If you’re looking to maximize sales productivity and the value that your sales team brings to customers, it may be time to review and enhance your sales territory plan.

Good sales territory planning provides a framework to measure sales potential, set goals, and focus your team’s sales efforts for maximum success. It provides your sales team the guidance to properly identify and understand customers and prospects, assess and measure value, and support customers in a way that leads to loyalty.

Table of Contents

What is Sales Territory Planning 
Benefits of Sales Territory Planning
Factors to Consider When Planning Sales Territories
7 Steps to Writing a Successful Sales Territory Plan
5 Sales Territory Management Best Practices to Follow
Essential Tools to Plan Your Sales Territories
5 Ways to Validate a Sales Territory Business Plan

What is Sales Territory Planning?

Territory planning is the process of creating a plan to ensure your sales team targets the right customers (and the most profitable ones).

Historically, most territories were broken down by geography, but in today’s connected world, sales territories can also be divided in many ways, including:

• Industry
• Sales potential
• Customer type

With a clearly defined territory, sales teams can work strategically to address the needs of their assigned market. A strong sales territory plan allows you to:

• Ensure your sales team’s efforts are focused on the who, what, when, where and why that offer the strongest return on investment.
• Align salespeople to the regions, segments, and/or verticals best suited for their background and expertise.
• Partner intelligently across company teams to drive corporate objectives
• Optimize customer experience by aligning accounts with sales teams that understand their unique challenges and opportunities.
• Set the stage for long-term solid customer and market relationships.

Benefits of Sales Territory Planning

If you’re doubting the value of a strong sales territory plan, consider these inarguable benefits:

More time spent selling

A strong territory plan allows organizations to maximize their sales momentum by aligning the right sales teams to the right opportunities. Studies by industry analysts consistently show a decline in sales productivity due to factors such as extensive traveling, the need to learn and understand new segments, and administrative overhead.

With a clear sales territory plan based on geography and sector, salespeople can spend less time traveling and preparing for customer engagements and more time working directly with customers.

Better customer service

By aligning your salespeople to a set of accounts that aligns to their background, expertise, and geography, they are better able to understand customer needs and build solutions that align. With consistent territories, salespeople can build long-term relationships, leading to higher customer loyalty and repeat business.

Balanced workloads

Workload is measured in time and effort required to adequately manage all accounts in a given territory. A strong territory plan compares workloads and designs territories so that each salesperson is at full capacity, maximizing their potential.

To maximize rep production, you need to do some due diligence when it comes to assigning balanced territories.

Factors to Consider When Planning Sales Territories

When segmenting territories among your reps, you want to make sure they’re allocated fairly. To ensure this, ask yourself the following questions:

• Is the workload equally divvied up between each member of the team?
• Does the territory design provide equal compensation opportunities?
• Is there a good mix of existing and new accounts per territory?
• Does the territory route allow easy travel time management?

Once you’re able to answer the questions above, it’s time to consider:

1 | Revenue Source

Current Customers. Where are your best customers and prospects located? Geographic and industry-based clusters are the most common focus because it’s easier to get new customers in an area with existing customers. Historical sales data will become your new best friend as it’s the best predictor of future success.

A sales tracking software will give you a complete history of this data.

Inbound Leads. When inbound leads convert, focus on the demographics such as geography, industry and size. Then, build a strategy to divide them as evenly as possible across your sales force.

The focus needs to be on revenue generated from inbound leads as opposed to volume of leads.

Outbound Prospecting. Sales territory design for outbound efforts begins by first laying out the territories to work, then overlaying them with prospecting territories according to how you’re allocating salespeople.

For example, you assign two sales reps to each state (two territories) and one canvasser (one prospecting territory).

2 | Rank Your Team

Create a scorecard and evaluate your sales reps to identify who your top, middle, and low level performers are.

• How much is their quota?
• Do they consistently achieve this number?
• How many current customers and prospects are in their funnel?
• How many viable prospects are located within their territory?

3 | Rank Your Territories

Most Profitable (Least Risky). Evaluate which of your territories are most successful and double down on what’s already working.

Most Growth. If you’re more focused on the long-term instead of the short-term, focus on territories that haven’t been worked yet. It’s likely to take longer to become profitable, but will generate greater growth over time.

Learning / New Markets. To establish yourself in a new market segment or determine if it’s viable, send a canvasser into this territory to accomplish a specific task. This will help determine exactly what’s needed to succeed in that market.

4 | Track and Measure Metrics

Sales metrics are invaluable in understanding the success of every sales team within the company, and entire sales department as a whole. They help you to spot trends and determine efficiencies, and inefficiencies, within the company.

With sales enablement platforms like SPOTIO, you can easily pull results for:

• Team performance in relation to your sales funnel
• Data from custom statuses and fields based on KPIs
• Graphs representing team performance, best time and day to knock, etc.
• The number of attempts it takes to establish contacts, get leads and make sales
• This data gives you the information you need in order to assign balanced workloads across your sales team.

Actionable Data and Insight

With the help of territory management technology, sales territory data helps you accurately evaluate sales performance. This information helps you design effective sales compensation plans and ensure your sales teams are performing at their maximum potential.

Clarify ownership in complex organizations

In organizations with large and complex sales teams, roles and responsibilities are often tangled. With effective sales territory planning, territories are made clear from the get-go, ensuring that salespeople are clear about their target audience and not creating confusion for the team or the customer.

Resilience to change and turnover

Organizational changes such as personnel loss, mergers, acquisitions, alliances, and relocations inevitably effect customers and internal teams. With a strong territory management plan, change is easier to manage.

A well-documented sales territory plan allows new team member’s to ramp up quickly and avoid confusion regarding roles and responsibilities.

Team cohesion and morale

Strong territory planning optimizes the role of the team. By assigning complimentary teams to each territory, you create and environment which allows team members to benefit from each other’s strengths, share workload, and also avoid conflict that arises from unclear territories and boundaries.

7 Step Plan to Write a Successful Sales Territory Business Plan

The next logical question is, where do you start? In this section, we’ll provide an overview of each planning step, along with key questions and suggestions. Depending on your offering, industry, company size, or various other factors, you may use some or all these steps when building your territory plan.

1. Analyze your business goals and objectives

The first step to drafting a solid sales territory plan is bringing clarity to your company’s landscape, defining organizational goals, and evaluating industry trends. This is a basic step to ground you and your team on what you’re trying to accomplish with your sales territory plan.

As you go through the subsequent process, you should continually refer back to this data to maintain a pulse on whether your plan accomplishes what you’ve set out to do.

To get the juices flowing, start by answering these key questions:

1. What is your organization’s most current vision, mission, and north star objective?
2. What are the key trends in your industry or market?
3. What pain do your offerings solve for customers?
4. What are your sales goals, in numbers?
5. What is your conversion rate? Based on this how many prospects should you have in your funnel at any given time to ensure that you’re meeting your sales goals?
6. Are there specific products/services that you are selling more than others? Why?

2. Analyze your prospects and customers

The next step is looking deep into your customer base. In addition to understanding their businesses, challenges, and unique traits, it’s important to identify what makes them unique and what sets them apart from each other.

Key questions to ask yourself include:

1. Who are your most profitable and lucrative prospects and customers defined by industry, region, product, etc.?
2. What do these customers have in common?
3. Which of your prospects or customers offers the most profound growth opportunities for your company?
4. What are your customers buying today and what does this tell you about their challenges and opportunities?
5. Are their industries you serve with success? Are their industries that you’ve had less success with?
6. When customers and prospects object, what is the biggest reason why?

3. Determine your Total Addressable Market

Your Total Addressable Market (TAM) is the entire body of prospects and customers that fit your ideal customer profile. Traditionally, organizations use data including industry, location, size, and revenue to begin mapping their TAM.

While this is still important, technology and tooling makes it easier than ever to identify prospects within your TAM that may not be so obvious.

Using traditional and modern sources, even tools like social media, look for company and industry look-a-likes that may be a suitable candidate for your offering.

Once an ideal customer profile is solidified, the next step is to figure out how large the market opportunity is that fits the description. You may use a matrix to include a range of large and small markets which present large or small opportunities.

While estimating the size of your market used to be a struggle of guesswork and complicated calculations, there are now tools available to businesses to automate the TAM discovery process.

4. Perform a SWOT Analysis

A simple way to evaluate your position in the market is to perform a SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threats) analysis. Since we all have blind spots, a SWOT analysis is best performed with the help of a broader team, including other company leadership, as well as members or your sales management and sales rep teams.

• What Strengths will you build upon?
• Which Weaknesses do you need to mitigate?
• Which Opportunities in your marketplace are you suited to take advantage of?
• What Threats in your selling environment will you defend against?

In doing this analysis, you will start to see patterns that indicate areas of your business that require more or less attention for various reasons.

For example, a strength that’s also a large opportunity may need a dedicated territory. On the other hand, an area that aligns to a serious competitive threat may require special attention to protect your company’s place in the industry.

The SWOT characteristics you identify will not always be related to revenue or geography. They may be related to more obscure things like training needs of your sales team, gaps in systems and tools, or even gaps in your products themselves.

Doing this analysis will help you be aware of other ways to think about your business and territories.

5. Determine and Document Sales Territories

Based on the work you perform in the sections above, you should have an idea of how to divide your sales territories. It’s important to document these clearly, outlining details of each territory including things like:

• Geographic Boundaries
• Industry or Segment Boundaries (including any overlap and how that is addressed)
• Revenue Boundaries
• Product Boundaries
• Anything else that may be applicable to your sales organization

6. Devise an Action Plan

Similar to the SWOT analysis, devising an action plan is a group exercise that should include various stakeholders in the company, specifically the leaders of each of your identified territories. Just as well, the action plan should be built to be nimble.

In a world where market opportunities change every day, the sales territory plan should be built to follow, ensuring that your action plan keeps up with changing opportunities and threats.

Gone are the days of an annual territory and action planning session. It’s important that change management is built into the framework to ensure your teams are not caught off guard with changes.

Within each category, you should answer the following questions:

• What is the territory’s quota?
• What is the territory’s quota stretch goal?
• What is the territory’s closed business YTD?
• What is the territory’s gap?
• How much pipeline do I have today?
• What is the territory’s pipeline gap?
• What are my goals for the year?

In addition to the overall territory, you will need to spend time looking at top accounts and where they fit in your territory plan. List top accounts and explain why they are chosen (relationships, industry fit, target profile).  For each, in one sentence, be clear and focused on the outreach strategy.

Next, create an opportunity map and make sure opportunity plans are thorough. What’s the compelling event? Why now? What’s the strategy to engage with a champion and economic buyer? What’s the mutual success plan?

Finally, close out with strategies to build your sales funnel.

In addition to being responsive to external factors, action plans should be reviewed on a quarterly basis to ensure your plan isn’t going stale unintentionally.

7. Track Performance and Stay Adaptable

Once you’ve devised and implemented your territory plan, it’s important to regularly measure success in each territory and adapt as needed.

Metric reviews should happen on a regular, defined cadence such as monthly or quarterly, and should be automated using sales performance tools to avoid making this a manual, costly, and easily avoided overhead.

Measures you put in place will vary based on your unique company situation, but some important measures include:

Gross Sales

The most obvious measurement of sales success, gross sales is the sum of all sales that a territory carries out during a defined time frame. Gross sales is a useful metric because it shows the ability of sales professionals to make sales, regardless of what the profit margin is on those sales.

Gross Profit

This is the difference between the selling price for a product and the price the business paid to develop the solution. This measurement is important for businesses that want to encourage their sales forces to focus on high profit margins rather than just sales.

Total Unit Sales

The aggregated number of product units sold within a particular territory, regardless of price, profit or commission. This method of measurement is useful when a company mainly sells a single type of product.

Conversion rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of leads or appointments that result in a sale of some kind. Sales forces with a high sales turnover number are operating at a high level of performance.

Total Commissions

This is the amount of money the sales representatives for the territory in question take home as personal income. Although this measurement does not directly correlate to the competitiveness or degree of success of the business itself, it is effective to use as a means of motivating members of the sales force to achieve higher numbers.

Return Customers

A sign of true development and sustainable growth in a sales territory is the tendency of buyers in that territory to come back and buy again.

For this reason, one important measurement to make is the amount of revenue or profit coming from clients who have bought before. This amount may be expressed as a gross number or as a percentage of gross sales, gross profits or commissions. 

With each review, it’s pertinent to ask your leadership whether the data being measures indicates the need for an adjustment to your territory plans. If you’re proactively monitoring and adjusting, you will maintain a plan that keeps you relevant with your customers and industry.

5 Sales Territory Management Best Practices to Follow

Managing a sales territory is a skill that needs constant development. Moreover, you should adjust and adapt to changes in your area. With summer underway, you have half a year left to grow your business. Propeller suggests four sales territory management best practices for you to implement this week.

1. Using a call rotation schedule to keep in touch with accounts

During the strategy phase, you and your team determined how often to call on each account based on their needs.  Also, note whether it is a phone call or an in-person meeting. Put these in a CRM or a calendar to keep your schedule on track.

2. Note the seasonal account trends

Another essential part of managing sales territories you addressed when building strategy was to determine which accounts were the seasonal business. It’s an excellent idea to check in before the season arrives and reconnect, so you are in touch when the account is ready to buy.

3. Keep the focus on the long-term, account-based goals.

New business is fantastic; however, it should not distract from the goals set for the targeted account-based marketing goals you set. Teaching the team to balance new business development with account management is a vital skill for any salesperson.

4. Explore new ways to divide the leads.

Many sales territory plans are set up by geography, and the leads from that area go to that sales territory rep. However, not every sales territory plan needs to be geographical; the location of the lead is not always the best way to go.

In cases where your sales reps do not have in-person meetings, you can try dividing new leads based on account type (i.e., verticals) or the referral source. Some people divide leads based on the product in which the lead is interested or by the size of the account.

5. Look for cross-selling opportunities.

Analyze the products that an account buys and look for natural partner-products or services, i.e., the “Would you like fries with that?” strategy. Many times, customers might not realize that you offer the full suite of products and services and can make their lives easier by ordering from one supplier.

Essential Tools to Plan Your Sales Territories

Like any job, when you are planning sales territories, you need to have the right tools. The right tools will help you plan, build, and execute a sales territory plan. There is a multitude of options available.  Here are three essentials you need to set yourself up for success, improve productivity and close the best deals.

CRM: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a how your company keeps track of its customer information and history. Many CRM applications also offer data analysis to help companies with customer retention and account growth. CRM compile data from several sources, including live chat, social media, and email correspondence, among others.

CRM is a significant source for successful sales territory planning.

Spreadsheet: Spreadsheets are data organizers in a tab form that takes data entered in cells and leverages that into different calculations and values, including simple math as well as complex financial and statistical figures. When you have data from various sources, such as a CRM and online sources as an example, you can assemble all the data available in a spreadsheet for quick access and comprehensive analysis.

GPS: Geo Productivity Software (GPS) are software applications that combine standard geolocation and route optimization functions with CRM data to help salespeople address their most relevant and profitable account first. Moreover, the features help salespeople optimize their selling time with customers instead of traveling to and from customers.

Some of the more sophisticated systems incorporate traffic and weather in the optimization of the scheduling.

A 7-Step Template to Create Profitable Sales Territory Plans

Without a strong sales territory plan, your sales team might become disorganized. As a result, you reps may not produce the best results for your customers or your organization. This is obviously a problem. Fortunately, this seven-step template is the answer! Simply follow the process we outline below to build a profitable sales territory business plan.

1. Analyze Your Business Goals

What do you want your sales territory business plan to achieve? Answer the seven questions below to help define and understand your organization’s objectives in this area:

• What is our current vision?
• What are key trends in our industry?
• What pain do we solve for customers?
• What are our sales goals, in numbers?
• What is our current conversion rate?
• How many prospects do we need?
• Which products/services are most popular?

2. Study Your Customer Base

Now that you know what your goals are, take a moment to study your customers. When you understand this unique group of people, you can serve them more effectively.

• Who are our best customers?
• What do these customers have in common?
• Which customer segments offer the biggest growth opportunities?
• What challenges and/or opportunities do our customers meet every day?
• Which industries are we most successful in? Which are we least successful in?
• What are the most common objections our sales reps deal with?

3. Determine Your Total Addressable Market

Your Total Addressable Market (TAM) is the entire body of prospects and customers who fit your ideal customer profile. Use this formula to determine your company’s TAM:

• (Total # of Customers) x (Annual Contract Value) = TAM

Imagine you sell machinery to manufacturers in Texas. To find your annual contract value, multiply your average sales price ($1,000) by the average number of sales you make to each customer per year (3). In this scenario, your average contract value is $3,000.

There are roughly 17,000 manufacturers in Texas. So, your TAM would be $51M, because 17,000 manufacturers multiplied by an average contract value of $3,000 equals $51M.

4. Perform a SWOT Analysis

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Ask yourself the following four questions to perform a SWOT analysis for your organization:

• What Strengths can my company build on?
• Which Weaknesses does my company need to mitigate?
• Which Opportunities is my company able to take advantage of?
• What Threats in the industry can my company defend against?

A SWOT analysis will help you determine which sales territories need your immediate attention.

5. Document Your Sales Territories

Now it’s time to either create or redefine your sales territories. Once you’ve taken this step, document the details of each territory to keep things organized. These questions will help:

• What location boundaries define my territories?
• What industry boundaries define my territories?
• What revenue boundaries define my territories?
• What product boundaries define my territories?
• What other boundaries will define my territories?

6. Devise an Action Plan

You’ve almost finished building your profitable sales territory plan. The next thing you need to do is outline specific data points to collect and goals to strive towards for each territory you create.

• What is the territory’s quota?
• What is the territory’s quota stretch goal?
• What is the territory’s closed business YTD?
• What is the territory’s gap?
• How much pipeline do I have today?
• What is the territory’s pipeline gap?
• What are my goals for the year?

