Sales Software

1. Lead Generation Software

What It Does: Inbound or outbound software that helps you find potential contacts, create prospecting lists, and/or generate online leads using paid traffic and lead forms.

Who Should Use It: Inbound or outbound salespeople seeking to build up their client base.

Average Cost: Averages $100 per month; free platforms are available or paid platforms that offer advanced features.

Lead Generation Software Key Features

The most important lead generation software features include contact discovery and visitor identification functionality, lead capture tools, survey forms, and paid traffic sources.

• Contact Discovery: Provides a database to search for, filter and store contact information for prospective clients.
• Visitor Identification: Collects data and contact information from visitors to your website, allowing you to target leads who have shown interest.
• Lead Capture: Adds a landing page or opt-in form to your website to engage with potential clients and collect their contact information.
• Survey Forms: Allows you to build and add a survey to your website to collect contact information while gaining insight into customer preferences.
• Paid Traffic Sources: Utilizes pay-per-click online ads from sources such as Google, Facebook, or Amazon to direct traffic to your website.

Top Lead Generation Software Providers

The top-ranking lead generation software providers are HubSpot, OptinMonster, and WordPress.

• HubSpot: Track, engage, and convert inbound leads from an all-in-one hub that offers web page templates and advanced tracking tools (free starting price)
• OptinMonster: Optimize online conversion rates with customizable, visually appealing opt-in form templates and campaigns for your website (14-day guarantee)
• WordPress: Create and publish a lead generation website with intuitive user interface, templates, and customization tools (free starting price)

2. Lead Qualification Software

What It Does: Organizes and presumptively qualifies leads through scoring and distribution automations so reps can further qualify them in a meeting.

Who Should Use It: Any individual or freelance salesperson, as well as businesses of any size, who source and qualify leads before nurturing them.

Average Cost: Depending on the number of users, it ranges from free to $1,000+ per month.

Lead Qualification Key Features

The top features of lead qualification software are lead scoring and routing capabilities, list segmentation, and pipeline and contact management.

• Lead Scoring: Screen, rank, and qualify leads based on a lead scoring process based on benchmark rules created by the marketing and sales teams.
• Lead Routing: Distribute leads to the correct sales rep and team based on predetermined rules, including the lead’s demographics or behavioral actions.
• List Segmentation: Categorize leads based on measurable values such as demographics or online engagement to create personalized marketing campaigns.
• Pipeline Management: Visualize and compare exactly where leads are in your sales process and how long they’ve been stagnant.
• Contact Management: Store all lead contact information as well as meeting notes or updates to monitor who and when reps engaged with them.

Top Lead Qualification Providers

The best lead qualification providers are Zoho CRM, Freshsales, and EngageBay.

• Zoho CRM: Sources leads from multiple channels and then scores and qualifies them for reps to best strategize lead nurturing tactics (free starting price)
• Freshsales: Uses AI functionality for lead scoring and predictions, then automatically distributes them by sales territory for further qualification (free starting price)
• EngageBay: Organizes leads through automated sourcing rules put in place and then schedules meetings on behalf of sales reps per their availability (free starting price)

3. CRM Software

What It Does: Tracks leads and customers through every stage of your sales process, as well as helps manage the activities performed at each step, such as phone calls and follow-up emails.

Who Should Use It: Any business looking to efficiently move leads through their sales funnel, tracking lead engagement, and building dashboards for workflows and forecasting.

Average Cost: Free options for basic features; up to $300 per month for advanced systems.

CRM Software Key Features

CRM software’s core features include pipeline management, reporting and forecasting capabilities, workflow automation, software integration, and access to customer analytics.

• Pipeline Management: Presents a visual representation of your sales funnel and process allows you to effectively manage your sales pipeline.
• Reporting and Forecasting: Uses sales tracking functionality to estimate future sales revenue, allowing you to make the best selling decisions.
• Workflow Automation: Moves leads through your pipeline by automating routine tasks or communication once a lead is entered into your CRM.
• Software Integration: Integrates third-party sales software with your CRM platform, creating a centralized place for essential functions.
• Customer Analytics: Provides insight into customer data such as preferences and revenue potential for lead nurturing strategies.

Top CRM Providers

Freshsales, Zoho CRM, and Pipedrive are the top-ranking CRM providers.

