What Sales Management Software to Use in Your B2B Sales Stack

A sales department’s B2B sales stack is a vital setup. Not only does it help sales reps to do their jobs, but it helps them to do their jobs well. In fact, 76% of B2B sellers say that technology is critical to closing deals efficiently.

But how do you decide what should be in your sales stack? What CRM do you choose, and what else do you really need alongside it?

Well, that’s exactly what we’ll look at in this article. We’ll cover what a sales team needs to do its job well, and look at the different aspects of an efficient sales stack.

What is a B2B Sales Tech Stack?

Put simply, a sales stack is the set of tools, apps, and programs a sales team use to do their job. In this context, it’s in relation to B2B sales, which changes the makeup compared to a B2C sales team.

The point of a sales stack is to streamline many of the repetitive parts of the sales process. For example, this might be emailing, product demos, engaging with prospects, and so on. Ideally, you’ll want a tech stack that can do the following:

• Integration. It’s beneficial for your chosen tools to integrate with one another. For example, you’ll want an email automation tool that can work within and alongside your CRM tool. Not having integration will remove some of the benefits of using multiple products.
• Automation. This has long been a feature of sales tools, and it’s only going to increase. You’ll want tools that can automate the more repetitive aspects of the job, such as sending out emails and managing calendars.
• Data capturing. Another no-brainer from your sales tools is data capturing and management. This is the raw information you need to be able to complete the sales process and streamline future sales interactions. In short, the more information you have, the better.

The number of tools you use in your tech stack ultimately depends on the size of your sales team, your budget, and the size and value of the clients you’re trying to win. A small sales team will only need the basic tools, but it can’t hurt to automate as much of the process as possible.

What You Need in a B2B Sales Tech Stack

Some of the components you might find in your sales team tech stack include:

Email Automation

Email automation is a useful part of a tech stack because it allows you to stay in touch with warm leads and established clients. For example, you could email them to chase up dropped leads or to let them know about upcoming offers.

The level of automation you expect from your email tool can depend on the tool you use. Many will automate the sending of emails, which you’re expected to write yourself. However, with the rise of LLMs, nothing is stopping you from automating the writing part too!

Contract Management

A sales team needs contract management to do their jobs properly. After all, what else are you going to do after you’ve spent a long time nurturing leads? Arguably the last stage of the sales cycle, contract management needs to be smooth and efficient.

There are loads of contract signing tools out there. Most will allow you to upload your contract and will then generate boxes for you and your new client to sign. You’ll also want a platform that makes contracts easy to send to your clients. Of course, you’ll still have to write the contract yourself.

Sales Data

We could also think about sales data tools as pipeline management tools. Sales and marketing teams manage the customer pipeline, ideally turning cold leads into new clients by funneling them through the different stages.

To do this more effectively, it’s essential to have a tool that captures insights from different levels. For example, you’ll want lead management data including:

• Contact management
• Company information
• Lead insights
• Sentiment
• Behavioral analysis

The last one is perhaps the most important when it comes to sales management system data. Your sales funnel will have about 5 stages before a lead becomes a client, and sales teams need to monitor the journey throughout. A lead could drop out at any point if they’re not seeing what they want, and you need to know why.

Behavioral analysis is essential for this. You need to understand why they dropped out and where to avoid it happening again in the future. But you can also use behavioral analysis to prospect future clients based on existing clients and lead profiles. In short, it’s vital information that should inform almost everything you do from a sales perspective.

Digital Deal Room

Digital deal rooms, also known as virtual sales rooms, are a fairly new addition to sales stacks. They’re essentially online spaces where you can keep all of your sales information for prospective clients. Their purpose is to streamline the late sales stages.

A virtual sales room should ideally have white label features and should be customizable to each prospective client. Although you can close a deal without a digital deal room, they’re designed to make the process much easier. For example, you can include financial information for managers, tech information for IT specialists, and product demos and sales videos.

