Sales management software has become a catch-all phrase for a CRM. We often think of a good CRM as the solution to help us manage our sales teams. This isn’t entirely wrong, as most CRMs like HubSpot and Salesforce have built many of the features you’d need to run a smooth sales process. Everything from contact management to pipeline management is the basic requirement for a modern CRM. We want to infuse this conversation with more nutrients to ensure your sales team grows as strong and resilient as a mycelial network.
Sales managers need a toolbox to help them build a resilient team. You are no longer limited to your skills as a manager, today, you need technology as a key driver to play in the big league. The key things you need to master as a sales team are:
- Contact Management
- Lead management
- Time management
- Pipeline management
- Call data management
- Sales forecasting
To be an effective team, you need a-players in the seats and a variety of systems that can support them as they live up to their potential. Multiple systems mean data is fragmented, thinking twice about your tech stack is important. You need to ensure that the systems you choose connect. Tools that don’t connect typically lead to manual work and endless sales hygiene work that will slow your team down.
Here is our take on the best sales management software for SaaS sales teams in 2023.
1. Contact Management
HubSpot Sales Hub
Contact management is important to track interactions with your customers, leads, and partners. A good overview can save you from mistakes that may cost you a deal or prepare you with insights that may lead to a closed-won tag in your preferred CRM.
The best solution for contact management is HubSpot. There are few tools as robust and connected, which means that your contact data doesn’t have to be isolated in one platform. You can share this data with the rest of your tech stack to ensure you walk into any call well-prepared and ready to win.
We see HubSpot as sales opportunity management software. When you keep your contact management software up to date, it’s easier to spot opportunities and win more business.
HubSpot Sales Hub Pricing
Small sales teams with two sellers can get access to HubSpot’s starter package at $540/year and add additional seats for $23/month. If you need to run and track sequences with leads, you need to upgrade to HubSpot’s Professional tier, which costs $5,400/year. This tier includes 5 seats; you can expand this package for $90/month per seat.
HubSpot Sales Hub Reviews
G2: 4.4 out of 5.
“HubSpot Sales is a user-friendly CRM software that makes it easier for our sales teams to manage contacts, track deals, and automate tasks.”
2. Lead Management
Airtable
We love Airtable because it connects to most systems. You can easily set up triggers based on changes you make in your document or make changes in the document when you make changes in other platforms. It saves a lot of time, and they even offer innovative templates you can copy instead of starting from scratch.
Many think you need a full-blown CRM system to manage your leads, but a smart system like Airtable can accomplish a lot. The connectivity is crucial for your sales workflow management, as a rule-based system will keep your team on track without all the sales hygiene work no one likes. Lead management is easy with Airtable, and their lead management template will get you up and running quickly.
Airtable Pricing
You can get started with Airtable for free with a sales team of 5 people. We recommend opting for their Pro package, which allows you to connect up to 10 additional tools to Airtable. Their Pro package is $20/month per seat billed annually.
Airtable Reviews
G2: 4.6 out of 5.
“Keeping track of our leads in all lead generators would be next to impossible without a solution like Airtable.”
Typeform
No one likes to spend time on leads that can’t use your product, it’s bad for business and for the leads you can’t serve. This is where Typeform comes in. You can use Typeform to filter out the leads you can’t serve. This can save your sales team hundreds of hours of discovery calls as you prequalify your leads before you spend your team's time on a customer who would never close.
Superhuman famously does this as their app doesn’t work on Android. They ask all leads if they use an iPhone, if not, they filter these leads out of the sales cycle. Typeform connects to most CRMs and can send responses directly to your Airtable, where you manage leads.
Typeform Pricing
The wonderful thing about Typeform is that you don’t need multiple licenses. You can get the $75/month business plan and set up a Typeform that can collect up to 10,000 responses every month. If you have a small team and don’t mind the Typeform logo on your form, you can use the free plan, which allows for 100 monthly responses.
Typeform Reviews
G2: 4.5 out of 5.
“Typeform skyrocketed and automated our lead generation. We also get meaningful input and insights from our audience. Those insights are actively informing and shaping our approach and offers.”
3. Time Management
Time management isn’t about working harder, it’s about working smarter. The best sellers understand this and employ tools that help them do just that. The key things great sellers spend a lot of time on are:
- Prioritization: They understand what is urgent and what’s important and strike a perfect balance between the two.
- Set goals and plan: The best sellers plan ahead and set clear goals for what they need to achieve weekly, monthly, and quarterly.
- Manage energy: A great seller know what drains them and what gives them energy they actively block time in their calendar not to get overwhelmed with small tasks that aren’t important.
We couldn’t decide on one time management app for sellers, we chose two that help sellers get more quality time with customers.
Calendly
Calendly helps sellers schedule sessions with prospects. Calendly integrates directly into a Typeform or as part of a “book a demo” flow. It looks at your seller's calendar and lets the prospect schedule a time convenient for them. It’s also a convenient way to avoid back-and-forth emails to get a time in the calendar for follow-up conversations.
Calendly Pricing
While Calendly offers a free tier, we recommend getting the Professional plan at $12/month per seat. This comes with personal branding and connects to most CRM tools out there. Calendly is a much better way to schedule meetings.
