13 Best Sales Enablement Tools 2019

Sales enablement is an umbrella term that describes a range of methods and tools that are used to increase the effectiveness of sales organizations and individual salespeople. We looked at a range of software tools that help streamline processes, to bring you this list of the best to help enable your sales team.

Top 13 Sales Enablement Tools 2019

How We Evaluated the Best Sales Enablement Software

We considered a variety of factors that make sales enablement software a useful tool for salespeople and sales teams, including how the software tool helps move the sales process forward or eliminate redundant steps. We also evaluated factors like pricing, ease of use, and what integrations are available to connect your overall sales process.

A few of the specific factors we looked at include:

• Price and affordability: Because the overall price is a factor in terms of the return on your investment in any technology or tool, we looked at the monthly and/or setup costs involved with each tool.
• Ease of use: In order for a tool to help enable your sales process, it has to be something you’ll actually use, so we considered the overall ease of use along with how simple the tool is to set up.
• Integrations: While not every sales enablement tool has to integrate with other business apps, the most helpful tools are ones that work with your existing set of sales management and customer relationship management (CRM) software.
• Customer Support: When you depend on software to help you make more sales, it’s good to know that someone will stand behind it and help when something goes wrong. We evaluated each tool’s overall customer support and training options.
• Overall features and functionality: Finally, we considered how each tool helps enable your sales team to perform better on a daily basis as a result of the features and functionality built into each software.

1. Pipedrive

What it costs: Pipedrive plans range from $15 to $59/user per month.
What it does: Helps manage contact and sales opportunities, and move them through your sales process with a visual pipeline tool.

Pipedrive Visual Pipeline Management

Pipedrive is a CRM that helps sales teams to work more efficiently by providing an intuitive interface to manage leads, customers, and sales opportunities. The visual pipeline tool makes it easy to see exactly where each of your deals are at in the sales process, and quickly identify the sales activities required to move them forward. For example, if a deal has been sitting in one stage for too long, it will turn red to draw attention to itself.

Pipedrive also includes sales goal tracking and activity reporting to help you stay focused on your goals and plan the activities that will help you get there. Sales managers can use the individual and team goals to motivate and reward their team with effective compensation plans.

Pipedrive’s plans range from $15 – $59/user per month, though a discount is available if you pay annually. A free trial is available and you can get started by visiting its website.

Pro tip: A CRM is one of the most important sales enablement tools because it allows you to measure and manage each and every key stage of your sales process efficiently. We recommend Pipedrive because it keeps sales CRM simple and sales-focused, and sales teams love Pipedrive because it works exactly how they would expect a CRM to work.

Visit Pipedrive

“I found the thing I liked most about Pipedrive is its user interface. It’s very clean, easy to use, and you can easily move a deal from one column to another with a mouse click, as opposed to having to go into the details of the deal to do so. Sales is part of my job, but I am not a full-time sales person. Pipedrive helps me keep track of all of my sales prospects in an efficient way so that I can spend the time I need to on new business activities while freeing me up to do everything else I need to do for my clients and my company.”

—Scott Rosenblum, President/Founder, LEVEL PR

2. Guru

What it costs: $14/user per month, to $24/user per month.
What it does: Create a knowledge library that can be searched and used by teams to standardize best practices and policies.

Knowledge-base using Guru
Source: Guru

Guru is designed to make it easy for teams to create an overall knowledge base that can be used across the organization to standardize your best practices. It includes a card-based interface that allows you to share information and makes it intuitive to navigate. Guru’s plans start at $14/user per month, and include unified sync, the ability to embed guru cards, and analytics reporting to help you see where your team is finding the most help.

Guru also features a Chrome browser extension and Slack integration that makes it easy to access your company’s information, even when you’re busy getting work done. This helps enable sales because it puts the standard operating procedures (SOPs) and best practices within reach while your team is working on building new customer relationships.

3. HelloSign

What it costs: Ranges from free to $40/user per month.
What it does: Simple online document signing for individuals or teams.

Hellosign helps you get your deals signed quickly

HelloSign is a cloud-based tool that allows you to collect digital signatures on proposals, deal contracts, or product orders. One of the benefits is that it includes integrations with Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, and G Suite, making it easy for your sales team to quickly access the documents they need and share them with customers to move the deal forward. The free plan allows individuals to use up to three documents per month.

In addition, HelloSign protects your documents with bank-level security, ensuring that your signatures will stand up in court. HelloSign’s paid plans begin at $13 per month and include unlimited document signing and your branding. You can sign up for a 30-day free trial of the higher-tier plans, but for most users needing a solution to digitally sign a few proposals and contracts a month, HelloSign’s free plan is a great choice. Visit HelloSign today to get started.

4. Zoom

What it costs: Free for meetings up to 40 minutes. Paid plans start at $14.99/user per month.
What it does: Video conferencing tool with a free plan that can be used for simple online one-on-one or group meetings.