Quoting and Proposal

Nothing is stopping you from sending an email to a prospective client that has their quote or proposal attached. For a small business, this might be a fairly standard process. However, there are definitely more professional ways to do this.

The easiest is to use a quoting and proposal tool. As with things like contract management, this software is designed to make the process easier and should include features such as customization, sharing, and even collaboration. Better yet, a quoting and proposal tool should have templates or simple to use design features.

Sales Calls

It’s likely that you already use sales call software, such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams. After all, we have to make sales calls, and this isn’t a new thing. There are ways you can supplement and enhance your sales calls process, though.

For example, you’ll want a platform that allows for easy demos and presentations as standard. On top of this, it can help to incorporate AI features for transcription or note-taking services. While this isn’t completely necessary, it can be helpful to make sure everyone is on the same page after the call.

Pipeline Performance

Pipeline performance tools arguably fall into the sales data category, but it can be worth having dedicated tools for this job. For example, pipeline performance can help you to track trends, analyze performance, obtain insights into prospective clients, and much more.

The main advantage of using a pipeline performance tool is that it should allow you to predict your chances of winning prospective clients at various stages. For example, you can use your data to understand when a client joined the pipeline, what they want, and what you need to do to get them on board.

CRM Software

CRM software is perhaps the cornerstone of any B2B sales team tech stack. As the name suggests, it’s what allows you to manage the customer relationship process. It helps you keep track of emails, documents, quotes, purchase, and much more. Having all this information in one place makes the sales process far easier.

Of course, a small business doesn’t need a particularly robust tool. But businesses that are looking to expand should have a CRM platform with the flexibility to scale as needed. This might mean running an SaaS platform or a tiered tool that can have more features integrated into it as the sales team grows.

Sales Management Software

Finally, we have sales management software. Unsurprisingly, this is designed to manage the sales process, so it incorporates a lot of the points mentioned above. This does mean it’s often a more cost-effective option, as it saves you from having numerous tools to take care of all these different aspects.

The benefit of having a specific sales management platform is not needing to worry about integration. It also streamlines the process, which, as mentioned above, is one of the main reasons to have a B2B sales stack.

CRM vs. Sales Management Software

CRM software and sales management software have a lot of overlaps. For example, the latter focuses specifically on the sales process, whereas CRM also includes marketing, ops management, and analytics. But you can get a lot of this information from sales tools, too, so why have both?

Different Scope

Customer relationship tools include all stages of the client pipeline, from cold leads to onboarding and even post sale. This will usually include email chains, copies of documents, pitches, project management, and so on. As mentioned, you’ll also use this tool to track and send out marketing campaigns, which can be focused on warm leads or existing clients.

A sales tool, on the other hand, focuses specifically on the sales process. It’s where you’ll go for your pipeline management, client prospecting, and so on. The purpose of this tool is to turn leads into customers, so it manages the data and services needed to do this.

Different Features

CRM will have features that focus on nurturing customers, such as contact databases, tracking communications, document support, etc. A sales platform, however, will often be visually led, particularly relating to all the data you’re capturing.

For example, you can use it to track your sales team members, visualize your pipeline, understand where leads are coming from, and so on. Sales is a very data-driven process, so you’ll want a platform that can easily turn this data into useful information and graphics.

Different Focus

Perhaps the main thing to remember when considering these tools is the intended user base. Customer relationship management goes well beyond just sales people. It’s used by marketing, for example, and various other departments may use the data or the platform occasionally.

A customer service department will often make use of the tool’s features, particularly if they’re dealing with queries or complaints. This is particularly helpful if they need to check previous communications or keep track of their own conversations. As such, a CRM tool is pretty much a company-wide platform.

Sales management tools are generally only used by reps and managers in the sales department. After all, there aren’t many people outside of this department who need this level of sales data. The scope of a sales platform is much narrower, then, but is still quite important.

CRM and CSM: Do You Need Both?

