10 Sales Platforms to Help You Boost Revenue in 2017 Guided selling software is vital for all sales reps, though those new to the world of selling (or your business) can especially benefit.
By Andrew Medal Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Is your sales team less than stellar? Give them the help they need with guided selling software that aids in matching customers with the right products every time.
Guided selling software is vital for all sales reps, though those new to the world of selling (or your business) can especially benefit. It can help aggregate and analyze customer data regardless of your company size. With that information, your sales team is armed with accurate information in real-time that best serves their customers. The result? Happy, loyal customers and a satisfied sales team.
How do you know which guided selling software is best? Look for a solution from an established and trusted company. Check out unbiased third-party reviews, look at testimonials and give your top contenders a whirl with free trials. All guided selling software should be integrated and intuitive.
Related: 3 Ways to Integrate Traffic Analytics Into Your Sales Management Platform
Here are a few of the best-guided software solutions of the year:
1. Salesforce CPQ software
The cash-per-quote software is designed to work for any industry and any sales member. By matching customers only with good services and products for their needs, your business and sales crew will be more quickly seen as experts in the industry.
2. LeadCrunch
If your sales team complains that their leads are low quality and the blame for low sales is continuously volleyed between them and the marketing team, it's time to invest in a better lead generation engine. LeadCrunch, which recently won GigaOM and NVIDIA's GAIN AI competition for best business-to-business platform, uses artificial intelligence to find the best leads by analyzing the customers you've already acquired and uses that data to find like-minded professionals that are searching for the same things, in the same way. That means your sales team can go back to selling and your marketing team will be equipped with ultra-specific information that will jumpstart their efforts.
3. Accent Technologies
Ready to remove the guesswork from the sales process? Accent has long been a leader in the sales industry, and its guided selling software showcases the company's skills, talent and background. The software is simple to use, has a clean design and the support team is well informed and at the ready.
4. Discern
This software helps with cross- and up-selling, has proven abilities to generate more repeat business and at its core focuses on engagement with the customer. However, if you're more of a business-to-consumer company or have a mix, Discern may be slightly too tunnel-visioned.
5. Cincom CPQ
Featuring a dynamic design where sales members can configure the CPQ software to suit their needs, Cincom is reliable and has a user-friendly layout. The software is both interactive and dynamic, ensuring product and service configuration to make the sales and negotiation (if applicable) process much smoother for any sales crew.
Related: How to Triple Your Sales by Knowing Exactly Whom You're Dealing With
6. Autodesk Configure One
What's in a name? Quite a bit since Autodesk's software offering is excellent at configuring your guided selling software to go to work for you. The amount of data it can analyze and crunch in minutes means sales teams have up-to-the-minute and accurate information readily available to close that deal. Autodesk specializes in enterprise solutions, although many industries and businesses of all sizes can benefit from this impressive option.
7. Tacton
Have you ever wanted to take all that knowledge from your best sales team members and turn it into a virtual solution everyone can benefit from? That's what Tacton does with its guided selling software solution, complete with 3-D visualization that allows customers to really see why they've been matched with a certain product or service.
8. Smart Assistant
It might not sound like a guided selling software solution, but Smart Assistant is a smart move and comes with a thriving online community of like-minded selling professionals. In just a few easy steps, you can set up the Smart Assistant guided selling software and integrate it with your favorite existing and future software solutions.
9. Burstorm
If you have a modern business with a significant IT footprint, your data and services are stored, managed and even distributed through some form of cloud services. Because of this, it's no surprise that there's a booming number of cloud products and service providers with various delivery models that are all vying for your business -- but how do you decide which one is the best and keep up with the changes?
Burstorm's platform enables enterprises, systems integrators and service providers to quickly create and assess infrastructure designs while providing up-to-date pricing and performance metrics against the leading cloud service providers. Find the solution that aligns with your business strategy and optimizes your IT infrastructure, while making the decision process of selecting a vendor that best fits your needs a breeze.
Related: 7 Steps You Can Take Right Now To Start Selling More
10. Agorapulse
AgoraPulse is a social media management and customer-relationship management tool that empowers agencies, businesses and advertisers to deal with all their online media messages, plan and distribute content, target key influencers, screen social channels and get staggering reports across the dashboard. AgoraPulse supports Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Google+ so you can growth hack your social networks.
