ARTICLE SUMMARY
The way you manage your sales pipeline and all additional activities can have a great impact on your sales results. Some of the tools we'll present are specific to one or more of these activities. The most adequate to your reality will greatly depend on the size and volume of your operations, as well as the value you're willing to pay to make your sales management easier.
New revenue is the ultimate goal for almost all companies, and sales management software is a great tool for accounting for your team’s performance and influence on revenue.
To help you choose the right tool, here’s what you need to know about sales management, sales management software benefits and key features, and 10 sales funnel management tools to consider as you search for the right software.
What is sales management?
Sales management is a discipline focused on continuous growth by applying and managing sales techniques — like process improvements and training — to improve sales team performance.
Effective sales management hinges on how well sales managers hire, train, and lead their sales team, in addition to key skills like:
- Day-to-day team support.
- Planning and setting team goals or targets.
- Solving problems as they arise and proactively identifying areas for improvement.
- Establishing and executing sales strategies.
- Tracking, evaluating, and improving sales team performance.
What is sales management software?
Sales management software brings visibility to the sales data that informs the sales process and simplifies the sales management process. Sales management software is also known as a sales management system or sales CRM.
Benefits of sales management software
Sale management software streamlines lead capture, improves database accuracy, and improves sales management by eliminating the need for workarounds like spreadsheets or shadow IT solutions.
In addition to simplifying and streamlining the sales management process, sales management software also:
- Increases sales team productivity.
- Boosts sales revenue.
- Reduces team turnover.
- Improves sales funnel management.
- Creates better and more reliable sales forecasts and reports.
Definitive Guide to Business Process AutomationDownload guide
Must-have features for sales management software
As you search for the best sales management software for your team, keep in mind these key features.
Low-code workflow management
Low-code means that no coding knowledge is required, and workflow updates can be implemented without having to go through IT or add to the IT backlog. Managing sales workflows with a low-code solution makes it easy for managers to take control of the sales pipeline and create an efficient end-to-end sales journey that turns prospects into customers – all the while providing a complete view of your process.
Dashboards and customizable reports
With visibility into how teams and sales processes are performing, sales managers can stay agile and have better decision-making powered by full visibility of key metrics
Measure key sales indicators — like conversion rates, deals won, and pipeline by sales rep, branch, region (or any filter you need) — to gain strategic insights and control over lead distribution among sales reps and create a more scientific sales process.
Customer database
Store and manage leads and registered information safely and reliably with a customer database importer that updates in real-time as deals move through your sales pipeline. And with customizable permission levels, grant your sales team access to information needed to close deals fast.
Automations and conditionals
Free your sales team of time-consuming administrative tasks, improve the channels of communication, and speed up approvals by assigning rules, creating conditionals, and automating tasks — like distributing leads, automating notifications and email follow-ups, assigning responsibilities, and managing the approval of prices and discounts — throughout your sales process.
Integrations
For a seamless sales process that provides interruption-free customer service, search for a sales management software that easily integrates with third-party tools. providing endless options to empower the usage, connecting to companies’ favorite tools to retrieve and send information, trigger automated actions, and much more.
Activity tracking
In addition to software that makes managing high-volume or complex workflows easy, look for software that includes audit trails to improve your sales funnel management and never lose track of a prospect or qualified lead again.
Public forms
A lead is only as qualified as the information your sales team has on file for it, and how well the lead capture is standardized. Consider software with customizable public forms to capture leads with mandatory fields and guarantee that all required fields are accounted for — consistently and accurately.
Comparison of best sales management tools
Sales funnel management and additional sales activities — like CRM and customer success — can have a great impact on your sales results. While the right tool for your business and team will depend greatly on the size and volume of your operations, here are 10 of the top sales management tools and software to simplify your sales management and help boost your sales.
1. Editor’s pick: Pipefy
Pipefy is a low-code process management and automation software that enables sales teams to get the most out of their sales funnel and operations by making it easy to customize and optimize their sales funnels. With process dashboards and reports that pull real-time process data, Pipefy keeps teams decision-ready with full visibility of key metrics to gain efficiency and agility and improve conversion rates.
Whether you want to build from a customizable template or start your process from scratch, Pipefy’s features — like automation, process connection, automated emails, and integration with existing tools or apps, like Salesforce, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Netsuite, and SAP — help standardize every aspect of the sales process, providing managers more control over the process itself and how sales reps are selling.
2. Pipedrive
Pipedrive is cloud-based sales management software designed to help sales teams manage their sales processes. Pipedrive offers many sales tools that help sales teams gain total visibility into their sales pipeline. Key features include a clear visual interface with pipeline view, email automation, full contact history, integrations, and sales reporting and forecasting.
3. Salesforce
Salesforce is a cloud-based customer relationship management software that helps teams find the right leads, close more deals, and make data-driven decisions. Salesforce centralizes end-to-end sales process information and improves collaboration between sales, marketing, and IT departments.
4. Oracle Sales Performance Management
Oracle’s SPM solution helps teams increase revenue by better aligning sales goals with your company’s sales strategy. Key features include territory management, quote management, and sales performance dashboards.
5. Hubspot
Hubspot is a CRM platform that offers a complete suite of sales, CRM, and marketing tools that simplify sales management and make it easier to measure all stages of the sales process. Hubspot’s Sales Hub provides deeper insights into prospects and automates time-consuming tasks.
6. Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM is a cloud-based business management platform that streamlines sales processes and helps teams build better customer experiences. Key features include contact management, pipeline management, workflow automation, sales forecasting, reporting & analytics, integrations, and visibility at every stage of your sales pipeline.
7. Mixpanel
Tracking your metrics is essential for proper sales management and planning. Mixpanel is the go-to tool to help you learn how people use your app. It offers advanced mobile and web analytics tools, such as funnel views to help analyze your users’ behaviors.
8. Intercom
Intercom is a customer communication platform. It offers a suite of integrated products to allow all of your company’s teams — sales, marketing, product, and support — to create targeted communication with your customers and users.
9. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an online email management tool that allows you to create professional email campaigns without any design or coding experience whatsoever. With Mailchimp, teams can create emails, ads, and landing pages, build personalized customer journeys, gain key audience information with built-in audience management, and increase conversions with behavior-based and data-based automation.
10. Recurly
Recurly is a subscription management and billing platform that helps companies anticipate and respond to customer demand. Recurly offers data-driven insights to capture and keep customers, manage the sales process, and increase sales.
Improve sales management with Pipefy
Pipefy’s low-code workflow automation software brings visibility to the sales management process and bridges the gaps that lead to performance issues, bottlenecks, and delays or lost opportunities. Integrate Pipefy with your existing stack of third-party tools to create a seamless user experience — for prospects and employees — and automatically turn requests into actions.
With a structured sales management process that centralizes and streamlines team performance and communication, eliminates time-consuming tasks with automation, improves sales funnel management with full visibility into end-to-end process performance, and has more predictability over results and challenges with real-time data.
