Finding a balance between motivating and micromanaging your sales team can be a challenge as a sales manager.
Overcoming this is essential to ensure your team stays on target while avoiding the pitfalls of excessive oversight that can hinder sales growth. Fortunately, you can rely on sales management software to amplify your impact and streamline operations.
Every great sales manager, and their sales team, can benefit from a variety of different software that include CRM tools, communication tools, route planning tools, and much more.
I’ve researched the best sales management software on the market today, while also personally speaking to different sales managers to gauge their opinion on what tools they are using.
The result is this curated list of the 10 best sales management software options you can start using right now.
To effectively manage any team, especially a sales team, you need the right mix of experience, personality, and tools. Sales management requires not only a background in sales and strong leadership qualities but also efficient tools that streamline processes and drive results. Focusing too heavily on one of these areas can lead to setbacks in others. In this guide, I’ll break down the best sales management software available, but first, let’s clarify what sales management software really is.
Sales management software includes tools that help you maintain consistency across your team while seeking out inefficiencies and optimizing them, ultimately boosting overall sales performance.
Managing your reps can be tricky and with automation becoming more and more commonplace among top performing sales teams, you should leverage some form of software in your role as a sales manager to enhance productivity and increase sales.
Let me show you how you should choose the right sales management software.
The success of your sales team depends on multiple factors. Are you selling a product people want? How good are you sales reps? How good are your management skills? Even if your reps are the best in the business, your role as a manager is to guide and shape their efforts, enabling them to reach their full potential.
This is where sales management software can help you. While your reps are out selling to customers, the best sales management software can provide you with insights into their performance, allowing you to strategize and implement resources that will help them perform better and, most importantly, sell better.
Planning plays a massive role in your position as a sales manager so it’s important to have the right tools at your disposal. But I’ll admit, it can be quite overwhelming trying to figure out which sales tools you’re going to need. There are literally thousands of tools on the market.
I’ve broken down the most important ones here, but keep in mind that you may not need all 10.
You may only need two or three. So make sure you talk to your sales team. See what processes they are lagging in. Look at your own data and see where the holes are. Maybe they are spending too much time driving. This can be optimized by using a route planning tool. Or maybe they are drowning in too much paperwork and are unorganized. This is where you could take advantage of a sales CRM software.
Choosing the best sales management software isn’t so straightforward. I hope this list provides helpful guidance to simplify your decision-making process.
Price: Starter - $ 25/user/month, Professional - $ 80/user/month, Enterprise - $165/user/month, Unlimited - $ 330/user/month
Features: Customizable CRM dashboards, contact management, lead and opportunity management, sales forecasting, advanced reporting, and scalability for large teams.
Capterra Rating: 4.4/5
Salesforce is one of the leading CRM tools for a reason. Its expansive feature set includes contact management, lead and opportunity management, sales forecasting, customizable CRM dashboards, process building, and advanced reporting capabilities. The ability to manage all of your sales reps customer interactions, whether they are in-person, email, or phone, is vital in your role as a sales manager. These interactions can massively influence your sales strategy, so investing in a sales CRM like Salesforce can transform the success of your team.
Here’s a few ways how Salesforce's CRM can help you manage your sales team better:
PROS | CONS |
---|---|
Customizability | Expensive |
Wide range of integrations | Complex to implement |
Robust reporting | Data storage limitations |
Mobile accessibility | Hidden costs |
Regular updates |
Finding the best sales CRM can be challenging as different software have different capabilities. Get started with this detailed guide with our list of the top 10 sales CRM software!
Price: $58/month Business, $95/month Enterprise (Free 7-day trial)
Features: Route planning, route optimization, territory management, scheduling, lead generation, follow ups, reporting and analytics.
Capterra Rating: 4.7
Badger Maps is a route planning tool that helps sales managers better manage their sales territories. With core features such as route optimization, territory management, and lead generation, you can plan and optimize sales routes in seconds and assign them to your reps in different territories, cutting down driving time by 20%.
