As a salesperson, you only get so many minutes in the day. We all do, really. But when your job depends on finding new leads, collecting data on leads, having meaningful conversations, managing opportunities, and helping close revenue, any time you can save on these tasks is worth its weight in gold. That’s why the world of online sales tools has exploded in the past few years – industrious entrepreneurs are finally realizing the inherent struggles of being a salesperson, and responding with a plethora of tools designed to make your job easier.
But what happens when you don’t have a big budget? Some sales tools can cost up to $30k per year, and even more if you’re looking to use it with everyone on your team. And even if you’re part of a larger sales organization, you may not always be able to get budget to try new tools.
If you’re struggling with a lack of budget for new tools and a lack of hours in the day to close deals, then this list is for you. Here are 11 of the best free sales tools we’ve discovered to help you find more leads, collaborate with your team, and spend less time prospecting so you can spend more time selling:
Rapportive
Used for: Gathering data on prospects right inside your email.
Rapportive is one of the first tools we started using here at Vidyard, and it continues to be an amazing, simple resource for our sales team. Integrating with our Google Apps email addresses, Rapportive shows LinkedIn profile data along side every email we send or receive just by hovering over a person’s email address.
It lets you see the picture, geographic info, social profiles, and – most importantly – the shared connections you have with anyone you’re emailing. Easy, instant data where it’s most relevant. Start a conversation by referencing some local news, look at shared connections and joke about a former colleague, all from within the email creation screen.
Rapportive is a free add-on for Google Chrome and Firefox, and works with Gmail or Google Apps email addresses.
Streak
Used for: Managing your clients and deals in Gmail.
Streak is a Gmail-based CRM and business management app that works directly in Gmail. Keep track of open and closed deals, create support tickets and collaborate with your support team, and even share contacts and client information with other salespeople.
If Salesforce.com is a bit out of your price range, or you’re looking for a CRM tool that you can start using right away, Streak is handy, easy to set up, and free for up to 200 tracked emails per month.
LeadIQ
Used for: Building lead lists from social profiles, and finding contact info.
LeadIQ falls into the free-ish bin of sales tools, but it’s powerful even as a trial product. With LeadIQ, you can build lead lists by browsing sites like LinkedIn and AngelList, and sync contact data from these leads directly into Salesforce. Not a Salesforce user? Export the data as a CSV instead!
The Chrome Extension allows you to quickly build lists as you browse through profile pages, and the first 50 leads are free. The setup process is super quick too, as illustrated by this hilarious video:
Owler
Used for: Gathering details on executive structure for private companies.
Owler is a unique company database that focuses less on minute company details and more on executive information. Signing up for a free Owler account lets you browse by company name, and shows estimated revenue, employee numbers, competitors, funding announcements, acquisitions, and even an RSS feed of recent blog posts and press releases. The site revolves around reviewing executives and businesses, but the data is definitely useful for anyone in sales.
Owler is free to use, and the information provided is crowd-sourced. Much of the data for private companies is speculation, but it will still give you a very good idea of the market size and any major milestones in the company’s recent history.
Hootsuite
Used for: Managing social channels, social listening, and social selling.
When it comes to social tools, it’s hard to beat Hootsuite. Their free plan allows you to manage up to 3 social profiles, schedule messages, and set up as many social searches as you want. Our team uses it to keep track of companies they are targeting, search for industry keywords, build lists of influencers to share news with – pretty much anything you can think of when it comes to social media.
It’s a great tool for social selling, as you can monitor conversations, keep track of competitors, and reply in the moment when something exciting happens. Their free plan is good for one user, and has no expiry date so you can use it for as long as you want.
Hunter
Used for: Finding contacts from specific websites.
Similar to LeadIQ, Hunter allows you to build contact lists, and discover emails, but works at a domain level. Plug in a website, and Hunter will find any known email addresses for that site, and the location of where it pulled the email address from. Very useful if you’re planning an account-based prospecting campaign for a specific company, or simply want to build a lead list for your target accounts.
Hunter is free for the first 150 searches per month you are performing, and the Chrome extension allows you to automatically pull lead lists when browsing sites. Hunter also features an email verification tool that can confirm an email address from your existing database as correct or not.
Boomerang
Used for: Scheduling emails and setting reminders.
Boomerang is a simple, but powerful way of scheduling your emails. It gives you the ability to set a send date and time within Gmail, set reminders on emails that you are archiving, and set reminders on emails that you may need to reply to later. The free account gives you 10 message credits to work with, and plans start at $4.99 per month for added functionality.
ViewedIt
Used for: Easily creating videos and screen shares in Chrome.
Most of these tools have focused on finding lead lists, or researching prospects, so now it’s time to look at a tool that just makes selling easier. ViewedIt is a free video and screen recorder for Chrome that lets you quickly create personalized content to send to prospects. Most business email accounts are bombarded with over 100 messages per day, and less than 25% of these emails ever get opened. That means you have to work harder, and be more creative to get heard through all the noise.
ViewedIt lets you easily create recorded personalized outreach videos, detailed walkthroughs of your product, and leave simple video voicemails that drive huge engagement rates. And best of all, you can see exactly when a prospect watches your video, and for how long. All that from a free Chrome extension that takes just a minute or two to set up. ViewedIt currently works with all Gmail and Google Apps accounts.
HubSpot CRM
Used for: Tracking emails, managing contacts, and assigning deals.
HubSpot has long been known as a leader in marketing automation, and their new HubSpot CRM tool is top-notch. It’s a free to use customer relationship management platform that tracks emails, stores contacts and companies, lets you manage deals, and integrates with their paid HubSpot Sales platform if you need a higher level of functionality. It’s free for as many users as you want to add, so if you’re looking for a way of keeping your sales team aligned around goals, there’s no limit on this.
All in all, for a free CRM tool, you can’t beat it!
Calendly
Used for: Automating your scheduling, booking meetings.
Calendly is a scheduling tool that allows you to automate your calendar, and let prospects book meetings themselves. Include your Calendly link in emails, and prospects can see when you’re available, book meetings, and get automated reminders that you can customize.
Calendly also makes it easy to schedule meetings with your team, giving you the ability to see when a group is available, and book times accordingly. The basic free version allows you limited scheduling options, but is relatively full featured if you want to see if this tool is right for you!
Pattern
Used for: Collaborating on notes with your team, automatically updating Salesforce.
Pattern is designed to help sales teams get more done, faster. It’s a collaborative note-taking application that uses an easy user experience, and predictive artificial intelligence to push your point form notes into Salesforce. Pattern can pull details like deal size, client name, and potential closing dates directly from your notes, and create salesforce opportunities from this data.
It can also automate follow-ups, confirm meetings, update Salesforce records, and pick up on potential lost deals or movement signals just by analyzing your notes, and the notes contributed by your teammates. It automatically syncs all the data with Salesforce, meaning you can keep all of your notes in one place and know that it’s safely in your CRM for later.
What’s Your Favorite Free Sales Tool?
Thanks for checking out our list of tools! Hopefully one or two of the great products we’ve talked about today will shave a few hours off your weekly sales tasks, or help you have better conversations with your prospects.
This list is by no means exhaustive, so we’d love to hear the free tools you and your team are using! Let us know in the comments!
The post 11 Free Sales Tools to Pump Up Your Pipeline appeared first on Vidyard.
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