Considering they do very similar things, do you need both CRM and CSM tools in your tech stack?

The short answer is yes, it’s almost always beneficial to have both. Provided your budget can cover setting up both tools, it’ll pay off massively in the long run. This is because, as discussed, they serve different functions in the same process.

You’ll want your sales management tool so you can focus on data-driven insights for your sales team. On the other hand, CRM is beneficial for other departments in the company.

On the flipside, you should also think about it from the customer’s perspective. An efficient relationship management process is for their benefit as much as yours. They’ll inevitably get tired of having to repeat themselves if you’re not keeping track of your communication with them. Similarly, they won’t enjoy being sent a lot of irrelevant emails because you don’t have a log of what matters to them.

While this might not be as true for the sales process, a prospective client will appreciate a more efficient process. Take the pitching and demo stage as an example. If you’re able to collect data telling you what your prospective customer will need to know, you’ll have a far more efficient pitch deck prepared. In turn, this will increase your chances of winning them over.

Choosing the Right Sales Management Platform

Now that we understand the difference between these two platforms, how do you go about choosing an efficient CSM that works for your sales reps? While the specifics will depend on your industry, team size, budget, etc., here are some important considerations.

White Label Client Rooms

A client room (or client portal) is essentially an online space that allows your prospective clients to access all the information needed as part of the sales process. This might include product demos, pitches, communication, order status, and more.

The benefit of having a self-service space is that your sales reps don’t need to chase up prospective clients as much. Rather, clients can look over the sales information at their own pace, freeing up some of your time. Obviously you’ll still need to nurture the lead, but having a client portal makes this process much easier.

As for the white label features, this is simply a matter of professionalism. White labeling allows you to add your own or your client’s visuals to the portal, which just makes it look nicer. This doesn’t do anything for the actual functionality, but is just a nicer visual from the client’s perspective.

AI

It’s no secret that AI is on trend at the moment. Although still nowhere near its full potential, it can offer a lot of benefits to a sales platform. You can use third-party apps for your AI integration, but it’ll be easier to look for software that includes AI functionality as standard.

Some functions AI can serve in the sales process include:

• Automatic note taking during meetings
• Personalizing client interactions (using LLMs)
• Collecting and analyzing data
• Pipeline management
• Content creation
• Automated client interactions

The point of AI is that it’s meant to make our lives easier by streamlining or automating some of the more repetitive aspects of the job. However, it can’t be relied on to do everything perfectly, so use it to supplement your sales efforts rather than replace your manual workflow. Provided you approach it with this mentality, you’ll find it makes a big difference to your sales processes.

Automation

Automation generally goes hand-in-hand with AI as they target the same pain points and use similar concepts. For example, automation is intended to reduce your need to perform repetitive tasks, and many sales automation platforms will use AI to do this.

Again, you’ll find third-party services for this, but it’ll help to have automation built in to your sales platform. If nothing else, it just means you don’t have to worry about dealing with any integration issues.

Client Onboarding

Technically, client onboarding isn’t really part of the pure sales process. After all, onboarding happens after the sale is closed, meaning it’s not really a sales rep’s responsibility to be managing the customer journey at this point.

However, integrating some level of client onboarding into your sales platform just makes everyone’s lives easier. Within a CSM, you should look for features such as centralized workflows, onboarding forms, and knowledge centers.

Rather than dealing with the entire process, the purpose of these is more to keep the client busy and informed while you sort out the onboarding process on your side. An onboarding space can work much like a virtual deal room—you collect specific documents and guides for your client that they can work through in their own time.

While this isn’t a must-have for a CSM platform, it definitely makes things easier. It streamlines what can otherwise be a fairly chaotic point in the customer journey and allows your customer service reps or account managers to hit the ground running.

5 Best Sales Management Software

Now that we have an understanding of what makes a good sales CRM platform, let’s look at some options. Some include a free trial or demo, so it’s definitely worth playing around with them to see which works best for your sales funnel.

