Succeeding in sales in the 21st century is not an easy job. In addition to needing empathy, grit, and drive, you need to know your potential and existing customers intimately to be relevant at every touchpoint.
Sales professionals who leverage sales technology outperform their peers. In this article, we'll introduce you to the eleven sales software categories that we think are the most important for you to be acquainted with.
What are sales tools?
Sales tools refer to digital tools that sales professionals use to make their work easier. The term "sales tool" is an umbrella term that encompasses several different technologies, including customer relationship management (CRM), sales intelligence and prospecting, sales acceleration, and data connectors and integrations, to name but a few.
The X factor for closing (the right) deals
Sales tools help salespeople understand which prospects are most likely to be successful with their product or service, when to reach out to those prospects, and what they should discuss with them. They save time on tedious and time-consuming administrative tasks and can focus on what matters most: providing value for people and businesses.
Another reason to invest in sales technology is that employees have started to demand access to a greater variety of modern tools. Companies using conservative or old-fashioned sales methods risk losing sales and even seeing their best sales talent leave. According to LinkedIn’s State of Sales 2021, 94% of sales professionals say sales tools help them close more deals, highlighting the importance of sales tools.
15 need-to-know sales tools categories
- CRM
- Sales Intelligence and Prospecting
- Sales Engagement Platforms
- Sales Enablement and Digital Sales Rooms
- Marketing Automation
- Account-Based Sales & Marketing
- Revenue Operations Platforms
- Customer Success Platforms
- Data Connectors and Integrations
- CPQ Software
- Conversation Intelligence
- E-Signature and Document Tracking
- Sales Productivity and Copilots/AI Agents
- Compensation Management Platforms
- Partner Ecosystem Platforms
CRM
As the name suggests, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software assists in managing your business’s relationships with its customers. It helps you keep track of existing customers, enhance customer relationships, improve customer retention, stay on top of sales and marketing efforts, and automate communication.
For most companies, a CRM is the first investment in sales technology, and it’s understandable why it's prioritized to that degree: According to LinkedIn’s State of Sales 2021, 68% of respondents stated that their CRM system was “very important” to closing deals.
Due to technological advancements and ultra-competitive markets, CRMs have matured into complex, multi-tiered support systems. From providing real-time updates to executing advanced lead scoring and automating repetitive tasks, CRM software now offers countless features that help salespeople optimize their sales processes.
Today, most CRM solutions are SaaS platforms where you can pay on a per-user, per-month basis. On-premise installations are seldom needed, as users can access most CRMs online in their internet browser. Some vendors charge a flat monthly fee for a set number of users but require larger packages or extra fees for additional users.
In a nutshell
A CRM is often a company's first investment in sales technology. The CRM space is crowded, yet there are clear leaders in different segments: Salesforce for enterprises, Pipedrive for small and medium-sized companies, and HubSpot for a full suite for growth.
Picking the right platform is an important decision since you will probably want to integrate it with other apps and platforms as you grow—make sure you pick one that won’t limit you down the road. Luckily, most vendors have seen UI facelifts in recent years, improving the user experience drastically compared to before.
We've identified fourteen vendors as strong options to make the choice a little easier.
Discover 14 smart CRM solutions
Sales Intelligence and Prospecting
Sales intelligence refers to a wide range of technologies that help salespeople find, monitor, and understand information on prospects’ and existing clients’ daily business.
Sales intelligence tools help salespeople know precisely who they should be talking with, what they should be talking about, and when they should reach out to them. They also put all the relevant information in front of them when they’re having that conversation. Sales intelligence tools provide contextual information surrounding these contacts, such as purchase history, current contracts, business objectives, and digital footprints.
Technology is increasingly becoming essential to most salespeople, with 62% of sales professionals believing that their sales intelligence software was “very important” in helping them close deals and 74% stating that their organizations plan to invest more in sales intelligence tools going forward, according to a LinkedIn survey.
In a nutshell
Local data plays a critical role in sales intelligence, making the category more geographically fragmented than others. For example, legislation such as GDPR makes Europe a more challenging market in which to have contact information.
