Why do sales productivity tools matter for modern sales teams? Well, there’s more pressure than ever to hit your targets, build stronger customer relationships, and close deals.

The problem? Repetitive admin tasks take up valuable time when it comes to prospecting, follow-ups, reporting, creating proposals, and more. Sales productivity tools can help with this by automating emails and generating quotes fast, so there’s less friction throughout the sales process and your reps can focus on selling.

The best sales productivity tools will save you time while reducing costly errors, providing valuable data, and accelerating revenue growth. In this article, we’ll cover the tools that top-performing sales teams use so you can improve your sales efficiency.

Let’s get into it!

Top tools that increase sales efficiency

There are a ton of sales tools to choose from that serve different purposes. Here are some of the most impactful types of sales tools:

Customer relationship management (CRM) software

A CRM is beneficial to any business and sales operation. CRMs include platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive, all of which can help centralize your customer data, track interactions, and manage your sales pipelines. CRMs help keep everything in one place so that your reps can see where deals stand, prioritize their outreach, and forecast accurately.

Configure, price, quote (CPQ) software

When a deal gets to the quoting stage, things can become more complex pretty fast. Your sales team needs to be able to configure products, apply discounts, and make sure that the pricing is correct, all while moving the deal forward.

CPQ tools help reps generate accurate quotes and proposals in hardly any time, even when dealing with complex pricing models. With this level of automation, you’ll save time while preventing revenue loss from manual errors.

PandaDoc’s CPQ software integrates seamlessly with top CRMs, including Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive. This helps your reps go from opportunity to signing a contract without ever having to leave their workflow.

Lead generation and prospecting tools

One of the hardest yet most essential parts of the job is finding qualified leads. Prospecting tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, or Apollo are great for helping your sales team make decisions, gather insights, and personalize their outreach. These tools will help boost efficiency because you’ll spend less time researching, which will allow your reps to focus their efforts on the right prospects.

Document management and proposal tools

Paperwork is a large part of the sales cycle, including documents like proposals, contracts, NDAs, and more. When you manually create, send, and track these types of documents, your entire workflow slows down. That’s why many successful teams turn to document workflow management tools like PandaDoc.

With a drag-and-drop editor, prebuilt templates, eSignatures, and real-time document tracking, your sales reps can deliver polished, professional proposals in just minutes while being able to see when a prospect has engaged with them.

Take a deeper look at PandaDoc’s proposal software.

Sales engagement and communication platforms

You want to stay top-of-mind with your prospects, which requires consistent and personalized communication. You can use tools like Outreach, Salesloft, or email sequencing within your CRM to help your reps automate follow-ups and nurture leads, meaning that opportunities won’t slip through the cracks.

The benefits of using sales productivity tools

When you have the right sales stack, your teams can work faster and can even completely change how they sell. Here are some of the biggest benefits of using sales productivity tools:

• Time savings: When you automate repetitive tasks like data entry, follow-ups, and proposal generation, your team has more time to build relationships with clients.
• Reduced errors: The right tools help you avoid making expensive mistakes. CPQ software, for example, makes sure your quotes and contracts are always accurate.
• Improved visibility: When you have dashboards and reporting, your sales leaders can better track performance, spot bottlenecks, and forecast more reliably.
• Faster deal cycles: Productivity tools remove friction at every stage of the sales cycle, from lead generation to closing, speeding up closed deals.
• Better collaboration: Integrated tools means sales, marketing, and operations teams can communicate better while moving deals forward more smoothly.

Tips for implementing sales productivity tools

It can be tricky to adopt new tools if you’re disrupting your team’s existing workflow. Here’s how you can make for a smoother rollout:

1. Start with the gaps: Identify the biggest time-wasters or bottlenecks in your sales process, and choose tools that directly address them.
2. Prioritize integration: Look for tools that connect with your CRM and other platforms to make sure everyone has access to the correct data.
3. Keep it simple: Don’t overload your team with too many tools at once and focus on the essentials first.
4. Train and support your teams: Invest time in onboarding so reps feel confident using the tools. Providing ongoing support will help the adoption stick.
5. Measure the impact: Track KPIs like time-to-close, quote accuracy, and rep productivity so you can see the ROI of your tools.

How PandaDoc helps sales teams close faster

Managing paperwork manually is time-consuming and hinders productivity, which is why switching to digital automation can significantly improve these processes and ultimately help you close more deals.

When our client Titan Protection switched to PandaDoc, creating, delivering, and eSigning contracts and proposals became more straightforward and efficient. Plus, they were able to reduce the time it took to create documents by 85%, reduce errors by 62%, and increase their close rates by 10%.

“We needed a document solution that allowed us to harness dependent fields for our signatures to meet legal standards. PandaDoc met and exceeded those requirements. The onboarding was a breeze, technical support is second to none, and they integrate perfectly with HubSpot. I highly recommend PandaDoc if anyone is looking for an alternative to DocuSign or any other document management platform.”

– Brian Potter, Marketing Manager at Titan Protection

The bottom line

Sales productivity tools are a necessity for sales teams today, whether that’s a CRM keeping your pipeline organized, a CPQ tool that speeds up quotes, or a document management platform like PandaDoc to make sure proposals land quickly.

Ready to see how PandaDoc can speed up your sales cycle so you can close more deals? Request a free demo today.