Sales tools at a glance: 5 must-haves for modern sales

The gradual development towards digitalization has a wealth of new Sales tools created to support the sales of tomorrow. As a sales expert, you are now faced with a mammoth task: month after month, new tools are coming onto the market that Industry is booming.

It's easy for modern salespeople to lose sight of the forest for the trees: what is the best, fastest, newest and most user-friendly tool? To shed some light on the matter, we want to support modern salespeople in their search for the best fit. We've put together an overview of the most important systems for sales for you.

First of all, however, it is important to find out which interface the company wants to focus on in order to optimize its sales work. Questions that need to be answered in advance are:

• How does the customer shop?
• What does the customer buy?
• How long does the purchasing process usually take until the final purchase decision is made?

These three central aspects help to understand where sales tools are relevant for the company and at the same time ensure that the customer and his needs are the focus during the optimization of sales processes.

Find out now which sales tools you should definitely not do without.

These are the 5 most exciting sales tools:

CRM systems

With the large amount of Customer datathat is generated every day, no important information is lost, many companies have long been using this tool: The Customer Relationship Management (CRM for short). CRM systems are an absolute must-have in both the office and the field. digital salesto always keep an eye on the needs of customers.

Every time your salesperson contacts a potential customer or a promising Lead he learns a new detail, which is of utmost importance for the personal bond between salesperson and customer. What used to be stored only in the memory of the responsible salesperson or on paper is now stored digitally.

CRM systems provide the entire sales team with access to these details by storing all communication between sales and lead or customer in one central location. This knowledge can determine an entire buying process: Your customers' preferences and important contact details are Shared knowledge instead of sales-specific insider knowledge. Central data storage allows the entire sales team to access the latest version of customer data using their own smartphone, tablet or computer, regardless of location or time. Simply and efficient the sales team is always connected, everywhere.

The cloud-based CRM market is teeming with providers who promise top performance. The best-known providers include SalesforceAlthough every company should identify its individual best fit, there are certain qualities that a modern CRM system must fulfill.

Features that every good CRM system should have:

• Contact management:

All important customer data is available at a glance and can be accessed anytime and anywhere

• Lead management:

The CRM software should primarily help you manage your leads in a structured manner and sort them according to names, addresses, descending relevance or other criteria.

• Sales and dashboard analytics:

In order to carry out sales processes more efficiently, it is important to always keep an eye on your pipeline. Detailed sales forecasts allow you to track exactly where the company's sales are at any given time. This makes the process more transparent not only for you, but for your entire sales team. In order to be able to carry out specific analyses, the system then visualizes the information obtained in intuitive dashboards that can be easily customized.

CPQ system

The most important thing for your customer to feel safe with you is a tailored and personalized Customer relationship. The key component in sales is the offer that you send to your customer. Many companies essentially commit two easily avoidable mistakes: Mistake:

• Often only a automated PDF data sheet sent out that has little to do with individualization and personal dedication. This not only puts off the customer, but also takes away any illusion of positive customer loyalty that was often laboriously integrated into the purchasing process in the previous steps.

• Or so much time and effort is put into creating and personalizing the offer that the salesperson's laborious work quickly disappears into thin air if the offer is rejected. This is not only annoying for the salesperson, but also very inefficient and time-consuming.

Our Tip Therefore: let sales software do the job. Because in this step of the sales process, the modern salesperson benefits significantly from the digital tool of automated offer creation: The golden middle ground between effort and benefit is offered by a so-called CPQ system.

CPQ stands for Configure, Price, Quote: After the product has been created, the price is determined and the offer sheet is developed. Intelligent pre-settings make it quick and easy to use different technical modules AI-generated templates generated. Without much effort, modern sales receive an automatically created and, above all, individualized offer for each customer. You will quickly notice that this simple step eliminates a lot of small sub-steps. Above all, however, the salesperson does not lose proximity to his customer and at the same time saves himself a lot of time-consuming work.

