The Top 16 B2B Sales Tools for 2017

Learn more about the the top 16 B2B sales tools for 2017 in this part of the 2017 Trends and Tech Guide from Ambition today!

The 2017 Trends and Tech Guide for B2B Sales and Marketing is a brand-new eBook by Prezi, Ambition, and LeadGenius. The premise: 9 high-level overviews of the most pivotal trends impacting B2B sales, marketing, support and operations. An accompanying guide profiles 112 software tools that solve the most pivotal needs for B2B business teams in 2017 and beyond.

Each chapter inside the 38 page eBook focuses on a particular trend, lists the needs associated with that trend, and ends with software profiles of tools most likely to help. To give you a primer, here's a look at the software tools designated best-in-class for B2B sales teams.

The Best B2B Sales Tools for 2017

#1. Salesforce. Customer relationship management for major-league teams.

Salesforce: the kingpin of inside sales software. This platform has it all -- millions of users, a phenomenal pedigree, and an App Exchange with thousands of plugins that help make your sales operation a well-oiled machine. It’s not the cheapest CRM on the market, but it’s unequivocally the first choice of inside sales teams competing in the most demanding markets.

Cost: $-$$. 

Best for: Sales organizations with multiple tiers, international targets, and legions of fractured verticals to handle.

#2. Close.io. Customer resource management to help you sell more stuff.     

Close.io comes with a higher price-tag than other startup-friendly CRMs, but don’t fret. This platform features an all-in-one sales acceleration package wrapped up with a proprietary phone system. Perfect for growing sales teams and sales leaders obsessed with streamlining operations, creating the perfect conditions for scaling, and pushing for massive growth. In many ways, this offering is a souped-up alternative to Pipedrive.

Cost: $$-$$$. 

Best for: Growing sales organizations that do it all, from prospecting to process management to customer service and beyond.

#3. Base. Mobile-first customer resource management for the future.          

Considered by many to be the most prolific up-and-coming challenger to Salesforce, Base is comparably priced and boasts a number of in-house features that you’d have to scour the App Exchange for with SFDC. This platform also includes analytics that encourage a deeper, broader understanding of sales performance that goes well beyond leads and revenue, but that still makes sense to folks without data-heavy backgrounds. If you’re frustrated with the complexity of SFDC, Base is absolutely worth checking out.

Cost: $$. 

Best for: Sales orgs that are data-obsessed and want to ramp up response time, lead capture, and profits from a single CRM hub.

#4. Pipedrive. CRM for expanding sales organizations on a budget.        

More affordable than almost every other comparable CRM on the market, Pipedrive offers everything you need to get your Sales team up and running. It’s a perfect CRM for early-stage startups and is amazingly robust for its price. Many small-business, mid-market, and growth-centric leaders swear by Pipedrive. It’s worth a look, especially if you’re on a budget.

Cost: $. 

Best for: Small and growing sales organizations that need to swiftly adapt and scale for new customers, markets, and verticals -- but still need to keep costs down.

#5. Microsoft Dynamics. No-frills, customizable CRM.

Dynamics comes at a price-point that’s slightly better than that of its big brother Salesforce, but doesn’t quite offer the resources, plugins, or community of SFDC. Still, if the rest of your company is running on Microsoft and you’ve got a budget to stick to, Dynamics is a CRM worth checking out. It includes expansive apps integration capabilities and a buffet of tools that allows you to pick and choose how you use it as your needs evolve. Plus, they have 40,000 customers and a habit of acquiring and integrating other great sales tools, so you’ll still be getting a piece of the pie without paying for all the fancy toppings.

Cost: $$. 

Best for: Sales orgs that are new to the automation game, but want to ramp up quickly and be prepared to scale.

#6. Ambition. Sales management software for the millennial workforce.    ​

Ambition’s acclaimed sales force management platform gives 360° visibility into individual and team performance. Create accountability and recognition with live performance data from any data source. Track and broadcast key metrics to personalized dashboards and office TVs. Put holistic goals right in front of your reps. Compare activity level and goal attainment across teams to see how hard and how smart your reps are working. Benchmark success for teams, roles and individuals, then drive results via automated scorecards, contests, recognition and reporting. Perfect for front office teams that value performance-driven culture and transparent operations.

Cost: $$-$$$. 

Best for: Growth, mid-market and enterprise front office teams with a rhythmic daily workflow, competitive employees, and high-energy culture.

#7. Outreach. The leader in sales acceleration and collaboration.        

In the battle for the hearts and minds of sales automation and acceleration customers, Outreach has strengthened its status as clear industry leader. Outreach lets managers establish workflow, analyze effectiveness, and keep segmented teams in sync. The value for reps is spectacular, enabling individual team members to absolutely manhandle daily workflow with coordinated, multi-channel prospect communication. Additional data automation, auto-dial and collaboration features (asset/template storage and sharing) shatter every ceiling holding back your team’s efficiency. This is the fastest-growing sales software on the planet for a reason.

Cost: $$-$$$. 

Best for: Any sales team entering the new year with a quota and a CRM.

#8. Velocify. Trifecta of sales acceleration features for sales teams.

The first thing you should know about Velocify is that you’re dealing with an all-purpose sales acceleration platform. Founded in 2004, Velocify enters its teenage years with three major product suites serving disparate yet essential sales functions. Use Pulse for process enforcement, LeadManager for prospecting automation, and DialIQ for cold calls. No matter what type of sales organization you have, there’s immense value to be gained from this platform.

