You’ve got a top-notch sales team of movers and shakers, who, as separate entities are adept and talented. But what good is it when collaboration between these team members is lackluster and there’s a continual communication breakdown?
In the wake of the recent pandemic, breakdowns in team collaboration are more evident as sales reps were mandated to work remotely. Was (is) your team prepared to continue nurturing leads and building relationships with buyers while working from home?
A recent survey of 250 business leaders revealed that 47% said supporting their team is a top priority. 80% of those surveyed reported they had invested in productivity tools and 63% reported facilitating in new ways for their teams to connect online.
Without an effective means of sales collaboration and the use of a sales engagement platform, your team is bound to suffer in many ways, with the primary victim being inadequate lead nurturing. In fact, 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales, with a lack of lead nurturing as the common cause of this poor performance.
Fortunately, there are a variety of sales collaboration tools that can keep your team on the same page and stop them from squandering leads.
5 Best Sales Collaboration Tools
1. Slack
“Be less busy,” is the motto of this cloud-based app. The premise is simple: organize discussions into different channels (both public and private) so team members can continually stay updated on various topics for maximum transparency.
They can seamlessly drag and drop files for instant sharing – and every single slice of data can be easily retrieved through an intuitive search in your archive.
If your team members are fed up with checking their email dozens of times a day just to stay in the loop, Slack is the perfect tool because they can simply receive notifications directly through the app. Studies have even shown that on average, Slack helps reduce internal email by 48.6%. It also reduces meetings by an average of 25.1% and can increase productivity by up to 32%.
2. Trello
Trello relies on a system of boards, which you fill with cards that identify tasks that need to be completed. Team members simply update the cards as they move along to indicate exactly how much progress has been made.
Comments can be added, and files can be uploaded as needed. Sales reps can receive relevant notifications as they complete each task – and you can keep tabs on the state of each project in real-time. In turn, this provides you with an overarching vantage point of what’s going on and the tasks that demand your attention.
3. Todoist
With features like due dates, reminders, comments, file attachments, project sharing, and email forwarding, even the most disorganized and unruly sales team can be kept in check with Todoist. Set up projects and assign tasks to individual reps or your entire team with the utmost simplicity and convenience.
More laborious tasks can be broken down into sequential sub-tasks to streamline projects (and help you keep your sanity). You can also create reminders, receive notifications, utilize hashtags, and add comments to keep the chaos at bay.
4. DealHub
The ability to quickly and effectively generating price quotes often is the difference between closing a sale and losing a lead forever. DealHub is the go-to CPQ tool for generating accurate quotes; even brand new sales reps will be able to offer proposals with minimal training. DealHub’s deal acceleration platform provides a rich and personalized buying experience throughout the sales process.
Team members can maintain communication each step of the way – and automatic pricing updates ensure sales proposals are always based on the latest pricing. Therefore, you can increase the efficiency of your sales team and strike while the iron is hot, even while working remotely.
5. Wrike
Wrike is an app that operates similarly to Basecamp and Asana but streamlines workflow in a way that allows any sales team to operate like a well-oiled machine. It’s perfect if you’ve got a high volume of discussions going on at any given time. Team members can keep track of what’s going on via a centralized dashboard.
Create new tasks, track their progress, and mark as complete once finalized. Manage your workload, follow an event stream, and painlessly search through your archive when need be. You can also message team members individually or as a group and share files with the greatest of ease.
And, of course, your CRM is your primary collaboration tool and the ultimate source of truth about sales deals. Wherever you work from, being in-office or remote, your CRM will support sales team collaboration, allowing sales reps to share essential deal information and status updates. DealHub CPQ, DealRoom, and DealStack integrate natively with Salesforce CRM, Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales, and FreshSales CRM. All deal data syncs back to your CRM so no one on the team is left out of the loop.
Frustrated when would-be deals slip through your fingers simply because of a communication breakdown within your sales team? Gain control and get the level of sales collaboration you need by utilizing one or more of these tools.
This article was originally published in April, 2018 and was updated May, 2020.