New datasets will constantly emerge, making prospecting more effective and specialized. Intent data is one new example, as are industry-specific data sources such as real estate data, credit ratings, or vehicle information.
Its fragmented nature makes it difficult for first-time buyers to compare sales intelligence solutions and decide which is right for their business. To help you narrow down the search, we’ve listed ten powerful sales intelligence tools.
Discover 10 smart Sales Intelligence and Prospecting tools
Sales Engagement
B2B sales engagement tools transform how sales teams interact with prospects and customers, enabling smarter, faster, and more personalized communication. These tools streamline sales by centralizing communication channels, helping teams stay organized and responsive throughout the buyer’s journey.
One of the core benefits of these tools is the ability to automate outreach while maintaining a human touch. Features like automated follow-ups, cadences, and reminders ensure no lead or opportunity is overlooked while enabling sales reps to deliver timely, relevant messages that resonate with potential buyers.
Another key advantage is tracking and analyzing sales activities. By monitoring email open rates, call outcomes, and meeting attendance, these tools provide valuable data that helps teams prioritize leads and refine their strategies. This visibility allows sales leaders to identify what’s working and optimize performance in real time.
Sales engagement platforms integrate seamlessly with CRM systems, ensuring all interactions and updates are logged automatically. This unified view of customer data eliminates silos, enabling a more cohesive and collaborative approach to managing the sales pipeline.
In a nutshell
The future of B2B sales engagement tools will transform how sales teams interact with prospects and customers. These platforms will enable more efficient, data-driven outreach by automating multi-channel communication across email, calls, and social platforms, ensuring consistent and timely engagement at scale.
AI-powered insights will be pivotal in analyzing buyer behavior and engagement patterns to help sales teams tailor their messaging and approach. Predictive analytics will identify the best times, channels, and strategies for outreach, increasing the chances of meaningful interactions and conversions.
Discover 10 smart Sales Engagement tools
Sales Enablement and Digital Sales Rooms
As transactional B2B sales become increasingly automated, salespeople will begin to allocate more of their time to larger opportunities where consultative approaches, discovery meetings, and tailored proposals play a more significant role. More people will get involved, both from the buyers' and sellers’ sides.
With these larger sales processes, customer-facing digital portals and microsites will gain more traction. Via these sites, parties can share relevant materials, chat with each other, and craft custom proposals with prospective buyers. The goal is to strengthen the relationship already before the contract is signed by removing any buyer friction. These portals also allow sellers to track content that clients view and interact with, which can be highly useful when analyzing which content creates the highest impact.
The software vendors that enable these portals and microsites come from different backgrounds. After G2 released digital sales room as a newly formed category, we have seen many sales enablement platforms and some e-signature and document management providers rebrand themselves as DSR vendors. Nevertheless, salespeople will most likely find it useful when creating unique buying experiences for customers becomes easier.
What's new
In an increasingly complex and competitive marketplace, where buyers expect more involvement and personalization, salespeople could sometimes use a helping hand—or tool—to ease the sales process and remove any potential friction points.
Considering the number of deals that don’t materialize due to buyer friction, it’s in a business’s best interest to counteract that. The ten sales enablement and digital sales rooms software that we’ve listed should do just that—remove friction and enable your sales team to make more sales.
Discover 10 Sales Enablement and Digital Sales Rooms tools
Marketing Automation
Every sale starts in one of two ways: the seller finds the buyer or the buyer finds the seller. Marketing automation and lead generation tools aim to encourage the latter.
The future of B2B marketing automation tools is set to revolutionize how businesses attract, nurture, and convert leads. These platforms will enable seamless, multi-channel campaigns by automating workflows across email, social media, and paid ads, ensuring consistent messaging and engagement at scale.
Moreover, AI-driven tools will enable real-time performance monitoring, offering actionable recommendations to refine campaigns and maximize ROI. By automating complex workflows while ensuring personalization, these tools will help marketing teams build stronger, more meaningful connections with their audiences.
In a nutshell
B2B marketing automation tools simplify and optimize complex marketing workflows, enabling businesses to scale personalized, multi-channel campaigns. These tools integrate capabilities like lead nurturing, segmentation, and behavioral tracking, helping marketers deliver timely and relevant content to drive conversions.
