Sales management software helps sales reps close more deals and improve workflows based on the performance data it provides.
But, due to the complexity and price of such tools, small businesses tend to either ignore them, or dump all their information in Excel spreadsheets.
I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to do this.
There are tons of sales management tools that have affordable and even free plans you can start using today to improve your sales tomorrow. I’ve made sure to include only the tools that I could try out using their free plan or free trials. So below, you’ll find my honest review of the 10 best sales management software that stood out in some way in my research.
Table of Contents
What is sales management software?
Sales management software is a digital tool salespeople use to manage the personal information of and interactions with their clients and potential clients (leads). Sales reps use this information to try and convert leads into paying customers and retain existing ones.
Sales management software is usually part of a larger software suite called customer relationship management (CRM) software.
Besides sales tools, CRM software also contains tools for marketing management and customer support management, all in one.
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Curious to learn more about CRM? Take a look at our guide that explains CRM in more detail:
Top 10 best sales management software for sales teams: Key takeaways
- Plaky — best for small teams
- Salesforce — best for large sales enterprises
- Zoho CRM — best for organization and filtering
- Pipedrive — best for easy navigation
- Copper — best for beginner sales teams
- Bitrix24 — best for ecommerce sales management
- Freshsales — best for organizing and tracking leads
- monday sales CRM — best for easy automations
- Act! — best for offline sales teams
- HubSpot Sales Hub — best for saving time
| Software | Best for | Free plan | Pricing (starting from) | Available for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plaky | Small teams | ✔️ | $3.99 per user/month | Web, Android, iOS |
| Salesforce | Large sales enterprises | ❌ | $24 user/month | Web, Android, iOS |
| Zoho CRM | Organization and filtering | ✔️ | $14 user/month | Web, Android, iOS |
| Pipedrive | Easy navigation | ❌ | $9.90 per user/month | Web, Android, iOS |
| Copper | Beginner sales teams | ❌ | $25 per user/month | Web, Android, iOS |
| Bitrix 24 | Ecommerce sales management | ✔️ | $61 per user/month | Web, Android, iOS, and desktop (Windows, Linux) |
| Freshsales | Organizing and tracking leads | ✔️ | $15 user/month | Web, Android, iOS |
| monday sales CRM | Easy automations | ❌ | $12 per seat/month (for a minimum of 3 seats) | Web, Android, iOS |
| Act! | Offline sales teams | ❌ | $30 per user/month | Web, Android, iOS, and desktop (Windows, macOS, Linux) |
| HubSpot Sales Hub | Saving time | ✔️ | Starts at $18/month and includes 2 users (+$9 per additional user) | Web, Android, iOS |
#1: Plaky — best for small teams
Plaky is a task management tool that helps you store and manage your customer information, making it more transparent and easily accessible.
This tool is user-friendly, intuitive, and free.
Pros of using Plaky for sales management
Plaky makes sales project management easy and straightforward — I never had issues navigating the tool.
The software lets you create different spaces and boards within those spaces to separate your teams or workflows. For example, you can have a space dedicated to sales management. Within that space, you can create different boards for your leads, companies, deals, etc. And within each of them, you’ll have your individual customizable items.
If all of this sounds too complicated, you don’t have to start from scratch. The Plaky project templates center contains a long list of templates you can use as your starting point.
For example, if you want to store your contact and deal information in one place, use the Plaky contacts template, or the deals template to get you started.
If you want to use more of them at the same time, simply open them on different boards!
Since the tool is so customizable, you can create your own custom sales pipeline. Switch to the Kanban view and customize the steps your opportunities are going to take before the deal is closed. Once the deal has been won, you can use Plaky to further organize your client onboarding process.
Finally, I’ve been using Plaky for more than a year now, and the tool only keeps improving and growing. On top of that, the customer support has been helpful and quick to respond, and the developers seem to take user suggestions and critique very seriously, which is always a big plus.
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Plaky is also useful for streamlining customer and client onboarding processes if you use one of Plaky’s onboarding templates:
Cons of using Plaky for sales management
Plaky lacks the integration options the other tools on this list have, and therefore can’t offer the mailing and scheduling possibilities most sales management software typically provide.