7. Track Performance

Finally, take time to evaluate your efforts on a regular basis. That way you know if your territories are performing the way you want them to, and can make necessary changes. To make things easier on your team, commit to tracking a few key metrics, like:

• Gross Sales
• Gross Profits
• Total Unit Sales
• Conversion Rate
• Total Commissions
• Return Customers

5 Ways to Validate a Sales Territory Business Plan

Measuring your progress toward your goal is a crucial part of managing sales. By looking at specific parts of your process, you can determine what is working on your behalf and, perhaps more importantly, what is not.

Here are five questions you should ask to validate a sales territory business plan courtesy of Steve Andersen, President and founder of Performance Methods Incorporated (PMI).

1. Is your growth of strategic customer relationships on target?

It is critical that the customers you focus on provide new sales opportunities and growth, so ensure you picked the correct ones.

2. Are you adding to and advancing the opportunities in your pipeline?

Systems build excellent account management, and every salesperson should have a system for developing and moving accounts through their pipeline.

3. What is your close rate on targeted opportunities?

Close rates are the number of sales you get divided by the presentations you made. For example, if you close three deals for every eight presentations you make, your closing rate (or closing ratio) is 38%. The higher your close rate on targeted opportunities, then the more valid your sales territory business plan is.

4. How accurate is the sales forecast?

The ability to correctly predict the sales your territory will produce is a vital skill for managing a sales territory.

5. Do you have the right resources deployed to help your team?

Managing resources is significant in the overall strategy of a sales team. The right resources along with the right motivating activity can be the key to success in a sales territory business plan. Ensure you have both deployed appropriately.

Sales territories tells salespeople where they can do business. Proper sales territory planning by you and your team can help them take care of business. Work with your team in a collaborative way to help them target the right accounts that give them best results and you have built a foundation for success that benefits the salesperson’s, the company’s and your bottom-line.

And who doesn’t want that?

A 7-Step Template to Create Profitable Sales Territory Plans

Without a strong sales territory plan, your sales team might become disorganized. As a result, you reps may not produce the best results for your customers or your organization. This is obviously a problem. Fortunately, this seven-step template is the answer! Simply follow the process we outline below to build a profitable sales territory business plan.

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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.

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Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

Whatever the case may be, you’ve come to the right place!

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about field sales, including what field sales is, why it’s important, the duties field sellers are asked to complete, the challenges they face on a daily basis, and how to build your own field sales strategy.

What Is Field Sales?

Field sales, oftentimes referred to as outside sales, is the act of selling products and/or services from outside of a typical office setting. To do this, professional field sales reps travel to prospects and engage with them in a face-to-face manner.

The opposite of field sales is inside sales, where sales reps sell to prospects from a distance. These kinds of reps don’t meet with leads in-person. Instead, they use phone calls, emails, text messages, etc. to connect with prospects.

Both field sales and inside sales have their benefits. We’ll talk about the specific advantages of field sales in the next section.

Why is Field Sales Important?

So, why would you want to employ a field sales team? Because there are legitimate advantages to doing so. Here are four of the most important ones:

Higher quota attainment

Studies show that the average field sales representative has a close rate of 40%. This is much higher than the 18% close rate attained by most inside sales reps.

Because field reps are able to convert leads into paying customers at a more consistent clip, they hit their quotas more often. In fact, the average field sales rep attains quota 65% of the time compared to just 55% of the time for inside sellers.

Stronger customer relationships

Field reps are generally better at building relationships with leads and customers than their inside sales counterparts. It makes sense when you think about it — field reps meet with prospects for in person meetings. They can look them in the eyes, shake their hands, and communicate more naturally. Face-to-face conversations also minimize misunderstandings, which is another relationship booster.

Better for complex sales cycles

Does your company sell complex products? Are they expensive, often requiring multiple decision-makers to greenlight before you get a signed contract in hand?

If so, you should definitely consider building a field sales force.

Field sales allows reps to meet with prospects in-person as we’ve already discussed. This enables them to build stronger, more trusting relationships, which is mandatory when pitching high-priced goods and/or services.

You wouldn’t buy a $10,000+ product from some random stranger who calls you on the phone, would you? Of course not! But you might from the flesh and blood human sitting in front of you—especially if you’ve just been talking for 30 minutes and enjoy their personality.

It’s also much easier to demonstrate complex products in person than it is via video-conferencing technology like Zoom and Google Meet.

Valuable source of customer insights

Last, but certainly not least, field sales allows sellers to glean incredible amounts of customer data. What does your target market struggle with? What do your current customers like and dislike about your products? What new features do they want?

The answers to these questions are usually much easier for field sales reps to attain because they’re able to spend more time with customers and get to know them.

Field Sales Roles And Responsibilities

Now that we’ve covered what field sales is and why it’s important, let’s talk about what field sales representatives actually do on a day to day basis.

Your job description as a field seller will vary depending on the industry you work in and the company you work for. Still, there are common duties that just about every field rep must complete. Let’s take a look at what they are:

Perform daily sales activities

If you’re familiar with sales at all, you know that field sales reps have to identify leads, get in contact with them, and attempt to sell products and/or services. We’ll talk about all of these things in the following sections.

But first, let’s discuss the other things sales reps do on the regular—the less flashy stuff, such as planning routes and updating CRM software.

• Planning Routes: As mentioned previously, field reps spend a significant portion of their on-the-clock hours traveling from prospect to prospect. This allows them to build stronger relationships and close bigger deals more often. But every minute a rep spends in the car is a minute they can’t spend closing deals. That’s why field reps need to minimize windshield time, which they can do by planning efficient routes between prospects. Software like SPOTIO makes this super easy to do. Simply plug in the addresses you need to travel to and SPOTIO will tell you how to get there without wasting time.

• Updating CRMs: CRM software, which is short for customer relationship management software, allows reps to easily store and recall important customer and prospect information. What was that lead’s name and what’s the best way to contact them? Your CRM will tell you—as long as you update it with these details. The best field reps spend time every day updating their CRMs with new information so that it’s there when they need it.

• Scheduling Follow-Ups: Field reps are asked to find prospects, nurture leads, and close deals. To do all this, they have to plan routes, update CRMs, overcome objections, learn about their company’s newest products… It’s a lot! The only way to get it all done is to use technology. Tools like SPOTIO will let you schedule calls and visit reminders, automate emails and text messages to send at specific times, and more. That way nothing falls through the cracks and you can consistently meet quota.

For more information on daily sales activities, read our full article on the topic.

Identify prospects

How do sales reps know who to make sales pitches to? It’s simple: they take time to identify potential customers and then approach them with an offer.

So, if you’re interested in becoming a field sales representative, you’ll need to learn how to identify prospects for your company. There are multiple ways to do this. For example, you can use websites like LinkedIn to source leads. Or you can use SPOTIO Lead Machine.

Image: SPOTIO’s Lead Machine enables reps to filter prospects using 200+ different data points.

Lead Machine is great because it provides 200+ different data points to help users find red-hot leads in the specific territories they’ve already been assigned to work.

Qualify leads

Have you found a few prospects to contact? Great, now you need to qualify them.

Here’s the truth: just because someone can buy your company’s product or service doesn’t mean they will. They might be strapped for cash. They might already use one of your competitor’s products. Maybe they’re just too busy to listen to your sales pitch right now.

You don’t want to waste your valuable time on these kinds of prospects, which is why you should qualify leads before you devote hours to them.

You can qualify your leads by doing online research, having a quick conversation with them, or asking a junior rep in your company to investigate them for you. However you do it, you need to learn if they want what you sell and if they have the money to pay for it.

Engage with leads

Once you’ve found and qualified a lead, you need to engage them. You can do this by calling them, sending a quick email, texting or visiting their place of business.

At this point, your only goal is to build a relationship with the lead. Don’t try to pitch your company’s products or services to sales leads yet — especially if you sell high-end products with serious price tags. That will probably backfire because you haven’t earned the lead’s trust.

Instead, try to book a future appointment with the lead. That way, you can sit down with them, show them the details of your offerings, and, hopefully, start talking about a deal.

Set appointments

To succeed as a field sales representative, you have to make appointments with potential buyers. If you don’t, you’ll have a really hard time closing deals.

Fortunately, if you’ve done a good job identifying prospects, qualifying leads, and engaging with these people, setting appointments should be a walk in the park.

This is especially true if you use a tool like SPOTIO, which syncs with your Google or Outlook Calendar and allows you to easily take notes before, during, and after your meetings. With SPOTIO, all of your prospect data is in one place!

Prepare and deliver sales presentations

Now that you have an appointment booked, you can begin preparing your sales presentation. Make sure you personalize it to the specific lead you plan to meet with!

For example, let’s pretend you sell cutting-edge accounting software. The lead you’re meeting with next week once complained that their current accounting software is difficult to use. As such, the lead’s team wastes hours a week fiddling around with the program.

Address this during your sales presentation. Show the lead how easy your company’s software is and how it will boost the team’s productivity.

When the day arrives, travel to the lead’s place of business at the appointed time and deliver your personalized sales presentation respectfully and professionally.

Build client relationships

You just closed your first deal as a field sales representative — congratulations! But your work isn’t done yet. You need to develop a real relationship with this person so they continue to buy from you.

This is especially important for subscription-based businesses. However, other kinds of companies can benefit from client relationships, too. Once you’ve built them, upsells and cross-sells will become much easier and more frequent.

Challenges for Field Sales Reps

As we’ve just seen, field sales representatives do a lot. So it’s only natural that they run into specific challenges from time to time. Here are four common ones:

Wasting time on admin tasks

Field sales representatives are hired to close deals for their companies, but there are many other things they have to do, too. Administrative tasks such as updating CRM software are necessary but take time away from a seller’s true purpose.

Image: SPOTIO enables reps to automatically log prospect interactions and transfer the data to your CRM.

One of the best ways to overcome this challenge is to invest in SPOTIO, which automatically tracks user sales activities, automates many of their messages with prospects, and otherwise eliminates the busy work reps have to do.

Finding qualified leads

It doesn’t matter how skilled you are, you have to have access to qualified leads to close deals at a consistent clip. The bad news is. Finding qualified leads is tough.

Fortunately, there are plenty of software tools that can help.

SPOTIO’s Lead Machine is a powerful prospecting solution for finding potential buyers. You tell Lead Machine where your territory is, and it narrows down leads using 200+ filters.

Handling sales objections

What do you do when you know that a prospect will benefit from your company’s products and/or services, but, after giving them your pitch, they say, “No thanks.”

You have two options: you can cut bait. Maybe they weren’t that great of a prospect after all and you should focus on other leads. Or, you can dig deeper and try to understand why this lead is rejecting your offer. What objections do they have?

Option one is easier. But option two will help you learn more about your target audience and close more deals. Overcome this challenge, you’ll be more successful.

Optimizing travel time

Finally, we have the dreaded windshield time, i.e. the time that field sales reps spend driving from one prospect to the next. It’s completely necessary. But time behind the wheel is time reps aren’t closing deals, which can be really frustrating.

Once again, SPOTIO can help reps overcome this issue. No, our platform won’t help you teleport from lead to lead. But it will use technology to help you plan the most efficient route between them.

With SPOTIO, you’ll be able to hit all of your leads in the most logical order, saving you time and gas money in the process.

Challenges For Field Sales Managers

Field sales reps aren’t the only ones who have to overcome challenges to succeed. The folks that manage them have struggles, too. Here are six of the most common challenges for field sales managers that you should be aware of:

Mapping and assigning territories

Territory mapping and assignment is essential to success in field sales.

Make your territories too big and your reps won’t be able to adequately cover them. Make them too small and your reps won’t have enough leads to fill their time. Oh, and make sure your territories don’t overlap or your reps will end up fighting over prospects.

Image: SPOTIO helps reps and managers geographically represent CRM data on maps.

Does this challenge make your head spin? Try SPOTIO’s Sales Territory Mapping feature. With it, you can cut territories using geographic boundaries or by drawing on a digital map. This kind of precision will ensure your reps never double up and bump into each other.

Tracking sales activities

As a field sales manager, you need to know how your reps spend their time in the field. It’s not that you don’t trust them to do their work. It’s that you need to understand what sales activities are successful and which aren’t. That way you can plan more effective sales strategies in the future.

SPOTIO offers a rep location tracking feature, which will give you real-time data on where your reps are and where they’ve been. (Note: this feature can be turned off.)

SPOTIO also automatically captures sales activities for reps, which means management professionals can easily see what their reps have and haven’t done. They can then use this information to inform their sales plans.

Maintaining rep productivity

Every department wants to be more productive and field sales is no exception. In fact, one of the biggest challenges sales managers face is making sure their reps maintain peak productivity levels as often as possible.

This is easier to do with tools like SPOTIO. For example, you can use SPOTIO to track your reps movements and activities, as we mentioned in the section above. You can then analyze this information to look for areas of improvement.

Image: SPOTIO GPS rep tracking feature enables managers to track rep location.

Maybe the location data shows your reps crisscrossing their territories as they travel from lead to lead. You can suggest they use SPOTIO’s Route Planning software to make sure they hit each lead in the most logical order.

Preventing leads from falling through the cracks

Is your field sales team underperforming? It might be because your reps aren’t following up with prospects as consistently as they should be.

Fortunately, the solution is simple: help reps develop effective follow-up sales processes. We suggest using SPOTIO’s Autoplays feature for this.

With Autoplays, field sales reps can create customized sequences of events and then automate them. For instance, once a rep secures a new lead, they can create an Autoplay that looks something like this:

• Day 1: Call Prospect
• Day 2: Email Prospect
• Day 3: Visit Prospect
• Day 5: Email Prospect
• Day 7: Call Prospect

Once a sequence is created, Autoplays will do one of two things: either remind your reps to engage their leads in the specific way the sequence tells them to or, if your reps have created email and text message templates, automate the sending of emails and text messages to the lead at the predetermined time.

Tracking rep performance

Are your reps underperforming? You won’t know until you track their performance.

SPOTIO makes it easy to track rep performance. With our platform, managers can see which tasks their reps are performing and the result of each. This will help you determine if reps are underperforming due to a lack of effort or training.

Reducing turnover

The last challenge that field sales managers face is the threat of turnover. If you’ve ever hired a promising sales rep, only to have them bail on you three months later, you know this is true.

Employee turnover is an expensive problem. According to PeopleKeep, it can cost a company up to 213% of a departing team member’s annual salary to replace them.

The sales industry is known for high turnover rates. It’s a demanding job that requires a thick skin, and not everybody can do it.

Still, as a field sales manager, your job is to keep your team on your team. The best way to do this is to create an environment they enjoy participating in.

Building a Successful Field Sales Strategy

Whew, we’ve covered a lot so far. But we aren’t done yet! Let’s talk about how you can build a successful field sales strategy for your company. This is where the rubber meets the road. Let’s make sure you’re ready to ride…

Set attainable goals

First things first, define what you’re trying to achieve via field sales. Do you want to move more products? Improve your department’s close rate? Something else?

Every goal you set for your field sales team should be SMART:

• Specific: Your goals should be clear and completely unambiguous. For example, say, “We’ll boost sales by 20%” instead of “We’ll boost sales.”
• Measurable: You should know exactly how you’ll measure your goals when you set them. “We’ll boost sales by 20%” is measurable. “We’ll make our customers happier” is not, because you can’t accurately gauge happiness.
• Attainable: Your goals should challenge your field sales representatives without pushing them too hard, as this will result in low morale.
• Relevant: Every goal you set should tie back to company objectives. Wanting to “increase upsell opportunities by 15%” is great, but only if these upsell opportunities will help your company achieve its biggest aims.
• Time-Related: Finally, your goals should have set deadlines. “We’ll boost sales by 20% by the end of the fiscal year.” If your goals aren’t time-related, your reps might slack off because there’s no urgency.

Define your sales process

Have you chosen a few SMART goals? Now it’s time to define your sales process. That way you can actually, you know, meet your objectives.

Here’s the truth: when your field sales reps know what to do in each and every scenario, they’ll become much more efficient and effective. Your job, when building a field sales strategy, is to equip your reps for every situation they’ll be in.

So think about your prospects and what it takes to make a sale. Then build a field sales strategy that will help your reps turn strangers into paying customers.

Create a sales compensation plan

There are a lot of ways to compensate your field sales representatives for their efforts. We cover the 10 most popular comp plans in this article.

The right compensation plan for your field sales force will:

• Motivate Your Reps: Are your reps inspired to make more sales? If the answer is “no,” you should consider choosing a new comp plan.
• Boost Rep Performance: Motivated reps are more productive than unmotivated ones. And productive reps generally outperform their unproductive counterparts. Make sure your comp plan motivates reps to perform their best at all times.
• Decrease Rep Turnover: The right comp plan will also help you attract top sellers to your field sales team and keep them employed by your company.

Improve your entire sales department with a quality field sales representative salary and commission structure for your team.

Set and track activity-based KPIs

Field sales is all about action. The most successful field reps are always doing something to close deals and move their careers forward. Help your team out by setting and tracking activity-based KPIs, such as visiting prospects, making calls, and sending emails.

The more of these actions your reps take, the more success they’ll have. And the more success your reps have, the more money your department will generate.

Image: Managers can track sales activity metrics across reps and territories in SPOTIO.

As a sales manager, you can track field sales activities with SPOTIO. With our tool, you’ll be able to tell how many prospects your reps contact on a daily basis, the communication channels they use, and the success rate they have with each one.

You can then use this information to adjust your field sales strategy when necessary.

Prospect with ICP data

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, ICP stands for ideal customer profile. Your company’s ICPs are the people most likely to buy your products and services. These are the folks your field sales reps should spend the most time on!