Video Meetings Using Zoom

Zoom is a video conferencing tool with a free plan that can be used for simple online one-on-one or group meetings. This can be especially helpful in enabling sales since it is a great tool for presenting proposals, internal account review meetings, and external meetings with customers. It also works well for keeping your field team connected remotely, which is similar to how we use it here at Fit Small Business.

In addition to letting you meet face to face online, Zoom’s free plan allows you to host an unlimited number of one-to-one meetings, and group meetings of up to 100 people (though meetings are limited to 40 minutes). It also lets you share your screen, making it ideal for conducting product demos, customer training, or support.

The paid plans start at $14.99 and include longer meeting durations, advanced administrative controls and reporting, as well as 1GB of online cloud-based storage for sharing recordings of your meetings. Zoom includes HD video and voice, automatically highlights the active speaker, and allows users to share their screen with participants. Visit Zoom today to create your free account.

5. UpLead

What it costs: $49 to $299/month
What it does: Allows users to search its database for verified contact information based on company, industry, geographic location, or role, and download them directly to your CRM.

UpLead search interface

UpLead is a lead-purchasing database that describes itself as a “real time verified B2B database that helps you find new customers and accelerate growth.” It helps enable your sales team by providing lists of email addresses in a searchable database that they have verified for accuracy. UpLead verifies these contacts upon export, ensuring that users won’t end up with large lists of bounced emails or take a hit to their sender reputation due to bad email addresses.

UpLead is a good fit for businesses looking for lead generation software that base a large amount of their prospecting on cold calls/cold emails, and those that need to generate large quantities of leads to move through a sales process. UpLead allows you to search for contacts based on criteria such as industry, title, location, company, and social profiles, among others.

UpLead charges a monthly fee based on a number of credits, which can be used for contact downloads. Pricing starts at $49 per month for 200 credits. Plans are also available at $149 a month for 1,000 credits, and $299 a month for 3,000 credits. UpLead also features the ability to integrate with Salesforce, which allows you to export contact directly to your CRM to manage.

6. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

What it costs: $79/user per month.
What it does: LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator is a prospecting tool that allows you to discover leads through the popular professional social network.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator search interface

Sales Navigator makes it easy to find new customers and prospects by searching LinkedIn with a range of filters. For example, you can search by industry, role, keyword, or location. Sales Navigator also helps you turn leads into accounts to stay up to date on recent developments, allowing you to track the most recent updates on your homepage. Sales Navigator costs $79.99 per month and provides you access to the entire LinkedIn network for lead generation.

It gives you in-depth information about both your leads and their companies. It includes recommended leads, which are prospects that LinkedIn identifies based on factors like their company, their connection to existing leads, and their roles. For sales professionals who are active on LinkedIn, and those who focus on account-based sales management, Sales Navigator enables sales by making it easy to search and find your target customer.

7. Showpad

What it costs: The company makes this information available upon request
What it does: Showpad delivers sales content and coaching in a simple cloud-based environment.

Showpad content library

Showpad is a sales content library that makes it easier to find, present, share, and measure the results of your sales collateral. Unlike traditional file-sharing or content management systems, Showpad lets you present and distribute your content in a cloud-based, branded environment. It allows your sales reps to access your library of marketing and sales collateral to find the right content, send it to prospects and track prospect engagement within each piece of content.

In addition, Showpad includes a coaching module that allows sales organizations to centralize all of their training and coaching resources, making it easy for sales reps to find what they need, wherever they happen to be.

Showpad is cloud-based, so it will support your sales reps wherever they happen to be.

The in-app reports allow sales reps to know what prospects have reviewed and when so they can make a timely follow-up. Importantly, sales leaders can track top performers’ habits to see what content they use at each stage of the sales process. This helps them to share this knowledge with other team members to improve the sales effectiveness of the team as a whole.

8. Canva

What it costs: Free, with a Pro version that adds additional functionality for $12.95/user per month.
What it does: Canva allows you to create beautiful graphics that you can use in sales materials, presentations, or online.

Canva design interface

Canva is an intuitive online design software tool that makes it easy for small businesses to create their own sales support materials without the need to hire a graphic designer. It can be used to design presentations, flyers, social media graphics, web banners, and print collateral. These sales support materials will help your sales team to follow up with prospects and maintain touch points outside of phone calls and meetings.

Most users will find that the free version, which includes thousands of free templates and stock photos, to be sufficient for their graphic design needs. The paid plan offers additional team sharing capabilities, as well as access to a larger library of premium stock images.

Canva also has an intuitive mobile app which makes it easy to design or edit graphics on the go. With over 8,000 user-generated themes to choose from, you can create infographics, social posts, sales brochures, and much more with a bit of creativity. The interface is drag-and-drop, so it’s easy to tweak your graphics to look the way you want. Visit Canva’s website for more information.

9. Zapier

What it costs: Free for limited integrations. Paid plans are $20 to $250 per month.
What it does: Allows you to connect third-party software tools that don’t already have built-in integrations with each other.

Zapier integrations and workflows

Zapier is a workflow automation software that allows you to connect software tools that don’t already have native integrations. This is especially helpful in connecting different parts of your sales process, to enable better communication and timely follow up. Zapier lets you create what are called “Zaps” to connect tools like your CRM to your project management tool and have it automatically create a new project or task every time you close a deal.

Zapier’s free plan lets you create five Zaps at a time and send 100 contacts per month between connected software apps. Paid plans are available at $20, $50, $125, and $250 a month and increase both the number of Zaps and the amount of information you can send. These plans also give access to “Premium” Zaps that include connections with software and platforms like Salesforce, QuickBooks and PayPal.

10. Freshchat

What it costs: Free to $39/user per month, when paid annually.
What it does: Freshchat allows you to embed a real-time chat window on your website, allowing you to engage with and capture leads while prospects and customers are most interested.

Freshchat webchat interface

Freshchat is a chat tool that can easily be embedded into your website to communicate with prospects and customers while they are engaged with your site in real time. Freshchat integrates seamlessly with WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify, and Facebook Messenger, making it a great tool for connecting with prospects wherever they are. Freshchat also integrates with both Freshsales and Freshdesk making it a powerful front-end sales communication tool.

Freshchat offers a free plan that includes up to 10,000 unique monthly visitors and supports up to 10 team members. This plan, called the Sprout plan, is free forever and Freshchat also offers free trials of each of their higher-tier paid plans, which include advanced features like automatic agent assignment. It also works with other Freshworks products like Freshcaller which help enable and track phone outreach activities. Visit Freshchat to get started.

Visit Freshchat

11. Slidebean

What it costs: $96 to $249 per year.
What it does: Slidebean allows you to easily create sales presentations using professionally-designed templates.

Slidebean templates

Slidebean is a slide design software tool that allows you to create professional pitch presentations without the need for graphic design expertise. It also provides useful analytics, which helps sales teams convert deals at the next stage. Slidebean includes professionally designed templates, and additional designs can be purchased as upgrades. These templates allow you to easily add your own text and images to enhance your presentation.

Apart from allowing you to create professional standard pitch presentations in-house, Slidebean’s metrics allow you to monitor when, where and for how long your audience views your presentation as well as which slides they view for the longest. This information will enable your sales reps to know who to call and when is the right time to engage with them.

12. BombBomb

What it costs: Plans start at $35 per month for up to 2,500 contacts.
What it does: Allows you to embed video with email and track the performance of your messages.

BombBomb video email composition

BombBomb helps agents easily create personalized videos, insert them directly into emails, and track who watches them. Including videos in your emails helps them stand out in a crowded inbox, and has resulted in over 80% more replies and responses for BombBomb’s clients. Plus, because it’s not an attachment, your video message actually gets delivered and seen.

BombBomb offers three service plans. The Individual Plan includes the ability to send unlimited video emails to up to 2,500 contacts, and Individual Plus users can have up to 3,500 contacts. Prompt includes up to 3,500 contacts plus advanced features like made and sent-for-you campaigns, custom-branded emails, and training videos.

Using video in your email is a great way to introduce a new product or service to an existing customer. BombBomb makes it easy to send personalized video emails to your contacts and lets you keep track of when they receive and view your message. BombBomb plans start at $39 per month, and it offers a 14-day free trial. Visit BombBomb to try it for free today.

13. Calendly

What it costs: Free to $12/user per month
What it does: Allows users to send a link to let contacts to self-schedule appointments based on your availability.

Calendly self-scheduling interface

Calendly is a free automated scheduling tool that makes it easy for salespeople to book more customer appointments by letting them pick the date and time that works best without all of the back and forth email conversation. It integrates with Google and Outlook Calendars, and lets you set your availability. Then, you simply provide your personalized scheduling link and let customers book a time that works, eliminating the hassle of scheduling meetings.

Calendly also offers paid versions starting at $8/user per month, which allow advanced integrations with GoToMeeting, Zapier, and Salesforce, as well as multiple appointment types. The paid versions also include administrative and team features for managing group and team scheduling needs.

Bottom Line: Sales Enablement Software

Providing your sales team with the tools they need to perform at their best is one of the most important aspects of sales enablement. The software tools in this article offer the features you need to improve efficiency and effectiveness at every stage of your sales process, which leads to more conversions and higher sales revenue.

Since the heart of any sales organization is its CRM, we recommend Pipedrive as a highly-intuitive way to track leads, customers, and sales opportunities. Plans start at $12.50/user per month, and allow you to easily move deals through your sales pipeline, and visualize when you need to take action. Visit Pipedrive to start a 14-day free trial today.

Visit Pipedrive