Additionally, there are no reporting and analytics options available at this time.
What’s new in Plaky?
The Plaky team has been hard at work implementing new features and improvements such as:
- Gantt view — track task sequencing and overlaps using a Gantt chart.
- Timeline field — add a start and end date to an item and track its progress in the timeline.
- Summary row — shows a summary of your fields for the entire item group at the bottom of every group.
- Private views — lets you create a private view that no one else can see or edit.
Available for: Web, Android, iOS
| Plaky plans | Plaky’s monthly pricing | Plaky’s annual pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Free Forever | N/A | N/A |
| Pro | $4.99 seat/month | $3.99 seat/month |
| Enterprise | $10.99 seat/month | $8.99 seat/month |
#2: Salesforce — best for large sales enterprises
Salesforce is the most comprehensive and robust sales management software on the market. It offers easy lead management. But, all this comes at a steep price, which makes Salesforce more suitable for enterprises with deeper pockets.
Pros of using Salesforce for sales management
Props to Salesforce for being able to keep such a feature-packed system so intuitive and easy to use.
Salesforce makes it easy to track where your leads are in the lead pipeline and manage all the activities related to those leads. I particularly enjoy how easy it is to just convert a lead into an Account, Opportunity, and Contact at the click of a button.
Once you start leading your opportunities through the sales pipeline, you’ll also be able to manage each of them individually or switch to Kanban view to get an overview of how your sales reps are doing, how much money is in the pipeline, etc.
If you find yourself lost in the sea of data, you can either enter what you’re looking for in the search bar or create custom filter views with “and/or” conditions to pinpoint the exact information you need.
Lastly, I love that Salesforce offers add-ons — specific features you can purchase separately, without having to upgrade to a more expensive plan. This isn’t possible with all Salesforce features, but it’s a welcome option more sales management systems would benefit from having.
Cons of using Salesforce for sales management
While add-ons can be great, they also quickly drive up the price of an already expensive product. So, they can be a pro or a con, depending on your needs and budget.
Another other big downside of Salesforce is that it lacks a free plan.
Finally, I couldn’t find a way to create product lists and connect them to the sales opportunities and deals.
What’s new in Salesforce?
Salesforce always keeps adding new features and functionalities to their software, and some of their latest additions include:
- Enablement for sales teams — allow you to build and launch enablement programs and measure their effectiveness through sales reps’ results.
- To-do list view — a mini task management tool that lets users track and organize all the tasks assigned to them.
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If you prefer keeping your sales and to-do lists separate, take advantage of our free to-do list templates you can download, print, or use online, from anywhere:
Available for: Web, Android, iOS
| Salesforce plans | Salesforce’s monthly pricing | Salesforce’s annual pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | N/A | $25 user/month |
| Professional | N/A | $80 user/month |
| Enterprise | N/A | $165 user/month |
| Unlimited | N/A | $330 user/month |
| Unlimited+ | N/A | $500 user/month |
#3: Zoho CRM — best for organization and filtering
Zoho CRM is a feature-packed tool that I thought most resembled Salesforce in the way it was set up.
It offers everything you need for your sales business, with varied options across the many paid plans and even a limited free plan.
Pros of using Zoho CRM for sales management
In my experience, using Zoho is quite simple — all the fields and options are unambiguously named, so it’s easy to find what you’re looking for.
On that note, the filtering options are also quite advanced, which means you shouldn’t have any issues sorting your data.
Other great features in Zoho CRM include:
- Campaigns — you can create and track all your marketing campaigns in one place and connect any leads, contacts, or deals to that campaign. This is one of the features that Pipedrive offers in their paid plans, so if this is something you think you’d like to have, it’s worth knowing that Zoho offers it for free.
- Customizable dashboard — lets you customize your dashboard to show only the information you want to see and generate reports using this data. It’s not possible to create custom reports in the free version of the software, but there are still tons of pre-made reports you can choose from, so that shouldn’t be a big problem.
Cons of using Zoho for sales management
Similar to the HubSpot Sales Hub, Zoho CRM also lacks the option to color code statuses, which I personally find frustrating. However, I find that Zoho’s advanced filter options and more intuitive layout somewhat make up for this drawback.