Cost: $$-$$$. 

Best for: Heavy Salesforce users who hit the phones like it’s still the 1980s.

#9. Prezi. Start the dialogue -- close the deal.

Just about everyone gets tasked with presenting information at some point, whether to a small team or to a board of busy executives. In any case, nobody wins if that presentation is boring, typical, and easy to ignore (or forget). That’s why Prezi created conversational presenting, a highly visual, flexible, story-based approach to sharing information that engages rather than overwhelms. By opening up a dialogue with your audience and using strategic visual storytelling, Prezi allows you to develop presentations that are infinitely more persuasive, memorable, and successful.

Cost: $. 

Best for: Presenters who want to have meaningful, memorable conversations with their audience and easily show how different ideas intersect.

#10. DocSend. Find and share the documents that close deals.

DocSend is emerging as a best-in-class addition to the sales content management space. Your sales reps should never have to hunt for go-to case studies, 1-pagers, and other valuable sales collateral. DocSend is built for speed and shareability. Effortlessly organize and track content. Use straightfoward analytics to track the journeys of each presentation and PDF through your account. This is the perfect combination of functionality and user-friendly interface your sales org needs. 

Cost: $-$$. 

#11. SalesLoft. Sales engagement suite designed for account-based teams.

SalesLoft is an established sales automation platform that comes equipped with auto-dialers, voicemail templating, email tracking, call recording, and tight synchronicity with Salesforce. Tons of functionality for streamlining and improving account-based sales development efforts quickly and at scale.

Cost: $$-$$$. 

Best for: SMB and mid-market companies looking to scale outbound sales development.

#12. ToutApp. Enterprise-ready buffet of productivity-driving sales tools.        

ToutApp has been a staple in the sales acceleration space since it first emerged. This is an all-in-one team communication, outbound email, and calendaring tool that syncs with Gmail, Outlook, Google Calendar, Salesforce, and Marketo. Stellar and diverse functionality helps you drive both inbound and outbound sales campaigns.

Cost: $$-$$$. 

Best for: Highly-collaborative sales organizations who are still on the road to full maturity.  

#13. Yesware. Affordable, actionable outbound tracking and analytics.   

If ‘read receipt’ is the extent of your outbound email tracking, you need Yesware. Get live notifications of prospect interaction plus real-time reports on opens, clicks, forwards, and more. For sales teams looking to go a step further, Yesware is souped-up with a slew of features such as email templating, prescriptive analytics on team activity, and its very own auto-dialer.

Cost: $-$$. 

Best for: Front office reps who conduct outbound communication primarily via email.

#14. GetAccept. Affordable sales automation, analytics and tracking for teams.

GetAccept is a sales document automation platform specifically designed for the lower half of your sales funnel. It’s the only platform that offers a robust combination of 1-to-1 prospect communication, video, reporting, and eSignature. Additional features sweeten the pot, such as remarketing tools (for lost opportunities and dead accounts), live notifications on prospect interaction (for hot accounts), and analytics detailing the performance of your sales assets. GetAccept is also super affordable, perfect for cost-conscious SMBs and mid-markets.  

Cost: $-$$. 

Best for: Growing B2B sales teams focused on improving conversion rates.

#15. DocuSign. Hassle-free, electronic signature facilitation from anywhere.    

Getting a contract on the table is hard enough as it is. DocuSign lets you manage, send, sign, and redline legally-binding documents electronically with next-to-zero hassle. Time is the killer of all deals, and a contract dispute is only a good time for the company lawyers on the other side of the table. DocuSign is the fastest, most secure way to put the finishing touches on a hard-won sell. Your closers deserve it.

Cost: $-$$. 

Best for: Rational sales organizations who think like Don Draper: not Harvey Specter.

#16. HelloSign. Modern eSign for the most collaborative sales teams.     

This agile and affordable eSignature solution is quickly dominating the market, thanks to its ability to fully integrate with Google Apps, Box, Dropbox, Slack, and Evernote. If your sales team gets notifications about new contracts out for signature pouring in on the daily, HelloSign makes it worth it. Status notifications, templates, and branding are just some of the cool features that give you everything you need to add transparency, excitement, and collaboration at the bottom level of your sales funnel.

Cost: $-$$. 

Best for: High-growth sales organizations with contracts flying around and a preferred team chat or collaboration tool.

Download the 2017 B2B Sales Trends & Tech Guide

The 2017 Trends and Tech Guide for B2B Sales and Marketing is free to download at b2btrendsandtech.com. Just enter your email and get instant access to the 38 page guide, chock full of original analysis and full profiles of 112 unique software solutions to help you meet your business needs this year.

To learn how Prezi, Ambition, and LeadGenius can help your B2B sales team hit its 2017 revenue goals, please contact us.

Ambition: The Data-Driven Sales Management Software 

Ambition is a sales management platform that syncs Salesforce and other data systems on one simple interface.

Ambition brings astounding clarity, context, and visibility to sales performance. Broadcast metrics, benchmarks, progress, and predictive analytics to personal dashboards and dynamic TVs.

Ambition helps sales leaders manage people and operations more efficiently. Build powerfully compelling sales force reports, analytics, and contests via a simple drag-and-drop interface.    

Ambition is endorsed by Harvard Business Review and AA-ISP (the Global Inside Sales Organization). Hear more from our growing client base.

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:

1. ChowNow. Led by Vice-President of Sales, Drew Woodcock.
2. Outreach. Led by Sales Development Manager, Alex Lynn.
3. 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.