Looking ahead, we anticipate advancements in AI-driven insights, deeper personalization, and seamless integration with CRM systems for a unified customer view. Marketing automation will become more industry-specific, offering tailored solutions for niche markets.
Discover 10 smart Marketing Automation tools
Account-Based Sales and Marketing
Account-based sales and marketing tools are reshaping how businesses engage with high-value accounts. These platforms enable teams to identify, target, and nurture specific accounts with tailored strategies, ensuring more personalized and impactful outreach. By leveraging account intelligence, sales and marketing teams gain deep insights into company needs, decision-makers, and buying signals, allowing for hyper-targeted campaigns.
As these tools evolve, we’ll see more specialized solutions for industry-specific account-based strategies, as well as holistic platforms that bring together targeting, engagement, and measurement into a unified ecosystem
In a nutshell
Account-based sales and marketing tools unify data, insights, and outreach to engage high-value accounts with tailored, multi-channel strategies. They integrate CRM, marketing automation, and account intelligence, aligning sales and marketing teams to drive personalized engagement.
Moving forward, we’ll see solutions that are both holistic and industry-specific, delivering deeper insights, stronger collaboration, and measurable growth for account-focused strategies.
Discover 10 smart Account-Based Sales and Marketing tools
Revenue Operations Platform
Revenue Operations (RevOps) platforms transform how businesses align their sales, marketing, and customer success teams to drive predictable revenue growth. These tools centralize data, workflows, and performance insights, breaking down silos and creating a unified view of the customer journey.
A core feature of RevOps platforms is data integration. Businesses can gain a holistic understanding of their revenue streams by consolidating data from CRMs, marketing automation, sales engagement tools, and customer success platforms. This enables teams to identify bottlenecks, forecast accurately, and optimize processes across the entire revenue funnel.
Moving forward, RevOps tools will become even more sophisticated, offering deeper integrations, AI-powered optimizations, and tailored solutions for specific industries, ensuring businesses can scale revenue operations seamlessly and efficiently.
In a nutshell
Revenue Operations platforms integrate data, processes, and teams across sales, marketing, and customer success to optimize revenue growth. By automating workflows, centralizing data, and delivering AI-driven insights, these tools enable businesses to forecast accurately, streamline operations, and scale efficiently.
The future of RevOps lies in deeper integrations and predictive analytics, empowering teams to collaborate effectively and make data-driven decisions that drive sustainable growth.
Discover 14 smart Revenue Operations Platform tools
Customer Success
Customer success software is used by businesses to ensure customers achieve the outcome that they expect to achieve as they use the business’s product or service. In other words, optimizing customer relationships and ensuring that the customer achieves success. Customer success initiatives are vital for the preservation and expansion of revenue, as well as boosting customer advocacy and helping sustain profitability and growth
The software provides businesses with a detailed analysis of customers’ past behavior and a “health score” that estimates their level of satisfaction.
This helps businesses identify any dissatisfied customers, set appropriate tasks into motion, and increase customer retention rates. Additionally, more often than not, customer success software will integrate with CRM software, help desk software, and social media management software tools, making it easier for businesses to gather their data in the place where they need it most.
In a nutshell
With its wide range of features, customer success software makes it easy for businesses to centralize all of their customer data and develop a 360-degree view of them, helping to decrease customer churn, increase customer satisfaction, and increase upsell opportunities.
Through customer success software, businesses can accurately assess their customers' satisfaction and take action if necessary. This helps ensure that the business can do the thing that matters just as much if not more than capturing new customers—retaining those customers.
Discover 10 Customer Success tools
Data Connector and Integrations
The increasingly digitized world has a multitude of fantastic tools that can help make our lives easier. However, a downside of this wide range of different tools is that they are often independent and not easily accessible from a single system. Data connectors and integrations come in handy here.
A data connector is a tool that connects different systems so that data can be moved between them. This means that the data is accessible through a single system, which is a significant quality-of-life improvement.
Data integration tools are slightly different in that they combine data from different sources into a single system instead of simply allowing data movement between systems.
In a nutshell
Even when businesses have access to all of the data and tools that they could possibly require, they run headfirst into another challenge—that data is scattered across numerous platforms and solutions. This decreases usability and makes it more difficult to access in real time.
If that’s a problem that your organization has encountered, data connectors and integrations, like the ones listed, could be worth looking into, as they make it easy for businesses of all sizes to centralize the wide range of tools and data that they have access to and avoid drawn-out and expensive data projects.
Discover six smart Data Connector and Integration tools
CPQ
Configure, price, quote (CPQ) software helps companies automate the quoting and proposal process lifecycle, starting with the moment a customer supplies their needs in a company’s offering and ending with sending a detailed quote to the customer or prospect.
CPQ software is used in sales departments to accelerate sales while improving quote accuracy and customer relations. These software products allow companies to determine a customer’s needs and provide custom quotes that best fit them. Products are typically built on an existing CRM software product or designed to integrate with one (or more) CRM tools.
As companies and their product/service lists grow, it becomes increasingly difficult to manage product pricing, identify great upsell opportunities, and keep track of deals being offered by your competition. Sales reps aren’t given up-to-date pricing information on their products, leading to lost opportunities and slower quote times. Configuring a quote can be a time-consuming task, especially when critical data is not easily accessible in real time.
CPQ software eliminates these problems. Sales cycles are faster, pricing data is far more accurate, and opportunities to upsell and bundle are captured more frequently. At the same time, a company can prepare orders faster without increasing the potential for error. And lastly, because pricing data is more streamlined, workflows are streamlined, time is saved, and more sales can be made.
In a nutshell
With businesses generally offering an increasing amount of personalization in their product catalogs, buyers increasingly having particular specifications for their purchases, and sales representatives not necessarily having the required access or knowledge to create quotes effectively, CPQ software is a boon.
Through automation, businesses can make the quotation process faster and more accurate and make it easier for their sales teams. This simplifies their sales process and frees up time for them to focus on a more important aspect of sales: customer interaction.
Conversation Intelligence
Conversation intelligence tools are revolutionizing how sales and customer success teams capture, analyze, and act on insights from customer interactions. By recording and transcribing calls, meetings, and other conversations, these tools provide teams with valuable data to improve performance, identify opportunities, and align strategies.
AI-powered analytics go beyond simple transcription, uncovering key trends such as customer pain points, competitive mentions, and buying signals. These insights help sales teams refine their messaging, improve objection handling, and prioritize follow-up actions effectively.
Furthermore, integrating these tools with CRM systems ensures that conversation data is automatically logged, creating a seamless flow of information for tracking deals and customer journeys. As these platforms evolve, real-time analytics and AI-driven recommendations will impact customer interactions, improving engagement, conversion rates, and team productivity.
In a nutshell
Conversation intelligence tools capture and analyze customer calls and meetings to provide actionable insights. By leveraging AI, they uncover trends, improve coaching, and enhance sales performance.
These tools seamlessly integrate with CRMs, optimizing messaging, highlighting key opportunities, and streamlining follow-ups. As they evolve, real-time recommendations and advanced analytics will further empower teams to drive engagement and accelerate revenue growth.
Discover 10 smart Conversation Intelligence tools
E-Signature and Document Tracking
An e-signature is a digital way of putting pen to paper. E-signature and document tracking software allow users to securely collect signatures on electronic records, such as sales contracts and proposals.
This software helps streamline administrative tasks and reduce overhead by providing a unified view of each contract’s processes. An additional benefit of e-signature technology is that it allows for a paperless office. The sheer amount of space that paper documents and files occupy is problematic on several levels.
Many solutions focusing on this area offer the possibility of tracking in real time when and how a prospect interacts with a specific document. Some salespeople call the decision-maker when they receive a notification about a prospect opening a proposal.
The majority of e-signature and document tracking platforms provide users with notifications for critical dates that affect a contract, such as the cut-off date for contract renewal. Some lower-end services only offer templates that allow users to create and store their contracts. Other, more advanced software provides tools for creating and managing contracts electronically and automating the digital management of a contract throughout its lifecycle. Many vendors integrate with third-party applications such as CRMs.