Also, the Feeds feature in Zoho CRM is meant to function like a built-in team chat app and notification dump in one, but, instead, it feels like a disorganized Facebook wall where information quickly gets buried.
What’s new in Zoho CRM?
Some of the newest additions to Zoho CRM include:
- Stripe Payments Extension,
- Email Validation, ABR Calendly Extension, Trello integration, and WhatsApp integration, and
- OAuth login support for email relay servers for Gmail, Outlook, and Office 365.
Available for: Web, Android, iOS
| Zoho plans | HubSpot’s monthly pricing | HubSpot’s annual pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Free | N/A (up to 3 users) | N/A (up to 3 users) |
| Standard | $20 user/month | $14 user/month |
| Professional | $35 user/month | $23 user/month |
| Enterprise | $50 user/month | $40 user/month |
| Ultimate | $65 user/month | $52 user/month |
#4: Pipedrive — best for easy navigation
Pipedrive is a great choice for small sales businesses. It helps you manage sales pipelines, and keep track of leads in a simple and straightforward way.
Pros of using Pipedrive for sales management
Pipedrive is intuitive and easy to use even if you’ve never used a sales management tool before.
Once I created my account, data imports, email sync, and teammate invites all went quickly and smoothly. Although, it’s worth keeping in mind that my test email had very little data to sync.
As for some of the other benefits Pipedrive offers, I’d highlight the following:
- Offline mode — all the data you enter while you’re not connected to the Internet will automatically update once you come back online.
- Customizable report templates — you can use ready-made report templates and customize them to your needs or create new reports from scratch.
- Smart contact data option — allows you to find publicly available information about leads, saving salespeople time they’d spend on research. It took me some fiddling to enable — even after following the instructions — and while it couldn’t find any information about me, it worked really well when I tried looking up the info on the company I work for. So, I can see how it could be a useful time-saving tool.
Cons of using Pipedrive for sales management
I noticed that Pipedrive wasn’t as feature-packed as some of the other tools on this list (e.g., Salesforce or Act!) — a complaint most users have about this software if review websites are anything to go by. However, smaller teams with simple workflows may find this to be a feature, not a bug.
Besides this, there are several other downsides to Pipedrive that warrant mentioning:
- It doesn’t have a free plan,
- Reporting features are limited in lower-price plans, and
- Security alerts and 2-factor authentication are only available on the Enterprise plan.
What’s new in Pipedrive?
Some of the most notable features and fixes Pipedrive introduced since our last update include:
- Live updates — changes are now updated in real time.
- Interface customization — you can now customize your left toolbar and default views.
- Improved email syncing — you can sync multiple emails to your sales inbox within Pipedrive on Professional, Power, and Enterprise plans.
Available for: Web, Android, iOS
| Pipedrive plans | Pipedrive’s monthly pricing | Pipedrive’s annual pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Essential | $11.90 user/month | $9.90 user/month |
| Advanced | $24.90 user/month | $19.90 user/month |
| Professional | $49.90 user/month | $39.90 user/month |
| Power | $59.90 user/month | $49.90 user/month |
| Enterprise | $74.90 user/month | $59.90 user/month |
#5: Copper — best for beginner sales teams
Copper is one of the easiest sales management software to navigate, making it perfect for those users who haven’t used such tools before.
However, it is on the more expensive side and still needs some polishing.
Pros of using Copper for sales management
Right off the bat, I really liked how easy Copper makes it to get help with anything you need.
In the bottom right corner of the screen, there’s an in-app chat option that lets you chat with a bot or actual human support in real time, access the Copper community page, helpful resources, news, etc. Live support is not available 24/7, but the option still made me feel like the team had my back at all times.
Copper also makes it really easy to schedule activities and log actions retrospectively, as well as unfollow items you don’t want to receive notifications for.
Scheduling meetings is also easy, but Copper doesn’t have an integrated meeting scheduler. Instead, it redirects you to Google Calendar, which may be an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on your preferences.
Copper also has a partnership with Zapier, which means you can connect it to thousands of other apps and improve your workflow.
