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6 Sales Tools to Hack Your CRM

Ashley Dotterweich

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There’s no way around it- there’s no such thing as the perfect CRM. What works well for one company might be disastrous for another, and what feels fresh to one manager might seem stale and bloated for another. But jumping from one CRM to another isn’t always an option, and sometimes you don’t need a complete overhaul, just a few new perks to liven up your CRM! That’s why we’ve reviewed the following 6 sales tools that can hack your CRM.

The sales-focus for CRM is trending towards automation right now; taking care of the menial tasks of finding, entering and managing information and items to free up your sales team to do more of what they’re best at – talk to customers and sell your product. If your sales team needs a boost, check out one of these quick, innovative tools to that will leave you wondering why we hadn’t thought of them sooner.

Streak: Turbocharge Your Inbox

Streak strives to break free of the clunky, bloated CRM model as a Gmail-native CRM application that lives in your inbox. What we like about Streak is how much more flexible it makes Gmail – you can group emails together into a single view,  schedule emails to be sent later, and create spreadsheets of your leads within your inbox, and even extract files from your email. While sales is a major focus of the product, Streak’s “boxes” also have customer support applications, which makes transitioning your leads into sales into repeat customers a smooth, simple process.

Yesware: Make Your Mailing List Work Harder

There’s a reason that Yesware calls itself “Email for Salespeople;” since its launch Yesware has been earning accolades as one of the best new sales tools out there. It’s a free add-on for Gmail that helps you track your email activity, keeping tabs on who has opened and read your email or clicked on a link, helping you better gauge when it’s time to follow up with leads. Yesware can even help you track what device your prospects are using to open your email, letting you tailor future correspondence to their preferences. While email tracking is the main benefit of using Yesware, the tool is also great for collaborating with a team and developing custom email templates for faster, more effective correspondence. Whether you’re using Yesware on its own or alongside one of the many integrated CRM systems the app is partnered with, it’s your best bet for better email outreach.

Rapportive: Consolidate Your Contacts

 Social media has given us more ways to connect with people than ever, but unfortunately our contacts tend to be fragmented across multiple platforms, and critical information isn’t always apparent from an email exchange. Designed to work in your Gmail inbox, Rapportive pulls as much information about your contacts as possible into a single place. When you open an email, Rapportive’s sidebar will call up their recent tweets, social activity and social profiles to help you get a bigger picture of who they are. This lets you pinpoint details and deepen your connection with prospects. It’s even easy to annotate Rapportive profiles, so you can build even stronger, more meaningful relationships quickly.

Ecquire: Say Goodbye to Data Entry

One of the biggest hassles of contact management? The endless fields to fill out. Give you copy and past shortcut keys a break and save some time with automated data entry. Ecquire adds a simple button to platforms like Gmail, LinkedIn and other social profiles that lets you easily save and send info to your Salesforce or other CRM account – or even just a Google spreadsheet, if you’re keeping things simple. The flexibility of the tool makes it a huge timesaver, since it adapts to your preferences. Additional perks? Ecquire’s privacy policy states that it is completely middleman free- they never store your info, so there’s no risk of it falling into the wrong hands on Ecquire’s accord.

Evergage: Instant Engagement for Less Churn

In a world of social, sms and chat clients, people want instant, personal interaction with companies. Evergage is a messaging platform designed with sales people in mind. By staying in direct contact with your leads, you can keep them interested in your product and tailor their interactions for maximum results. Evergage is also designed to convert free trials into sales and ease the onboarding process.

Tinderbox: Simplify Document Sharing

While email lets us share documents with farflung clients and collaborators quickly and easily, the constant back-and-forth of sharing multiple versions of documents, can get messy. Tinderbox is a proposal management software designed to help companies easily draft smart proposals. TinderBox features an easy to use editor that you can load up with rich media, logos and templates to speed document creation. It also helps keep your legal team in control and in the loop, without derailing the flow of conversation with sales. Allow all collaborators to view, edit and comment on your documents, and even track how people interact with them.

To find out more about specific automation products be sure to check out our Top 10 Sales Force Automation software report.

• Top Expert

Ashley Dotterweich

Business-Software.com
Expert in Enterprise Software Selection

Ashley Dotterweich is a former Business-Software.com marketing team member who writes about tech industry trends and the software selection process. She was on the marketing team at Business-Software.com from 2012-2014.