13 Tools for Sales Managers in 2023
From spinning out sales forecasts to dealing with training for your sales reps, managing a sales team can definitely be a challenging task.
Of course, a lot of time, skill, and experience would help, but what really helps get the job done is having the right tools on your side.
As a sales manager, you're in charge of ensuring your team consistently performs to the best of their ability, which can mean much more than just having great sales reps.
It's hiring and sometimes firing. It's managing pipelines. It's sales forecasting, tracking performance, and training personnel.
And sometimes, in your spare time (as if that’s a thing), it's analyzing data and fine-tuning strategies to speed up the sales cycle and maximize your team's performance.
We've come a long way from going door to door with a bag full of tricks. Sales management software is constantly changing, with new technology always emerging.
But it’s not easy figuring out which ones will be assets to your workflow.
That’s what we’re here for!
So without further ado, here are the 13 best tools for sales managers available today.
Tools for creating sales forecasts and managing the sales pipeline
Your reps may be the best in the biz, but even the best sales reps can't unleash their potential if the system is faulty. When your team doesn't hit their quotas, it may be a sign of inefficiency in your sales pipeline.
The best sales management tools can help you smooth out your pipeline by:
- Creating accurate forecasts for expectation management
- Managing and viewing sales pipelines to quickly spot and fix leaks
- Helping your sales reps prioritize their time and effort
- Analyzing data for deeper insights into performance
- Integrating tools with your CRM for seamless lead management
1. Weflow
Weflow is a sales management tool that helps sales and revenue teams use Salesforce more effectively.
It eliminates repetitive data entry, streamlines Salesforce pipeline management, and clears up your pipeline views, so that you can inspect deals quickly and effectively.
No matter how many deals your sales reps manage, this tool organizes the entire workflow to increase the visibility of all deals, the team’s performance, and quality forecasting for future deals.
Thanks to the Weflow Chrome extension, you don’t have to switch between screens, apps, or accounts. Instead, its dashboard tracks essential data on deals performing well and those that need your attention. The best part? You get all the insights you need to help improve your sales reps' performance at a g,a ce.
You can use Weflow for free by adding the Chrome extension. The free plan supports up to five users. Paid plans include:
- Team – At $39/user/month, the Team plan allows unlimited users and a number of added features like note templates, bulk editing, group reports, and more.
- Business – At $59/user/month, the Business plan gives you access to all of Weflow’s features, including deal signals, email logging, and more.
2. Atrium
Atrium is a powerful sales management tool that uses data to improve team performance. It supplies sales managers with the insights they need and makes applying data to improve your sales process easy.
This tool can analyze your existing pipeline, identify issues bogging it down, and suggest executable solutions. Using customized KPIs, Atrium can analyze your team’s performance and suggest ways to help them improve.
While Atrium comes pre-loaded with hundreds of metrics, it can be customized to fit your business. This means you get only the metrics that matter and save time in the process.
While you can start with a free account, you’ll need to contact Atrium’s sales team for the full breakdown of fees involved with a paid plan.
Tools for managing sales enablement content
First, what is sales enablement content?
Sales enablement content is any kind of information that helps your sales reps perform better at their job. This includes resources like sales scripts, white papers, case studies, product spec sheets, market research intelligence, and competitive comparison tools.
As a sales manager, ensuring your team is leveraging the right sales enablement resources can mean the difference between a successful sales pitch and a lost sale.
With the right tools to manage sales enablement content, you can:
- Organize, track, and store all types of content in one place
- Provide access to constantly up-to-date content for reps on the go
- Analyze the performance of sales content to make better decisions
3. Seismic
Sales managers need content, tools, skills, and data to get their jobs done. Seismic is built to provide it all, so your team can engage better with customers and grow your business.
The Seismic sales enablement platform consists of powerful technologies, including a cloud infrastructure that lets your team connect seamlessly, an open platform to tie everything together with existing systems, and strict compliance across the board.
Seismic uses machine learning to reveal more sales-enabling data. It includes content automation using LiveDocs to create custom content in minutes. You can even integrate it with 150+ leading tools, including Salesforce, HubSpot, WordPress, and more.
Unfortunately, there is no public pricing available. However, you can get a demo and custom-made pricing by speaking with Seismic's sales team.
4. Highspot
Highspot is a sales enablement software designed to boost sales teams' productivity by providing various features to optimize their processes. Not only does the tool help manage content, but it also equips, trains, and coaches sales teams to win.
Highspot enables sales through four methods: executable strategies, content creation, impact measurement, and rep training. Accessible through the intuitive interface, the search experience makes finding content easy — all the while customizing it to retain your brand’s tone.
Highspot doesn’t display their pricing publicly. You can contact their sales team to chat about customized pricing for your needs.
5. Showpad Content
Showpad Content is a content management software that allows effective collaboration between marketing and sales. Its content management system provides a centralized location for teams to manage, distribute, and analyze content at scale — even providing AI-powered recommendations so that salespeople get the right content at the right time.
Showpad Content has three plans: Essential, Plus, and Ultimate. However, pricing isn’t available publicly.
Tools for sales training
Hiring is only the first step. The only way to ensure your reps represent the company to the best of their ability is through training and coaching as they develop.
As a sales manager, you don't have hours to spend coaching your team and ensuring they complete their training tasks. That’s where sales training tools come in.