Product configurator

Are you one of those companies that sell products that sometimes require a lot of explanation? Then sales is an extremely important point of contact: Your sales representative is faced with the huge task of convincing the customer of a product that they themselves may not yet fully understand.

We ask ourselves: Why not let AI do the job? Product configurator is particularly suitable for individual customer needs in the company even more to the forefront. Because the more complicated the product that is sold, the higher the customer's demands for tailored advice with a tailor-made offerIt is often a question of resources as to how intensively customers can be advised. And this is precisely where the product configurator takes on a particularly laborious task.

As an IT start-up, we have developed digital sales support with our software. Our sales tool “Digital Product Selector” guides the customer through a automated questionnaireby having the customer interactively specify their own needs and product requirements. In just a few steps, the customer is guided to their best fit in the product range and receives a tailor-made product recommendation quickly and easily.

The Advantages At a glance: Not only is the customer provided with a pleasant customer journey, but above all, the salesperson is relieved of a lot of time-consuming work.

Appointment tool

Another tool that can make everyday sales easier is the automated appointment plannerThis software solution takes care of reserving your sales meetings so that (potential) customers can see with just a few clicks which days and times the sales representative can assist them. Both sides save themselves the tedious back and forth between annoying appointment arrangements and the sales expert can prepare even more specifically for his customer meetings.

Another Advantage: The appointment tool can be easily integrated into the salesperson's web presence. Whether as a central form on the company's website or the social media channels: Wherever the customer meets the salesperson online, he or she has the opportunity to make direct contact via appointment scheduling. It really is as simple as it sounds, but has a high impact. An established tool for this is, for example, Calendly.

Social Selling

Find and be found: Social Selling through online platforms and business portals such as LinkedIn, Xing and Co. has become more important than ever in our digital age. In recent years, this trend term has gradually emerged as a modern sales tool For example, LinkedIn offers the Sales Navigator, which is designed to make it easier to approach potential customers

If you already have a professionally used Facebook, LinkedIn, XING or perhaps Twitter profile, it often only takes a few steps to use it as a sales tool. It is especially important to be aware that with the Social media presence your own brand can be embodied in order to significantly build relationships with existing or new customers. Above all, however, it is about being close to the customer through your own online presence and thus being able to respond to their needs more quickly and perhaps even offer a solution to their current problem.

The ultimate discipline in sales is to turn your sales contacts into real customers. Finally, here are three social selling strategies that work:

• Get personal:

The trend of recent years to maintain the highest possible level of professionalism on business portals has recently evaporated. LinkedIn and other social networks are also "social" networks and this aspect is gradually becoming more and more of a focus. Many industry influencers are therefore increasingly putting their own view of things in the foreground on their profiles and are trying to use emotional argumentation and building a network by sharing your own experiences. With success! 

• Offer added value:

interaction Unlike in the past, being on social media means more than just advertising. The focus today is on positioning yourself as an expert in the industry, whether as a company or as an individual, through useful tips, tricks and experiences. Therefore, avoid an aggressive advertising policy and share important findings with others.

• Stay authentic:

Slipping into other people’s roles to attract “customers” is definitely the wrong way to go. Because nothing is worse than being given the feeling of insincerity. And not just in your private life, but also in a professional environment! Make sure that your Online community to communicate just as you face to face with your customer. And above all: stay true to yourself!

Get started and digitize sales

Fear of change often goes hand in hand with a lack of knowledge and information. This also applies to digital transformation. With this overview of the common Sales tools we want to show you which tools are useful to be well prepared for a digital future. Because one thing is certain, digitalization measures pay off: employees are relieved, efficiency increases and, as an add-on, there is even more time that can be invested in a successful customer relationship.

If you are unsure which sales tools are right for you, then first talk to the respective provider without obligation and ask for contact details of reference customers, for example. After all, there is no better customer and problem understander than other companies that have faced a similar challenge to yours. This is of course also possible with FoxBase: Here you can find our References, and if you would like to learn more about the individual use case, please contact us.