Your field sales strategy should include detailed ICP data. Your reps can use it when prospecting, preventing them from wasting valuable hours on prospects who will never make a purchase.

When you know your ICPs, you can use SPOTIO’s sales intelligence tool to find ready-to-buy prospects who fit your company’s exact parameters.

Automate tedious admin tasks

In decades past, field sales teams had to manually log prospect interactions, transfer notes to CRM databases, and perform other tedious administrative tasks.

No longer! Tools like SPOTIO allow field sellers to automate many of the “shoot me now” activities that every salesperson hates. This means field reps can focus more of their time on revenue-generating tasks that help them hot and exceed quota.

Assign sales territories strategically

We’ve already discussed how SPOTIO helps field sales managers cut territories. But your field sales strategy needs to cover how territories are assigned, too.

In general, we recommend assigning the most valuable territories to your top performing reps. This will ensure your department, as a whole, closes more of the highest-value deals in its collective pipeline.

Automate sales sequences

You’re building a field sales team. But that doesn’t mean your reps can’t utilize inside sales strategies. If your field reps aren’t using phone calls, emails, and text messages to contact leads, something has gone very wrong with your strategy.

The best thing about emails and text messages is that they can be automated. Imagine how many more sales your department will make when your reps don’t have to manually type out every email and text they send. WAY MORE!

When creating your field sales strategy, build sales sequences that include every communication channel your reps use. Then look to automate your sequences with a tool like SPOTIO’s Autoplays, which will simplify the entire process.

Once your department is set up with Autoplays, your field sales representatives will be able to close more deals in less time, leading to greater success.

Use a consultative selling approach

Consultative sales is a sales strategy where reps take an advisory role rather than a traditional sales role. As such, consultative sales reps recommend solutions to potential customers based on their needs.

Consultative selling helps field reps build trust with their prospects, ultimately allowing them to close more deals.

To adopt a consultative selling approach, simply teach your reps to:

• Actively listen to their prospects’ needs
• Asked questions about their prospects’ challenges and pain points
• Focus on finding solutions for prospects rather than repping products
• Offer insight to prospects without expecting anything in return

If your field reps can learn to do these things, their sales numbers will improve.

Map efficient sales routes

Yes, we’ve already talked about route planning. But it’s so important we need to mention it again in the context of building your field sales strategy.

Windshield time is the Achilles heel of field sales teams. Productivity levels and sales numbers go down when reps spend more time in the car. To minimize this issue, plan your reps’ sales routes in the most efficient way possible.

SPOTIO’s route planning software makes this tedious task a breeze.

Create a healthy level of competition

Salespeople thrive on competition. The trick is building a competitive work environment for your reps that also fosters teamwork and camaraderie.

You can do this with SPOTIO Leaderboards, AKA a digital scoreboard of sorts that displays important metrics such as knocks made, meetings booked, and revenue generated for every field sales representative on your team.

Leaderboards allows reps to see how their efforts stack up against their peers. It can also be used by management professionals to create fun competitions that motivate field sales reps to perform their best at all times.

Align the sales and marketing teams

Sales and marketing aren’t enemies! These two departments should always work together to help propel their company to new heights.

So, when creating your field sales strategy, look for ways to align your organization’s sales and marketing teams. You can do this by increasing communication.

For example, when marketing knows what kind of prospects sales needs, they can pursue more of these leads. And when both departments communicate on goals, they can help each other achieve them rather than fighting against one another.

Track performance metrics

How are your field reps doing? Are they meeting quota? If so, what’s the secret to their success? If not, why are they underperforming? You need to be able to answer these questions! Once again, SPOTIO can help.

Our platform will enable you to track field sales activities for each rep, as we discussed earlier, and the result of each activity they perform.

Want to know which team member has the best close rate? Interested in learning which communication channels work best for your reps? Maybe you just want to make sure that your reps’ pipelines are full. SPOTIO’s new My Reports feature allows reps and managers to quickly and easily build custom reports so that you are only looking at the metrics that matter most to your business.

The information inside SPOTIO will help you adjust your field sales strategy when required, and forecast future results more accurately.

Invest in continual training

Lastly, make sure your field sales strategy prioritizes training.

Field sales training can come in the form of annual conferences, employee events, internal cross-training, job shadowing, department mentorship programs, etc.

We won’t tell you how to train your team because every team is different and should be trained in a different way. What we will say is this: the best field sales departments are always looking for ways to improve their reps’ skill sets.

Boost Field Sales Productivity and Performance

Field sales is an exciting opportunity! Companies that employ these kinds of sellers will be able to sell complex and expensive products more consistently. They’ll also benefit from the stronger client relationships and detailed data these reps dig up.

Field sales representatives have it good, too, as many field sellers make a very healthy living for themselves and their families.

If you’re looking to build a field sales team for your organization, or want to start your career as a field sales rep, you should definitely invest in SPOTIO. Our platform is the ultimate tool for field sales and has been proven to boost revenue by 23%!

Contact our team today for a free demo of our software. See you on the inside!

But generating more sales is only part of the equation.

While sales effectiveness does well to improve conversions, there’s another component that should be a priority: sales efficiency.

Sales efficiency is the key to not only generating more sales for your business but also streamlining your sales processes so that you get more sales, faster.

In this guide, we’ll cover what sales efficiency is, why it’s essential to your business, and 12 ways to make your sales process more efficient than ever.

What is Sales Efficiency?

So, what is sales efficiency? How is it different from sales effectiveness?

Let’s dive into the definitions.

Sales Efficiency vs. Sales Effectiveness

Sales effectiveness refers to your sales team’s ability to convert prospects into leads — and eventually paying customers or clients — at each stage of your sales funnel. If your sales process is effective, you will experience more “wins” than losses every step of the way.

Sales efficiency refers to the speed of your sales operations. That is, how quickly you are able to convert users into leads/sales and while still generating the highest return on your investment. It is the revenue your sales team generates relative to the cost.

A sales process that is both efficient and effective will help reps close sales in a reasonable time frame, at a sustainable cost, and on the right terms.

Why Sales Efficiency & Effectiveness Should Be Your #1 Priority

Your sales team closing the majority of new prospects isn’t always an indication of success.

While sales quotas continue to rise, only 47% of B2B sales organizations hit their targets. The fact that the average sales rep only spends 39% of their time selling. As such, sales efficiency is key.

Calculating your sales efficiency is the best way to determine whether your business is on track. If there’s room for improvement, you will need both sales efficiency and sales effectiveness to move the revenue needle.

How Do You Calculate Sales Efficiency?

Here’s a simple formula you can use to calculate sales efficiency in a specific period:

$ Value Of New Revenue / (Sales + Marketing Costs)

For instance, if you earn $8,000 in new Q2 revenue and spend $4,000 on sales and marketing in that quarter, your efficiency score is 2.
Your sales process is efficient if your score is 2 or higher. A score of 1 indicates that your company is essentially breaking even, and a score of less than 1 means you’re spending more than you’re earning.

What is a Good Sales Efficiency Ratio?

A good sales efficiency ratio is between one and three. In other words, it should take your company 4 to 12 months for revenue to cover sales and marketing costs. If your company’s number is lower than this, you need to increase efficiency. If it’s higher, your sales team is on fire. Keep doing what you’re doing!

12 Ways to Improve Sales Efficiency

If your business is struggling with sales efficiency, just know that you are not alone. Many business owners are making sales efficiency their #1 priority, and you can too.

Here are 12 ways sales managers and sales teams can improve sales efficiency in your business.

1. Set Business Goals and KPIs

The first step in laying out your sales efficiency plan is to clarify your goals and how you will measure success.

Are your sales reps expected to close a set number of sales per month? A certain amount per sale? Make sure those expectations are set from the beginning.

We highly recommend using the SMART goals method to set goals that are measurable and realistic.

For example, your goal could be: Increase sales by 17% by the end of the next quarter.

Once you are clear on what your goals are, and what KPIs you’ll use to measure success, make sure you track sales activity closely. Identify any bottlenecks and fix problems in a timely manner to improve sales efficiency.

2. Identify Your Ideal Customer

Half of sales time is wasted on unproductive prospecting.

To make sure you’re going after the right prospects, you can use sales intelligence tools like SPOTIO’s Lead Machine to pull from 200+ data points, including demographics, location, and contact information.

Building your ideal customer avatar consists of four main components:

1. WHO they are (demographics)
2. WHERE they are (location)
3. WHAT they want (pain points and needs)

With this information, your sales team can focus on pitching exactly what your potential customers want to hear without wasting time on specs that won’t be of interest to them.

3. Create a Repeatable Sales Process

If you want your sales team to be efficient, you must outline a repeatable, consistent sales process. Having a go-to guide for qualifying leads, selling at the right moment, collaborating with the team, and other important sales tasks will help reps work better and faster.

The key steps in sales processes are:

1. Preparation & Research. Know the scope of your product, your ideal customer’s wants and needs, and your company’s unique selling point.
2. Prospecting. This includes the search for potential customers with the goal of moving them down your sales funnel. Detailed customer data can help you identify promising prospects.
3. Needs Assessment. This is a way for your sales team to dig deeper into what the prospect needs and what issue(s) they are trying to solve. That way, reps can custom-tailor a solution for them.
4. Pitch & Presentation. This is where your sales rep communicates the value of your product to the customer. It’s best that your rep establishes trust and hones in on what benefits your potential customer is looking for. Then they present your product as the ideal solution.
5. Objection Handling. The customer may have questions or concerns. Addressing objections presents another opportunity to establish trust and communicate how you are different from your competitors.
6. Closing. This is when the sale is made or the proposal is sent.
7. Follow-Up. Referrals are the highest converting lead source. Follow-up with customers to encourage referrals and repeat business.

Creating a sales process and tailoring it for each prospect can be rather time consuming. But with Autoplays, you can create automated outreach sequences for each prospect and funnel stage to ensure no lead falls through the cracks.

Creating a clear sales process ensures that reps are following the same step at every stage, and it can help you identify holes in the process. If leads are dropping off right before the close, you will be able to see this issue and address it quickly.

4. Define Daily, Weekly and Monthly Sales Activities

Sales activities are routine steps that bring new leads into the pipeline. Some examples include:

• Contacting new prospects
• Pitching your solution
• Following-up
• Creating awareness about what you have to offer
• Assigning territories
• Route planning

5. Align Sales and Marketing Teams

Often, miscommunication between marketing and sales teams causes inefficiency.

In fact, only 35% of salespeople think that the marketing team knows what content they need, and only a third of sales and marketing teams talk regularly. This is obviously a problem.

When marketing and sales teams are on different pages, the entire company suffers. For example, sales reps might not understand how marketing talks about products. And the handoff from one department to the other often lacks context, which enables sales reps to make sales at a consistent clip.

Fortunately, aligning both teams can solve these kinds of issues. Here’s how to do it:

• Create Shared Goals: Marketing and sales teams should work towards common objectives. A single objective, such as company revenue, will help ensure marketing and sales alignment.
• Build Personas Together: If your marketing and sales teams have different buyer personas, you’re going to have issues. Ask both departments to create unified personas. That way marketing produces the kinds of leads that sales can actually close on a regular basis.
• Commit to Communication: Finally, make sure marketing and sales professionals talk every month—if not every week. Is marketing able to generate the right kind of leads? Does sales need to change their approach based on marketing’s strategy? These are important questions. By communicating on a regular basis, you’ll be able to answer them and improve revenue.

6. Train Your Sales Reps Effectively

Did you know that 82% of B2B decision-makers think sales reps are unprepared?

Without proper training, sales reps may waste time and resources on approaches that don’t work, pitch to a customer too early, or draw out the sales process.

Sales managers should require new hires to go through in-depth training about effective prospecting and selling. It should address any common questions that sales reps may have during the process, as well as tips on how to handle objections from customers.

Providing ongoing training will also help your team stay sharp and up-to-date on the latest selling techniques.

7. Assign Sales Territories Strategically

Image: Screenshot of the SPOTIO territory management interface.

Strategic rep assignment is one way to prevent redundancies in your sales process. That is, it ensures that no sales reps are selling to the same areas/leads at the same time.

We recommend assigning your top reps to the most lucrative territories to ensure a better close rate on those high-ticket offers. Check out our guide on Sales Territory Management for tips on how to create your own efficient rep assignment strategy.

8. Reduce Windshield Time

Driving from meeting to meeting has a huge impact on a rep’s daily efficiency. Mapping efficient routes maximizes the amount of time reps spend selling and reduces their time on the road.

Route planning software is the best way to reduce driving time for reps when they’re in the field. You can use it to:

• Cutdown windshield time
• Easily find the most efficient route to one or multiple meetings
• Map and plan your day in a single tap

9. Sell to Customer Needs

The research you conducted around your ideal client persona will tell you what issues your potential customers are struggling with, what they need, and what they want.

Understanding their needs and articulating how your product is the best solution is the surest way to win them over.

While your competitors are hitting on all the features of their products, you will be speaking directly to your target customer’s strongest pain points. If you are able to drive home the benefits, it should be a straightforward sale for you.

10. Manage and Nurture Leads Effectively

Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.

It’s always easier to sell to a “warm” lead — someone who is familiar with your brand and has been primed for the sale — than a “cold” one. That’s why it’s essential to have a lead nurturing process.

The best system for doing this is a centralized CRM or lead management system. This software allows your sales team to see where prospects are at in the sales cycle so that they can follow up with them in the right way at the right time.

A CRM tool will increase sales efficiency by:

• Notifying your team when to follow up
• Helping your team tailor communications to where prospects are in the sales cycles
• Assigning priority to prospects that are farther down the sales funnel

11. Work on the Basics

Sometimes the easiest and fastest way to improve sales efficiency is to brush up on the basics. No matter how long you have been in business or how precise your processes are, there’s always room for improvement.

Fine-tune your sales process by considering new ways to find prospects, present sales pitches, or conduct follow-ups. Don’t be afraid to look at your existing system from a different perspective.

12. Maximize Rep Productivity

A recent study found that sales reps spend just 28% of their time on selling. That means that the rest of the time is spent on non-selling tasks like traveling, attending meetings, or data entry.

There are many handy tools that you and your team can use to maximize your time and efficiency. For example, reps can use the SPOTIO app to create notes when they’re in the field, and the information automatically syncs to your CRM. That eliminates the need for time-consuming data entry at the end of the day.

Look for opportunities to automate routine sales tasks that free up more time for reps to focus on sales.

4 Sales Efficiency Metrics To Start Tracking

The goal of a sales team is to be selling for as many hours in their working day as possible. With the sales efficiency metrics below you can learn just how efficient your current sales process is.

1. Customer Acquisition Cost & Customer Lifetime Value

Cost of acquisition, or CAC, is an essential metric for understanding efficiency as it lets you know if your resources are being allocated in the best way. Here’s the formula for calculating CAC for a specific period:

CAC = Total Marketing Spend / # Of New Customers

Cost of acquisition, or CAC, is an essential metric for understanding efficiency as it lets you know if your resources are being allocated in the best way.

Next, you’ll want to calculate your customer lifetime value (CLTV). The closer these two numbers are, the more unsustainable your sales process is. It also goes without saying that your CAC shouldn’t exceed your LTV.

A good LTV:CAC ratio benchmark is 3:1

CLTV = Avg. Value Of Purchases x # of Sales x Contract Length

Tracking your average customer acquisition cost over time also helps your company make smart decisions.

2. Lead Response Time

How long does it take sales reps to respond to new leads? According to recent research, 88% of customers want an email response within one hour. So, efficient follow-up can be crucial to a sale.

If you find that certain sales reps are falling behind in response time, it may be time for retraining. If lead response times seem to be gradually increasing, that could be a sign that the workload per sales rep is too much, and you may need to hire additional help.

3. Number of Sales Calls Per Rep

While analyzing sales efficiency on a team-wide basis is useful, it only tells a partial story. You also need to track sales metrics such as the number of sales calls or visits per week per team member.

Taking into account pre-call research, the actual call, and post-call CRM updates, you should allow an average of 7.5 minutes for each cold call.

60 Minutes / 7.5 Minutes Per Call = 8 Cold Calls Per Hour.

This metric helps you assess performance, as well as team member strengths and weaknesses.

4. Frequency of Customer Contact

Building trust with the prospect is an important aspect of an optimized sales process. By tracking the rate of client outreach, you can make sure your team is putting in the right amount of time to create a long-lasting relationship.

You can also use this data to understand what sales tactics work best with your customers.You may find that more touch points convert better for certain customer personas.

Boost Your Sales Efficiency

Sales efficiency is the #1 priority for businesses that want to close more sales and get the best ROI for their sales investment.

Close rate alone is not an accurate measure of sales success; there are many metrics to track and steps to take along the way to ensure that your sales productivity is at its highest.

Is your sales team as efficient as it could be?

See how SPOTIO can boost your company’s sales efficiency, qualify prospects, and develop better processes. Request your demo today.

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SPOTIO is the #1 field sales engagement and performance management software that will increase revenue, maximize profitability, and boost sales productivity.

As deals progress through the sales cycle, the manager ensures all players have what they need and are on track. Sales management also provides feedback and training to the entire sales team, helping to ensure everyone is on the same page and doing their best. They take an active role in leading the team to success and motivating them to reach their goals.

Many sales management and productivity tools are available to support managers. These tools provide sales leaders with features like real-time visibility, territory mapping, and sales process management capabilities to optimize sales performance and drive results.

In this article, we’ll introduce 27 sales manager tools to help you be more productive and better prepare your reps for success.

What is the Role of the Sales Manager?

Team leaders are critical in driving business growth by leading a team of sales representatives. Sales management manages and supports their team and ensures their reps are well-equipped to succeed. Their duties include setting sales targets, analyzing sales data, and developing sales strategies.