When it comes to training, these tools can help you:
- Provide easy access to training resources for all sales reps
- Track when and how often reps have accessed training material
- Measure performance with real-time feedback
- Customize or implement gamification of training material to drive engagement
6. Mindtickle
Mindtickle is a sales readiness platform that helps build reps’ skills and knowledge.
It uses continuous sales training, behavioral analysis, and constant updates to deliver impactful training.
Unlike your standard training methods that lack practical examples, Mindtickle incorporates actual sales data adjusted to your business. There are also provisions to help teams collaborate and track progress easily.
The Mindtickle sales training program uses AI to bring microlearning and gamification into the learning process. It also allows you to define success metrics, required skills, and competencies so you can track and measure your sales teams' performance.
You can request a free demo and custom pricing from Mindtickle’s sales team. Online sources claim that pricing starts at around $30/user/month.
7. Brainshark
Brainshark is a data-driven sales training and learning platform designed to help improve sales team performance. This is achieved through strategic coaching, which aims to educate sales teams on how to interact with each buyer.
With Brainshark, you can produce content, deliver onboarding and training courses, and easily measure individual performance.
The platform also has a handy AI feature to help check progress, discover skill gaps, and track performance using select metrics.
8. SalesHood
SalesHood’s sales enablement software is a ready-to-use training platform that empowers teams with experience and training for optimizing the sales process.
With a wide range of templates and other automated resources within the updated library, your sales team has all it needs to understand simple and advanced sales methods to grow the business.
The tool also uses AI, NLP, social learning, gamification, role-playing, and micro-assessments to boost and assess the team's performance.
SalesHood is priced at $75/user/month. You can also contact the sales team to get a custom price for a multi-year plan.
Tools for analyzing sales calls
Calls are the lifeblood of any sales team. Analyzing the points where a sales call went well or not so well can help you identify process and performance issues.
But if you're like most sales managers, you don't have hours to spare for call reports.
By using conversation intelligence software, you can:
- Generate transcripts from recorded sales calls
- Analyze reps' conversations to get a better understanding of their performance
- Track sales reps’ verbal and non-verbal behavior
- Identify patterns in customer conversations and use them in future sales strategies
- Estimate call duration to better manage time with customers.
9. Gong
Gong helps improve revenue teams’ productivity through conversation intelligence. It enables sales managers to leverage its advanced technology to analyze sales conversations.
With support for over 70 languages, its AI captures dynamics in topics as well as questions.
Gong’s pricing is a mix of platform fees and per-user fees. The platform pricing is $5,000/year billed annually, and depending on how big your team is, fees vary from $1,360 to $1,600 per user per year billed annually.
10. Chorus
Chorus was launched in 2015 to offer conversation intelligence to sales teams. It works by analyzing the best sales teams in the world and applying their performance to suggest improvements for your team.
While the working strategies of successful teams serve as the foundation, it also gives your team insights to understand all customer interactions and improve customer relationships. From phone calls and emails to meetings, Chorus can analyze it all to drive growth.
The AI sales management system can also transcribe meetings and calls. By integrating with your CRM, it keeps your team updated and suggests follow-up steps. There are also options to track the performance of your team over time.
Pricing isn’t available publicly, but you can ask for a free demo and custom pricing. Certain online sources claim that pricing starts at $8,000 a year, which includes three seats. Additional users cost around $1,200 per seat.
Tools for managing sales compensation
It's the dream of every sales rep: a hefty paycheck with a nice bonus on top.
As a sales manager, you need tools to manage this process accurately and fairly. You want tools that can take manual calculations off your hands and free up your time for more important tasks.
Imagine a tool that can help you:
- Design incentive plans that motivate reps to reach their goals
- Analyze performance data to determine commission amounts
- Make sure that reps are paid in a timely manner
- Allow reps to access their own compensation data
- Simplify the entire process with automated calculations and reporting tools
11. CaptivateIQ
CaptivateIQ is an agile commission solution that helps keep sales and revenue teams in sync with their ever-evolving business goals.
This tool allows businesses to speed up payout processing, develop custom commission plans, and influence sales behavior with visibility and transparency of metrics.
You can request CaptivateIQ's prices through their pricing page. The pricing model is based on a one-time set-up fee + monthly per-user fees.
12. Spiff
Spiff is a commission management platform for automating compensation. It includes a host of sales management software features that help teams with creating and managing compensation plans, such as a collaborative dashboard that lets you assign plans to teams and individuals, allowing for trust, visibility, scale, and automation.
Spiff is available for $35 and $45 per user/month. To get a quote for your specific needs, you’ll have to fill out the custom quote form on their website or contact their sales team.
13. QuotaPath
Sales teams can rely on QuotaPath for transparent compensation plans without errors. The software is a powerful platform for creating and managing commission processes.
Featuring admin controls, among other exciting features, QuotaPath is able to provide real-time insights that sync with your CRM system. It also allows you to design custom plans with rates, quotas, and bonuses.
QuotaPath offers a free 30-day trial you can use to test out all of the software’s features. Paid plans start at $30/user/month, billed annually.
Use these tools for sales managers to make your life easier
Sales is a constantly evolving landscape, and as sales managers, you can't expect your team to go to battle with spears and rocks while your competitors are using fighter jets.
In 2023, efficiency is the name of the game. With the right sales management software on your side, you can save not only money but the most important commodity of all: time. And with more time on your side, the sky's the limit in what you and your team can achieve.
So stay caught up! Invest in tools to help you manage sales, and watch your team thrive as they reach their goals with ease and confidence.
Enjoyed this round-up? Be sure to also check out these guides: