Client Onboarding Checklist: Steps, Templates & Best Practices
Looking to close more deals and drive revenue? You need to equip your sales team with the sales enablement tools that drive personalized, impactful, and engaging sales experiences.
Think of them as your support squad to help your sales team meet and exceed their sales milestones.
Effective sales enablement tools enable your sales team to achieve peak performance and drive unparalleled success.
Read on as we dive into the basics of sales enablement and the 18 best sales enablement tools you should start leveraging today.
Get ready to amp up your sales strategy and watch your conversions skyrocket!
*Disclaimer: The comparisons and competitor ratings presented in this article are based on features available as of November 10, 2023. We conduct thorough research and draw on both first-hand experience and reputable sources to provide reliable insights. However, as tools and technologies evolve, we recommend readers verify details and consider additional research to ensure the information meets their specific needs.
Sales enablement tools are applications, platforms, and technologies that help salespeople sell effectively. These tools equip sales teams with resources, materials and content throughout the sales lifecycle—from initial prospecting to client retention.
Sales enablement tools include a wide range of technologies and platforms, like:
But why are sales enablement tools important? The truth is, not every salesperson has the right tools to do their best work. In fact, 65% of sales reps struggle with finding the right content to share with prospects.
If this sounds like a problem your team is facing, content creation and management tools like Visme can come in handy. Empowering your team with sales materials like presentations, brochures, case studies, white papers, and videos helps them:
Overall, sales enablement tools make these tasks manageable for all teams—marketing, sales, or content teams. They streamline sales workflows, align goals, share insights, track metrics, and enable better communication within the team.
The answer is simple: in the world of sales, every advantage counts. Sales enablement tools provide that winning edge. They help your business increase deal velocity and sales productivity and drive greater revenue growth.
Sales enablement tools automate repetitive tasks, freeing your sales reps' time to focus on high-value activities like building customer relationships, closing deals, and discovering new leads.
Now, let's take a look at some of the sales enablement tool examples within their respective categories.
Made with Visme Infographic Maker
These platforms ensure your reps always have access to the marketing content they need—from pitch decks to white papers to thought leadership articles. Visme is a top-rated visual design and content management tool.
Other marketing sales enablement tools in this category are Canva, Venngage, Adobe and more.
These educate your sales team on the best techniques, introduce new company-wide sales strategies and provide live training sessions that reps can return to as many times as necessary. Brainshark, Spekit and Playboox are top sales enablement tools in this category. Visme also offers a variety of templates or tools for creating sales and customer success training materials.
A unified platform to see customer interaction details. This visibility is fundamental to dealing with clients effectively and moving the sales initiative forward. HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive are top customer relationship management tools.
These provide vital data surrounding your sales activities, such as monitoring your reps' performance, tracking leads, analyzing sales patterns and trends, and identifying weak spots in the sales process. SPOTIO Sales Tracker, Lattice and 6sense are leading sales analytics tools.
These tools enable you to gain deep insights into market trends and your competition. They offer data points like market segmentation, opportunity analysis, competitive landscape, demographic information, and more, enabling your sales team to make data-driven decisions.
Examples of top market intelligence tools include D&B Hoovers, Emissary and Mattermark.
Find and aggregate comprehensive information about your prospective leads with these tools. They assist in refining targeting strategies, optimizing lead qualification processes, boosting prospecting outcomes, and levering insights for personalized outreach.
Acquire, LinkedIn Sales Navigator and SPOTIO Lead Machine are three powerful sales intelligence and prospecting tools you can try out.
Market automation tools allow you to automate and streamline your marketing tasks and workflows, increasing efficiency and reducing human errors. These tools help optimize your marketing campaigns, email marketing, social media postings, customer segmentation, and performance metrics tracking. When it comes to market automation, Marketo and Customer.io are the top tools you don't want to miss out on!
Collaborative tools allow your sales, marketing, and content teams to stay in sync, helping them share info, discuss strategies, brainstorm ideas, evaluate performance, and ensure consistent messaging. This synchronization results in a unified customer experience.
Some top communication tools are HubSpot, Salesforce, Microsft Teams, Aloware, Chorus.ai and Slack. When it comes to collaboration, you don't want to miss out on Visme, Asana and Monday.com.
These tools help streamline and automate the sales email process. They provide functionalities such as email scheduling, tracking, follow-up reminders, automated sequences, and more, which help sales teams create interactive and high-converting email campaigns.
Utilizing these tools ensures timely communication with leads and helps maintain fruitful client relationships. Respona, SalesHandy, Snov.io and Attach are the top sales enablement software in this category.
Contract management tools help sales teams manage contract creation, execution, and analysis to maximize operational and financial performance and reduce risks.