Cons of using Copper for sales management
Copper doesn’t have a live update feature, so you’d have to get used to refreshing the page from time to time to keep up with the changes. This makes team collaboration more difficult and may create confusion since it sometimes takes a while for a change to register.
As an example, I sent 2 emails to one of my test accounts, and both arrived fine, but Copper never registered that they were sent, and they never appeared in the activity log. I did the same thing for a different test account, but this time had no issues. So, it seems to be quite inconsistent.
Another potential downside could be that you cannot automatically convert leads into opportunities. Instead, you have to manually create them.
What’s new in Copper?
Over the past months, Copper has been hard at work upgrading their interface and adding great quality-of-life features, such as:
- Days in stage reports — show how long it takes for your opportunities to travel through the sales pipeline,
- Emoji comment reactions,
- @mention feature for the Android app, and
- 2-way syncing of tasks and events with Google Calendar.
Available for: Web, Android, iOS
| Copper plans | Copper’s monthly pricing | Copper’s annual pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $29 user/month | $25 user/month |
| Professional | $69 user/month | $59 user/month |
| Business | $129 user/month | $119 user/month |
Sales management software
Manage leads and track the customer onboarding cycle — with Plaky.
#6: Bitrix24 — best for ecommerce sales management
Bitrix24 is a comprehensive sales management tool with a focus on ecommerce.
Bitrix24 is the most unique sales management software on this list thanks to its amazing inventory management and website building tools.
Pros of using Bitrix24 for sales management
Bitrix24 has a built-in website builder where you can create a website without any experience, for free. You can choose from over 70 free pre-made websites, dozens of customizable templates, or can create your own site from scratch.
Bitrix24 also allows you to create an online store. All your customers and orders from the online store will automatically be saved to your Bitrix24 CRM.
From there, you can easily track your sales, leads, contacts, payments, earnings, create marketing campaigns, handle documents, chat, send emails, and so much more.
If you don’t need the ecommerce features, you can still use Bitrix24 as a regular sales management tool.
You might also be interested in knowing that the software boasts advanced automation features that are sure to make your life a lot easier.
Cons of using Bitrix24 for sales management
Something worth mentioning is that many negative reviews of Bitrix24 highlight its complexity and steep learning curve. I thought this was something worth mentioning even though I personally haven’t had any issues with finding my way around the software (except for how to set up smart process automations).
That said, the software offers a surprising number and variety of functionalities, even in the free version. This can certainly be overwhelming for someone who only wants a straightforward sales management solution.
What’s new in Bitrix24?
Recently, Bitrix24 has further improved their software by adding:
- Smart processes — instead of editing existing entities (i.e., contacts, deals, companies, etc.) to fit your company needs, you can now create your own from scratch. Decide which fields you want to have, what they’ll be called, what the sales pipeline will look like, etc., and mold the software to fit your workflow.
- Smart Process Automations — create custom automations to automate the work of any department.
Available for: Web, desktop (Windows, Linux), Android, iOS
| Bitrix24 plans | Bitrix24’s monthly pricing | Bitrix24’s annual pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Free | N/A | N/A |
| Basic | $61 user/month | $43 user/month |
| Standard | $124 user/month | $87 user/month |
| Professional | $249 user/month | $175 user/month |
| Enterprise | $499 user/month | $325 user/month |
#7: Freshsales — best for organizing and tracking leads
Freshsales is a modern-looking sales tool that seamlessly integrates with other Freshworks software to create an all-in-one workspace for your customer and sales management teams.
It is a powerful sales tool, but very limited in its free and lower-tier plans.
Pros of using Freshsales for sales management
Some useful features I encountered in the Freshsales’ free plan include:
- Email templates — let you create templates for common email types you use on a daily basis and insert fields that will be automatically populated to match the information of the person you’re contacting.
- Comprehensive lead profile — all the information related to a specific lead is well-organized and easy to access. I wouldn’t normally point out something that should be a given in a sales management tool, but I believe Freshsales stands out in this respect from other sales software on this list.
- Chat option — you can connect your WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and SMS to the software to see and reply to messages directly within Freshsales.
Cons of using Freshsales for sales management
With only 4 sample contacts, accounts, and deals, it took 2–3 seconds for the software to load the information. This may not seem like much at all. However, it begs the question of how long the loading would take for an actual company with thousands of leads in their sales system.
