Inside Sales Software Guide Chapter 11: Team Communication

Read more about CRM in chapter 11 of Ambition's Inside Sales Software guide. Check it out today!

This post is an excerpt from our brand-new eBook: The Inside Sales Software Guide for 2016. 

We profiled this year's Top 50 Inside Sales software tools in order of placement on the Sales Funnel. These were our picks for the best team communication platforms. Inside sales is becoming more collaborative than ever, which is why we’ve added a brand-new chapter to this year’s software guide. 

The Best Collaboration Platforms for Sales

These communication tools include a highly affordable mix of internal-facing software and dual-threat software that lets you communicate with team members, prospects and existing customers.

Each of the following four platforms comes with a great pedigree and is worth a look.  

1) Slack | The Best in Team Communication 

We instituted Slack in Ambition a little over a year ago and the effects were immediately staggering.

If you’re looking to build a collaborative sales environment, Slack makes it second nature. Even better, Slack makes it super easy to interlace communication between sales, marketing, customer service, product -- whoever.

Create your company channel and watch your team start putting its head together with amazing results.

Unbeatable interface. Awesome App. And a great way to store and share sales and marketing collateral, tips, updates and data. 

Price: Free: $0. Standard: $6.67. Plus: $12.50. Site: https://slack.com/

2) HipChat | The Best-Priced Team Communication Tool        

We used HipChat before switching to Slack - and let us reassure you, the switch had nothing to do with issues with HipChat and everything to do with the amazing power of Slack.

HipChat is a robust, no-frills team communication tool that will optimize internal communication better than just about any tool out there.

For larger teams, the pricing here is unbeatable -- give it a test run and see how immediate cultural benefits. 

Price: Basic: Free. Plus: $2. Site: https://hipchat.com/

3) Intercom | Fully Integrate Business Communication 

Intercom is a revelation.

Essentially four separate products bundled into one platform, Intercom lets you chat with leads, onboard and retain them, obtain feedback and provide support to clients, see, filter and segment your client base -- and share all these insights with key team members as they happen.

Intercom is wholly unique in its ability to optimize internal and external communication amongst marketing, sales and customer service throughout the duration of a prospect/customer’s lifecycle. 

Price: Aquire: $49. Engage: $49. Learn: $49. Support: $49. E.L.S. Bundle: $57. 

Site: https://intercom.io/

4) Front | Centralize External Team Communication           

Front is a crazy powerful way to take all the channels sales and marketing use to communicate with the outside world -- email, social media, phone, messaging, et cetera -- and put them into a single inbox.

Think of Front as bringing order to the chaos of external communication. It’s telling that they claim a number of clients who specialize in workplace collaboration and communication -- Slack, Mailchimp and Dropbox included. 

Price: Team: $12. Premium: $24. Enterprise: Custom. 

Site: https://frontapp.com/

Download the 2016 Inside Sales Software Guide

This concludes our debut of the 2016 Inside Sales Software Guide. Want more? Download the free ebook on the Ambition Academy and get access to all 11 chapters profiled, plus 3 extras!

Thanks for reading and best of luck to your inside sales team in 2016.

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Ambition is a sales management platform that syncs every sales organization department, data source, and performance metric on one easy system.

Ambition clarifies and publicizes real-time performance analytics for your entire sales organization. Using a drag-and-drop interface, non-technical sales leaders can build custom scorecards, contests, reports, and TVs.

Ambition is endorsed by Harvard Business Review, AA-ISP (the Global Inside Sales Organization), and USA Today as a proven solution for managing millennial sales teams. Hear from our customers below.

Watch Testimonials:

1. FiveStars: Adam Wall. Sr. Manager of Sales Operations . 
2. Filemaker: Brad Freitag. Vice-President of Worldwide Sales.
3. Outreach: Mark Kosoglow. Vice-President of Sales.
4. Cell Marque: Lauren Hopson. Director of Sales & Marketing.
5. Access America Transport: Ted Alling. Chief Executive Officer.

Watch Product Walkthroughs:

• ChowNow. Led by Vice-President of Sales, Drew Woodcock.
• Outreach. Led by Sales Development Manager, Alex Lynn.
• AMX Logistics. Led by Executive Vice-President ,Jared Moore.

Read Case Studies:

1. Clayton Homes: HBR finds triple-digit growth in 3 sales efficiency metrics. 
2. Coyote Logistics: Monthly revenue per broker grew $525 in 6 months.
3. Peek: Monthly sales activity volume grew 142% in 6 months.
4. Vorsight: Monthly sales conversations grew 300% in 6 months.

Contact us to learn how Ambition can impact your sales organization today.