In a nutshell
New data protection laws and the GDPR restrictions make it more difficult to track when and how a prospect interacts with a document. When selling to prospects based in any of the EU's member states, the GDPR framework must be considered before switching to document tracking.
Besides digital signature options, vendors focus a lot more on collaboration throughout the process, including chat capabilities, document tracking, predictive analytics, and other features. Expect all document-related collaboration to soon happen within the proposal software itself, to ensure a speedier process.
Discover 10 smart E-Signature and Document Tracking tools
Sales Productivity & Copilots/AI Agents
Sales productivity tools and AI-powered copilots are transforming how sales teams operate, enabling them to work smarter, faster, and more efficiently. These tools act as intelligent assistants, automating time-consuming tasks like note-taking, CRM updates, and follow-up reminders, allowing sales professionals to focus on high-value activities like closing deals and building relationships.
AI copilots go beyond basic automation by providing real-time support during sales interactions. They deliver insights, suggest talking points, and help overcome objections, ensuring reps stay on track and maximize every conversation. Additionally, these tools analyze data to prioritize leads, recommend next steps, and forecast opportunities.
Integration with CRMs and other sales tools ensures a seamless flow of information, while AI-driven analytics uncover patterns and trends that boost team performance. With continuous learning, these copilots improve, providing increasingly precise recommendations that help sales reps meet and exceed their targets.
Looking ahead, sales productivity tools will become even more intuitive and proactive, leveraging advanced AI to act as strategic partners for sales teams, streamlining workflows, and enhancing decision-making.
In a nutshell
Sales productivity tools and AI copilots streamline workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and provide real-time insights to help sales professionals maximize efficiency and performance.
As intelligent assistants, they analyze data, suggest actions, and deliver support during customer interactions. As these tools evolve, advanced AI will transform them into proactive strategic partners that optimize decision-making, improve workflows, and accelerate revenue growth.
Discover 14 Sales Productivity & Copilot/AI Agent tools
Compensation Management Platforms
Compensation management tools redefine how organizations design, track, and optimize sales incentive plans to drive performance and motivate teams. These platforms automate commission calculations, ensuring accuracy and transparency while reducing manual errors and administrative burdens.
Real-time visibility into earnings and performance empowers sales reps to track their progress toward quotas, aligning their efforts with business goals. Leaders can leverage insights to design smarter compensation structures that reward behaviors driving revenue growth and retention.
Looking ahead, AI-driven compensation tools will offer predictive insights, allowing businesses to model incentive plans, forecast outcomes, and optimize compensation strategies for maximum impact. These platforms will become indispensable for aligning incentives, boosting motivation, and driving sustainable sales growth.
In a nutshell
Compensation management tools streamline commission calculations, reduce errors, and provide real-time visibility into earnings and performance. By aligning incentives with company goals, these platforms motivate sales teams and boost productivity.
AI-powered insights will help organizations design, model, and optimize compensation strategies as they evolve, ensuring smarter incentives that drive revenue growth and team success.
Discover six Compensation Management tools
Partner Ecosystem Platforms
Partner ecosystem platforms transform how businesses manage and leverage partnerships to drive growth. These tools enable companies to collaborate more effectively with partners by sharing data, identifying joint opportunities, and streamlining co-selling efforts. By centralizing partner relationships, businesses can optimize workflows, increase visibility, and accelerate revenue from their ecosystem.
A key feature of these platforms is data integration. By securely connecting CRM systems and other sales tools, they identify overlaps in accounts and opportunities, helping teams prioritize and coordinate efforts with partners. Additionally, automated workflows streamline partner onboarding, enable deal registration, and track performance across the ecosystem.
Partner ecosystem platforms will be essential in driving scalable growth, creating deeper collaboration, and ensuring businesses maximize value from their partner networks.
In a nutshell
Partner ecosystem platforms centralize partner relationships, align data, and streamline workflows to optimize collaboration and co-selling. By integrating with CRMs and sales tools, they uncover account overlaps, track performance, and measure partner contributions.
As AI and predictive analytics evolve, these platforms enable smarter partner strategies, driving scalable growth and deeper ecosystem collaboration.
