Must-have Tools for Sales and Marketing in 2019

Must-have Tools for Sales and Marketing in 2019

It’s often said that only a bad worker blames their tools, but in the world of business, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Sales and marketing have always been a highly competitive roles, regardless of the market you’re operating in.

To stay ahead of the competition then, you need to be sure you’re fully equipped with the best tools around.

Here we’re sharing our must-haves for the modern sales rep and marketing maestro, organised by which skill they enhance.

Better Organization

While most companies don’t have the budgets to provide everyone with their own PA, it would be nice to have some extra help in organising the busy schedule that comes with a life in sales and marketing.

Fortunately, virtual assistant technology provides comparable benefits and is much more accessible to the average company.

Designed to enable greater productivity and organisation, artificially intelligent chatbots are a must-have for staying on top of your day.

Oracle’s suite of apps for example, are specifically developed to understand sales and marketing related to dialogue, so all you need to schedule meetings, set reminders, and note important information is your voice.

 

Stronger lead generation & sales prospecting

Good leads are the driving force behind a successful sales and marketing strategy. However, the manual process of lead generating can be incredibly time consuming.

Fortunately, lead generation tools can make it easier for reps to efficiently generate leads at scale regardless of your specific lead generation strategy.

Knowing which tools to use and how to properly apply them to your strategy can enable reps to spend less time searching, and more time converting. Our top recommendations include:

 

Lead data collection

Data collection tools can help identify potential prospects by collecting data on who visited your site and their contact information, so you don’t miss an opportunity to reach out.

Even if a visitor does not fill out an inquiry form, tools like Leadfeeder and Prospect.io provide you 30 day brackets of each company that visits your website and the contact information of its employees.

 

Prospecting

Nobody wants to go in blind when contacting prospects. Prospecting tools can help you prepare yourself by providing on demand company information.

Free tools like Google Alerts and the Datanyze Insider extension can help you determine the quality of a prospect by providing relevant company information just by visiting their site.

Clicking on the extension while on a prospect’s website supplies you with the company’s location, contact details, revenue bracket, number of employees, and social and technology insight.

 

Effective email outreach

Emailing is a huge part of a sales rep’s day, so it’s important to make sure the time spent at that task is fully optimised.

Fortunately repetitive email tasks can be expedited with automation solutions and other accessible tools meant to help save you time and increase volume.

HubSpot is a fantastic tool for building out automation workflows and generally having technology do a serious amount of the heavy lifting for you.

 

Email lookup

Hunting down a company or individual’s contact information can be time consuming and often unproductive without the right tools in place. Chrome extensions such as Hunter and VoilaNorbert can help facilitate this process.

These tools can scour the web for you in seconds to find you email addresses and phone numbers that are listed in the public domain.

Additionally, so you don’t waste your time reaching out to deactivated emails, Hunter provides a quality score to let you know the likelihood of an addresses still being in use.

 

Email transparency

Taking the time to craft the perfect email only to discover it was opened by the wrong person, or worse, never opened at all, can throw a wrench in your sales efforts.

Email transparency tools such as Mailtrack can help tackle this issue by providing insight into who is responding to your emails and clicking your links. Enabling you to make more informed decisions as to who to target and follow up with.

  

Smarter meetings

Video conferencing is a must have for securing necessary sales meetings regardless of location.

Virtual meeting platforms like Join.Me and Skype enable hosts to schedule meetings automatically through Gmail calendars and link up participants through video, voice and sharing screen tools.

For those meetings where video won’t suffice, virtual reality technology is enabling sales teams to meet in a life-like environments while miles apart.

Working with people in other zones? World clock time zone converters like Time Buddy removes the guesswork in scheduling meetings that work for everyone. Capable of linking up to Google calendars, all you have to do is schedule your meeting and it automatically updates time zones for participants.

 

Greater convenience

In a sales and marketing role day-to-day, convenience and efficiency are top priorities. Tasks need to be able to be completed wherever you are and without extraneous equipment.

Mobile tools can help salespeople and marketers optimise their time with use of a few easy downloads:

 

Mobile scanners

Salespeople often collect dozens of business cards, but holding on to those tiny squares of paper can be difficult over time. The HubSpot Mobile Card Scanner can help reduce the risk of losing cards, and therefore potential prospects. By taking a simple photo, the app automatically saves the information to your phone’s contacts.

Similarly to business cards, documents and contracts and can be cumbersome to travel with. Doc Scan allows you to snap a picture of a document and convert it to a more convenient PDF or JPG.

 

Slide Presentations

Whether you need to refer back to a presentation or present a pitch deck yourself, the Keynote app allows you to view and edit directly from your smartphone or tablet.

This is great for presenting to prospects or clients on the road when you need to make a few quick changes before going into the room. 

 

Profit conversions

Don’t worry if you’re not a maths wiz, mobile margin calculators allow you to easily calculate profit margins, markups, suggested selling prices and suggested cost prices without any awkwardness. 

So there you have it, the must-have tools for salespeople in 2019. Looking for new ways to generate leads? Click here to view our Lead Generation services.


Guest post written by Maddie Davis of Enlightened Digital.