13 Best Sales Management Software Tools for Small Business

Sales management software helps managers and business owners track, enhance, and oversee the performance of their sales teams. Users can optimize their teams’ workflows and close more deals using customer relationship management (CRM) or specialty software for gamification, enablement, project management, or analytics. We’ve evaluated dozens of software products for sales management and selected the top 13 for small businesses.

Best Sales Management Software

1. amoCRM: Best CRM for sales process tracking and analytics
2. Zoho CRM: Great for sales managers who need low-cost CRM system customization
3. Freshsales: Excellent sales CRM for helping teams perform through built-in telephonic capabilities
4. HubSpot: Best sales management CRM for ease of use when tracking and reporting activities
5. Ambition: Solid choice for analyzing performance and coaching sales reps
6. Hoopla: Best performance management tool with a rewards system
7. VanillaSoft: Excellent platform for assisting reps with lead management and engagement
8. Nextiva: Top pick for managers looking for robust phone communication and a contact center solution
9. UpLead: Ideal for managers looking to supply sales reps with business-to-business (B2B) leads
10. monday.com: Great option for those seeking a simple project management tool
11. Airtable: Best project management software for teams seeking an interactive interface
12. Clari: Good choice for managers seeking in-depth pipeline analysis
13. Gong: Terrific analytics tool with simple forecasting reports

Best Sales Management Software Compared

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*Billed annually; monthly billing is also available at higher prices
**Tier-based pricing model

Best CRM Software for Sales Management

CRM systems are used to organize leads, communicate with contacts, automate sales tasks, and track current opportunities in the sales pipeline. Because this type of sales software stores real-time data relating to a sales operation, CRMs offer an all-in-one solution for tracking and enabling lead generation and deal production activities. Some CRMs also provide performance management capabilities such as gamification, goal setting, and quota-monitoring features.

1. amoCRM: Best for Process Tracking Tools

*Based on six-month billing; other billing options are also available for higher prices

amoCRM is an excellent CRM platform for organizing contact data, managing leads, and monitoring the sales pipeline. This platform also has automation capabilities, including lead scoring to quantify the best current opportunities and process automation that auto-creates tasks based on the activity that occurs.

As it relates to sales management, amoCRM offers analytics and reporting functions to view key performance indicators (KPIs), analyze calls, set and track goals, and run sales forecasts. Reporting can be segmented by teams or branches and evaluate both activity input such as calls made and output such as deals closed. There are even process analytics that help managers find bottlenecks in their sales process for improvement.

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2. Zoho CRM: Best for CRM Customization

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available at slightly higher rates

Zoho CRM is a cost-effective CRM solution for automating workflows, managing leads, and collaborating on opportunities. This product includes many modules for managing sales, such as gamification, pipeline tracking, activity reporting, auto-lead assignment, and analytics. The analytics features, many of which use artificial intelligence (AI), provide insights into processes you can automate, task suggestions, and a prediction builder to forecast any type of measurable outcome.

While Zoho has a wide range of built-in capabilities and native and third-party integration options, the system customization is the most appealing. Managers and business owners appreciate the tailoring of data fields, pipeline stages, reports, predictions, automated workflows, and full modules this CRM offers. This is especially useful for firms with a unique operation that demands a niche selection of CRM components.

Want more information about Zoho? Our Zoho CRM review tells you everything you need to know about the features, pricing, usability, and customer support Zoho can offer your business.

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3. Freshsales: Best CRM With Telephonic Capabilities

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available at slightly higher rates

Freshsales is a CRM with various communication channels, including live chat, phone, text, social media integrations, and sales automation tools. For instance, managers can get automated sales insights like lead scoring, whether a deal is “rotten,” and suggestions as to which deals should be included in a sales forecast through the Freddy AI tool. It also has automated lead and deal assignment that pairs nicely with the contact management features.

This software is an excellent tool for giving your team the resources they need to perform through the built-in telephone system. Its features allow reps to place and receive phone calls, record conversations, log call information, and manage the call waiting queue. These capabilities are available with Freshsales and the native Freshdesk Contact Center for handling new business opportunities and current customers.

Learn more about Freshsales and its powerful tools for helping manage sales opportunities by reading our in-depth Freshsales review to see if it’s right for your business.

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4. HubSpot: Best Easy-to-Use Activity Monitoring Features

*Pricing is for the Sales Hub. Bundled options with Marketing, Customer Service, CMS, and Operations Hubs are available for a bulk deal. Pricing also based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available for slightly more.

HubSpot is an excellent sales and marketing CRM for tracking leads, opportunities, and designing and deploying marketing campaigns. This platform has advanced features like analytics, automated lead rotation, deal scoring, and revenue forecasting. Managers can also create and store sales playbooks for reps to use for reference during their day-to-day and do coaching based on call transcriptions collected in the CRM.

