10 Best Sales Tools for Startups to Get Growth to Series A Level
Check out 10 high-performing sales tools that can help you reach Series A growth
Growing a startup to reach Series A funding is no small task. It requires smart strategies, a sustainable business model, product-market fit, and the right tools to help your sales team close deals and scale quickly.
Here are 10 of the best AI for sales tools to help your startup grow.
What is sales software?
Sales software refers to tech tools that accelerate sales cycles by automating processes and streamlining workflows. These tools provide features that make sales teams more productive, improve the customer journey, and cut down on costs.
Main features of sales software
Sales platforms frequently cover many of these processes:
- Contact management – Sales platforms often have a database of B2B leads with contact details, demographics, and interaction history. Some also have tools for tracking online activity, recording cold calls, and capturing personal information.
- Lead management – Sales software commonly includes tools that discover, qualify, and nurture leads. Some also assign lead scores and craft outreach emails.
- Pipeline management – Sales solutions usually include features that visualize sales pipeline stages, making it easy to spot and manage opportunities. They enable teams to identify bottlenecks and push prospects down their funnel and pipeline.
- Productivity management – AI tools for sales can help organize daily tasks and schedules. Some automatically book meetings, track activities, and send deadline reminders.
- Data management – Sales solutions often provide dashboards that report key sales metrics for making forecasts and decisions. Teams can use them to identify areas for improvement.
Aside from these sales motions, specific qualities can be built into AI sales tools.
How can a startup benefit from using sales tools?
The right tools will make your sales processes more efficient while bolstering your reps’ productivity.
Here are some other benefits of AI sales software.
Facilitates teamwork
Sales software offers a single source of truth, making it easy for people to work together. It facilitates teamwork not only between reps but also across departments. 78% of sales professionals like how their CRM is improving the alignment between sales and marketing.
Makes it easy to spot opportunities
Sales platforms provide a level of visibility that makes it easy to see opportunities as they come. You’ll know exactly where prospects are on the customer journey. Some solutions even automate the process, sending nurturing emails to warm up leads until they book a meeting with your reps.
Boosts productivity
Sales reps spend as much as 70% of their working hours on non-selling tasks. This means they spend just ~2.5 hours on sales, which is what they were originally hired to do. Sales software fixes the problem by automating processes, leaving reps with the bandwidth they need to build meaningful relationships and close deals.
When a startup’s sales specialists spend more time on sales, they’ll build their traction, which is key to successful Series A funding.
Promotes business growth
Sales solutions provide startups with the tools they need to grow their customer base and capture new revenue streams. Solutions that address a “hair on fire” problem will need fast access to lots of data in order to avoid getting outcompeted.
All-in-one platforms feed pipelines with a steady supply of leads and automatically nurture these prospects until they’re ready for closers. They also provide data insights to help improve processes and promote growth.
How to choose AI tools for startups and not make a mistake?
You shouldn’t opt for the sales software that has the best or flashiest features. Without properly considering your needs, you might end up spending funds on tools you don’t need or use.
Startup size
Startups need sales software that’s as lean as their teams. You need to strip the features list down to a level that meets your needs without burning a hole in your budget. As a result, you should steer clear of pricey systems built for large enterprises.
Startup-friendly software providers typically offer tiered plans with an option suitable for small companies, or pay-as-you-go models where you only pay for what you use.
Startup industry
Look for sales tools designed to meet your industry’s unique needs. E-commerce stores will have completely different requirements from those catering to business buyers. A good solution also integrates seamlessly with your existing tech stack.
Customer types
If you are catering directly to consumers, you may deal with a high volume of prospects requiring low-touch interactions. Selling to businesses, on the other hand, may involve providing high-touch engagement to fewer leads. Choose sales systems that will enable you to offer the best experience to prospects who fit your customer profile.
Deal sizes
The challenging economic times have made businesses scrutinize their purchase decisions, resulting in longer sales cycles. This is particularly true for B2B deals, which now involve an average of five decision-makers.
You’ll have to equip your teams with sales software that can handle longer deal cycles. For instance, you’d need it to automatically send several well-timed follow-up emails. This won’t be as necessary if you’re selling small-ticket items directly to consumers who may decide to purchase on a whim.
10 best sales tools for startups
Here are some of the top AI tools for startups that you can build into your sales process and drive your revenue to Series A level.
AiSDR
AiSDR is a sales engagement tool that automatically generates personalized conversations and books meetings with prospects. It’s designed to automate tasks of sales development representatives (SDRs).
Startups can count on it to take charge of outbound campaigns, from finding and qualifying leads to crafting outreach emails, sending follow-ups, and responding for you. AiSDR can also handle inbound requests by sending a contextual response within 10 minutes, as well as build LinkedIn outreach into your campaign cadence.
Key features for sales
- Email generation – Feed the AI with examples of good emails to teach it how to write emails that sound like you wrote them.
- Multimedia emails – Embed AI videos, memes, and GIFs in your emails to make them more engaging.
- Persona creation – Leave a link to your website or a description of the leads you’d like to target so the AI can create personas for you.
- Lead capture – Access the database of more than 700 million professionals to find relevant prospects.
- Personalization – Scale personalization using information from lead databases, your HubSpot CRM, and LinkedIn, as well as several intent signals.
AiSDR pricing is $750 per month. Metal, an investor intelligence and CRM platform, closed 1.8x more revenue in one month. The Partner Sales scheduled 18 on-site event meetups in one week.
Vidyard
Vidyard is a video platform designed to help businesses capture leads, accelerate deals, and enhance customer experience. You can use it to impress your prospects with AI-powered video messages and demos.