Like Salesforce, Freshsales also has the option to purchase add-ons, but they are very expensive and therefore not as useful for small businesses and startups.
Finally, while I prefer Freshsales’ use of colors in their interface, I found the layout to be much less intuitive than in Zoho CRM or Salesforce.
What’s new in Freshsales?
Some of the latest software enhancements Freshsales has released in 2023 include:
- Easier contact imports with CSV files,
- Syncing with multiple email domains,
- Viewing edit history.
Available for: Web, Android, iOS
| Freshsales plans | Freshsales’ monthly pricing | Freshsales’ annual pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Free | N/A (up to 3 users) | N/A (up to 3 users) |
| Growth | $18 user/month | $15 user/month |
| Pro | $47 user/month | $39 user/month |
| Enterprise | $83 user/month | $69 user/month |
#8: monday sales CRM — best for easy automations
The monday sales CRM is part of monday.com’s suite of organizational tools geared toward sales management. As such, it shares the recognizable design and intuitive layout of its peers.
Pros of using monday sales CRM for sales management
monday sales CRM is very easy to use. It’s a simple sales tool, with all the essential sales management functionalities and no fluff or distracting features — fitting for small sales teams and those new to sales management.
Something I really liked was how no-nonsense the automation creation tool was. All I needed was to click on automate in the top right corner and set the “When X, do Y” condition from a dropdown menu. Super easy.
The software also integrates with tools such as Dropbox, GitLab, Copper, Jira, Mailchimp, and many others. The list is not extensive, but it covers some of the most popular digital tools on the market, so you’re likely to find what you need in the integrations center.
Cons of using monday sales CRM for sales management
I noticed that there were surprisingly few fields for contact, lead, and company data. For example, the only information you can capture for a lead are name, title, company, email, phone number, and status.
On top of this, I thought the account, contact, lead, and deal cards were poorly connected to one another and contained few available actions you could perform.
Lastly, the software lacks all the advanced functionalities of more sophisticated sales management tools such as Salesforce or even Pipedrive, for instance. This may change in the future, but for now, monday sales CRM remains best suited for those who are just starting out and learning how to use a sales management tool.
What’s new in monday sales CRM?
Some of the most notable releases by monday sales CRM in the past few months include:
- Assistant AI — helps you compose emails and activities. This feature was revealed in September 2023 and is currently still in beta. It will gradually be introduced to customers over the coming months.
- Mass email analytics — help you analyze the success of your campaigns by tracking recipient engagement.
Available for: Web, Android, iOS
| monday sales CRM plans | monday sales CRM’s monthly pricing | monday sales CRM’s annual pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | $15 seat/month | $12 seat/month |
| Standard | $20 seat/month | $17 seat/month |
| Pro | $33 seat/month | $28 seat/month |
| Enterprise | Contact sales | Contact sales |
*The minimum number of seats for each plan is 3
Free monday sales CRM alternative
If you’re considering monday.com — try Plaky, for unlimited number of users, tasks, and projects.
#9: Act! — best for offline sales teams
Act! is one of the oldest sales management systems on the market. It is a well-respected tool with a wealth of features aimed at sales and customer management, such as:
- Automated workflows,
- Templates for building personalized campaigns,
- App integration, etc.
But, it badly needs a makeover.
Pros of using Act! for sales management
Act! is a feature-packed sales management tool that has both a web version and a desktop version. This makes it great for enterprises that want an additional layer of security.
Act! also offers plenty of customization options, from several different views for each group (contacts, opportunities, sales pipeline, etc.), to individual field customization, custom chart and table creation, and much more. This allows sales reps and sales managers to stay focused by pinpointing the exact project KPIs they want to track.
Besides a wealth of sales management features, Act! has a generous offer of features for marketing teams, as well as a built-in project management tool where you can manage your tasks, create to-do lists, notes, etc.
Cons of using Act! for sales management
The two main complaints I had about Act! are that:
- The interface is severely outdated to the point that it’s obstructive, and
- It’s really slow to react.
I found myself clicking on an item multiple times because I thought I had misclicked, only to realize that, no, the response time was simply terrible.