Calendly Reviews
G2: 4.7 out of 5.
“My clients merely need to click the link on Calendly and choose their preferred day and hour. This eliminates all the back and forth and guarantees all parties are there.”
Clockwise
Calendly enables scale, as customers can book time independently. Sales reps are no longer a bottleneck. Some revenue teams have reported that their demo requests went from double digits to four digits. This is where Clockwise comes in.
Clockwise is an extension to your calendar and helps you block time you need for other work. Clockwise will help you get the time you need during the week to maintain your peak performance, whether for internal meetings or just to get some headspace. The days of back-to-back meetings can be a thing of the past, and the app even blocks time for you to get lunch. Clockwise is our plug for the best time management software out there.
Clockwise Pricing
The sales manager who needs a clear view of how sellers spend their time would want to fork out $11.50/month per seat. This gives the sales manager access to deep analytics on time spent. If the team needs time management software without the analytics, you can settle with a monthly cost of $6.75/month per seat.
Clockwise Reviews
G2: 4.8 out of 5.
“I do not need to resolve any meeting conflict anymore. I also have more free/focus time without having to create it manually constantly on some given times but still struggle the rest of the time.”
4. Pipeline Management
Pipedrive
Pipedrive is one of the most accessible pipeline management software solutions. The Pipedrive interface makes getting a clear overview of your pipeline easy. Pipedrive makes it easy for sales leaders to do pipeline reviews to ensure the team works on the highest priority deals. Pipedrive’s reporting features help the team stay on top of all their work and give them the information they need to balance the pipeline and ensure a constant flow of new business. Pipedrive is one of the market's best sales rep management software solutions.
Pipedrive Pricing
To get the most out of Pipedrive, we recommend their Professional plan at $49.90/month per seat. This plan should cover your needs and enable great pipeline management. Pipedrive’s sales process management software gives you full control of how you design the sales process to optimize your pipeline performance.
Pipedrive Reviews
G2: 4.2 out of 5.
“Pipedrive performs exceptionally well in its sales pipeline management abilities. The CRM gives a holistic view of our sales pipeline, making it possible for us to recognize bottlenecks, put in priority deals, and allocate resources efficiently.”
5. Call data management
Grain
Data is crucial in any deal and with Grain, you can capture powerful AI transcripts that give you an insight into every conversation you have with your prospects.
Grain is an excellent sales team management solution, as you can easily coach your team at scale. You can rewatch calls or skim through powerful AI summaries that are synced directly to your favorite CRM like HubSpot. All calls recorded with Grain are transcribed, summarized, and uploaded into the tools you need to run your team, it’s one of the best performance management software solutions in the market.
Grain Pricing
Grain is free to get started. You can try it out with a team of up to 5 members and collectively record up to 100 sales calls (20 calls per user) for free. When you decide to upgrade, each user costs $15 per month. The best part is you only pay for the recording seats.
Grain Reviews
G2: 4.6 out of 5. Grain has been named a leader in Conversation Intelligence, Transcription, Meeting Management, and several other categories.
“We had been evaluating other solutions such as Gong, Outreach, and Salesloft but were left frustrated as those were so over-baked and overkill for what we needed. I had Grain up and running in 15 minutes. My calls and notes are well organized and easily accessible by my team.”
- User review.
6. Sales forecasting
Outreach
A successful sales team leverages great sales team management software. Your current performance is great, but it’s quickly forgotten. It’s crucial that you look forward to what’s next. What will my pipeline look like next quarter? Where can we apply more pressure to pick up the pace this week? Will I make my numbers at the end of this quarter? These are all questions Outreach helps answer.
Forecasting can be a manual process that’s not done in real-time. With Outreach you can adjust your assumptions, model new scenarios, and analyze trends that will increase your pipeline coverage and win rates.
Outreach Pricing
Outreach is in a similar league as Salesloft, and it’s not a cheap solution. You should expect between $100-$150/month per seat. When you decide to invest in a solution like Outreach, you should ensure that you have sufficient inbound to justify it. You’ll also want to ensure your leads are properly warmed up to make the most of their solution from the get-go.
Outreach Reviews
G2: 4.3 out of 5.
“It reduces the sales execution gap by combining automation and AI together and brings the visibility to the team for better sales forecast for planning daily activities.”
Wrap-up
Sales management software is a key component of a healthy sales team but you don’t need to invest in all the tools in one go.
We recommend starting with a good contact management system like HubSpot which is a great starting point for your sales team. It provides all the basics you need and then some. We also recommend that you invest in call data management software like Grain as it will increase your ability to glean insights from customers. It’s also an excellent tool to use for sales coaching, as you can share a series of great calls with new reps that they can learn from before they go into action.
Once you have a stable pipeline with a healthy amount of inbound leads, we recommend looking more into time management software like Calendy and Clockwise as the two will help you scale and ensure that you take the time you need to keep performance high as you do so. Once you have grown to a certain size sales forecasting will be necessary to help you hit your targets consistently as you at this stage will rely on other stakeholders who will require data points to support your efforts.