The activity monitoring and reporting tools are notably simplified in HubSpot. Managers, even ones new to using a CRM, can simplify goal setting and quota management by assigning activity or production minimums to teams or individual reps. They can then pull the real-time information and display it on the reporting module for evaluation with just a few clicks.

HubSpot has various products available to bundle for sales, marketing, content management, customer service, and operations teams. Check out our HubSpot CRM review to see if their solutions are right for your organization.

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Best Performance Management Software

Performance management software is used to increase the effort and knowledge of sales reps—allowing them to improve their activity and sales production. These sales management systems are typically in the form of gamification software to create friendly competitions between reps that use rewards and recognition for success.

5. Ambition: Best for Sales Coaching Features

Ambition is an all-in-one performance management solution with a module for encouraging teams using gamification. Here, reps can compete to receive accolades, improve their scorecards, and compete with their peers in a sales contest. There are also goal-setting and monitoring features and performance tracking using key performance indicator (KPI) and preset goal metrics.

In addition to gamifying a sales operation, managers can coach their reps using check-ins, scorecard analysis, and customizable programs to improve their knowledge of sales techniques to generate leads and close deals. Action plans with in-depth timelines can also be designed to put individual reps on the best track to become better at their craft.

Want to learn more performance management tools applicable to other departments outside of sales? Here are our picks for the top performance management systems for 2022.

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6. Hoopla: Best for Rewarding Great Performance

Hoopla is considered a workplace engagement platform that helps recognize and encourage high performance. For gamification, team leaders can design various one-on-one, tournament-style, and multiparticipant contests to get reps excited to contribute. Winners can then be recognized through newsflashes within the platform or on directing messaging tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Users can also take advantage of the Hoopla rewards system. As employees receive points for achieving goals, hitting quotas, or conquering KPIs, those points can be traded in for an array of electronics, vacation, and other prizes from the system’s reward store. Using rewards employees love not only pushes them to do their best, but also promotes a positive sales culture that yields lower employee churn and higher job satisfaction.

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Best Sales Enablement Tools

Sales enablement tools encompass a range of software, information, and other resources managers provide to reps to help them become more productive, organized, and efficient in their day-to-day activities. While the term is relatively broad, any data-sharing, automation technology, content, or communication tools that make a sales team’s job easier is considered an enablement solution.

7. VanillaSoft: Best for Helping Teams Directly Engage With Leads

VanillaSoft is sales software that helps businesses better handle leads. This platform is applicable for both inside sales teams who conduct initial outreach to set up appointments with interested contacts and outside teams who handle the client-facing and deal-closing activities. With the multichannel communication tools, reps can contact and monitor conversations through a built-in phone, live chat, SMS text, and email system.

Teams can also track their opportunities in terms of associated activity and performance to find trends and see which lead or communication channels are most effective. Users build out call scripts for reps to handle objections and adapt to changes during their conversations. There is even the ability to do inbound lead capture through online forms, queue-based routing depending on how “hot” the lead is, and set sales appointments.

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8. Nextiva: Best Sales Management Tool With a Comprehensive Call Center

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available for slightly more

Nextiva is a communication platform that enables sales teams to contact leads or customers through phone, video conferencing, or SMS text and track those conversations. Teams can integrate their contact database with CRMs such as Salesforce, Zoho CRM, HubSpot, and SugarCRM to keep all of their information in sync across systems and collaborate through team task tracking, file and screen sharing, and internal chat.

In addition to the communication channels and collaboration tools, Nextiva also offers basic pipeline and lead tracking. There’s also a unique customer experience score feature that lets you gauge the current mood of prospects and customers based on interactions with them. This helps generate automated smart recommendations to know what you should send to a lead and when, so you can get optimal results.

Find out if Nextiva is the right voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) platform for your business with our in-depth Nextiva review. You’ll learn which businesses this solution is best for and get details on all the features it offers.

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9. UpLead: Best for Providing Reps With B2B Leads

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available at slightly higher rates

Sometimes, the best way for a manager to enable a sales team to close more deals isn’t with technology or coaching, but with data. UpLead is a business-to-business (B2B) contact database users can use to search, filter, and generate lead lists based on industry, job title, company size, location, and the technology in use.

A relatively new feature is the Intent Data tool that helps optimize outreach timing based on when a decision-maker is seeking a solution or searching for a term. This powerful tool removes the guessing game during lead generation and qualification, as your team will only attempt to connect or prioritize connecting with prospects looking to buy the products and services you sell.

Did you know that UpLead also is one of our picks for the top lead data providers? Check out our buyer guide on the best places to buy leads to find the right solution for you.

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Best Project Management Software

Sales managers often find themselves managing large or long-term activities on the side and not directly part of the day-to-day sales operation. Things like content development, CRM or sales data migration, and training programs, for instance, are projects which once completed, help the sales team improve their performance and efficiency.