Managers are also responsible for maintaining effective customer relationships. Sales leaders monitor customer feedback, provide feedback and recognition to their team, and provide guidance and support when needed.

The role and function of the field sales manager can be divided into four categories:

• People Manager: Motivating employees, training them, and resolving conflicts
• Customer Manager: Understanding customer needs and targeting
• Process Manager: Implementing and enforcing effective processes
• Performance Manager: Monitoring analytics and tracking performance

The sales manager’s core responsibilities ensure that all aspects of the sales process run smoothly and produce results.

The 27 Best Tools for Field Sales Managers

#1: SPOTIO Territory Manager

Functions: People. Performance.

SPOTIO is ranked #1 in the Field Sales category and was a 2023 G2 Best Software Winner. SPOTIO’s Territory Manager allows sales management to lead their teams more efficiently and accurately while achieving the highest possible contact rate.

This sales management tool enables the creation of territories based on ZIP Codes or a few targeted streets in a specific neighborhood. Territories can be assigned to individual sales reps, minimizing the time spent searching for the perfect neighborhood or business to prospect.

Working and reworking a territory is the key to reaping maximum benefits. SPOTIO Territory Manager also provides historical data, giving sales management the background and insights they need to coach their sales team to success.

Get pricing.

#2: Sales Cloud by Salesforce

Functions: Customer, Process, Performance

Sales Cloud, built on the Salesforce platform, is a modern cloud application for managing your entire sales process. Sales Cloud lets sales teams connect customer touchpoints across multiple systems, apps, and departments, giving a single view of the customer. The AI features automatically capture data, revealing instant insights and allowing managers to proactively coach reps to win with predictive sales forecasting. Prioritizing customer privacy, the platform offers a set of controls to manage the lifecycle of customer data and track end users’ preferences and consent.

Five pricing plans are available:

• Starter Suite | $25/month/user
• Professional | $80/month/user
• Enterprise | $160/month/user
• Unlimited | $330/month/user
• Einstein 1 Sales | $500/month/user

#3: Process Street

Functions: People, Process.

Process Street is a simple tool for documenting a sales team’s recurring checklists and procedures. Users can quickly create and assign checklist workflows using a drag-and-drop interface, intuitive keyboard shortcuts, collaborative workflows, and forms to capture structured data. Sales management can track activity from the dashboard and receive notifications when tasks are complete.

Three pricing plans are available:

• Startup | $100/month
• Pro | $1,500/month
• Enterprise | Contact for Details

#4: Sales Intelligence by SPOTIO

Functions: People, Customer, Process

SPOTIO’s Sales Intelligence offering, Lead Machine, is a one-stop shop for identifying strong leads, managing sales cycles, and canvassing territories based on reliable, up-to-date data. Lead Machine empowers residential sales teams to work more effectively and close more sales by targeting the best leads within a chosen territory.

Taking advantage of Lead Machine is simple. Draw your desired target area, establish an ideal customer profile (sort by income, home square footage, credit capacity of homeowner, etc.), and once your target area and prospects have been identified, simply import those ‘best match’ leads and start selling.

For those going after businesses and corporations, SPOTIO’s integration with Google Places makes it easy for reps to find, filter, and target businesses in their territory. Simplify the process by searching for all restaurants and retail stores in an area and then routing the best path to get there.

Get pricing.

#5: Xceleration

Functions: People, Performance.

Xceleration is a web-based platform for sales management that offers the rewards, motivation, and knowledge necessary to create effective sales incentive programs. Xceleration’s RewardStation® platform can manage every aspect of a sales recognition program, including day-to-day maintenance, comprehensive reporting and analytics, and rewards fulfillment. Xceleration allows users to design recognition solutions and reward options specifically tailored to each unique organization.

For pricing, contact Xceleration.

#6: Hoopla by Raydiant

Functions: People, Performance.

Raydiant believes the number one way to engage today’s employees is with transparency and appreciation. Formerly known as Hoopla, Raydiant’s experience platform provides sales management with the means to communicate across the entire organization, creating engaged and motivated individuals and sales teams. Using features like live leaderboards, gamification, and advanced recognition capabilities, managers can motivate employees with real-time positive feedback. Task management features get sales reps on the same page, clarifying expectations and responsibilities.

For pricing, contact Raydiant.

#7: My Reports by SPOTIO

Functions: People, Process, Performance

SPOTIO’s My Reports feature gives account owners, sales management, and sales reps the data they need to make the best decisions. With this tool, you can create custom reports based on metrics such as activities, stages, visits, territories, teams, or individual reps.

To set up a report, simply name it, define the date range and category, and drag and drop the KPIs you wish to view — it’s that simple. You can save your report as a template for future reports and access and share reports from your desktop, laptop, or SPOTIO’s field sales app.

Get pricing.

#8: Brainshark

Functions: People, Process

Brainshark provides a comprehensive sales enablement and readiness platform, including features for onboarding, product launches, new markets, and competitive news. The sales training feature allows managers to deliver formal readiness paths for onboarding, provide learning content, and track progress. Brainshark’s content authoring solutions allow sales management to create video-based learning content, add interactivity with quizzes or attachments, and ensure content is always up-to-date and accessible.

For pricing information, see the Brainshark website.

#9: SPOTIO Sales Activity Management

Functions: People, Customer, Process, Performance

SPOTIO’s Sales Activity Management simplifies field sales management. The tool gives managers the insights they need to identify bottlenecks in the sales pipeline, evaluate rep performance by specific metrics, and gauge the amount of activity required to hit targets. It easily integrates with most ERP, project management, and CRM software to streamline internal processes.

With this tool, you can see where reps are in real time, track their travel history, and verify visits. You can also use it to set up AutoPlays — just define the cadence for contacting leads and customers, and SPOTIO will remind reps. They can communicate by email, text, or phone from within the SPOTIO platform. SPOTIO automatically logs a record of all communication, syncing it to your CRM software.

With SPOTIO’s analytics, managers can evaluate which types of contact are most effective for building customer relationships and troubleshoot any engagement drops.

Get pricing.

#10: ReferenceEdge

Function: Customer

ReferenceEdge is a native Salesforce application that manages customer reference and advocate information and automates the reference request workflow. Users can track references, attributes, and frequency of use and issue and redeem reward points for completed referral activities. Sales management can measure program impact through extensive reports and dashboard charts, improve sales and marketing efficiency, shorten the “quote to cash” cycle, and win more deals.

For pricing information, contact Point of Reference.

#11: Zoho CRM

Functions: Customer, Performance

Zoho CRM empowers sales management to enhance relationships and track performance metrics. With advanced features like lead management, marketing automation, and multichannel forecasting, Zoho CRM enables a comprehensive understanding of customer needs and sales dynamics.
The platform also supports performance management through real-time analytics and reporting, helping sales management optimize strategies and improve overall sales efficiency. These integrated sales management features make it an essential tool for managing customer interactions and monitoring sales outcomes.

Four pricing plans are available:

• Standard | $14/month/user
• Professional | $23/month/user
• Enterprise | $40/month/user
• Ultimate | $52/month/user

#12: Factiva

Function: Customer

Dow Jones’ Factiva will appeal to sales management that prioritizes a global perspective or wishes to track prospect-specific news. Its global database of over 33,000 premium sources — including licensed publications, influential websites, blogs, images, and video — enables users to analyze and forecast data, improve sentiment analysis, uncover hidden connections, and enrich data visualizations.

The new streamlined Factiva experience incorporates a powerful research platform on mobile devices or integrated via advanced feeds and APIs. Identify opportunities with competitive intelligence and media monitoring.

For pricing information, submit the Factiva contact form.

#13: Adobe Connect

Functions: People, Process

Sales management can use Adobe Connect to create digital training, webinars, and collaborative experiences tailored to your sales needs. It offers tools for building interactive learning experiences and engaging micro-sites, complete with customizable content management and engagement analytics.

Additionally, managers can bring their teams together using virtual rooms that can be personalized with unique layouts, branding elements, and dedicated URLs, fostering a cohesive and branded communication experience. These features make Adobe Connect an ideal tool for enhancing educational initiatives and process efficiencies.

Three pricing plans are available, with optional add-ons available:

• Standard | $190/year/host
• Premium | $290/year/host
• Enterprise | $390/year/host

#14: Rep Tracking by SPOTIO

Function: People, Customer, Process, Performance

SPOTIO rep tracking allows sales management to track their sales team in real-time to ensure reps complete territory assignments. SPOTIO’s location verification tool tags each rep’s location as pins are dropped to show:

• Verified: Confirms the sales rep was within a 300-foot (100-yard) radius of the address of a dropped pin
• Unverified: Sales rep was not within the 300-foot radius

Get pricing.

#15: Zoomforth

Function: Customer

Zoomforth is a visual communication tool that helps sales reps create immersive, personalized content to propel the buyer’s journey forward. Present your case clearly and visually, all in one place, with branded microsites that eliminate disconnected email messaging. Sales management can identify what prospects are looking at, what they may have missed, and how they engage so reps can better assist them. With Zoomforth, you can streamline the buying experience, build client relationships, and improve team productivity by allowing reps to spend less time on administrative tasks and focus more on selling.

For more information, including pricing, see the Zoomforth website.

#16: e-Contracts by SPOTIO

Functions: Customer. Process.

Functions: Customer, Process

SPOTIO e-Contracts gives field sales reps immediate access to the files they need when they need them. Users can close deals on the spot, without emailing files back and forth to get contracts signed. Reps can take pictures onsite and access needed files, such as product spec sheets and presentations. What’s more, sales management can track their team’s contract documents in one platform.

Get pricing.

#17: Proposify

Functions: Customer, Process

Proposify streamlines the creation of quotes, contracts, and other sales documents. Sales teams can quickly access and collaborate on proposal content while sales management oversees activity with roles and permissions, commenting, and tracking through version history. In addition, Proposify notifies sales teams every time the client interacts with the proposal, from opening the email to closing the deal.

Two pricing plans are available:

• Team | $49/month/user
• Business | Contact sales.

#18: Slack

Functions: People, Process

Slack helps sales teams work smarter with cross-functional partners. Sales management can set up public channels to improve visibility between sales, marketing, product, and support teams, making it easier for all groups to work toward the same goals.

Sales team leaders can use Slack to boost morale by announcing closing deals and congratulating contributors across distributed teams and offices. Sales management and reps alike can share the context behind deals, like challenges and lessons, so everyone can grow together.

Four pricing plans are available:

• Free
• Pro | $7.25/month/user
• Business+ | $12.50/month/user
• Enterprise Grid | Contact sales.

#19: QuickVoice

QuickVoice by nFinity is an audio recording solution designed for iPad that is also compatible with Windows computers. Both sales management and reps can use QuickVoice to record memos, dictation, reminders, ideas, “to-do” lists, meetings, phone conferences, interviews, entire lectures, or seminars. Users can drag and drop recordings into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other audio-supporting programs.

See the nFinity website for pricing information.

#20: Microsoft Teams

Functions: People, Process

Microsft Teams helps sales teams stay connected using instant messaging, video and audio chat, and collaborative online meetings. Managers can use Teams in many ways to stay in touch with their sales reps and keep them connected. With one click, anyone can join an online meeting from any device. Users can meet immediately or schedule for later, with meeting URLs personalized for each user.

Microsoft Teams is part of Office 365. A Teams-only plan is available, or you can choose from several Office 365 business plans. For more information, see the Microsoft Teams website.

#21: LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Functions: People, Process, Customer

LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes social selling easy with sales tools that focus on helping reps find the right prospects to build trusted relationships. Sales management can scale their social selling strategies and start using their sales team’s network. Choose individuals/organizations that you want to approach, and Sales Navigator will suggest other profiles that are similar to your choice. As a result, you learn about organizations you weren’t aware of, expanding your potential opportunity pool.

#22: Gong

Functions: People, Customer, Performance

Gong is a powerful sales management tool for capturing and analyzing sales conversations, phone calls, web conferences, and emails. Using advanced AI technology, Gong uncovers patterns and insights to reveal what’s working, what’s not, and how high-performing sales reps communicate. Analysis helps identify effective communication practices that managers can use to boost sales team performance. Gong enables sales teams to refine their approaches, ensuring alignment with proven methods that drive sales success and improve customer interactions.

For a customized pricing proposal, see the Gong website.

#23: ExecVision

Functions: People, Customer, Performance

ExecVision is conversation intelligence software that equips sales management to efficiently coach and enhance their teams on a scalable level, significantly boosting performance and driving revenue growth. Using AI, managers can gain critical insight into why some calls go well while others do not. The tool facilitates sales rep evaluations to determine if reps are asking the right questions and adhering to best practices. Sales management can use these insights to implement targeted coaching and strategic guidance, optimizing team performance and customer interactions to achieve better outcomes.

For pricing information, contact ExecVision.

#24: Showpad

Function: People

Showpad eOS® is a comprehensive platform for streamlining training, onboarding, and coaching processes within sales teams, equipped with full e-learning capabilities and video role-playing technology. The software allows sales management to craft and monitor a skill development plan, ensuring their reps achieve necessary milestones and continuously improve performance. Showpad’s integrated coaching system has three core components:

• Training: Structured learning modules to enhance knowledge and skills
• Coaching: Personalized feedback and development sessions
• Conversational Intelligence: Tools to analyze and improve sales conversations

Showpad eOS® has two main plan levels, Essential and Plus. To request pricing for either plan, see the Showpad Coach pricing page.

#25: Leaderboards by SPOTIO

Function: Performance. People.

Function: Performance, People

Encourage healthy competition through sales leaderboards and contests to keep your business thriving. Sales contests are one of the best ways to drive team engagement and throttle results heading into the end of the month, quarter, or year. SPOTIO’s communication features encourage sales rep engagement and offer an open feedback loop with managers. This tool allows sales management to measure the field team’s performance and engage with staff while promoting open communication across teams.

Get pricing.

#26: NerdyData

Functions: Customers, Process

NerdyData is a search engine designed to find the code, tools, and licenses your competitors or prospects’ competitors are using. This tool is great for sales reps creating custom marketing packages to present to prospects. In addition, sales management can provide teams with an accurate list of prospects, target ads via platforms like LinkedIn Matched Audiences, perform market share analysis, and analyze competitors’ client lists. NerdyData can also identify websites that are using software without a license.

Three pricing plans are available:

• Basic | $200/month/user
• Pro | $300/month/user
• Teams | Contact sales.

#27: SPOTIO AutoPlays

Functions: People. Customer. Process. Performance.

Functions: People, Customer, Process, Performance

With SPOTIO Autoplays, managers and sales reps don’t need to waste valuable time setting up the right cadence. Autoplays lets you change settings with a few clicks, so you can zero in on when and how to contact leads to get the best results. Add as many steps as you need, and create conditional rules that sort prospects into different lists. Once you’ve figured out the ideal Autoplay, you can replicate it and share it with other team members or sales management.

With SPOTIO Autoplays, you never need to worry about leads getting lost in the shuffle.

Get pricing.

Unlock The Potential Of Your Sales Team

Sales management isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. By ditching your spreadsheets and implementing proper sales tools, you can more easily focus on your organization’s people, business processes, performance, and customers — and drive further success.

At SPOTIO, we understand the complexities of field sales and sales performance management. Our platform is the #1 field sales automation and performance management software designed to increase revenue, maximize profitability, and enhance sales productivity by automating and optimizing every stage of the sales process.

Curious about how SPOTIO can elevate your sales performance? Book a demo to see how SPOTIO can take your sales management to the next level.

With a sales territory plan, you can improve the efficiency of your field sales team and ensure no one is working overlapping areas or duplicating sales efforts.

In this post, we’ll look at the sales territory mapping process— what it is, what it entails, and how sales managers can improve it.

What Is A Sales Territory Map?

A sales territory map is a visual layout of your sales territories. You can manually create maps or use territory mapping software to define territories and assign them to the reps that are the best fit for each one.

What Is Sales Territory Mapping?

Sales territory mapping is the creation and assignment of sales territories based on factors like geography, revenue potential, and the individual expertise of sales reps.

Territory planning also incorporates the size of accounts to ensure a fair balance. For example, two large accounts might be equal in revenue to four smaller accounts, so managers might want to rebalance territories to ensure reps have equal opportunities to hit their sales quota.

The Old Approach to Sales Territory Mapping

Territory mapping with Google Maps and a highlighter leaves room for error and confusion. You have no way to determine how many prospects you’re assigning to each rep, how many customers you have in each territory, or whether prospect demographics in each territory align with your ideal customer profile.

Not to mention once you send a rep out with their printed sales territory map, you’ll rarely get it back — and therefore have no idea where you’ve worked or haven’t worked.

Consider this situation:

1. A rep made a sale outside of the territory you assigned them, claiming they weren’t sure where it ended.
2. The rep who was assigned to that territory lost the opportunity to make that sale.

Who do you give the sale to — the rep who closed the deal, or the rep who covers the territory where the sale occurred?

The same issues can occur with other legacy solutions like Streets and Trips and MapPoint. Today, sales organizations can use software to design sales territories, prevent territory disputes among sales teams, and gather the insights sales managers need to adjust territory boundaries or reassign reps.

The Benefits Of Modern Sales Territory Management

Modern sales territory mapping tools help managers:

Assign territories strategically

You wouldn’t assign a junior sales rep to your highest-value territory. With the multiple data points available in territory mapping platforms, you can segment sales territories and assign reps to territories that align with their experience level. This approach to sales planning and territory management ensures your best reps are working the most valuable territories.

Balance workloads

To maintain harmony among your sales team, you should be mapping sales territories in a way that balances the workload. That means looking at more than just the geographic area of each territory — a small territory could contain just as many leads as a territory that spans two ZIP Codes.

Increase rep selling time

The way you map sales territories can help reps maximize their selling time. For example, you might find that shifting the territory boundaries gives each rep a simple sales route, with little distance between stops. Route optimization is one of the best features of territory mapping apps.