Let’s take a look at how Badger Maps can help you optimize your sales teams processes -
Sales teams have reported that they sell 22% more and drive 20% less when using Badger Maps, in fact, the average team of 10 reps sells $936k more the year they start using the app.
"After getting Badger Maps, weekly meetings per rep jumped from 12 to 20. This led to a 22% increase in annual revenue."
Brad Moxley
Business Development Manager, Cutter & Buck
Sign up for a free trial or schedule a demo to see how you can optimize your field sales management with Badger Maps!
PROS | CONS |
---|---|
Optimize sales for multi-stop routes and get to your appointments faster | Requires Internet connection |
See all of your existing customers, and discover new ones, on an interactive map | Doesn't include mobile invoicing |
Create check-ins to keep track of completed meetings | Only available in English |
Get instant activity reports | Doesn't automatically record deliveries |
Sync with your CRM and update customer data from the field | Max. of 30 pin colors available |
Great customer support |
Price: Contact for pricing information
Features: Automated cadences for emails, calls, or social media messages, integrated dialer, coaching, forecasting.
Capterra Rating: 4.3
Salesloft is an excellent sales management software if you are looking to drive efficiency in the way your reps engage with their customers. Your sales outreach usually follows the same approach and wording, barring personalization of course. So when you are doing this manually, it makes sense to outsource this work to a tool to automate this, right? Salesloft can do this and more, allowing you to personalize each outreach based on the data your reps receive from their sales conversations.
According to the research and advisory company Forrester, Salesloft is the best sales engagement platform on the market today. So what makes it stand out over other leading tools like Outreach, Groove, and Revenue.io?
PROS | CONS |
---|---|
User friendly | Steep learning curve |
Automates repetitive tasks | Long setup time |
Customizable | Complicated UX |
LinkedIn integration |
|
Price: Free version, Pro - $8.75/mo, Business - $15/mo, Enterprise Grid - Contact sales for pricing
Features: Real-time messaging, Channels for organized conversations, Virtual collaboration.
Capterra Rating: 4.7
Slack is an instant messaging platform that has revolutionized the way sales managers and their teams communicate on a day-to-day basis. For sales managers, being away from your reps in the office used to mean collaboration was next to impossible. Slack makes it easier than ever to work side-by-side on important projects with your team, and can be used to improve both internal and external communication.
Here’s how implementing Slack in your sales operations can be a game changer:
PROS | CONS |
---|---|
Real-time communication | Can be distracting |
A lot of integrations | Steep learning curve |
Free plans available | Notification overload |
Looking for the most up to date techniques on managing a sales team? Check out our field sales management playbook!
Features: Project management, Goals and reporting, Workflows and automation
Capterra Rating: 4.5
Asana is the industry leader when it comes to project and task management, so much so that it is used by 85% of Fortune 100 companies. It can help you organize, track, and manage the work of your entire sales team more efficiently, with a suite of features that facilitate project planning, task assignment, progress tracking, and team collaboration.
With the life of your average field sales representative filled with a litany of tasks, it’s important you are able to manage their workload in a streamlined manner. With a task management tool like Asana, you will be able to organize your sales team better, which in turn will make your operations run smoother and more effectively.
So what is it that makes Asana a must-have sales management software?
PROS | CONS |
---|---|
Free plan available | Can be overwhelming getting started |
High number of integrations | Notifications and messages can easily get buried and forgotten about |
User friendly interface | Mobile app isn’t as consistent as web app |
Price: Contact for pricing info
Features: Verified B2B mobile data, Lead enrichment, Chrome extension for LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Capterra Rating: 4.6
Cognism is one of the best sales prospecting tools available on the market today. By supplying you with the phone numbers and B2B emails your sales team is looking for, both you and your sales reps can connect directly with the people you want to do business with.
A distinct advantage of using Cognism over other similar tools such as Lusha, Zoominfo, or Apollo is that it has international coverage, helping you to break into markets in Europe and Asia.
Let's run through the main features that make this a must-have sales management software tool:
PROS | CONS |
---|---|
Accurate contact information | Complex Implementation |
Easy to use | Limit on number of contacts that can be exported at once |
Chrome extension for LinkedIn | Basic plan is limited |
Real-time data updates |
Listen to this Outside Sales Talk podcast episode with sales leader John Barrows to learn the top questions you should ask every prospect!
Price: Contact sales for pricing info
Features: Data Capture, Opportunity management, Pipeline management, Conversation intelligence
Capterra Rating: 4.5
Clari can safely stake its claim as one of the best sales forecasting platforms. Clari combines machine learning and real-time data analytics to provide highly accurate sales forecasts and actionable insights that empower you to predict sales outcomes more accurately.
Being able to predict these outcomes is critical in your role as a sales manager, and Clari’s software is a great resource for helping you anticipate demand, set realistic revenue targets, and make informed decisions regarding resources, budgeting, and sales strategy.
These are the main features that you will be using while managing your team of reps:
PROS | CONS |
---|---|
Accurate | Learning curve |
Advanced analytics | Can be pricey |
Automated data capture | Mobile app lacking in comparison to web |
Customizable |
Curious how sales experts like John Barrows, Samantha McKenna, and Steve Benson drive growth within their teams? Check out the best sales growth strategies here!
Price: Contact for pricing information
Features: Content automation, analytics, sales presentations
Capterra Rating: 4.6
Seismic is a sales enablement platform that can easily serve as your one stop shop for all of your sales content. Being able to craft compelling content is crucial if your reps are going to convince prospects to convert into paying customers, and with Seismic you can automate the creation of the content your sales team uses during their sales presentations.
With personalization becoming more and more of an issue with buyers, Seismic seamlessly integrates with your sales CRM software, allowing you to tailor your sales content to the unique needs of each prospect.
These are some core features of Seismic that make it the best sales enablement software available to sales managers:
PROS | CONS |
---|---|
Centralized content management | Complex implementation |
Automated content updates | Difficult to navigate app |
Detailed personalization | Limited mobile app analytics |
User-friendly | App prone to glitches |
Price: Contact for pricing information
Features: Sales onboarding and training, sales coaching
Capterra Rating: 4.8
Mindtickle is a sales training software that provides you with the tools and resources to help train, onboard, and continuously develop your team of sales reps. With changing customer behaviors, new technologies, and a market that is constantly in flux, using the best sales training software is a vital part of sales management.
They use a scientifically proven approach to learning and their sales training programs are being continuously updated based on the latest evidence from the field.
Here are its top capabilities:
Analytics can track sales performance and how well your reps are progressing.
PROS | CONS |
---|---|
Gamification | Steep learning curve |
Comprehensive training modules | Limited reporting |
Offline access | Content overload |
Support for multiple languages | Occasional performance issues |
Price: Contact for pricing information
Features: Document automation, eSignatures
Capterra Rating: 4.5
PandaDoc is a document automation and management platform designed to streamline the creation, sharing, and signing of digital documents. You can create a wide variety of documents for your sales activities, such as proposals, contracts, quotes, and agreements.
A proposal and document automation platform is important for sales teams as it simplifies the process of creating all of your essential sales documents. Automating this enables your sales reps to focus more on selling and less on administrative tasks.
These are PandaDocs main features -
PROS | CONS |
---|---|
User-friendly | Expensive for small teams |
Document tracking | Learning curve |
eSignatures | Integrations setup |
Advanced analytics | Missing data from reports |
Remember to speak first with your sales team to see which areas need addressing the most.
Sales management software shouldn’t be a tool you use to micromanage your reps. Instead it should be a tool that fosters collaboration between managers and employees, leading to better performance and more sales.
Learn how you can maximize your sales routes & sell more with Badger Maps
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