Other than that, I found Act! to be the least intuitive software on this list, and yet, the only one that didn’t have quick guide pop-ups to help newcomers navigate the interface.
What’s new in Act!?
Some of the most notable changes to the Act! software since our last update include:
- Built-in SMS — send and receive text messages directly from Act! (no need for an add-on).
- Advanced chart builder — create a new custom chart within which you can choose the data you wish to track and add it to your dashboard.
- Multi-factor authentication
Available for: Web, desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux), Android, iOS
| Act! plans | Act! monthly pricing | Act! annual pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Premium Cloud (with desktop sync) | N/A | €30 user/month ($32,31) |
| Premium Desktop | N/A | €33 user/month ($35,54) |
#10: HubSpot Sales Hub — best for saving time
HubSpot Sales Hub is a version of HubSpot dedicated to sales management. It can be used on its own, separate from their CRM software package, or as part of it if you’d prefer to use one software for all your teams.
Pros of using HubSpot for sales management
What really caught my eye with HubSpot was their focus on automation — setting up the tool so that it works for you and saves a ton of time.
Some really cool features HubSpot offers that help with automating processes and saving time include:
- Email templates — allow you to write personalized emails in a few clicks. The template will automatically detect the recipient’s name and adequate personal information and insert it into the email template.
- Lists — you can create lists and define conditions for the lists. A list will then automatically update once the condition(s) are met.
- Snippets — let you create shortcuts for writing down phrases, sentences, and even paragraphs you find yourself writing over and over again. It works kind of like choosing tags on Instagram. As soon as you hit “#” and start typing, it will automatically offer you suggestions of the shortcuts you had previously created based on the first few letters.
Cons of using HubSpot for sales management
As someone who enjoys categorizing and color-coding everything I do, I thought that the interface felt monotone and flat. Some may see this as just a matter of aesthetics. But, I could find no way to assign colors to labels or statuses, which made skimming information impossible.
My second complaint is regarding the “Save” button that popped up in the form of a banner at the bottom of the screen after every little change. I can see the potential usefulness of this. However, I found it so unexpected in a web app that I lost all my progress several times before I realized that the banner wasn’t, in fact, an ad and that I had to manually save every single action (e.g., changing lead status).
I also have to mention that I found HubSpot more difficult to navigate than most other tools on this list.
Last, but not least, the free plan is limited, and the paid plans can get very expensive very fast. I’m also not a fan of the mandatory onboarding that costs $1,000+ for some of the plans (see table below).
What’s new in HubSpot Sales Hub
Some of the most interesting features Hubspot introduced since our previous update include:
- HubSpot AI that can be used for drafting personalized emails, creating reports, improved analysis, forecasting, and recommendations, etc., and
- Lead form routing, which allows you to create conditions that — when fulfilled — route your leads in the right direction, and connect them to the right sales rep.
Available for: Web, Android, iOS
| HubSpot plans | HubSpot’s monthly pricing | HubSpot’s annual pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Free | N/A | N/A |
| Starter | Starts at $20/month and includes 2 users (+$10 per additional user) | Starts at $18/month and includes 2 users (+$9 per additional user) |
| Professional | Starts at $500/month and includes 5 users (+$100 per additional user) + $1,125 required, one-time Professional Onboarding fee | Starts at $450/month and includes 5 users (+$90 per additional user) + $1,125 required, one-time Professional Onboarding fee |
| Enterprise | N/A | Starts at $1,500/month and includes 10 users (+$150 per additional user) + $3,500 required, one-time Professional Onboarding fee |
Who uses sales management software?
Sales management software is primarily used by sales reps, sales managers, and sales directors. They use the software daily and actively with the aim of closing more deals and ultimately earning more money for the company.
Sales management software may also be used by other team leads or company executives if they want to gain a better understanding of the performance and effectiveness of the sales teams.
What sales management software features should you look for?
Among the sea of features sales management tools provide, some make a bigger difference than others for sales teams.