Key features for sales
- Email videos – Add Vidyard videos to your regular emails and send them without adding heavy attachments or requiring the recipient to download a file.
- Video sharing pages – Share the video via a landing page that matches your company’s branding.
- Video actions – Add instructional buttons that show viewers what to do next.
- Real-time viewer insights – Capture data on the viewers.
Vidyard’s first tier of paid plans is priced at $19 per month. It also makes enterprise-grade features accessible to startups with a limited budget, offering them discounts of up to 25%. With Vidyard, some customers report a 25% increase in close rates.
SparkToro
SparkToro is a business intelligence tool for conducting audience research. It allows startups to gain the insights they need to create high-performing SEO, content, and social media campaigns.
Key features for sales
- Affinities – Learn which websites and social networks your target audience likes to visit.
- Keyword searches – Find out what keywords and questions your prospects search for on Google.
- Contact lists – Capture the contact information of leads that are relevant to your business.
- Data-backed personas – Create profiles complete with data on demographics, skills, and interests.
Paid plans start at $38 per month. Rise Marketing Group, a performance advertising agency, managed to decrease its customer acquisition cost by 50%. Foundation, a content marketing agency, raked in 50% more qualified leads within a month of using SparkToro.
Apollo
Apollo is a B2B database that boasts more than 270 million verified contacts. Startups can use it to capture qualified leads and gain actionable insights.
Key features for sales
- Contact and account search – Filter out qualified leads from the database and gain insights that tell you when to initiate a connection.
- Sales engagement – Craft resonant messages and make timely phone calls to the prospects you dug up from the Apollo database.
- Workflows – Use pre-built automation to streamline your workflows.
- Deal management – Manage your pipeline to easily spot opportunities and identify bottlenecks.
You can sign up for a paid plan at $49 for every user per month. Mutiny, an AI-powered sales enablement tool, increased its outbound revenue by more than 200% in 90 days. Aligned, a customer collaboration software, converted more than 40% of their cold calls.
Calendly
Calendly is a scheduling tool that automates appointment booking. Startups can use it to automate sales admin work, connect with decision-makers, and keep conversations going.
Key features for sales
- Pipeline acceleration – Book appointments directly from your company website and match the prospects with appropriate sales reps.
- Real-time scheduling – Instantly book meetings straight from emails, LinkedIn messages, or during a call.
- Automated communications – Send reminders before appointments to confirm attendance and follow up with a message after the meetings to reinforce the connection.
You can access paid plans at the starting rate of $10 monthly per seat. Calendly’s automated scheduling helped Katalon, an automation testing software, reduce its sales cycle by five to seven days. CallRail, a lead-tracking SaaS provider, doubled its sales conversion rate.
HubSpot
HubSpot CRM equips businesses with sales engagement tools designed to facilitate high-converting pipelines. Startups can use it to organize their prospecting processes, gain visibility into customer interactions, and close more deals.
Key features for sales
- Sales automation – Send personalized emails and religiously make follow-ups.
- Email tracking – Get informed when prospects open your emails and learn when it’s a good time to send follow-ups.
- Call tracking – Make call recordings and logs to improve efficiency.
- Writing tool – Use the AI-powered writing tool to draft emails and CTAs.
Pricing for the comprehensive sales software starts at $90 monthly for every seat. HubSpot records show that their customers have captured 129% more inbound leads and closed 55% more deals after using the software for a year.
Tl;dv
Tl;dv is a meeting recorder that automatically records, transcribes, and summarizes meetings. Startups can use the summaries it makes for coaching sessions.
Key features for sales
- Custom playbook – Use the recordings to uncover repeatable sales processes and effective ways to close deals.
- Coaching tool – Train your sales reps on how to handle objections properly.
- Speaker insights – Find out who dominates the dialogue and how well the overall client engagement is going.
Paid tiers start at $18 per seat every month. This can save sales reps four hours of admin work per week (or 30 minutes per meeting).
Koala
Koala is a customer intent platform designed to uncover buyer signals and identify engaged leads. It alerts sales teams when it finds leads with buying intent, allowing reps to strike out while the iron is hot.
Key features for sales
- Real-time tracking – Rely on Koala to track page views, active session time, and click-throughs to your website from emails and ads.
- Intent scoring – Get alerts when account activities surge.
- Signal reports – Learn which content leads to high conversion rates.
Koala’s paid plans start at $350 per month. One customer reported shaving five minutes off their outreach effort for every lead.
Waalaxy
Waalaxy is campaign development software that you can connect to your email and LinkedIn to personalize your prospecting processes. It allows startups to automate their campaigns without the risk of being flagged or banned by LinkedIn.
Key features for sales
- LinkedIn prospecting – Access more than 700 million profiles on LinkedIn.
- Outreach campaign – Send outreach emails to 200 people per week and automatically send follow-ups.
- Complex workflows – Set the tool to trigger outreach processes when a prospect comments on a LinkedIn post or visits a profile.
Waalaxy’s paid plans start at $44 per month.
Notion
Notion offers an all-in-one workspace by integrating many productivity tools into a single interface. Sales can use it to manage sales pipelines and prospect lists.
Key features for sales
- Deal management – Monitor deals with tracking systems that align with your sales workflows.
- Collaborative workspace – Brainstorm and collaborate with your teammates to improve your sales processes and stay on top of deals.
- Reporting dashboards – Track sales metrics, forecast revenue, and identify areas for improvement.
Paid plans start at $10 per seat every month. Notion provides startups with a special offer of six months of free access, amounting to more than $6,000 in savings.