• Freshsales: AI-powered platform that includes wide-ranging features from pipeline management to analytics and forecasting (free starting price)
• Zoho CRM: Sales pipeline platform that offers marketing and sales functionality, including social media management and email marketing automations (free starting price)
• Pipedrive: CRM software that offers a basic stack of sales and marketing features like a drag-and-drop pipeline builder for monitoring leads with add-ons (14-day free trial)

4. Demo Software

What It Does: Creates and delivers demos of your product or service for leads to experience the solution you offer before a purchase.

Who Should Use It: Sales teams or businesses that offer product demos through their website or lead generation strategy.

Average Cost: Free to $79 per user per month.

Demo Software Key Features

The top features offered by a demo software include a template library, meeting scheduling tools, interactive click features, brand control functionality, and CRM integration capabilities.

• Template Library: Choose from a variety of premade templates and demo designs to select and plug in your information to quickly create and send demos to leads.
• Meeting Scheduling: Schedule, host, and follow up on demo presentations with multiple leads from one software.
• Interactive Click Features: Increase lead engagement with your demos with click features that allow leads to directly interact with the demo.
• Brand Controls: Attach branded content to your demos that your marketing and design teams have approved for brand consistency.
• CRM Integration: Sync your demo software directly to your CRM to automate updates between the two, including lead contract information and meeting notes.

Top Demo Software Providers

The top-scoring demo software providers are Canva, Demostack, and Google Slides.

• Canva: Create demos and presentations through its intuitive interface, along with collaborative team editing, AI tools, and brand logo importing (free starting price)
• Demostack: Imports data about your product and automatically makes a demo sample for you to send to leads or host live demo presentations (free demo available)
• Google Slides: Design slideshow styled presentations within the Google tech stack with high-quality collaboration, control, and editing tools (free starting price)

5. Presentation Software

What It Does: Helps create and display persuasive and visually appealing presentations to prospective clients or customers.

Who Should Use It: Individual sellers and sales teams that present their solution to clients directly.

Average Cost: Ranges from free to $59+ monthly.

Presentation Software Key Features

The most important features of presentation software are integration and customization functions, multi-media importing, mobile device compatibility, and interactive tools.

• Integrations: Allows imports and exports so anyone can view your presentations, and allows you to incorporate Word or Excel files into your presentation.
• Customization and Branding: Provides presentation templates that can be customized to include your branding colors, fonts, and logos.
• Video and Multi-Media Import: Allows you to incorporate videos and other multimedia into your presentation deck.
• Mobile and Tablet Compatibility: Ables for presentations to be viewed on different device types, including a cell phone or tablet.
• Interactive Features: Increases audience engagement by adding polling, feedback surveys, or audience chat.

Top Presentation Software Providers

The top-ranking presentation software are Visme, Prezi, and PowerPoint.

• Visme: Houses a large variety of templates for slide decks, social media, and even videos with highly customizable and intuitive design features (free starting price)
• Prezi: Offers a special zoom-in-and-out feature to keep audiences engaged that prioritizes the flow of information by zooming in on topics and content (14-day free trial)
• PowerPoint: Includes an AI-powered Speaker Coach tool that helps pace and organize your presentation with the Microsoft tech stack (free starting price)

6. Business Proposal Software

What It Does: Creates professional sales proposals and allows you to track, manage, and analyze their performance, including customer interactions.

Who Should Use It: Businesses with high-ticket items or ongoing client work, especially service-based businesses, benefit most from business proposal software.

Average Cost: $5 to $500 monthly, depending on features and number of users.

Proposal Software Key Features

All proposal software should include features like proposal templates, e-signing, CRM integration functionality, and proposal and analytic tracking.

• Proposal Creation and Templates: Create professionally designed proposals using customizable templates and outlines.
• E-Signing: Send the proposals you’ve created directly to your clients for them to review and submit their signatures online.
• Integration With CRM Software: Integrate the software with and pulls information from other CRM software to cut down on administrative work.
• Proposal Tracking: Catalogue and manage proposals and receive notifications on status changes and recommendations for follow-ups.
• Analytics: Track the performance of your proposals with data such as most viewed sections of your proposal, number of views, and length of time spent viewing.

