perform their everyday activities through the use of virtual and digital technologies, that will not be the case forever. If you have a field sales team, they will eventually be back tin the field.
The best approach is to deploy content management and content presentation tools that will work for you for virtual and field selling (and that period where they do a little bit of both).
How important will Field Sales solutions be to your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Engaging: Response-Worthy Content
Personalized outreach converts exponentially higher than canned messages. Personalization includes understanding prospects’ personality, interests, and topics, and finding relevant and interesting news you can share with them. These types of solutions make it possible to send personalized outreach at scale driving better prospecting outcomes.
Alternative types of personalization, like Turtl, allow you to send customized and beautifully crafted content that converts no matter the sales stage.
How important will Response-Worthy Content be to your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Engaging: Content Sharing
Sometimes, your sellers just need a simple way to find and share content with prospects without over-complicating things. And sometimes your marketers need that same simplicity.
These solutions combine an easy approach to finding content with an easy approach to sharing it. The thing that matters even more, is that your prospects need an easy way to digest your content.
How important is Content Sharing to your business?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Engaging: Demo Automation
Demo Automation offers the means for each prospect to get a self-configured and personalized video product demo without the help of a salesperson or SE. Prospects can dive into the specific areas of interest in their own time from wherever they happen to be.
Essential functionality includes the ability to create a broad set of content that speaks to the needs of different vertical markets, personas, and other criteria. With a few clicks, viewers indicate which topics or features most interest them.
How important will Demo Automation be to your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Smart Selling Tools •
Top Sales Tools of 2020
PERFORMING
Performing sales activities or, the actual execution required to move deals through the pipeline is where the rubber meets the road. Yes, getting leads to raise their hand is important. Yes, closing deals is important. But none of those matters if the sales team can't execute.
Performing comes down to collaboration; task prioritization and execution; and understanding, planning, and acting on activities that will impact the success you have with accounts and opportunities.
Performing includes:
- PreSales Management
- Sales Team Workspaces
- Account & Opportunity Orchestration
- Revenue Execution
Performing: PreSales Management
PreSales Management platforms help sales engineering (SE) teams do their daily work more effectively. The technical selling needs rare different for SE teams compared to sales rep teams.
They will include data analytics capabilities so that leaders can run their teams as a business, the ability to use AI to help provide a PreSales view of the sales forecast, and an AI-powered ability to collect, cluster, and communicate product feedback at scale.
How important will PreSales Management be to your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Performing: Sales Team Workspaces
Salesforce is an extremely popular CRM. Using it has many challenges though, including that it requires clicking through to many different screens.. Many salespeople resort to spreadsheets, later bulk updating the CRM by cutting & pasting.
Sales Team Workspace apps are here to change that dynamic. It includes combining sales notes, spreadsheets, tasks, Kanban boards, search, collaboration, and sales process adherence in one simple and intuitive workspace - connected to Salesforce to eliminate all those tabs and double work.
How important will easy updating of Salesforce CRM be to your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Performing: Account & Opportunity Orchestration
These types of solutions help sellers identify opportunities for growth inside key accounts and execute a plan to capture that growth. They often include such functionality as mapping buyer stake-holders into organizational charts, aligning buyer objectives to your offerings, specifying stake-holder sentiment, and automatic grading of likelihood to purchase based on which tasks or processes have and have not been achieved.
How important will Account & Opportunity Orchestration be to your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Performing: Revenue Execution
Revenue Execution is about showing your reps the statistically proven ways to win, but not stopping at that. It is also about incentivizing them with a new 3rd bucket of compensation (micro-incentives) to deliver sales excellence. From data to buying signals to incentives - Revenue Execution realigns your entire revenue teams - sales, marketing, and service around the customer, motivating excellence through small wins that lead to bigger deals and better customer experience.
How important will Revenue Execution be to your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Smart Selling Tools •
Top Sales Tools of 2021
EARNING
The profession of selling requires the mastery of many types of activities. In the end, those activities are all in the service of earning someone’s business.
Number one is helping buyers to understand how your solution will translate into value. In addition to value-translation, buyers need to trust that the solution will work in their environment given their unique situation. If you can over-come those two challenges as well as facilitate conversations between buyers and your current customers, it will go a long way.
Earning includes:
- 3D Value Models
- Customer References
Earning: 3D Value Selling Models
Prospects that understand how your offerings will work within their own environment are a more likely to buy than those who don’t understand.
Slideshow presentations and lengthy technical write-ups shared with a prospect require interpretation and mental visualization. They depend on the prospect’s imagination. Not so with 3D Value-Selling models.
These models provide a holistic perspective of your solution in a way that brings clarity and understanding.
How important will 3D Value Models be to your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Earning: Customer References
Making it easy for salespeople to introduce their buyers to existing customer references can help close deals.
Help them buddy-up to hold an authentic conversation with an existing customer to validate their perceptions or to feel safe with their decision..
Make it easy for reps to find the perfect reference while avoiding burdening any one customer with too many requests.
How important will Customer References be to your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Smart Selling Tools •
Top Sales Tools of 2021
CLOSING
Many factors go into a seller's ability to close deaIs. It helps if you have a scalable, repeatable way to coach reps on each deal and can help them understand what's needed to win each one. This includes having a deal pursuit framework for structuring calls along with signals that indicate deal-health.
It also helps if you get the buyer to collaborate on every step of the buying process. This is an exciting solution category because it helps you gain buy-in throughout the process. Mutual Action Plans (MAPs) get both sides on the same page.
Closing includes:
- Deal Coaching Software
- Deal Room & Buyer Collaboration
Closing: Deal Coaching Software
Deal Coaching Software is not the same as “Coaching Software.” As you probably guessed, the word “Deal” is a critical differentiator. These solutions give sales teams a systematic way to evaluate deal health, identify which deals are worth pursuing, understand the buying team, and collaborate on next steps.
Deal playbooks help sellers initiate best-practice sales motions based on similar deals.
How important will Deal Coaching tools be to your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
Closing: Deal Room & Buyer Collaboration
Having buyers on the same page as your sellers is easier to do when you have a tool to facilitate the collaboration. These deal-room/collaboration solutions provide a structured way to communicate internally and externally.
Working with your buyer, you can create milestones action items, and other mutually agreed-upon objectives and timelines.You’ll get alerts if any deal is at risk, for instance when milestones or timelines are missed. Provide a clear plan to value to guide the customer journey and keep the conversation focused on the mutually-desired outcome.
How important will Deal Rooms & Buyer Collaboration be to your business in 2021?
- Very Important
- Somewhat Important
- Neutral
- Not important
NANCY NARDIN | TOP SALES TOOL OF THE YEAR 2021