Boost rep productivity

In the days of analog territory mapping, field sales reps wasted countless hours jotting notes on paper and marking up maps to keep track of their progress. Digital territory maps integrate with CRM data, giving reps instant access to important data when they’re in the field. And they can update notes from their mobile phones, which eliminates the need for manual entry and increases sales productivity.

4 Ways To Create A Sales Territory

To save time, be more efficient, eliminate confusion, and increase performance, create territories for your sales team using the following strategies:

1. Target Market Demographics

One of the most effective strategies for territory management is to gather market demographics before sending your team out to knock on doors. This will minimize unproductive time for your reps in the field.

Using a tool like SPOTIO’s Lead Machine will help you to identify key territories, target qualified customers that match your ideal customer profile (ICP), and ensure that your team is targeting prospects that have real buying potential.

You’ll also have the ability to track the progress of each of these leads in your sales pipeline through the app. This prevents leads that you’ve spent money on from slipping through the cracks and increases the return on your investment. (This is one of the main features SPOTIO offers that causes many outside sales reps to switch from the competition).

The more information you have about your current customers, the better. You can understand where you’re having the most success and identify higher-quality potential customers with a greater chance of buying.

Download this resource to learn more:

2. Include Current Customers In Each Territory

Your current customers are extremely valuable to your business, and not just because they purchased your product or service.

Your customers can provide you with some of the highest converting and cheapest leads: referrals. You just have to ask.

Start by generating a list of all of your current customers. If you use a sales tracking app like SPOTIO, it’s simple to upload this list into your account, or you can simply sort the pins in your account by the status you created to signify a closed-won deal.

If you’re not using a sales tracking app, you’ll have to map these addresses by hand individually. It will be a much longer process, but well worth it.

Once you’re able to see all of your customers on a map, draw out territories for your reps to work based on these locations.

There are two strategies for this approach:

1. Evenly distribute the number of customers in each sale’s reps territories.
2. The other option, if your customers are more spread out, is to assign a couple of smaller territories to each rep, but still distribute them as evenly as possible.

The goal is to use your current customers as references when pitching a new prospect. You can also have your team visit satisfied customers to ask for referrals.

3. Distribute By Number Of Prospects

Making sure that sales reps have enough prospects to visit is essential to their performance and production.

Without sales territory mapping software, you can spend hours on this process. Sales territory mapping software significantly simplifies this process, saving you many hours and ensuring greater accuracy.

Create and assign territories based on the number of contacts you want each rep to work.

As you start drawing out a sales territory plan in SPOTIO, the app will tell you the estimated number of prospects in that territory.

Using territory mapping software will allow you to create equitable territories for your entire team in less than 10 minutes.

4. Distribute By City/ZIP Code

Creating territories by city or ZIP Code is a little bit trickier because of the size of the area. Even so, distributing territories by city or ZIP Code is one of the easiest methods because there’s no room for misinterpretation.

You can tell a rep, “This is your ZIP Code, and if you get a lead or sale outside of your territory, it’s going to the rep that territory belongs to.” Creating territories this way eliminates a lot of the conflict and guesswork for reps.

These territories won’t be quick to work through and shouldn’t be changed frequently like smaller territories.

How To Evaluate And Optimize Sales Territories

You’ll need to periodically review your sales territories, because circumstances change. Your prospects might move to a new area, a competitor may begin working in your territories, or your staffing levels may increase or decrease.

Review Your Rep Count

If you’ve gained or lost reps or customers since you first defined sales territories, you’ll need to reevaluate. You may need to adjust or merge territories quarterly or yearly.

Consider Your Team’s Skills

You may have new hires with expertise in a certain aspect of sales that makes them a good fit for a territory, or you may find you need two people to cover one territory if you’ve lost the superstar who once covered it.

Analyze Existing Territory Performance

An underperforming territory might not be a result of sales performance. B2B and B2C prospects might have shrinking budgets or new priorities, or a competitor might be luring your prospects away. An underperforming territory always merits closer inspection.

Reassess Market Potential

Has the spending potential within your territories changed? That’s an important question to consider as you review your territory design. Review your sales data for the past year to detect any trends that may help you forecast market potential.

3 Common Mistakes To Avoid In The Territory Mapping Phase

1. Using Limited Data – And The Wrong Territory Management Tool

If you don’t know your client and/or account data, you can’t gauge how well the sales rep is doing, let alone make improvements.

Refrain from making continuous changes to sales territories, as it will negatively impact client engagement. However, you will want the ability to modify territories occasionally.

Find the best sales CRM tool to aid you in this process.

2. Failing To Include Your Sales Team

In order to be effective in territory mapping, you need to involve your sales teams and reps and take their experience and talents into account. If reps feel they have a say in territory planning, they are more likely to feel satisfied in their roles.

3. Relying On Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets won’t help your reps see their territory boundaries. If you want to win in sales performance and motivate your reps/teams, you must incorporate the right tools and applications that improve territory visibility.

8 Reasons To Use Sales Territory Mapping Software

According to an MIT study, 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. It’s no surprise that visual territory management tools are especially helpful for sales teams.

Sales territory mapping software provides a simple way for sales teams to visualize geographical areas and ensure:

• Territories are a manageable size for reps
• There is no overlap between reps
• Sales leaders and managers are thoughtfully and strategically assigning the top performers to the right territories

Here are eight reasons to use sales territory mapping software:

1. Prevent Deals From Falling Through The Cracks

If one rep has too many leads to manage, some of them will fall through the cracks. Sales territory planning software helps you balance territories and ensure reps have the capacity to manage all leads in their territory.

2. Uncover New Leads In Existing Territories

The temptation to expand to new territories is only natural. But it’s likely that your team hasn’t covered all potential leads within their existing sales territories.

With sales territory management tools like SPOTIO, you can use insights about your territories to reveal new leads in your existing territories.

3. Save Hours With Segmentation

Without territory mapping software, sales managers often have to spend hours creating sales maps.

Solutions like SPOTIO make it easier to categorize areas or regions by:

• High or low sales potential
• High sales volume
• High-quality leads

These features make it easy to map territories quickly while providing a simple-to-use interface for the reps in each territory.

4. Improve Close Rates With Data-Driven Area Assignments

Sales territory mapping solutions help sales leaders place their reps strategically.

With integrated key insights like sales performance, geographical history, total revenue earned, and leads converted, sales leaders can use SPOTIO to place people where they can make the most impact.

Whether this is about placing high performers where they’re needed most, or placing average performers in an environment that allows them to reach their potential, consider your team’s strengths and opportunities as you’re creating a sales territory plan.

5. Optimize sales routes and improve productivity

Without an effective and comprehensive system, territory mapping and sales route planning tend to be two separate activities.

Using smart features like those offered by SPOTIO, you can quickly see which territories landed the most accounts and where the highest-value clients are.

Sales route planning is adjustable on the fly. When new leads arise, the app helps users adjust their route and plan efficiently.

6. Measure Sales Data Across Territories

The best sales territory mapping software solution makes it easy to measure and compare sales data across multiple territories.

For example, using SPOTIO’s smart reporting features, you can quickly see which territories landed the most accounts, where the highest-value clients are, and which territories are underperforming.

This gives you strong visual data to understand where to invest as well as how sales reps are performing by region.

7. Boost Team Morale

When sales territories are unevenly distributed, sales goals may be unattainable for some reps, and morale may suffer. Whether a territory is too small and lacks potential, or the territory is too big for a rep to manage, a workload imbalance can cause frustration and resentment among your team.

With the data you gather from smart sales territory mapping software, you can closely monitor the level of work required to support each territory and allocate your sales team accordingly.

8. Help Your Team Succeed

Most sales territory mapping tools are part of a field sales enablement platform (like SPOTIO). That means you get a suite of tools that reps can use to:

• Add notes about prospects and leads using their mobile device
• Drop real-time location pins as they move through their territories
• Automate reminders to follow up with leads
• Sync data to your CRM remotely
• Share notes and reports
• Access a complete history of all interactions with leads and prospects
• Review essential steps in your sales process

All of these features help reps work more effectively — and reduce the need for time-consuming manual data entry.

Supercharge Sales Productivity And Increase Revenue With Sales Territory Mapping

Organize and divide territories: Define and reorganize territories in just a few minutes with SPOTIO’s intuitive interface.

Visualize lead and customer data: SPOTIO lets reps color-code map pins based on any data point, such as previously contacted leads, new prospects, and existing customers.

Monitor territory performance: Click on a territory to see performance data for sales teams and sales reps, and run reports that show performance metrics for all territories.

Find out how SPOTIO helps field sales teams stay organized, increase productivity, and close more deals. Request a demo today!

Sales mapping software is an essential part of every field sales team’s toolbox. 

No more drawing and sticking pins in paper maps. Today’s sales reps rely on the latest technology to optimize their territories and increase sales.

A glance at several studies underlines the point:

• Optimizing your territory design can increase sales by up to 7%.
• Territory optimization can increase sales productivity by 10%-20%.
• Optimizing sales territory design results in 30% higher sales performance.

In this guide, we’ll show you what features to look for in sales mapping software and then highlight the best sales mapping solutions to consider in 2024.

What is Sales Mapping Software?

Sales mapping software is a business application that integrates sales data with geolocation. Sales managers use it for sales territory mapping and to visualize leads, customers, and areas on a map.

Field sales teams also use it to plan better routes and more effective schedules.

Managers can use sales mapping software to view:

• The locations of customers and leads
• The distribution of customers across target territories
• The distribution of territories among field sales teams

Plus, managers can verify whether their sales reps are where they say they are and work all the accounts they are supposed to during a given time frame.

Why Field Sales Teams Should Invest in Mapping Software

Territory mapping has been around for ages. A few decades ago, your typical door-to-door sales rep used a paper map with a hand-drawn outline of their territory. 

Each neighborhood had prospects with distinct characteristics, personas, and buying potential. Nowadays, sales mapping software has replaced paper maps. 

Sales mapping software does a lot more than help you create maps. It helps you manage sales territories, prevent sales territory overlap between members of your sales team, and identify underperforming territories at a glance.

Let’s take a look at the reasons sales teams should be using mapping software.

Assign Sales Territories Strategically

It stands to reason, you want to squeeze the most sales out of each territory. That means you need to assign your sales resources to match the territory strategically and help your sales team work each territory more efficiently. 

With sales mapping software, you can ensure sales reps have enough accounts to manage, and confirm your top reps are working the most valuable territories.

Uncover new opportunities in existing territories 

You want to expand and move into new territories, but you know your sales eam hasn’t covered all potential leads within their existing sales territories.

With sales mapping software like SPOTIO, you can analyze insights about your existing territories to uncover new opportunities.

Increase time spent on sales activities

According to CSO Insights, just 33% of inside sales reps’ time is spent actively selling. Similarly, SPOTIO also reports that 66% of outside/field sales reps’ day is spent on non-selling activities. With sales mapping software, you can eliminate manual route planning, which is an easy way to increase sales productivity.

Sales mapping software helps reps quickly identify new opportunities in their territory, as well as upsell potential in existing accounts. Also, integrated route planning features reduce windshield time, ensuring reps are spending more time in the field working their accounts and completing daily minimum sales activities.

Optimized sales routes can reduce travel costs, increase the number of clients sales teams can serve in their territories, and improve fuel efficiency.

Improve sales tracking and performance 

Sales mapping software makes mapping territories an intelligent process, using important sales and geographical data points to help managers place their reps strategically.

Sales leaders can use software like SPOTIO to place reps where they can make the most impact based on valuable insights like sales activity reports, plus KPIs for leads, opportunities, and revenue at the rep, org, and territory levels. 

Sales territory mapping software also offers the intelligence you need to realign your territories as your reps and opportunities change.

Whether you want to deploy high performers where they’re needed most, or you want to place average performers in an environment where they can reach their full potential, you can assign reps to a specific sales territory to improve sales performance.

Key Features to Look for in Sales Mapping Software

Not all sales mapping software is created equal, so here are the key features to consider for your business:

Customer mapping

Customer mapping brings your CRM data to life and finds gaps you didn’t know existed. For instance, you can visualize leads and opportunities on a map, filter by a pipeline stage, and find new leads around existing customers. 

Image: Field reps can use SPOTIO to visualize customers while out in the field. 

To make sure reps follow up as expected (and don’t annoy leads), you can filter by visit count/last visited date/days since the last visit.

Equally important, sales territory mapping also helps you segment territories by different demographic, firmographic, or industry data. For example, if you sell various products and services based on industry, then it makes sense to map your territory by industry data.

Territory management

Territory management lets you allocate your sales team to match the territory properly.

You can assign territories by state, county, city, or ZIP code, or by drawing an area on a map. Alternatively, you can assign your top performers to the highest value accounts and opportunities.

Image: Defining and assigning sales territories in SPOTIO. 

Additionally, you can clarify who owns which area, prevent unwanted territory overlaps, and ensure you have the optimal number of reps working a designated sales territory.

Route planning

Sales mapping software can cut the time your sales reps spend planning routes. For example, SPOTIO quickly finds the best route to appointments and plans the entire day, so your sales reps can focus on closing deals instead of working out how to get from meeting to meeting.

Route planning makes it possible for you to optimize your sales reps’ routes to include the greatest number of interactions with leads, prospects, and customers.

Rep tracking

One of the things that sales managers struggle with is not knowing if their reps are where they say they are, or if they are working all the accounts they should be.

Back in the office, it’s not always possible to keep tabs on each team member. But for those managers who want to track reps on the map in real time, SPOTIO’s GPS sales rep tracking holds everyone accountable, especially newer reps who you may want to monitor more closely. For sales teams that prefer more privacy, you can turn the feature on and off.

Permissions and controls

Sales mapping software like SPOTIO allows you to control who can access each lead’s data and keep everyone organized using parent/child hierarchies and permissions. 

No one wants their team to waste time arguing over who owns which leads. By using permissions and controls, you can prevent confusion and culture-eroding arguments, give ops and managers greater visibility, and keep reps focused on their allocated leads.

Sorting and filtering

It’s important for sales teams to stay organized, especially when their maps contain dozens or hundreds of pins.

SPOTIO enables reps to colorize and sort pins based on any data point, such as pipeline stage or the result of a previous visit. This level of filtering and sorting makes it easy for sales reps to distinguish between leads, opportunities, and existing customers while they are out in the field, and in the process, manage their days more efficiently.

CRM integration

Integrating your CRM and field sales data can save you loads of time and boost sales rep productivity by 46%.

SPOTIO’s sales mapping software tools let you send field sales data directly into your existing CRM. (No need to worry if you don’t have one, because SPOTIO comes with a basic CRM for field sales teams.)

The CRM integration automates those time-consuming tasks such as mileage tracking and routing, and automatically prompts every type of follow-up activity.

Performance reports

Without accurate sales performance reports, you can only guess whether your team is on track and if gaps might need plugging.

Image: Measuring leads and pipeline value by territory in SPOTIO. 

The best sales mapping software enable managers to track territory-specific sales activities and gather performance-based metrics. You can track territory performance across the organization and analyze what’s working and what’s not.

With SPOTIO’s My Reports feature, sales managers can set custom parameters so that reports only include the most important sales data for a user or territory, and then save the dashboard as a reusable template.

9 Best Sales Mapping Solutions to Consider in 2024

In this section, we’ll look at the best free, freemium, and premium sales mapping solutions. We’ve included a brief overview of each sales mapping tool and highlighted some of its key features.

Choosing the best sales mapping software will depend on many factors, such as your budget, goals, and business size. Although some sales mapping tools are free, most of them don’t have advanced features. 

Free sales mapping software typically has basic sales mapping features, so if you need a sales mapping solution that covers everything, you’ll need to consider a paid subscription. And if you need free sales mapping software for budget reasons, you should take advantage of the free trials that some of the premium tools offer.

When selecting the best sales mapping software for your business, evaluate all the features and integrations on offer, and check the “best for” section to see if it fits your niche. 

SPOTIO

Source: SPOTIO 

Best for: Field sales teams. SPOTIO is ranked #1 in the Field Sales category and is a 2023 G2 Best Software Winner.

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales software because it enables amazing sales productivity, increases sales by 23%, and shortens sales cycles.

Key sales mapping features:

• Create sales territories by ZIP Code, city, county, state, or hand-draw.
• Automate reports on sales territory performance and maximize results.
• Make sense of field data at a glance by visualizing CRM data on a map.
• Organize pins based on different data points such as pipeline stage.
• Customize, filter and sort pins based on your preferred workflow.
• Increase accountability and find sales reps in the field when you need them.
• Integrate with any CRM, including Salesforce and HubSpot.
• Reduce windshield time by planning and routing each day.
• Create role-based hierarchies and measure sales territory performance.
• Locate, monitor, and manage the activity and progress of your sales reps in real-time.

See how SPOTIO compares to other sales mapping solutions here.

Get pricing

Mapline

Source: Mapline

Best for: Academics, banking, insurance, manufacturing, retail, and real estate industries.

Mapline is a web-based mapping platform and data visualization tool. You can easily display data from Excel spreadsheets to optimize logistics, enhance market planning, identify growth opportunities, or reduce market risks.

Key sales mapping features:

• Create a map from a spreadsheet in seconds.
• Add boundaries, create heat maps, and plan routes.
• Optimize sales territories by geographic boundaries or custom shapes.
• Assign customers to sales territories automatically.
• Improve performance reporting with dynamic charts, reports, and dashboards. 

Pricing: Request a price proposal or start mapping for free.

BatchGeo

Source: BatchGeo 

Best for: Data analysts, marketers, journalists, real estate firms, and sales teams.

BatchGeo is the fastest way to create Google Maps from your spreadsheet. Just copy and paste your data — such as addresses, intersections, cities, states, and postal codes — into the tool.