They offer functionality such as templated contracts, automated approvals, digital signatures, compliance tracking, and more, making the contract process seamless and efficient. DocSend, Proposify and HelloSign are top sales contract management tools.
Sales management tools provide a comprehensive overview of all sales operations and support guided selling.
For example, you can track goals, optimize sales processes, receive real-time data, and improve sales strategies to optimize bottom-line performance. SocialChorus, WhatsApp for Business and Microsoft Office are the top sales management tools.
Customer feedback tools allow sales teams to gather valuable insights from customers. They provide functionalities such as surveys, online reviews, feedback forms, and social listening, helping improve customer relations and service.
Such tools enable the evolution of sales strategies while emphasizing customer satisfaction. Visme Forms, Typeform, UserReport and Crowdsignal are key sales customer feedback tools.
Demo and presentation tools help sales teams create polished, interactive content for more engaging, successful sales demos and presentations. With real-time analytics and remote presentation capabilities, these tools equip teams with the right tools to convert prospective customers.
For presentations and demos, Visme is a great fit. When it comes to onboarding, MindTickle and Allego take the top spots.
Each software category caters to different aspects of your sales process—from the kickoff meeting to the champagne-popping close.
As such, there isn't a one-size-fits-all sales enablement tool. It depends on your business's unique demands and goals.
In this section, we're going to provide a category-wise list of the tools that are a must-have for any successful sales enablement strategy.
HubSpot is a powerful, full-stack growth software built for all kinds of business needs. Other than CRM, it offers sales enablement features like email tracking, scheduling meetings, and deal pipeline control.
It equips sales individuals with data regarding customers' actions and gets them ready with the right pitches at the right time, increasing the close rate. Integrated data analytics allow for informed strategic decisions to propel overall business growth.
A one-stop shop for marketing, sales, and customer service functionalities makes HubSpot an ideal power tool for a solid sales engine.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an advanced tool that takes advantage of the enormous LinkedIn network. This sales enablement tool is designed for social selling, helping to target the right buyers, understand key insights, and engage with personalized outreach.
To keep sales and business leaders up-to-date with their network's updates, it offers real-time insights and for synergic operations, it integrates with CRM tools.
With features like advanced lead and company search, custom lists, and InMail messages, it aids in harnessing the opportunity of social selling through LinkedIn's wide professional network.
D&B Hoovers is a sales intelligence solution that provides a deeper understanding of businesses and their key players. Aimed at lead generation and pre-sales research, it offers extensive company databases providing information about more than 120 million businesses worldwide.
Their key features include strategic alerts to stay updated about target companies and contact data integration for targeted, segmented campaigns. The tool also helps you identify the competitive landscape and find new and valuable markets.
Visme empowers your sales team to easily create attractive, branded sales materials—even without design expertise. Easily create stunning sales collateral, reports, presentations, sales one pagers, sales battlecards, sales decks and plans.
Below is a list of all that you can achieve with Visme.
Highspot is a fully feature-loaded sales enablement platform that ranges from content management to training and coaching. It allows space for better strategic conversation. Some features are search and filter, content scoring and hosting, similar content grouping and permissions, along with user-generated submissions and reviews.
Moreover, its features include guided selling, coaching collaboration, certification, live call execution, empowering the sales team, and improving overall efficiency.
The predictive content functionality aligned with buyer personas and sales stages ensures tailored-fit solutions and impactful pitches to close the deal.
Brainshark is a comprehensive tool for sales enablement training, coaching, content, and analytics. It provides sales teams with the necessary knowledge and skills accelerators through multi-form content, including videos, quizzes, documents, and infographics.
Designed for onboarding, continuous learning, and skill mastery, it empowers on-the-go productivity, ensuring information capture within real-world practice. Deep analytics helps leaders track the effective uptake and application of knowledge acquired.
All-in-one content creation tools like Visme can be used to design sales training materials. Some popular templates are sales pitch presentation templates, sales training course templates, and sales playbook templates.
Outreach is a top-notch sales engagement platform that integrates seamlessly with your entire tech stack to streamline your sales process and increase efficiency.
It offers unique features like automatic email sequences, AI assistant, sales call dialer, and analytics to break down communication barriers, guiding sales reps throughout the customer life cycle.
Outreach also offers personalization, automates menial sequences, and provides data-driven insights, enabling strategic planning and successful sales conversions.
SalesLoft empowers sales teams with a powerful suite enveloping all essential stages of the sales cycle such as prospecting, qualification, and closing deals.
Core features include email sequencing, call recording, sales insights, deep integration with other CRM software, and orchestration for multichannel touchpoints. These features facilitate systematic follow-ups and responsive engagements, ultimately enhancing customer relationships and boosting sales output.
PandaDoc is a digital document solution that augments sales performance. It simplifies creating, sending, tracking, and e-signing sales documents.
Features include personalized document templates, embedded media, content library, approval workflows, and CRM integrations. It ensures legal compliance and source tracking, making it an essential tool for negotiations, contract management, and subsequent sales closure.
DocuSign is a game-changer in the realm of sales. It not only automates and streamlines document management, but it also adds a level of security and professionalism that can significantly impact sales outcomes.
Ever been in the middle of closing a deal, and the process came to a halt due to paperwork issues?
With DocuSign, those hurdles have become a thing of the past. Its digital signature functionality allows for seamless, real-time contract signing, making it quicker and easier for both you and your client to get deals over the line. It also reduces the risk of lost or misfiled paperwork.
Mailtrack empowers users with simple, effective email-tracking solutions. As a popular choice for Gmail and Inbox, it provides real-time notifications on email tracking and reveals how often an email gets opened.
Features include link tracking, mobile email tracking, daily reports, and CRM integrations. It’s a powerful tool for sales follow-up and conversions, ensuring no missed engagement opportunity.
Ringover is a cloud-based business phone solution designed for sales team interaction.
Its highlights are real-time assignment of callers, unlimited international calls, and direct integration with several CRM tools.
Elements such as real-time indicators, call recording, and text-to-speech voicemail increase its utility. Through a combination of phone, video conferencing, and texting, Ringover enhances customer experiences and sales performance.
Intercom is a beginner-friendly customer messaging platform that boosts sales by ensuring seamless interaction with your potential clientele.
Leveraging features like live chat, bots, and personalized messaging, Intercom bridges the gap between sales teams and customers.
Businesses benefit from its in-app, email and live chat functions that provide ease of communication. In addition, it intelligently segments visitors for targeted campaigns and offers performance metrics for constant optimization.
Even if you're a novice, its intuitive interface makes it a breeze to use. It not only facilitates smooth communication but also helps in understanding customer behavior for strategic sales decisions.
InsightSquared is your team's new best friend when it comes to data-driven sales.
It steps in as a powerful analytics tool, taking in all of your sales data and turning it into easy-to-understand, actionable insights.
Ever wondered how your latest campaign has affected sales, or if there's a pattern in when and why sales drop? InsightSquared goes above and beyond in providing answers, helping your team pinpoint what's working and what isn't.
This sales enablement solution provides a comprehensive view of sales progress, helping your team make smart decisions to increase sales and accelerate business growth.
Think of 6sense as your sales intuition turbocharged. This sales enablement tool has the ability to predict buyer behavior by leveraging artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning. With this sales enhancement tool, such missed opportunities become less frequent.
The predictive analytics capabilities allow sales teams to engage with prospects just when they're ready to move forward, significantly increasing conversion rates and making your sales process far more efficient.
Leadfeeder is like having an undercover agent in the world of sales.
Ever wondered who's visiting your website and what they're interested in? Leadfeeder has the answers. It tracks visitors to your website, even if they don't fill out a contact form or send an email, all with the help of IP addresses.
This gives your sales team a considerable advantage, as they can reach out to potential clients who have shown interest but haven't yet made contact. It's like a magic window into your prospects' behavior, helping to quickly identify potential leads and focus efforts on likely conversions.
Think of Gainsight as your personal assistant for understanding customer data.
It consolidates customer information and transforms it into actionable insights.
This helps industries accurately predict customer behavior. Easy-to-digest visuals let anyone understand these data patterns, improve customer mechanisms, and enhance client retention. Trying to retain business and promote customer success? Gainsight grabs those optimization wheels for you.
Essentially, it's your go-to data interpreter for customer-centric strategies and implementing impactful, relevant action plans.
KrispCall is a top-tier cloud-based phone system designed specifically for sales teams, offering a comprehensive suite of telephony features to improve communication efficiency and productivity. With access to virtual phone numbers from over 100 countries and trusted by more than 4500 companies, KrispCall allows the sales team to establish a brand presence worldwide.
The best part is you can share a business phone number among multiple agents helping in teamwork and collaboration. Moreover, a single sales agent can own and operate multiple phone numbers from different countries conveniently thus expanding the scope of sales operations.
KrispCall also boasts handy features like IVR, call forwarding, call transfer, etc., which help sales teams handle a large volume of inbound calls, thus resulting in an improved first-call resolution and reduced waiting time.
KrispCall also offers analytics and reporting features to help sales teams track their performance. Despite having such a plethora of amazing features, this app is affordable when it comes to the price. And at the price of $15/month, KrispCall is one of the best phone systems for the sales team.