Top Proposal Software Providers

Freshsales, PandaDoc, and FlippingBook are the top-scoring proposal software options.

• Freshsales: Design proposals from a template library through an add-on feature from the CRM (21-day free trial)
• PandaDoc: Create and manage proposals from sending and tracking receipts and signatures from leads (free starting price)
• FlippingBook: Track proposal activity and analytics by monitoring when and how leads engage with the proposal (14-day free trial)

7. Contract Management Software

What It Does: Automates the tasks of producing, storing, signing, and managing contracts throughout their lifecycle.

Who Should Use It: Salespeople who require contract signatures as part of their sales process and want to automate admin work to save time on organizational work and focus on sales.

Average Cost: Free basic platforms or up to $600 monthly for an advanced system that includes signature licenses and AI capabilities.

Contract Management Software Key Features

The best contract management software should have features like contract creation and storage, contract alerts, customizable workflows, and AI capabilities.

• Contract Creation: Build customized contract-types using contract and clause templates and route for esignature.
• Contract Storage and Organization: Utilize a centralized platform to store and organize contracts for easy reference.
• Contract Management and Alerts: Create trigger automated alerts when critical contract dates that require action or decisions approach. 
• Customizable Workflows: Design custom workflows allowing for contract type-specific routing, approving, and managing processes.
• AI Capabilities: Automate tasks such as inserting/extracting data and provides risk assessment and intelligent workflows with performance monitoring.

Top Contract Management Providers

The best contract management providers are PandaDoc, DocuSign, and Zoho Contracts.

• PandaDoc: Helps create contracts with templates, then tracks esignatures through a CRM integration functionality (free starting price)
• DocuSign: Automates contract creation with suggestions and auto-store tools that also notify you when renewals are approaching (30-day free trial)
• Zoho Contracts: Offers collaborative editing and approval workflows with upgrades available within the Zoho product stack (free starting price)

8. Help Desk Software

What It Does: Provides customer service capabilities such as ticketing and resolution, allowing the account management team to own the post-sales process.

Who Should Use It: Best for businesses with a substantial customer base and/or frequent requests for assistance, such as client services or SaaS-based businesses.

Average Cost: Ranges from free to about $25 per month.

Help Desk Software Key Features

The most important features of help desk software are ticketing systems, multi-channeled points of contact, process automation and workflows, and access to analytics.

• Ticketing System: Allows customers to log requests or ask questions online and for customer care teams to view and respond.
• Multi-Channeled Points Of Contact: Permits customers to log tickets via multiple channels such as email, app, web chat, or social media.
• Automation: Automate routine tasks such as converting emails to tickets, routing tickets, and sending alerts with AI powered functionality.
• Analytics: Provides data and insight into trends like most frequent complaints for specific products and customer preferences.
• Custom Workflows: Sets up specific workflows unique to your business based on complaint type and the different roles within your team.

Top Help Desk Software Providers

The best help desk software providers are Freshdesk, LiveAgent, and Intercom.

• Freshdesk: Features automated conversion of tickets from all channels, customized workflows, ticket metrics, and an AI-enabled chatbot (free starting price)
• LiveAgent: Includes chat widget capabilities, multichannel ticket importing, and an AI-whisper assistant (7- to 30-day free trial)
• Intercom: Offers an automated self-resolution bot for the most common issues and a live chat feature for more difficult inquiries (14-day free trial)

9. Sales Management Software

What It Does: A broad software-type that allows managers to optimize productivity through sales planning, performance management, and reporting.

Who Should Use It: Team managers to better empower sales reps and manage performance on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis. Platforms that track, enable, or forecast sales are also useful for individual salespeople.

Average Cost: Because there are a number of different sales management software types, the prices vary, but most essential options are available for free to about $50 monthly.

Sales Management Software Key Features

The most important sales management software features are sales enablement and tracking, commission tracking, rep performance management, and detailed sales reporting and forecasting.

• Sales Enablement: Helps with the development, training, and empowerment of the sales team as a means for boosting performance.
• Sales Tracking: Logs sales activity, providing insight into customer trends and allowing you to track any potential issues in your sales pipeline.
• Commission Tracking: Provides a way to automatically calculate and track commissions and sales benchmarks.
• Performance Management: Allows you to monitor and track employee and departmental performance metrics at each stage of the sales pipeline.
• Sales Reporting and Forecasting: Evaluates historical data, current trends, and business performance to assist in predicting future revenue.