Key sales mapping features:

• Convert spreadsheet data into interactive maps of customers, leads, and assets.
• Find trends, hot spots, and cold zones.
• Drill down to discover insights geographically, such as the total sales value, the number of sales, and the revenue per sale for each state.
• Filter for a specific sales representative’s territories.

Pricing: Buy BatchGeo Pro for $99/month (limit of 10 users).

ZeeMaps

Source: ZeeMaps

Best for: Businesses of all sizes.

ZeeMaps allows you to create and publish interactive maps for analysis and presentations. You can color-code regions, show real-time traffic overlays, aggregate regional data, and more.

Key sales mapping features:

• Add unlimited markers per map.
• Select from 3-level access control for each map: Viewer, Member, and Admin.
• Highlight countries, states, counties, cities, ZIP Codes, or hand-drawn regions.
• Optimize multi-point routes for distance or time.
• Aggregate your regional data.

Pricing: Professional plans start at $19.95/user month. Free version with limited functionality available.

Geopointe

Source: Geopointe

Best for: Marketing, operations, and sales teams and executives.

Geopointe is a leading geolocation application available on the Salesforce AppExchange. It location-enables Salesforce so that you can geographically visualize and manage your accounts, contacts, opportunities, and CRM data. 

Key sales mapping features:

• Build territories visually from predefined boundaries.
• Plan, create, and optimize your routes from any mappable data.
• Distribute leads or manage territory assignments automatically.
• Access real-time field sales activity.
• Integrate with Salesforce CRM.

Pricing: Plans start at $74/user/month.

Maptive

Source: Maptive

Best for: Real estate, sales, supply chain, and more.

Maptive is a global mapping platform that lets you transform any spreadsheet data into a customized Google Map in minutes. You can create custom maps from your data, including heat maps, sales density maps, territory maps, store locators, and more.

Key sales mapping features:

• Draw custom sales territories based on your data. 
• Access important information like sales numbers, demographic details, and customer profiles for each sales territory.
• Create visual boundaries based on predefined regions like cities, states, ZIP Codes, districts, territories, and more.
• Draw a “lasso” around specific locations to create territories. 
• Map the most efficient route between multiple locations.

Pricing: Plans start at $250/user/45 days. Free trial available.

Maptitude

Source: Maptitude

Best for: Data analysts. 

Maptitude’s GIS software gives you the tools, maps, and demographic data you need to analyze and understand how geography affects your territory management. You can create maps and map images from spreadsheets, plus you can see external data on the map from various sources, including Google Maps KML/KMZ files.

Key sales mapping features:

• Find hidden opportunities.
• See where sales are highest.
• Know exactly where your customers are.
• Answer geographic questions that impact your operations.
• Spot geographic patterns and trends that you can’t see in database tables and spreadsheets.

Pricing: Maptitude’s cloud-based platform is $420/user/year. The desktop version starts at $695/user/year. Free trial available.

MapBusinessOnline

Source: MapBusinessOnline

Best for: Marketing, sales, and resource management teams.

MapBusinessOnline is a cloud-based mapping tool you can use to analyze and visualize business data, explore new markets, manage sales territories, and optimize logistics.

Key sales mapping features:

• Visualize customer locations.
• Access advanced sales territory mapping.
• Run market analysis with multiple drive time queries.
• Optimize multi-stop route planning with time windows.
• Share maps or conduct collaborative editing.

Pricing: MapBusinessOnline subscription plans start at $500/user/year. Free trial available.

GeoMetrx

Source: GeoMetrx

Best for: Franchise organizations, retailers, restaurants, commercial brokers, marketers, and sales teams.

GeoMetrx is sales territory mapping software that you can use for franchise territory map making, retail site selection, and territory building. Using the precision of mobile device GPS data, it can deliver expert analysis that provides a more accurate understanding of your sales territories or retail locations.

Key sales mapping features:

• Upload data appended to standard geographies to create reports and thematic maps.
• Select territories by market capture.
• Share data, report formats, and map templates.
• Compare different geographies, including radius versus drive time, or radius versus standard regions.
• Customize maps with increased thematic ranges defined by: Equal Value, Equal Class Counts, Class Percent, Means and Standard Deviations, Individual Values.

Pricing: Available upon request.

Which Sales Mapping Software Are You Going To Try?

All of these sales mapping solutions are good options for customer mapping, territory management, and route planning.

If you’re running a field sales team, then sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO to see how sales mapping software can help you optimize your sales territories, track your sales reps, and increase sales.

We reached out to our top clients and conducted extensive research to compile this list of the best sales apps. From medical to solar sales, and everything in between, these apps can help reps and managers across all industries boost productivity and hit bigger numbers.

Let’s take a look at the 41 best sales apps, key features, and use cases.

41 Best Apps for Sales Reps

There are a lot great sales apps out there, and each one has a specific use case. We’ve broken this list of apps into the following categories. Feel free to click the links below to jump to the apps you’re most interested in reviewing.

• Best Door to Door Sales App
• Best Mobile Apps for Sales Reps
• Best Travel / Route Planning Apps for Sales Reps
• Best Prospecting Apps for Sales Reps
• Best Appointment-Setting Apps For Reps
• Best Lead Management Apps for Sales Reps
• Best Productivity Apps for Sales Reps
• Best File-Sharing Apps for Sales Teams
• Best Note Taking And Recording Apps For Sales Reps
• Best Apps for Closing Sales
• Best Apps for Sales Tracking
• Best Expense Tracking Apps For Sales Teams

Best App for Door-to-Door Sales Teams

In some industries, door-to-door sales continue to be the best way to connect with prospects. And with the right technology, reps can zero-in on only the most qualified prospects before they begin canvassing.

SPOTIO

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO is the #1 app for door-to-door sales and canvassing. With SPOTIO, you can filter prospect lists by more than 200 data points, including credit capacity, home square footage, and median home income. B2B salespeople can filter prospects by job title, company size, and annual revenue.

You can also cut custom territories and create permissions and hierarchies for each territory.
Sales agents can add notes about prospects, transfer appointments to other reps, and manage their Google and Outlook calendars from within the SPOTIO app.

G2 ranked SPOTIO #1 in their Field Sales category, and awarded us 2023 Best Software.

Pricing plans

Best Mobile Sales Apps for Reps

Outside sales reps spend their days meeting with prospects and touching base with clients. That’s why applications that can streamline communication and organize one’s day are important.

Whether it’s supporting administrative needs, simplifying the act of taking notes, or automating follow-up actions, these mobile apps make life easier for sales reps.

SPOTIO

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO is an all-in-one sales engagement solution that offers a breadth of capabilities such as appointment scheduling, sales rep tracking, territory and customer mapping, CRM integrations, route planning, custom reporting, and more. SPOTIO eliminates the need to manually keep track of your administrative tasks, giving you more time to focus on selling.

A key feature in the mobile sales app is the appointment setting capabilities. SPOTIO makes it easy to schedule meetings, add and share notes, and see each appointment on a map.

Slack

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Slack is a handy app for messaging and collaboration. With more than 8 million active users, Slack is an easy way to reach prospects, colleagues, and customers and move things along with real-time communication.

CamCard

Mobile App: iOS | Android

With CamCard, you’ll never lose another business card. CamCard makes collecting contacts seamless by instantly reading business cards, converting them into a digital format, integrating the information into your phone contacts, and securely storing information. You can also export business cards to other members of your team.

Keynote

Mobile App: iOS 

Keynote is an app for creating professional presentations on iPad, iPhone, and laptops. Keynote’s features allow you to interact with and edit presentations in real time and present in-person or via videoconference.

Evernote

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Evernote gives users several ways to capture notes: speech-to-text, smartphone keyboard, smart stylus, and scanning. You can also upload images, add receipts, and mark up images and PDFs.

Quickvoice

Mobile App: iOS

Quickvoice is a popular voice recording app with over 5 million users. It makes recording ideas, notes, meetings, and presentations simple. You can also record and schedule voice reminders — a helpful feature when you’re driving to your next appointment and not looking at your phone.

Skype for Mobile

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Skype is one of the most widely used apps for making voice and video calls. Sales teams can use Skype for client calls, or for times when they need to communicate with each other internally.

Best Travel / Route Planning Apps for Sales Reps

For teams in the field, efficient travel is the key to closing as many deals as possible.

These top travel and route planning apps help users optimize their time and get around with ease.

SPOTIO Route Planner

Mobile App: iOS | Android

With SPOTIO, managers can dramatically cut down windshield time by enabling reps to quickly find the most efficient sales routes, no matter how many stops.

In addition to the advanced route planning functionality, SPOTIO also bolts onto your customer relationship management platform. As reps visit prospects in the field, take notes, set meetings, and update customer information, your CRM will automatically update in real-time. This helps cut down time spent on data entry, further boosting rep productivity and sales performance.

SPOTIO’s route planner also automates mileage tracking and integrates with a number of different expense tools. This feature reduces tedious and time-consuming paperwork and gives reps even more time to focus on selling to new customers and nurturing existing relationships.

TripIt

Mobile App: iOS | Android

For sales reps that travel by air, TripIt is an easy way to stay organized and avoid delays. Just share your travel plans with the app, and it will alert you if flights change, if better seats open up, and when it’s time to leave for the airport. TripIt stores every detail of your itinerary, from hotel check-in times to rental car reservations, so you never have to hunt for information.

Google Maps

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Google Maps makes navigating traffic stress-free by displaying live traffic patterns that help users avoid accidents and traffic jams. Google Maps also shows multiple options for routes and transportation, which creates flexibility, especially when navigating inner city traffic.

TripCase

Mobile App: iOS | Android

The TripCase app helps design your entire trip. With TripCase, you can book flights, reserve cars, and set up lunch meetings. When you’re in a new city and in between meetings, you can use TripCase to explore local tourist spots and find restaurants.

Parkopedia 

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Parkopedia is an app that helps users find the closest or most affordable parking. The app conveniently shows the price, number of available parking spots, and the distance to each lot. This instantly takes away the stress of competing for a spot in a busy city district.

Rome2rio

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Rome2Rio is an all-inclusive travel app that takes you from your doorstep to your destination. By train, plane, automobile, or even ferry, this app will cover any possible route to get to that sales meeting.

Best Prospecting Apps for Sales Reps

Prospecting is one of the most important aspects of sales. These top sales prospecting apps are designed to help teams generate, manage, and nurture leads.

SPOTIO Lead Machine

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Lead Machine is the top prospecting and lead-tracking app for B2B and B2C sales teams. It gives you the data you need to identify the right leads and disqualify bad prospects, saving time for your reps.

Just choose a territory to generate a lead list, and select filters to remove unqualified prospects.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Mobile App: iOS | Android

LinkedIn Sales Navigator includes sales tools that help you find the right prospects and build trusted relationships. You can save new leads to the app to begin receiving real-time sales updates and communicate with leads via InMail or messages.

Hunter.io

Web app

Hunter is an email verification tool that allows users to find prospect email addresses by providing a domain name. Hunter then searches its more than 50,000 domains on record, and verifies the deliverability of any email addresses it discovers.

SellHack

Web app

SellHack helps sales teams find email addresses for prospects and validate existing email addresses. You can bulk-upload contacts, and let SellHack do the work of finding and verifying contact emails.

BuiltWith

Web app

BuiltWith is a tool that scans a website and lists all of the tech powering the site. A sales rep can use BuiltWith to gain a deeper understanding of their prospect’s needs and determine how their product can help resolve those needs.

NerdyData

Web app

NerdyData is a search engine designed to find the code, backlinks, SEO tools, and licenses your competitors or your prospects’ competitors are using. This tool is great for SaaS sales reps to use before approaching prospects. NerdyData reports can be downloaded and shared with team members.

Best Appointment-Setting Apps for Reps

Appointment-setting apps can ensure a smooth handoff from prospector to closer, or reduce the amount of back-and-forth when trying to schedule a meeting. Let’s take a look at the two best apps for setting sales appointments.

SPOTIO

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO’s sales canvassing features let reps access shared calendars and schedule appointments for team members. Appointment assignees can then access any details, history, and files attached to the appointment, ensuring no information is lost in the handoff from one rep to another.

Pricing plans

Calendly

Mobile App: Android

Calendly connects to your calendar and provides a link that you can embed in an email or on a website. Leads can then click on the link to see your availability and schedule a meeting or sales call.

Best Lead Management Apps for Sales Reps

Prospecting activities provide the leads, but proper lead management is required to complete conversions The following apps can help you nurture and manage your leads for optimal success.

SPOTIO Lead Management

Mobile App: iOS | Android

The process and method of lead management is what drives the success of a sales team. SPOTIO’s Lead Management tool allows users to capture interactions across emails, texts, calls, and in-person visits, accessible via separate tabs in a single view. The SPOTIO Lead Management smartphone app connects with your CRM, giving reps access to sales CRM data, even when they’re in the field.

HubSpot CRM

Mobile App: iOS | Android

HubSpot CRM is an app for managing your sales team and their activities in an easy-to-understand dashboard. With the ability to see individual performance, sales quota progress, and other key metrics, you can evaluate your sales team in real time.

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Salesforce has a wide range of products for different business uses. Its Sales Cloud is specifically for sales teams and includes features for the management of contacts, leads, accounts and opportunities.

Best Sales Apps For Productivity

As sales teams look to maximize their time, these productivity apps offer a way to make the most of every minute.

SPOTIO Territory Manager

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO’s territory management feature allows sales managers to track, assign/reassign, and adjust sales territories while in the field. SPOTIO shows managers precisely where their reps are and provides live information on their progress.

SPOTIO Autoplays

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO Autoplays is a tool that allows users to create automated and customized activity sequences (Autoplays) to help reps know what their next best action should be for prospects.

When prospects are enrolled in an Autoplay, an automatic sequence tells reps who they should engage with, the best channel to leverage — call, email, text, visit — and when they should contact that person. It’s more than a task management app, because reps don’t have to plan and schedule their actions, thanks to SPOTIO’s automation.

SPOTIO Auto-Visits

Mobile App: iOS | Android

When reps have SPOTIO installed on their smartphone, the Auto-Visits feature uses geofencing to automatically log check-ins and check-outs, as well as the duration of the visit. With SPOTIO’s sales analytics, managers can see how time-on-site, new visits, and revisits impact close rates.

Any.do

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Any.do lets users create and share tasks and task lists, and remove them when they’re complete. Lists can be collaborative, so Any.do is a good app when teams need to brainstorm next steps, but reps are working remotely.

Best File-Sharing Apps for Sales Teams

Sales reps need to be able to share and access files in a secure, cloud-based platform. The following apps can fulfill that need.

Dropbox

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Dropbox lets teams share files remotely and protect files with passcodes, expiration dates, email verification, and approved viewer lists. Teams can also use Dropbox to collect digital signatures on service agreements.

ShareMe

Mobile App: iOS | Android

ShareMe is a file-sharing app that uses WiFi to transfer files between mobile devices and laptops at lightning-fast speeds. Only the person sharing files needs the app — recipients can access shared files via their web browser.

Best Sales Apps For Note-Taking And Recording

Note-taking apps and recording apps can save reps a lot of time and help them keep track of important information. Two apps are among the best for reps who rely on speech-to-text transcription.

Dragon Anywhere

Mobile App: iOS | Android

Dragon Anywhere is a mobile dictating tool with unlimited word input. It has a 99% accuracy in formatting and editing recorded notes. Documents made in Dragon are easy to share through email, Evernote, Dropbox, and other popular cloud-sharing services. You can also add client names and store them as custom words, so you’ll never have to worry about misspelling them.

Just Press Record

Mobile App: iOS

This sales app is perfect for the “idea people” on your sales team — they can push a button and record an unlimited amount of text, which the app transcribes into searchable text. Recordings are automatically organized into folders by date and time.

Best Sales Apps For Closing Deals

These sales apps help reps through the closing process, whether they’re looking to produce and execute a contract, or accept mobile payments.

SPOTIO (eContracts)

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO’s mobile app for eContracts allows reps to get documents and contracts signed from their mobile device. No emailing back and forth and wasting time — close deals on the spot with fully integrated e-Contracts.

HelloSign

Mobile App: iOS | Android

HelloSign is an app for remotely collecting signatures of up to 20 people per document Reps can import PDF documents and share them for signing right from their mobile devices.

DocuSign

 Mobile App: iOS | Android

DocuSign is another trusted sales app for collecting signatures remotely. Reps love it for its easy-to-use interface and its notifications about the status of every document.

Proposify

Mobile App: iOS

Proposify is a sales app that helps reps close deals faster by removing the tedious aspects of managing proposals. Create proposals using Proposify’s templates, save them to the cloud, and get faster sign-off with online signatures.

Best Apps for Sales Tracking

SPOTIO Sales Tracker

Mobile App: iOS | Android

SPOTIO provides sales operations teams with real-time visibility into what’s happening in the field. Know which activities drive the best outcomes and troubleshoot sluggish sales or underperforming territories.

SPOTIO’s My Reports feature makes it easy for managers to quickly build custom reporting dashboards that include only the most important sales activity and performance metrics.

Pricing plans

SPOTIO Sales Rep Tracker

Mobile App: iOS | Android

As part of one of the best sales apps on the market, SPOTIO’s Sales Rep Tracking app gives managers full visibility into what’s happening in the field to better monitor performance and gauge rep efficiency. With features such as rep travel history, real-time location, and visit verification, SPOTIO provides the details managers need to improve sales processes and performance.

HubSpot Sales Hub

With Sales Hub, you can monitor how deals are progressing, organize all sales activity in one platform, and accelerate sales cycles. You can also schedule appointments from within Sales Hub and connect with prospects via live chat.

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Sales Cloud has features managers need to drive growth, including forecasting tools, quick filters for managing pipelines, and automation for routine tasks. This app offers additional capabilities when partnered with other Salesforce sales apps and products.