RingCentral is another communication lifeline you should consider for your sales team.
Settling communication gaps is key in any sales process, and RingCentral steps up to the challenge. It offers video conferencing, screen sharing, team messaging, and even a cloud phone system.
This sales enablement solution consolidates all your communication into one platform, ensuring that information flows seamlessly within your team. This helps in quick decision-making, improves coordination, and ultimately leads to a more efficient and successful sales process.
Think of Zapier as the digital glue that holds all of your sales tools together. It's a powerhouse that integrates and automates your workflows, easing the burden on your sales team.
Say you're using separate apps for lead generation, customer relations, and email marketing. With Zapier, you can create automated workflows, or 'Zaps', to link these services seamlessly.
This means your sales team can focus more on selling and less on unnecessary admin work, improving overall productivity and closing deals quicker.
Now that you know the right tools to use, let's delve into the top sales enablement best practices to maximize your sales enablement strategy.
When your goals are crystal clear, you can align all your actions and efforts around them.
Sales strategies should articulate your vision and detail a comprehensive plan of action on how that vision will be achieved.
Below are a few questions you can ask to help develop a strategy.
As part of your strategy, consider integrating the responses to the questions above into your sales assets to demonstrate alignment.
Using the template below to craft an effective sales strategy
Businesses that align their marketing and sales teams are 67% more efficient at closing deals, which could result in 209% higher marketing revenue.
Wondering how you can efficiently integrate the two departments?
Involving both teams ensures goals are shared and everyone is on the same path toward success; a siloed mentality can discourage mutual goals.
This means that any key performance indicator (KPI) should reflect the achievements of both the sales and marketing departments. Use metrics that clearly demonstrate the impact of both on the overall company goals.
This can be customer acquisition costs, customer lifetime value, or sales and marketing return on investment.
Regular and informative communication bolsters interdepartmental relationships. Shared group seminars and conversations encourage understanding, sharing of resources, and knowledge transfer, resulting in the reinforcement of combined goals.
Use content assets like webinars, newsletters, and internal blogs to deliver key insights and updates to your team.
Here's a template you can use to draft out your team's communication plan
The more you understand your customer's journey, the better you can help them reach their goals.
Showing genuine interest in customers is key. The buyer's journey is not linear, as customers have evolving needs, questions, and pauses in the buying process.
Sales enablement should track, predict, and help them with the right content, data, and insights to help them both achieve their end goals and cope with any issues at any stage.
Design sales collateral for buyer personas and ICPs and keep the 5 stages of the customer journey in mind.
Here's an infographic showing what content you should create at each customer journey stage.
From sales playbooks and training seminars to role-play sessions, continuous learning should be a core part of your sales enablement initiative. This is critical for keeping your team updated with industry trends, customer preferences, and sales techniques.
Next, ask your top-performing reps for insight. Examine their skill level, success stories and recognize the behaviors that help them achieve their goals. Take into account what helps them hit their quotas.
Some questions to consider include:
Create a culture where knowledge-sharing is encouraged, with opportunities to learn from successes and failures. Regular training sessions and updated sales collateral can help your team members stay equipped with the latest knowledge and skills.
Level up your company's sales training using the template below.
Design a sales training schedule and keep learning on track with this template.
From creating a sales plan to analyzing the results, each step of your sales enablement process should be measured.
This will allow you to understand what works, what doesn't, and where there's room for improvement.
Some questions to ponder when measuring success include:
While this is not an exhaustive list, reflecting on these points can offer valuable direction.
In the end, it is the ROI that matters most. Therefore, continually examining the return on investment of each strategy, tool, or process in your sales enablement framework is non-negotiable.
In this section, we aim to answer the most common questions surrounding sales enablement tools.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for sales enablement include:
A sales enablement framework is a strategic tool used to increase sales efficiency and effectiveness.
All of this is done via services, practices, strategies, and decisions aimed at increasing sales or business outcomes.
It ensures that salespeople have the right training, content, technology, and reports to sell more efficiently at a high velocity.
Building sales enablement involves framing structured methodologies and aligning tools to meet sales-related objectives.
Specific steps include:
Ideally, it is an integrated strategic array strengthened by collaboration between sales and marketing teams, stimulating performance and profitability.
To recap, the right sales enablement tools can significantly speed up the sales pipeline and prevent leads from being neglected or stuck in a stage.
However, remember that the sales and marketing teams must be aligned. Also, equip your sales and marketing team with high-converting sales materials.
If you are looking for a powerful, feature-rich sales enablement content creation tool, then take Visme for a spin. Visme's intuitive visual design tool makes it easy for teams to create engaging marketing and sales content.
Sign up for Visme today and create content to smash your sales targets or boost revenue.
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