Finding a balance between motivating and micromanaging your sales team can be a challenge as a sales manager. You have to make sure that your team is on track to meet their targets while being careful that you’re not micromanaging them to the point of stifling sales growth. Fortunately, you can rely on software to amplify your impact and streamline operations.

Every great sales manager, and their sales team, can benefit from:

• CRM tools that integrate with other business software
• Communication tools for internal team messaging and with customers
• Time tracking and productivity tools
• Route optimization apps
• Territory planning tools
• Motivational tools that encourage sales reps and celebrate wins

Choosing the Right Field Sales Management Software

Here’s how we can help. We’ve compiled a list of the top software in each category so you can benefit from these tools right away. With the right combination of business apps, you can focus your energy where it’s needed most, and let software help with the rest.

CRM Tools That Help Your Team Work Better

Salesforce

Salesforce is the #1 CRM platform for a reason. With Sales Cloud, you get a complete view of each potential customer, a way to manage leads and data, and a workflow for getting it all done.

• Helps sales teams create personalized experiences based on customer data
• Flexible software allows your team to work whenever and wherever is best for their customers
• Einstein, an AI add-on, provides lead scoring, activity capture, insights and more

Pricing: Lightning Enterprise plan (most popular) starts at $150/month per user, although they offer a lighter version starting at $25/month for up to five users.

Close.io

If you’re a startup or small business with a focus on sales, you’ve likely heard of Close.io. Its focus on productivity and results makes it the trusted CRM for growing businesses.

• Tasks, calls, emails and reminders keep sales teams moving forward on the highest priority accounts
• A clear history with each customer makes it easy to keep your team up-to-date
• Personalized templates shave off hours of unnecessary work from your teams’ days

Pricing: Basic starts at $65/month per user. Professional is $110/month per user, Business is $165/month per user.

Lead Management Software

noCRM.io

noCRM.io provides a lead management software that eliminates the distractions of standard CRMs and gives the power back to salespeople. This tool places leads at the heart of the system and allows sales teams to operate in the way that best suits them to close more deals.

• noCRM.io is the perfect match for small businesses ranging from 1 to 500 employees that need a proactive sales approach to convert leads into deals
• Key features include built-in lead capturing, activities & status loop, customizable sales pipeline, built-in prospecting, team management & collaboration, statistics and reporting, customization, post-sales process, integrations & API
• More highlights: simplicity & ease of adoption, customization, mobile app, security & reliability, and support

Pricing: Starter Edition (Ideal for very small companies) starts at $12 per user per month, and Expert Edition (For demanding salespeople or bigger sales teams) starts at $18 per user per month.

Tools for Effective Communication

Slack - Within your team

Honestly, is there an alternative? Slack makes team communication so simple, it would be hard to find software that works as well. A few highlights include:

• Creating a shared workspace where your entire sales team can exchange updates, ideas and progress reports
• Integrating with top sales tools so you can send information straight through the desktop app
• Easier handoffs by tagging who is responsible for what, and what the next steps are
• Not to mention, a fun way to celebrate victories and recognize team members

Pricing: Free for small teams, $6.67/month per user for Standard, and $12.50/month per user for Plus.  

Intercom - With prospects and customers

Intercom is an incredibly popular tool for sales, marketing and support teams. It offers:

• A simple way to message and track prospects as they visit your site
• Automation designed to better qualify and fast track highly qualified leads
• Interact with prospects and customers in helpful, meaningful ways

Pricing: Intercom offers varied pricing for each product. Messages start at $49/month, Inbox starts at $38/month and Articles at $49/month (fixed price).

Time Tracking and Productivity Tools

Hubstaff

Managing a field service or inbound sales team can be a challenge when you don’t have a way to quickly and easily see what your team is working on. One tool that can be overlooked is GPS time tracking. Hubstaff allows your team to track their time and location easily from a mobile device, allowing you to:

• Instantly see where your team is at, and which clients are getting the most attention
• Identify opportunities to improve processes or introduce new tools
• Better serve customers, by dedicating time to the right prospects and customers

Pricing: Premium plans start at $10/month per user, and include all of Hubstaff’s features (invoicing, automated payroll, GPS tracking and more).

ProofHub
Keeping track of where your sales team is spending its time, and measuring its productivity is imperative for the success of a sales team. ProofHub works as an all-in-one tool to see what your sales team is up to and how the team members are spending their time at work.

Using ProofHub, you can:
Track time spent by your team members on their tasks
Use timesheets for invoicing and billing purposes
Carry out real-time collaboration to discuss sales plans and brainstorm ideas virtually
Keep all the important information centralized so that there’s no confusion
View how the team is performing using Custom reports (where you can set parameters of your preference)

Pricing
The highly recommended, Ultimate control plan, with unlimited users, is offered at $89 per month (billed annually). 

Territory Management Tools

Quip

Keep your sales team on the same page for better handoffs and happier customers.

• Main features for managing sales teams include territory plans, enablement, sales reviews, reports and more
• Integrates Salesforce data
• One document that’s always up-to-date
• So your sales team can spend less time syncing up and providing updates

Pricing: $30/month for up to a team of five, plus $10 for each additional team member.

Route optimization apps

Badger Maps

If you manage a field sales team, it’s important that you enable them with a optimized route planner. This way, your team stop spending time planning routes and selling instead.

• Check-ins allow your field team to take notes of customer meetings on-the-go
• Managers can quickly realign territories
• Get automatically generated reports of the week’s activities so you’re always know what’s happening in the field

Pricing: Badger Maps offers a Business Plan for $58 and an Enterprise plan for $96.

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Motivational Tools for your Sales Team

Ambition

Motivate your sales team and drive results with streamlined sales performance management.

• Main features include goals, scorecards, contests, coaching and team management
• Flexible API integrates with top CRM platforms (including Salesforce)
• Generates reports that make it easy to track progress

Pricing: Custom to your business, so you’ll need to contact Ambition for a quote

SalesScreen

Manage your entire sales team with one tool: SalesScreen.

• Sales motivation platform that helps sales managers simplify recognition and motivation
• Features include competitions for teams and individuals based on real-time data, events to celebrate milestones and “battles” for 1-on-1 challenges
• Sales reps can challenge one another, to save managers time

Pricing: Annual Starter plan is $15/month per user. Pro plan is $30/month per user.

The list goes on

Every year, there are more helpful tools to make managing a sales team more productive and effective. For now, there’s no question that introducing the tools mentioned here could mean a boost to your sales team’s efforts and motivation.

The best sales managers are constantly looking for processes and tools to enable their team. Find out how top field sales managers cut their team's driving time by 20% and increase sales by 25% here:

About the Author: Win Risner is a customer success lead at Hubstaff, where he helps prospects and customers identify ways to run their business better through software. He’s part of the 40-person remote team at Hubstaff that creates time tracking and project management tools for growing teams. You can follow along on the Hubstaff blog, Twitter or Linkedin.