Best Expense Tracking Apps for Sales Teams

Expensify

Mobile App: iOS | Android

From receipt scanning to reimbursement, Expensify automates every step of the expense reporting process. Reps on the go can snap a photo of their receipt using SmartScan, and Expensify takes care of the rest.

Rydoo

Mobile App: iOS | Android

With Rydoo, you can create policies — such as spending limits, or per-diem rates — and the app will automatically approve authorized expenses. You can also configure rules to allow for international travel/other currencies, and review Rydoo data to see where your team is spending the most money.

Which Sales Apps Are Right For Your Team?

With the right technology, you can automate processes, strengthen your sales pipeline, and close more deals. Once you start using sales apps, you’ll wonder how you ever functioned without them.

SPOTIO is the #1 sales app for outside sales managers that want to improve their processes and support their team’s sales goals. It integrates seamlessly with your CRM software, gives you actionable insights, and ensures leads never fall through the cracks.

See what SPOTIO can do for your team. Request a free demo today!

To that end, we are very excited to announce one of our biggest releases yet! And with it comes some groundbreaking new features. These enhancements not only streamline the sales process but also bring a new level of integration and user experience. Let’s dive into the details of these exciting new features, perfect for boosting your sales strategy.

Native Solo Integration: A Game-Changer for Solar Sales
One of the standout features in this release is the enhanced Native Solo Integration. This innovative update allows users to trigger the SOLO integration instantly upon logging a custom Task activity. 

What does this mean for your sales team? Efficiency like never before. Instead of merely creating a customer profile in SOLO, SPOTIO now automatically generates a detailed solar proposal. The real magic lies in the two-way synchronization. Once a proposal is generated in SOLO, a link is sent back to SPOTIO and made available under the “links” section for the record. This seamless integration not only saves time but also ensures accuracy and speed in proposal generation. Check out the Solo integration knowledge base article here.

Task Management: Refined for Maximum Efficiency
The latest update revolutionizes Task Management in SPOTIO. The new requirement to fill out specific custom fields on a record before logging a trigger activity ensures that all necessary data is captured upfront. This precision in data entry paves the way for more streamlined operations. Moreover, introducing a new activity type that doesn’t require blocking off time on a user’s calendar is a significant boon for busy sales professionals. Additionally, the ability to bulk assign tasks to multiple records from map and list views is a game-changer, enhancing productivity. Check out the Task Management knowledge base article here.

Activity Enhancements: Tailored to Modern Sales Needs
Activity management within SPOTIO has received a substantial upgrade. Administrators can now classify activity types as either “In-Person” or “Virtual,” aligning with the current hybrid sales environment. The “Log Now” feature, available on both Web and Mobile platforms, adds another layer of convenience, allowing sales teams to record activities instantaneously.

New Map Filter Options: Visualize and Strategize
SPOTIO’s map interface now includes an innovative Custom Field option for “Currency.” This feature enables users to colorize and filter records based on Currency and Number Field Values, akin to the “Days Since Last Visit” feature. Such visual differentiation aids in better data analysis, allowing sales teams to strategize effectively based on financial metrics. Find out more about custom fields and filters here.

Shareable Filters: Collaborate and Conquer
The introduction of Shareable Filters is a significant step towards collaborative sales management. Admin and Manager users can create, save, and share custom filters by territory, team, or individual users. These shared filters appear in a new section, “Shared Filters,” located below “My Filters.” This feature promotes a collaborative work environment, enabling teams to share insights and strategies efficiently and enhancing collective performance. Click here for more information about how to set up Shareable Filters.

Location Sharing Privacy: Empowering User Control
Recognizing the importance of privacy, SPOTIO’s latest update introduces customizable location-sharing settings. Users can now set their preferred working hours for GPS tracking within the app. Moreover, Manager and Admin users can set their location sharing to “Never,” offering greater control and peace of mind. This feature is especially vital today, where privacy and personal space are increasingly valued. Find out more in this knowledge base article.

Streamlined Call Logging for Non-SPOTIO Numbers
The update brings a much-needed feature for users making calls from non-SPOTIO numbers. Now, after completing a call from a native phone number, the SPOTIO app will automatically prompt users to log the call’s outcome. This seamless integration ensures that every interaction is recorded and tracked, enhancing the overall data quality and reliability. Find out more in this article.

Updated API Documentation: User-Friendly and Informative
SPOTIO’s commitment to user-friendliness extends to its API documentation. The latest update features improved, easy-to-understand customer-facing API documentation. This enhancement enables users, particularly those with technical expertise, to better integrate and utilize SPOTIO’s features with their existing systems. Click here to access.

Updated Compass Icon: Navigate with Ease
A small yet significant update is the addition of a new compass icon in the Mobile map view. This feature allows sales reps to quickly see the map’s orientation and easily re-orient it back to True North. Such navigational aids are invaluable for field reps, especially when navigating unfamiliar territories.

A New Chapter in Sales Enablement
SPOTIO’s latest release is more than an update; it represents a significant leap forward in sales enablement technology. With features like Native Solo Integration, enhanced Task Management, Activity Enhancements, and new Map Filter Options, SPOTIO continues to set the standard for sales engagement platforms. These enhancements are designed not only to streamline the sales process but also to provide a more integrated and user-friendly experience. As sales teams adapt to the evolving landscape, SPOTIO is a pivotal tool in their arsenal, ready to drive success and efficiency in every interaction.

Even if you only have five full-time reps, that’s 100 paid hours every week that produce zero ROI. This stat might be less surprising when you learn that companies spend 5x more on hiring a sales rep than they do training them.

Poor sales training is a problem that persists in any industry. The solution? Sales enablement.

In this post, we’ll talk about what sales enablement is and why it’s important, then we’ll share our list of the 60 best sales enablement tools available in 2024.

What Is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement is a support function. Its goal is to provide sales reps with the information, customer-facing content, and tools they need to guide a buyer through the purchase process successfully.

This could involve creating fact sheets, industry-specific case studies, and comparison tables that help a rep persuade a lead to buy. It also means coaching reps on best practices and equipping them with the tools they need to be efficient.

Being able to do this in your organization requires an understanding of the ideal buyer, so you can provide resources they actually need and want throughout the journey.

There are two key stages involved in building a good sales enablement strategy:

1. Understanding who the ideal customer is, and mapping the buyer’s journey.
2. Creating sales plays, content, and training for reps to leverage at each stage of the journey.

Next, we’ll look at the power of field sales enablement software.

The Importance of Field Sales Enablement Software

According to Mailshake, only 13% of customers believe sales reps understand their needs.

When the majority of your reps aren’t connecting with customers, that’s a costly problem. You can help prevent this type of disconnect by providing better support for reps, and content they can use to appeal to customers.

Propeller research shows that this is a big differentiator for customers:

To do this at scale (or at all), you need a sales enablement strategy. Tools are essential to this, and they’re worth the investment, research from Brainshark shows:

“More than 2/3 of companies that invested in sales learning and development technology realized a positive ROI.”

On the flip side, companies that failed to invest in sales enablement technology saw a 12% drop in sales goal achievement.

Almost two thirds of companies that have piloted sales enablement software programs and seen positive ROI attribute the success to software. Salesforce found that 84% of companies hit quota with the support of sales enablement tools and coaching.

Now that we understand the value, let’s look at the top tools across each category that will help you research, deploy, and optimize your sales enablement strategy.

The Best Sales Enablement Tools for 2024 (By Category)

Sales enablement is built around the idea that reps can optimize the way they sell, and provide customers with informative content that helps them make complex purchase decisions.

That makes it part market research, part content management — and heavily reliant on analytics to understand and support your ideal buyer segments.

We’ll look at tools across each of these core functionalities:

Market Intelligence
Sales Intelligence & Prospecting
Content Sharing & Management
Market Automation
Sales & Team Communications
Sales Emails
Sales Presentations
Contract Management
Sales CRMs
Sales Training
Sales Management
Customer Feedback

Market Intelligence

To accelerate sales and ramp up rep productivity, you’ll need to make data-backed decisions. For sales, some of the most important data is around the companies in your target market. How many employees do your prospects typically have? What about funding, or annual revenue?

With that intel, you can make the way your reps sell and prospect more effective, and waste less time. Let’s look at the best sales enablement tools for market intelligence.

D&B Hoovers

D&B Hoovers integrates with the tools your team already uses — Marketo, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and more — to enrich lead data and help sales enablement teams analyze the pipeline and develop relevant content.

As well as enriching current data, it can be used to research leads in new markets and support strategies that expand your reach.

Pricing for Hoovers isn’t public, but a free trial is available before you connect with a rep.

Emissary

Ever wanted an expert insider when you’re chasing a big lead? Emissary gives you exactly that, by matching you with a recent former employee from any given company that can guide you on how to close the deal.

It’s aimed at enterprise sales — with 75% of its connections coming from firms in the Fortune 1000 — and over two-thirds of its contacts were VP or higher at the company. Emissary is an effective high-touch way to develop enterprise enablement material, but also serves as a way for reps to get coaching from successful insiders.

Get in touch with the providers for pricing info.

Mattermark

Mattermark combines company profiles with social listening to provide lead and contact profiles, with over 80 fields of data per entry.

It provides data on 4,000,000 companies and 20,000,000 contacts imported via API into your CRM, or in exports to spreadsheets. With Mattermark automatically gathering data on prospects, the sales enablement process is made simpler; far less manual research is needed when a tool can fill in the blanks.

Aimed more at startups (and companies selling to startups), Mattermark also lets you segment companies by funding recency/amount, and growth signals. It also has a lower price tag than the other intelligence tools on this list, at $49/user/month.

Sales Intelligence & Prospecting

Prospecting tools help your reps find the ideal customers for your product, based on a selected set of specific set of demographic and firmographic data points, like “leads within 50 miles of me, with over 200 employees, in the healthcare tech industry”.

An improved prospecting process is a core part of sales enablement because it helps reps up productivity by spending less time on bad leads and more time selling to those likely to convert.

Here are the prospecting tools we recommend checking out.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn has access to one of the biggest troves of business data on the planet, owing to the fact that it has gathered so much insight from user-submitted information on its social network and the connections between different professionals.

When you get access to that data (not fully available through the social network alone), you can unlock every insight the network has gathered, including data on company size, activity, news mentions, posts, engagement, and connections. It also lets you nurture leads and reach out with that data in context through LinkedIn messaging.

Pricing starts at $79.99/month.

SPOTIO Lead Machine

SPOTIO’s sales intelligence tool, Lead Machine, allows managers to generate a list of qualified leads for sales teams in seconds.

The tool allows users to define geographic territories and mine data on all the companies within that area. Reps can quickly create an ideal customer profile by mining and sorting over 50 different data points – income, credit capacity, square footage, age of home etc.

After leads have been qualified, extract the data and import into the CRM and start selling.

Lead Machine helps businesses close more deals by having reps focus only on the most qualified leads in a given sales territory.

Get pricing.

Note: SPOTIO is ranked #1 in the Field Sales category and is a 2023 G2 Best Software Winner.

NerdyData.com

NerdyData.com gives you access to company technology usage data. You could search the database for every Intercom customer because your tool integrates with Intercom. Or, see who’s running your competitor’s software so you can send over a relevant comparison sheet.

It’s easy to see how this enables your sales team to make more personalized and informed decisions, and how it helps sales enablement initiatives research the tech stacks of different market segments to better understand the lead’s internals.

NerdyData.com’s pricing starts at $150/user/month.

Clearbit

Clearbit is an API you can hook into your existing source of customer data, whether that’s Intercom, Close.io, or Salesforce. With a company name or domain, Clearbit pulls in anything else your sales team should know about that lead, such as the number of employees or industry.

As well as enriching existing data, Clearbit can enable sales to do a more efficient job by building prospect lists and revealing the company profiles of anonymous site visitors. This all helps your team get a better look at the kinds of companies they attract so you can create effective enablement content to support future deals.

Pricing is available on request.

SellHack

SellHack helps expand your funnel by making prospecting easier. It’s a browser extension, so you can add leads you find on LinkedIn to existing prospect lists and automatically hunt down their email address.

With segmented lists and easy email outreach built in, SellHack empowers teams to get the right content to the right leads, informed by data SellHack stores.

For 150 email lookups, you can get SellHack at $19/user/month.

Albacross

Did you know that a big-name exec and their team were browsing your site yesterday while evaluating solutions? You’ll certainly agree that would be powerful to know. But how will you find out if it’s not something you’re tracking?

Albacross enables all that and more by keeping a log of companies and potential customers that visit your site, and enriching the data with the best way to contact that lead.

Once the visitor data is stored in Albacross, you get a lead list that grows by itself and is able to be filtered by fields like revenue, company size, and location. Push that lead list to your CRM or any other sales tool you use by integrating Albacross with Zapier.

Pricing available upon request.

Growbots

Growbots allows you to create prospect lists by selecting an ideal customer profile, and then automate target outreach to those lists.

Straight away, it’s easy to see how this empowers a sales enablement strategy. Your Growbots prospect lists are created based on criteria like company size, industry, and email activity. With that insight, you can automate the distribution of relevant sales enablement content and design plays around specific market segments and prospect needs.

Pricing for Growbots is available by request only.

Owler

Owler is a lookup database for company information that can be used to explore profiles via the web or enrich CRM data with their API.

Uniquely, Owler focuses on the trust score of a company’s founders and the funding a company has historically received. This makes it great for selling to startups and early-stage high-growth businesses.

Alongside company profiles, you can see all recent news and social mentions for a given company so you can research competitor progress and prospects in context of current events.

Pricing for Owler is not public.

Content Sharing & Management

You’ll need a centralized location to store and distribute customer-facing content and training material, or you’ll be stuck searching for files on your local computer (and so will all of your frustrated reps).

Content sharing and management tools let you create internal documentation, host files for customers, and control who inside your organization can access which resources. Let’s look at some of the best options for sales enablement.

Box

Your sales enablement training material and customer-facing content needs a home. When multiple reps need to access internal content — regardless of when or where — you need a robust cloud storage tool like Box.

Box is an enterprise file sharing and storage tool that integrates with plenty of top sales tools like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. The integration allows you to associate Box documents with leads, making it easy to match the right content to the right person.

Box’s pricing starts at $15/user/month for unlimited storage.

SharePoint

If you’re already living in the Microsoft ecosystem at work, then SharePoint is a great choice to manage sales enablement content, either on-premises or in the cloud with Office 365.

Create internal wikis for your sales team’s training material, and neatly categorize centralized enablement material with ease.

SharePoint is available on its own for $5/user/month, but is at its most useful as part of Office 365. For $20/user/month, you can get the Office 365 Enterprise E3 plan that has SharePoint included alongside Outlook, Word, Excel, and other Microsoft software.

Allbound

Allbound is a sales intelligence tool designed to help businesses manage relationships with partners and deploy enablement content to those partners that will make selling easier.

It features company data lookup, content collaboration, and analytics reports that give insight into content performance. If you’re running a partner sales program, Allbound is the perfect line of communication between you and your external channels.

Pricing available upon request.

Bigtincan

Bigtincan improves sales success by helping sales teams better prepare for meetings, boost engagement, enhance collaboration, and ultimately improve overall win rates.

Bigtincan Hub is only AI-powered sales enablement automation platform. With Bigtincan, transform the way sales and service organizations access, share and collaborate on the sales content.

For pricing, email them at sales@bigtincan.com.

Showpad

Named a leader by Gartner in the field of Sales Enablement Automation, Showpad is one of the first dedicated sales enablement tools. It provides a platform where sales and marketing can collaborate, sharing content and metrics.

With Showpad, it’s easy for sales teams to surface and share relevant engagement content with buyers and match content to lead profiles based on filters. It is also possible to build and deploy sales training inside the app, then track rep engagement with it.

Pricing is available on request only, and the content platform is sold separately from the training platform.

Marketing Automation

Any efficient sales enablement strategy is built around automation. It only makes sense that reps can do a better job if their lead nurturing happens automatically and they get better qualified or ready-to-buy leads as a result.

Plus, many marketing automation tools also act as a way to get insights into your lead’s mindset — find which leads open and engage with your emails most often, or reference a lead’s historical engagement to know which content they have and haven’t seen.

Here are our top picks in the field of marketing automation.

Marketo

For many companies, Marketo is where lead and customer data already lives. Leveraging this data, you can use Marketo to analyze your site’s content and find sales enablement recommendations based on the lead’s company profile and history. After sharing content, Marketo logs the lead’s interactions to gather metrics you can use to make optimizations.

On top of this, Marketo is an industry-leading marketing automation platform you can use to nurture leads with targeted messages and build a stronger pipeline.

Pricing is unavailable online, but you can request a demo to find out more.

Customer.io

Customer.io is email marketing for companies that collect in-product data — namely SaaS and web tools. Sales enablement teams can use Customer.io to develop relevant content and training based on the different segments of product user.

Customer.io can be integrated with other customer analytics tools like Segment and Heap, so you’re able to deploy content over email based on historical data like signup date, industry, user count, and last bill amount.

Pricing starts at $100/month for products with up to 100,000 users.

Sales & Team Communications

Conversation and collaboration tools bring your sales team closer together and put the resources reps need right at their fingertips — they also give managers a platform to analyze how the team interacts and sells.

Sales communications is a broad category. It covers anything internal content management, rep call analysis, and instant messaging. Here are some of our top recommendations.

Aloware

Sales teams tend to adapt to newer technologies including sales tools that can cope with the increasing competition across various industries over time. This is why tools like Aloware is considered as one of best tools for modern sales teams. Aloware is a sales enablement solution designed to conquer the recent challenges that most sales people have been facing nowadays.

Packed with various features including contact center solution and workflow automation, Aloware is not only an all-in-one sales tool but is also cloud-based which is perfect for remote and hybrid teams.

