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.

What is Sales Management Software?

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.

Choosing 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.

CRM Tools

Salesforce

salesforce


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

Get it: iOS | Android   

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:

  • With all of your reps' customer data in one place, you can help your sales teams create more meaningful and productive customer relationships.
  • Lead scoring capabilities will allow you to prioritize high-potential leads, helping you maximize profits across your sales reps.
  • You will be able to analyze each stage of the sales pipeline and identify where deals may need support to ensure no opportunities slip through the cracks.
  • By automating repetitive tasks, you will have more time to focus more on strategy and coaching rather than administrative work.
  • Gives you a clear view of your sales team’s performance with real-time reports and dashboards that make it easy to monitor progress toward your sales goals and identify areas for improvement.
  • Salesforce integrations can unify different processes, enabling you to leverage the benefits of multiple tools simultaneously. 
PROSCONS
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!

Route Planning Tools

Badger Maps

badger maps

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

Available on: iOS | Android 

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 - 

  • Reps get the fastest route to all of their daily sales appointments and save up to 8 hours a week. 
  • Effortlessly optimize sales routes with 100+ stops that allows reps to drive 20% less.
  • Stay connected to your field sales team with a complete view of their territory. Reps can share valuable updates, including check-in photos, completed services, surveys, customizable forms, and more. 
  • Exportable reports allow you to monitor the progress of your reps and ensure they’re on track to hit their targets.
  • Mobilize your team's CRM with a two-way, real-time native integration with the most popular CRMs.

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.

badger-quote

"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!

Drive 20% Less. Sell 20% More.


PROSCONS
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

Sales Engagement Platform

Salesloft

salesloft


Price: Contact for pricing information

Features: Automated cadences for emails, calls, or social media messages, integrated dialer, coaching, forecasting.

Capterra Rating: 4.3

Get it: iOS | Android

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?  

  • Salesloft’s outstanding feature is Cadence. This is where you can create structured and repeatable sequences of emails, calls, social media interactions, and other actions, known as "cadences," to engage with your prospects. 
  • The Deals feature is a centralized dashboard where you can visualize opportunities throughout the sales pipeline. You can see the status of each opportunity and identify actions to move them along.
  • CRM integrations are pretty important here. Integrating with your CRM combines your outreach with your customer database, giving you easy access to all of your customer information.
  • AI can transcribe, analyze, and summarize all of your customer interactions, distilling this information into actionable insights that you can use to inform the outreach of your sales reps. 
PROSCONS
User friendly

Steep learning curve

Automates repetitive tasks

Long setup time

Customizable

Complicated UX

LinkedIn integration

Collaboration & Communication Tools

Slack

slack

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

Get it: iOS | Android 

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:  

  • Channels can be created for day-to-day conversations between your sales team and serve as a thread for focusing on particular projects.
  • Connect allows you to open up conversations to organizations outside of your sales team, allowing you to connect faster and easier with decision makers.
  • With the Huddle feature you can quickly jump in a huddle over audio or video, helping to create fluid work processes as you work on projects together.
  • You can quickly record short audio or video clips and send them to your reps in the field, without the need to set up meetings.
PROSCONS
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!

Project and Task Management Tools

Asana

asana

Price: 

Features: Project management, Goals and reporting, Workflows and automation

Capterra Rating: 4.5

Get it: iOS | Android

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? 

  • Projects can be seamlessly coordinated from start to finish. You can assign owners and due dates to tasks and get automatic status updates delivered directly to you.
  • You can add different tags to your task which will allow you to visualize them by priority, status, or any other field you need.
  • Company-wide goals can be tracked in real-time, ensuring your sales team is aligned with what the overall strategy is.
  • Asana integrates with hundreds of tools, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace, and Salesforce, allowing you to get the most value out of different sales software
PROSCONS
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

Prospecting

Cognism

cognism

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:  

  • The Diamond Data® feature is the gold standard for mobile number databases, boasting an impressive 98% accuracy rate. This is backed up as they manually call the phone numbers they collect to ensure it belongs to the right person.
  • Lead enrichment will help you enhance the existing information you have on your leads, with valuable insights such as prospect demographics, their interests, and even their motivations for buying available to you.
  • You can easily find prospects' contact information while browsing LinkedIn Sales Navigator with the Cognism Chrome extension. 
  • You can also integrate with leading sales CRM software such as HubSpot and Salesforce. 

PROSCONS
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!

Forecasting

Clari

clari


Price: Contact sales for pricing info

Features: Data Capture, Opportunity management, Pipeline management, Conversation intelligence

Capterra Rating: 4.5

Get it: iOS | Android

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:  

  • Clari gives you a detailed view of your team's performance metrics, where you can monitor pipeline health and make data-driven adjustments backed up by AI to meet revenue targets.
  • You can automatically capture the data your sales team collects from emails, calendars, and calls, sparing you the manual entry with accurate and up-to-date information.
  • Provides you with real-time visibility into your reps pipelines, allowing you to inspect deals, assess health scores, and identify risks or opportunities.
  • They acquired Groove, a sales engagement and prospecting tool that helps your team improve their sales communication and deal with prospects more effectively.
PROSCONS
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!

Sales Enablement

Seismic

seismic

Price: Contact for pricing information

Features: Content automation, analytics, sales presentations

Capterra Rating: 4.6

Get it: iOS | Android

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:  

  • By automating the content your reps present to customers, you will ensure they enter every sales conversation fully prepared with information personalized for each customer.
  • Use the data from your CRM to inform your content. 
  • You can train reps through interactive sales courses that simulate real-life sales scenarios with role-plays and video recordings.
  • Analytics and insights into how content is performing will help you understand which materials resonate best with prospects.
PROSCONS
Centralized content management

Complex implementation

Automated content updates

Difficult to navigate app

Detailed personalization

Limited mobile app analytics

User-friendly

App prone to glitches

Training

Mindtickle

mindtickle


Price: Contact for pricing information

Features: Sales onboarding and training, sales coaching

Capterra Rating: 4.8

Get it: iOS | Android

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:  

  • You can build programs that are relevant and personalized to each of your reps, ensuring training is not a mundane experience for all involved.
  • Give targeted feedback, track progress, and assign personalized learning paths to each of your reps.
  • The Readiness Index provides a holistic view of how well your sales reps are equipped to to handle customer interactions confidently

Analytics can track sales performance and how well your reps are progressing.

PROSCONS
Gamification

Steep learning curve

Comprehensive training modules

Limited reporting

Offline access

Content overload

Support for multiple languages

Occasional performance issues

Proposal & Document Automation

PandaDoc

pandadoc


Price: Contact for pricing information

Features: Document automation, eSignatures

Capterra Rating: 4.5

Get it: iOS | Android

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 -

  • You can use customizable templates when creating your various documents. It’s simple to design professional, branded materials. 
  • eSignature capabilities can allow your team to send documents for electronic signatures that customers can complete from any device, eliminating the need for physical signatures.
  • You can track document status, showing when a document has been viewed, signed, or completed.
  • You can also integrate with your sales CRM system of choice. 
PROSCONS
User-friendly

Expensive for small teams

Document tracking

Learning curve

eSignatures

Integrations setup

Advanced analytics

Missing data from reports

Conclusion

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. 

The Best App for Field Sales People

Learn how you can maximize your sales routes & sell more with Badger Maps

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