A sales specialist from CAKE.com, Niko Tomic, shared with us some of the most important features to look for when choosing sales management software for your sales team:
“Some of the features I’d look for in sales management software are:
- Robust reporting, summary, overview, and export functions,
- Bulk-edit options that cover both editing values in all fields and configuration edits, and
- Automation of certain processes and functions and good integrations with other existing tools.”
Reporting, summary, overview, and export functions
A comprehensive dashboard that shows your performance overview and can be customized to your needs is an invaluable tool in your sales management toolbox. An organized dashboard helps sales teams:
- Understand their performance at a glance, and
- Easily create and export summary reports based on the information in the dashboard instead of doing it manually.
Niko Tomic explained his frustrating experience with a certain sales management tool that lacked the features the sales team desperately needed.
“What I’d say we were missing was a better way to analyze statistics and generate reports. The software was great for keeping track of individual leads, contacts, and companies, but we lacked a simple way to create the monthly reports we needed for internal statistics and things like that, so we did this manually, in Excel.”
Bulk editing
While it seems like a simple enough feature, not all sales management software offer the option to bulk-edit items. This leaves sales teams wasting valuable time (their time really is money) and spending hours doing something that the software should be able to do for them.
Niko Tomic elaborated on the issues that come with the lack of a bulk-edit option in a sales management tool.
“Another thing we found really irritating was the extremely limited or nonexistent bulk-edit option. If we had to change something, we either had to do it item by item, which was extremely time-consuming, or export it to Excel, edit it there, and then import it back to the sales management system (which sometimes wasn’t even possible). This was especially troublesome when we were trying to create a rundown and statistics for the end of the year.”
Automations and integration
Sales teams use sales management software to make their work easier and alleviate the sales reps of the time-consuming manual work that prevents them from actually selling. But, when software fails to do this, it can create more problems than it solves.
Niko Tomic further explained why automations and built-in integration with other tools are so important for sales management systems.
“Also, while the software let us set reminders to notify us when it was time to follow up on a lead, it would have been useful if we could have somehow automated this. For example, if we could have had a reminder be created automatically 7 days after a meeting in the calendar was over.
Instead, we had to manually create reminders after every meeting. This was about more than just reminders. It would have been useful to be able to automate certain processes or to have triggers, like Calendly does, for example. We used API to automate and integrate different tools with our internal Sales panel and get around some of the issues, but it was frustrating nonetheless.”
As a sales and marketing manager at upMention, Alexander Zuidam further elaborated on the importance of integration in sales management and CRM software.
“For us, it is important that both sales management software and CRM software have a good integration. When a lead turns into a client it becomes a project. So all the data and communication we had during the sales process with the lead gets transferred to our CRM software and is accessible for the project managers.”
Why is sales management software useful?
One of the crucial benefits of using sales management software is that it offers a systematic approach to sales and a one-stop shop for all sales processes.
Sales management software is extremely beneficial with:
- Increasing the time sales reps spend actually selling by automating menial tasks that would normally take up a lot of their time. According to McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), about a third of all sales tasks can be automated.
- Improving interactions with current and potential customers by allowing sales reps to receive and reply to emails, SMS, instant messages, and social media DMs, all in one place.
- Fosters customer loyalty and satisfaction rates by centralizing customer data and keeping it accessible, so that sales reps can refer to it whenever they need to. A customer who gets a discount coupon and a happy birthday message from their sales rep is more likely to feel satisfied with the service they received.
- Improving sales performance by tracking important sales KPIs and analytics sales reps and managers can use to analyze and constantly improve their performance, which eventually increases profitability.
💡 PLAKY PRO TIP
Customer retention depends on a high level of customer satisfaction. If you’re still trying to figure out your customer experience philosophy, our collection of famous sayings on the topic may help:
Choose the best sales management software for your team
This was a list of the best sales management software I’ve tried to date.
Now it’s your turn to give them a spin and choose your winner — make sure to include your team in the process and choose a tool that’ll best fit their workflow, but be easy enough to use to not disrupt it.
In the sea of sales management software clones, Plaky stands out as a simple and free solution for small teams who are just starting out. If you need a tool that’s easy to navigate and offers tools for managing all your business projects, from simple daily tasks to sales and client onboarding, Plaky’s got your back! Sign up for Plaky’s free account today and try it out.