Aloware can also be integrated with HubSpot and other CMS platforms. It can be accessed directly using any web browser but is also downloadable for desktop, mobile, and Chrome extension.

Pricing starts at $30/user/month which includes toll-free number and unlimited data storage.

Chorus.ai

Optimize the way your reps talk to leads by storing and analyzing their sales calls automatically. This is great for developing training material or providing an AI coach for your team that fine-tunes their sales technique and helps them close more deals.

Chorus.ai stores call analysis next to lead data inside your CRM, so you can see call history and outcome wherever you already work. Pricing for Chorus.ai is not publicly available.

Slack

Slack has quickly become to go-to chat and notification hub for teams everywhere. Since it’s where your sales team hangs out already, why not power it up with integrations? Slack can be used to automatically notify reps when new signups come in, segmented by potential deal size with integrations to a customer data tool like Clearbit or DataFox.

Outside of strict sales activity, Slack is a simple way to hold team meetings, search conversations, and even deliver presentations.

Pricing starts at $7.25/user/month.

Skype for Business

Skype for Business is a collaboration tool for teams, offering a way to streamline internal communication and great customer-facing presentation features for sales demos.

As part of Office 365, Skype for Business integrates with PowerPoint and Word Online so you can easily search and present documents and slide decks that exist in your org’s folders, all without leaving the app.

Skype for Business starts at $6/user/month when you buy Office 365 annually.

Calendar

Calendar was created to streamline your day and improve productivity. With features like recorded meeting transcripts, have a calendar that showcases you and maximizes your most valuable resource: your time.

Basic accounts are free, and paid plans start at $20/user/month.

Sales Emails

Vanilla email doesn’t cut it for sales. You need a tool that lets you create outreach playbooks, manage follow-ups, and track engagement metrics.

Here are our top tools for outreach and sales email management.

SalesHandy

SalesHandy is an easy to use email automation software that helps sales and marketing professionals to send cold email outreach campaigns at scale. It makes your sales conversation smooth in building a unique relationship with your prospects. You can send personalized cold email campaigns, set auto follow up to 9 stages as per the recipients’ behavior and get instant notifications of email opens and clicks.

You can get a higher email open rate and conversion by avoiding machine type interaction. Use the Mail Merge feature to send a highly personalized message that gets opened. SalesHandy analytics will give you the overall performance report based on your campaign to get behavioral insights from email communications and to know the recipient’s engagement faster.

Pricing plans starting at $27/mo.

Attach

Attach is a centralized content hub for sales enablement material that allows your team to store material and then get insight into how leads consume and engage with it.

Unlike a generic solution like Google Drive, storing your content in Attach lets you see which leads viewed which documents and for how long. You can also easily deploy updates to live enablement content without having to send the lead to a new URL.

In line with Forrester research that suggests 90% of reps don’t use content because it’s outdated, this is an invaluable feature.

Attach pricing starts at $10/user/month.

Snov.io

The all-in-one platform gives access to a complete toolset that helps automate the cold outreach process. Snov.io lets you generate leads on numerous platforms, check the lists of email addresses for validity, and easily get in touch with them via the email drip campaigns instrument.

Thanks to the platform, you will enlarge the leads’ base in a matter of minutes and lead them through the buyer’s journey. Besides, Snov.io integrates with Pipedrive and Zapier.

The pricing plans start at $30/month.

Lemlist

Lemlist is a powerful email outreach software that helps you automate and personalize cold emails at scale. You can play with personalized images, website screenshots, company logos, or even create dynamic landing pages and make them part of your outreach funnel. By doing so, you’ll be adding a much-needed personal touch without sacrificing the ability to send emails at scale.

Pricing starts at $59/user/month

Yesware

Yesware is a Chrome and Outlook extension for sales teams, offering a way to supercharge your everyday inbox with CRM-like capabilities. This includes data on open/reply rate, attachment opens, and even presentation slide engagement.

With its email templates and sequences, you can add proven, relevant sales plays to your team’s repertoire easily.

Yesware is available for free, with premium plans starting at $15/user/month when billed annually.

Mailshake

Mailshake was built for sales teams to deliver personalized outreach at scale. It’s a platform that your sales organization can use to create sequences, lead segments, and automation that help reps reach more leads with more targeted messages.

Pricing starts at just $58/user/month.

Close

Close.io is a powerhouse CRM, with everything you need to track calls and emails with prospects, leads, and existing customers. It has support for custom fields and lists, so you can create tightly-focused segments that match your sales play and enablement material.

Integrated with a product data or enrichment tool, Close.io acts as a rich data warehouse, storing email history alongside in-app activity and company profiles.

Pricing starts at $25/user/month, but for automation the monthly fee goes up to $99.

Outreach

Outreach lets you create sales email sequences that save reps from the mental burden of remembering to follow up, or remembering to send the right content to the right lead. With its lead prioritization and task feature, reps will always know what the next step is with each contact. This keeps your team productive when they’re doing manual work, and automates the remaining emails.

Pricing for Outreach is available by request.

Sales Presentations

Reps need more than just a basic video chat tool if they’re going to deliver winning presentations. And managers need a way to file presentation content for reps and track its performance. Thankfully, there are powerful video conferencing tools that are built for sales demos, and dedicated meeting apps for measuring the conversion rate of outbound calls.

Here are the sales presentation tools we think are the best to check out.

GoToMeeting

GoToMeeting makes it easy for your team to give sales presentations to practically any lead, without having to get them to download a bulky desktop app or go through a lengthy verification process. For that reason, it’s low friction — a vital benefit in the low-patience world of sales.

For sales pitches and demos, its screen sharing and annotation features are among the best on the market. You can give presentations that are as detailed and engaging as you need, or offer one-to-many training sessions with reps when you roll out a new piece of software.

Pricing starts from $14/user/month for the starter plan.

Prezi

Prezi is a different kind of presentation tool. Like PowerPoint 2.0, but with none of the boring WordArt.

Instead of forcing the presenter and audience through a linear narrative, slide by slide, Prezi is laid out like an interactive, free-form map that you can seamlessly zoom and navigate.

It also collects analytics on the audience’s reactions to the presentation, so you know where to improve in the future. In this way, it powers sales enablement to make optimizations to the standard presentation process reps follow.

Pricing starts at $9/month for the standard plan.

ShareDemos

ShareDemos is software specifically built for sales enablement. It’s a way to create and distribute sales enablement content internally and externally — that includes sales onboarding material and product fact sheets for customers.

Since rich content can be designed and edited through the ShareDemos platform, sales managers can make updates to content that appear whenever the lead or customer accesses it. This solves the issue of having old content being sent to leads, or reps worrying if the material they send to leads is up to date.

Pricing for ShareDemos is publicly available.

ExecVision

ExecVision is a sales call analysis tool that can process call recordings to gain insight into how the ways reps make calls is affecting your sales conversion rate.

Load you sales calls into ExecVision, and you’ll get an indexed database of your call logs which is searchable and includes metrics such as keywords and interchange frequency. With calls added inside ExecVision, you can get metrics like average call length, calls per rep, and more.

As a bonus, you can feed all of this data into the CRM you already use, like Salesforce or HubSpot.

Pricing for ExecVision is available on request.

Contract Management

The exchange and review of contracts can be a long, drawn-out process. If it falls through, you’re wasting all of the marketing effort that went into winning that lead, and all of the sales work done to convert it.

Instead of relying on a Word doc template and freeform follow-up notes, try a dedicated contract management tool to help you create, distribute, and track metrics around contracts.

Proposify

Are you still making your sales proposals inside Google Docs? How are you going to track if your prospect actually reads and engages with the proposal you send?

With Proposify, you get a simple user interface to create proposals with, pre-loaded with data from your business that makes creating proposals a snap.

Pricing for Proposify starts at $49/user/month for one user account.

HelloSign

HelloSign is cloud-based document management software that makes paper contracts a thing of the past. For sales enablement purposes, you can use HelloSign to draw up contract templates for deals and make it easier for your reps to distribute them and track progress.

HelloSign features native integrations with Oracle CPQ, Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, and Zapier, which provides connections to over 1,000 other apps.

Pricing starts from free, for three monthly documents. The cheapest premium package, which offers unlimited documents from a single sender, costs $13/user/month.

DocSend

DocSend is a content management tool for sales enablement material. It helps you surface and organize your comparison sheets, white papers, and other content that your sales team needs to close deals. Since documents are distributed by the app, you can use DocSend’s analytics to track content usage and make optimizations.

Pricing for DocSend starts at $10/month for one user.

PandaDoc

With PandaDoc, you can create and send branded proposal documents that help you reps close deals.

Using pre-made templates and your in-built company data, you can spin up a proposal in minutes and get it distributed. Plus, after it’s sent you can track metrics that tell you whether or not a prospect is engaging with the material.

PandaDoc pricing starts at $19/user/month.

Conga

Conga is a content management system for sales teams that allows reps to create templated, branded documents with ease. Build approval workflows and templates inside Conga, and you’ll have the systems in place already to enable reps to create their own material and submit it for review.

Conga also integrates directly with platforms like Salesforce, so you can track customer metrics inside your CRM to get a better look at your content’s performance.

Pricing for Conga isn’t available online.

Sales CRMs

A salesperson’s CRM is their #1 most-used tool. If it’s a pain to use, won’t automatically enrich lead data, and doesn’t offer time-saving automation, it’s a big problem for sales enablement.

Since reps spend less than 36% of their time selling, the remainder is spent on data entry, menial tasks, and in the CRM. A good CRM could put an end to all of that time-sucking work.

Here are our top picks in the category.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a free CRM with a full feature set — contact management, email history, lead data, and more — all for free. This alone sets it apart from most other CRMs, which can come with a high price tag.

You can automation outreach and build follow-up sequences that are optimized to allow your reps to make the most high-converting plays.

As one of the most popular CRMs out there, HubSpot offers great support for other products and has integrations with over 1,000 apps through Zapier.

Best of all, HubSpot CRM is entirely free! No hidden costs

Salesforce

As the #1 CRM on the planet, Salesforce needs no introduction. It’s widely supported with integrations, so practically any data you collect from other tools can be added to your lead profiles easily.

It acts as a rolodex for your leads, whether that’s leads you haven’t reached out to yet, or leads partway through the funnel. For opportunities in the funnel, Salesforce tracks deal status so you can filter your sales opportunities and enable reps to save time.

Salesforce’s pricing starts from $25/user/month.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive tracks rep activity across every lead in your database and gives you a birds-eye view of your entire sales funnel.

Through its marketplace, Pipedrive has native integrations with over 100 apps you already use, like Asana, Intercom, Slack, and Help Scout. This allows you to pull in everything you already know about a lead and track sales activity no matter where it happens. More data means your reps are better able to make a pitch that converts.

Pipedrive is priced for the SMB and startup market, with packages starting from just $14.90/user/month.

SPOTIO

SPOTIO is a field sales CRM which houses your organization’s lead data complete with locations, rep and territory assignments. Leads are enriched with unique metrics like home value and eco-friendliness automatically, which gives reps a way to tighten their targeting and waste less time on qualification.

The SPOTIO CRM features a shared meeting appointment calendar and a historical log of rep activity.

Get pricing.

Sales Training

Sales training is a vital component of enablement. Not just as a one-off deal, but when practiced continuously. That’s because salespeople will forget 80-90% of what they learned in training within a month without revisiting the material.

Because of this startling reality, sales teams often use a dedicated platform to manage, deliver, and monitor training content for reps.

Here are our top picks from the category.

Brainshark

Brainshark is a sales training tool with a focus on video. With it, you can create sales training videos to deploy to your reps and enable them to close more deals.

Industry-wide, turnover for SDRs is high. That means you need good onboarding or you won’t be able to get reps up to speed fast enough. Brainshark optimizes your sales training by giving reps a centralized hub they can use to find and consume material. Then, you get metrics back that tell you how to improve.

Pricing for Brainshark isn’t available on the web, so contact sales for more information.

Spekit

Spekit is a digital adoption and training platform that helps sales teams boost productivity, reduce ramp-up time, and drive more revenue with just-in-time enablement.

The platform has a variety of features to streamline sales onboarding and training including in-app alerts and guided walkthroughs, contextual embedded training, knowledge sharing that can be organized by tool or team, custom learning streams, and activity monitoring.

Spekit is trusted by large brands such as Southwest and Uber Freight, and is also the only Salesforce adoption solution with a one-click integration.

Pricing starts at $10/user/month.

Playboox

With Playboox, you can build sales playbooks directly into Salesforce and make it easy for reps to know what to do next and cut time-wasting activities (like searching for information) to a minimum.

Taking a playbook-focused approach helps your reps ensure consistency and success because they’re using proven standards versus their own improvised techniques. With Playboox, this is simple to design and add to your CRM.

Pricing for Playboox is available on request.

Sandler

Sandler isn’t your typical sales training tool. Rather than leaving it all up to you, you get connected with a sales training expert to design your processes. Sandler teaches SDR their winning methodology to ensure you get the best results, and offers metrics that help you make optimizations.

As a service rather than a piece of software, all solutions are custom. Find a center near you for more info.

Lessonly

Lessonly is a sales training platform that helps you build, store, and distribute training content while tracking the most vital success metrics, like whether or not reps have undergone training and engaged with it.

Creating a solid knowledge base for new hires and existing reps — with material about selling a new feature, or key personas — is essential for onboarding and retaining reps because it empowers them to be successful and be motivated by more commission.

Pricing for Lessonly is not public, and only available through requesting a demo.

MindTickle

MindTickle helps organizations train and coach sales reps with microlearning, gamification, and quizzes. Admins can easily create and publish training content to the platform, and then analyze how it performs. Reps get a simple mobile-ready interface they can use to participate in bite-sized training courses that help them hit their goals.

MindTickle’s pricing is available on request.

LevelEleven

Managing sales rewards and training schemes can be difficult, especially if you have a lot of reps to track. That’s where LevelEleven comes in.

LevelEleven is a sales management and motivation tool designed to encourage revenue-creating behavior with competitions and scoring. With it, you can get insights into the top-performing reps’ habits so you can create training material that enables your reps to convert leads.

LevelEleven’s pricing is available on request.

Sales Analytics

Without sales analytics, you can’t hope to transform the way your reps sell. Why? Because you can’t measure what you can’t manage. Sales analytics tools let you collect and analyze data on reps and their deals, so you can make strategic decisions about the sales enablement work that needs to be done — and track your strategies effectiveness.

Here are our top picks.

SPOTIO Sales Tracker

SPOTIO’s sales tracking software provides sales operations teams with real-time insights into what is happening in the field.

See detailed location activity of sales reps, deal support, and start making business decisions based on real-time data. Track sales rep activity across territories, and create custom reports using dozens of different data points.

Get pricing.

Lattice

Lattice is a platform for performance reviews, employee goals, and sharing feedback. It helps companies grow by giving managers a central hub they can use to track how sales reps are tracking against their performance goals — especially useful in large sales organizations.

Pricing for Lattice starts at $11/user/month, but reporting and analytics are only available on the $12 package.

6sense

With so much of the buying cycle happening in the background these days, sales teams desperately need to get insights into their anonymous traffic so they can be informed of the lead’s past activity and knowledge and be equipped to sell better. With 6sense, you get to look behind the curtain and reveal everything a lead has done before they reached out to sales — and analyze the lead’s behavior using AI.

Pricing for 6sense is available on request.

InsightSquared

InsightSquared makes it possible for you to create reports using your entire bank of sales data, from day one. Just connect it to your CRM, and you’ll get a library of pre-built reports that you can use to extract insight and sell more efficiently.

InsightSquared has native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, and more — anywhere your data lives, InsightSquared will be able to access it.

Pricing is available by talking to the InsightSquared sales team.

Sales Management

Managing a sales process also means managing the people that run that process. That includes performance metrics, employee engagement, and sales contests to improve productivity.

The sales management tools selected below will help you make reliable decisions about your team’s health and drive up motivation.

SocialChorus

SocialChorus is an internal content management platform that teams can use to share playbooks, standard procedures, and other documentation.

It’s not like just storing your files in Google Drive, though — SocialChorus features analytics that help you (and stakeholders) see the value of having a central hub for internal documents and communication, rather than using multiple disparate tools.

Pricing for SocialChorus is available by request only.

Customer Feedback

Typeform

Typeform is a simple, powerful, and beautiful form creation tool you can use to distribute post-sale feedback forms to your customers and improve your sales processes. Or, you can use Typeform to collect missing lead data, pre-sale, and send it to your CRM automatically.

Typeform is so flexible, it’s just about the last form builder you’ll need. You can even just use its API to give your team a central place to store and analyze form data, regardless of the way it’s captured.

Pricing for Typeform starts from free, with premium tiers from $25 monthly.

UserReport

UserReport is both a feedback form tool and a way to communicate with customers that leave feedback. With it, you can gather NPS feedback that tells you how to improve your sales process. For example, poor NPS feedback could be the result of a bad-fit lead buying your product — and with UserReport, you can find that out and get to the root cause.

It’s free to add UserReport’s feedback forms to your app, plus it integrates with Google Analytics to enrich your existing data. Pricing for the premium package is available on request.

Crowdsignal

Crowdsignal is a form-building tool that gives you an easy-to-use platform to collect information from leads and customers. With its simple interface, you can construct mobile-friendly forms that you can distribute through social media, your product, or transactional email.

Pre-configured reports can analyze data as it comes in, or offer exports to Excel where you can crunch the numbers.

Ready. Set. Enable.

There you have it – 60 sales enablement tools to level-up your sales performance in 2024.

Which tools are you going to try? Any good ones we missed?

Let us know in the comment below.

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SPOTIO is designed specifically for outside sales managers and reps to squeeze every drop out of their field sales efforts.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.