10. monday.com: Best Simple Project Management Tool

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available for slightly more

monday.com is a simple solution for managing projects, tasks, and collaborating with a team. Through a system of items and boards, users can create, assign, monitor, and communicate on tasks associated with a project or workflow and view its progress on the dashboard, Kanban, timeline, calendar, chart, or map views.

There’s also the option to enhance the team experience through file storage and sharing within items, integrations with third-party software products, and automation of repetitive tasks on your board. This work management system is cost-friendly, easy to use, and offers prebuilt boards teams can use, including a CRM system for tracking leads and the sales pipeline.

Want more details on this excellent project management tool? We have the insights on everything you need to know about the pricing, usability, and features in our monday.com review.

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11. Airtable: Best for Designing Interactive Interfaces

*Pricing based on annual billing; monthly billing is also available at slightly higher rates

Airtable is well-known as a workflow and process management tool with an array of dynamic views for project records, including grid, calendar, Kanban, gallery, Gantt, and timeline. Users can attach files to records, comment on them, and create task automation both in the Airtable system and with outside applications. Additionally, records can be simple data entries like text and numbers or utilize more advanced field options such as check boxes or drop-downs.

One of the features appealing to sales managers, especially if they are managing complex or unique workflows, is the interface designer. This drag-and-drop function lets you create custom interfaces that put all your dashboards, layouts, charts, and data in one place. For example, if you want to link an inventory record with an address, you can add a map to the interface that goes to that inventory’s source location upon clicking the specific record.

In addition to being a project management tool, Airtable can be used as a CRM system to manage leads and opportunities. Learn how in our article: How to Use Airtable as a CRM.

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Best Sales Analytics Software

This type of software is for gaining intelligence regarding your sales operation. Managers use information about their sales projections, pipeline health, lead sources, and rep activity to make resource allocation and strategic decisions as well as use for coaching opportunities. These tools typically pull data from a CRM system and use artificial intelligence (AI) or other analytics features to provide actionable insights.

12. Clari: Best for Analyzing the Sales Pipeline

Clari was designed to help teams win more deals and better monitor their sales operation. Using AI, the platform allows managers to make accurate revenue projections, see the most important indicators of their revenue, and track changes to a projection, such as a prospect unexpectedly de-committing from a deal. There are also excellent analytics into prospective accounts and sales activity conducted to see where reps’ attention should be.

Arguably, the most valuable feature of Clari is the pipeline management and analytics tools. With total visibility, users can see in real time which deals are on the move, halted, or at risk of being lost. They also identify bottlenecks in terms of which stages seem to be where opportunities are lost in order to coach individual reps. There are even insights as to why a pipeline’s health has changed and opportunity scoring to help teams prioritize deals.

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13. Gong: Best for Simplified Sales Forecasts

Gong is a revenue intelligence platform with modules for tracking activity, monitoring deal pipelines, and coaching reps in sales, marketing, or customer success teams. The interface is notably easy to navigate, and pulling analytics reports is simple thanks to the AI that captures buyer interactions and data for accurate insights.

One of the most popular Gong features is the sales forecasting modules. In addition to AI pulling in information, the users can commit and approve deals that will be closed within the specified time duration. The forecasting takes into account pending pipeline deals, shows you which ones are doing poorly and why, and presents you with estimates related to individual or team revenue targets.

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How We Evaluated the Best Sales Management Systems

Because sales managers have a wide range of responsibilities, including planning, executing, and monitoring a sales operation, we only considered products that could assist with one or some of those requirements. From there, we evaluated various product attributes relevant to selecting a provider including:

• Pricing: We evaluated the affordability of each product in terms of free plan availability and scalable subscription options that allow growing businesses to slowly upgrade. Additionally, the ability to pay monthly or annually was considered as well as the overall value for getting solid features at competitive prices.
• Relevant functionality: This attribute refers to fulfilling capabilities associated with its primary function. For instance, project management tools are expected to offer a wide range of tools, views, and capabilities specifically around project-based work, just as sales analytics platforms are expected to have various reporting and intelligence capabilities.
• General features: General features are capabilities found in all business software, regardless of primary function. This includes third-party and native software integration options, the availability of a mobile app, and system customization for data fields and automated workflows found within the platform.
• Ease of use: Product usability is the intuitiveness of setting up your account, operating the features, and navigating the interface. We also evaluated the technical skills required to integrate with other platforms and import data from other applications.
• Customer support: Having a service department to assist helps with any issues users encounter while using the products. We measured this based on having multiple lines of communication channels such as phone, email, and live chat, as well as whether they offer 24/7 or business hour support. Online resources and self-help guides were also taken into account.

Bottom Line

Sales managers, executives, and business owners have demanding jobs that require them to wear many hats, including operations lead, project manager, data analyst, sales coach, and enablement specialist. Any tools that assist a manager or team lead in making proper decisions or providing adequate knowledge and resources to their team can make the difference between a high-performing sales department and a lackluster one.