Top Sales Management Software Providers

The top-ranking sales management software providers are SalesRabbit, SalesLoft, and Showpad.

• SalesRabbit: Provides data analytics, performance tracking, lead tracking, and a detailed map application that helps teams improve efficiency (free starting price)
• SalesLoft: Guides reps through the sales process and includes analytics reports, a sales forecasting feature, and team collaboration features (free demo available)
• Showpad: Allows teams to develop and share content in a visual way with collaboration and integration features with AI functionality (free demo available)

10. VoIP Phone Systems

What It Does: A complete business phone system that runs over the internet instead of copper wires, providing better performance and more features than traditional office phone systems.

Who Should Use It: Larger sales teams that need multiple desk phones and sales phone lines.

Average Cost: $18 to $80 per month for one to 100+ phone lines, billed annually or monthly.

VoIP Phone System Key Features

The top VoIP phone systems often include features like unlimited phone lines and calling, video conferencing, advanced call handling, and CRM integration functionality.

• Unlimited Business Calling and Texting: Provides unlimited domestic calling and texting for each phone line and extension.
• Unlimited Phone Lines: Allows phone lines up to 999+, with options for small sales teams as well as large call centers with many phone lines.
• Video and Audio Conferencing: Offers tiers with built-in conference calling for internal and external use in addition to calling and texting.
• Advanced Call Handling: Helps manage larger teams with higher call volumes via call routing, auto attendant, call whisper, and hot desking. 
• CRM Software Integrations: Integrates with your CRM software, allowing you to make and track calls directly from your CRM.

Top VoIP Phone System Providers

Nextiva, RingCentral, and GoTo Connect are the top VoIP phone system providers.

• Nextiva: Offers scalability for a range of businesses, from voice and video conferencing to integration with your CRM software (free demo available)
• RingCentral: Includes unlimited lines, unlimited calling in the US and Canada, voicemail to text, call recording, and custom integrations (14-day free trial)
• GoTo Connect: Provides video conferencing with screen sharing, custom hold music, international calling, and wait time announcements for callers (free demo available)

11. Virtual Phone Number

What It Does: Gives you a separate business phone number on your personal device that lets you flip between business and personal calls and texts.

Who Should Use It: Those who want a business phone number on their personal device. Especially for individual reps who may not need a complete business phone system or teams with salespeople who are often in the field and on-the-go.

Average Cost: $26 to $90 per month for up to five phone numbers, billed annually or monthly.

Virtual Phone Number Key Features

Virtual phone number software’s key features typically consist of mobile phone compatibility, virtual receptionists, voicemail transcriptions, additional phone numbers, and call blasting.

• Softphone App: Provides an app on your personal phone that allows you to make and receive business calls and texts from a separate phone number.
• Virtual Receptionist: Administers either live receptionists or automated attendant services that can pick up and route missed calls as well as take messages.
• Voicemail Transcription: Transcribes missed messages automatically and read them using voicemail transcription.
• Additional Numbers and Extensions: Offers the creation of multiple business lines with unlimited extension capabilities. 
• Call Blasting: Allows inbound calls to multiple lines or extensions at once to ensure a customer or prospect’s phone call is never missed.

Top Virtual Phone Number Providers

Grasshopper, Ooma, and Google Voice are the top virtual phone number software providers.

• Grasshopper: Provides intuitive interface with a virtual receptionist, voicemail transcription, and call transfers (7-day free trial)
• Ooma: Supports unlimited users and provides handy advanced features such as video conferencing, call recording, and voicemail transcription (free consultation available)
• Google Voice: Allows users to make and monitor calls from anywhere with customized daily workflows and Google stack integrations ($10 per user per month starting price)

Bottom Line: Sales Software

Many sales software platforms offer various degrees of crossover or an integrated, all-in-one toolset, while others specialize in a specific area. Whether you need one software type or an arsenal in your sales stack — utilizing sales software is key to increasing efficiency and boosting sales. Now that you know the top software types and why they’re effective, check out our article on the top sales tool providers to help build your sales tech stack.