As organizations scale, the challenges of managing a sales department within the confines of Excel or Google Docs becomes increasingly apparent. Without the timely implementation of suitable systems and reporting mechanisms, chaos can quickly ensue, leading to a lengthy process of restoring order. Most importantly, once you are behind, it becomes harder to make proactive strategic business decisions to optimize growth based on key metrics like quota achievement, average sales cycle, deal size, contract length, pipeline coverage, magic number, etc.
Listed below is a comprehensive list of sale engagement platforms to consider. While there are many vendors in each category, the purpose of this list is to provide direction on the types of platforms. You decide which vendor is best for your organization. Many of them also have overlaps in capabilities.
Sales Engagement Platforms
- CRM – It goes without saying, you will need a platform like Hubspot or SFDC to track your deals from lead to close. In addition, these tools can help track rep performance, capture contract details, and provide pipeline coverage reporting. CRMs can have many other uses such as customer tracking and integrations with Tech Support providers (i.e., Zendesk).
- Sales Prospecting Platform – SalesLoft and Outreach can help create, schedule, and automate outreach to prospects. This keeps outreach cadence on track throughout the sales cycle and helps make sure reps aren’t letting leads fall through the cracks.
- Sales Management Platform – LinkedIn Sales Navigator enables prospecting: keep a pulse on prospects with intent, build lead lists, map accounts, and direct messaging to target buyers.
- Revenue Platform – Clari can enhance pipeline health, accurate forecasting, and reliable revenue projection. It finds greater traction among management, as well as Revenue Operations and Sales Operations teams. While CRMs offer overlapping functionalities, platforms like Clari are explicitly designed to cater to the specialized demands of pipeline management.
- Competitive Intelligence – Klue can offer insights into your top competitor’s strategies and provide guidance on emphasizing your unique qualities.
- Sales Enablement (LMS) – 360Learning offers a dedicated Learning Management System and content/training management platform, empowering your sales team with comprehensive training resources and streamlined content through organization, leading to heightened productivity and efficiency.
- Content Mgmt. – Platforms like Seismic if planned out properly with governance can help with content management across the entire organization.
- Demo Automation – Consensus enables your pre-sales and sales teams to create personalized, automated demo journeys, helping move deals through the pipeline and identifying key stakeholders and decision makers.
- RFP Response Management – Loopio allows you to centralize your RFP content, automate responses, and collaborate across teams to improve the quality and efficiency of your RFP responses.
- Sales Interaction – Gong provides a platform for consolidating customer interactions, enabling in-depth analysis and sharing of insightful data across teams. This not only streamlines the sales process but also significantly boosts the quality and efficiency of your sales responses.
- Sales Compensation – beqom empowers you to streamline your sales compensation processes, automate calculations, and collaborate across teams to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of your sales performance. Leveraging its comprehensive platform, beqom facilitates accurate and transparent incentive compensation management, enabling better decision-making and improved sales outcomes based on complete and reliable data.
- Partner and Customer Portals – Magentrix and Crossbeam can be set up to manage, educate and register partners who you work alongside to grow your organization.
Given the rapid advancements in AI, new vendors and products enter the market daily. The list provided focuses on platform types rather than specific vendors, offering valuable insights for shaping your Sales tech arsenal and selecting the right platforms to embrace before outgrowing your current processes.
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