1. FuseBase

FuseBase is a CSM platform designed to make life easier for your sales team. It includes a wide range of automation and integration features to drastically streamline your sales performance. In fact, it can handle everything from pre-sales and proposals to client onboarding and support.

The interface is straightforward and it has full white label features for all client-facing aspects. As mentioned, this isn’t a necessity, but it improves the professional appearance of your business.

FuseBase also includes a range of supplementary features, such as document signing, file management, CRM integration and AI features. It’s suitable for all kinds of businesses but is primarily designed for design agencies, SMBs, and consultants and coaches.

2. Pipedrive

As the name might suggest, Pipedrive puts its focus on the sales pipeline itself. While this is essentially what all CSM products do, its interface is designed to help you track leads through different stages. This can be helpful if you need a specific focus on who is where and why potential clients may have dropped out.

It has AI and automation features, including automated lead nurturing. This is useful if you have a fairly clear-cut nurturing process but will obviously miss the nuance that you’d get from it being handled by a person. If you like to curate and personalize your lead nurturing process, you’ll want to stick to people doing it.

One useful AI feature is its data generation and data-driven decisions. It displays the information clearly, allowing you to use it quickly. However, Pipedrive does lack features such as onboarding, white label deal rooms, and supplementary aspects that streamline the entire sales process.

3. Hubspot

What needs to be said about Hubspot that hasn’t been said a hundred times before? It’s one of the biggest names in this market, and for good reason. Many of the expected features in a customer management tool come from Hubspot, making it something of an industry leader.

However, it’s not necessarily a product that fits into our specific niche. For starters, it’s massively expensive and small companies or sales teams are automatically going to be priced out of using it. For example, its lowest price tier is $800 a month!

It was worth including on this list because it’s essentially the benchmark for what a sales platform should be. There’s a reason it’s an industry leader after all.

4. Salesflare

Salesflare is more of a customer relationship platform than a sales platform, but it has a range of useful features that make it worth including on this roundup. As with Pipedrive, it has a nice visual layout for understanding where your prospectives are in the sales pipeline, including color-coded tabs.

It has automated generation features, which allow you to fill in client information quickly and easily. While this isn’t the most important feature, it saves a lot of time having to copy and paste details every time you want to set up a new client portal.

However, one big downside of Salesflare is that it’s missing a lot of useful built-in aspects. For example, it integrates with Outlook, Gmail and LinkedIn, but that means by extension that it doesn’t have any native messaging services. This becomes quite noticeable when you’re having to track and manage numerous leads at different stages of the journey.

5. Freshworks

Freshworks is built around a pipeline journey dashboard, and its main focus is moving leads through the stages as efficiently as possible. Unlike other pipeline-focused platforms, it displays an extensive range of information for your leads, including socials, demographics, touchpoints, and conversations.

As such, it’s basically a sales platform built using a relationship management interface. This can help your sales reps to more efficiently keep track of their conversations and interactions, which should make the customer journey a lot smoother. While this doesn’t sound groundbreaking, the difference between a good and bad platform that uses this setup is immediately noticeable.

Freshworks has a range of other platforms, all of which can integrate together. This is good, but it would be far better if they were all just the same platform. It gives you some flexibility in what you pay for, but it does mean you may need to manage different subscriptions and platforms as well as any integration issues.

Final Thoughts

Building a sales tech stack can be a complex process. There are lots of different aspects to consider and you need to weigh up all stages of your customer pipeline. Once you’ve figured out which platform you need for which job, it’s then a case of making sure they all integrate properly.

Of course, one way around this is to find an all-in-one platform that handles every stage of the sales journey. You’ll want something that can visualize leads and allow you to nurture them with ease while properly keeping track of all your conversations.

FuseBase brings everything you need to manage your sales pipeline in one place, with automation and integrations to keep things moving smoothly. Book a demo to see how it fits into your workflow.

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