Best Tools To Manage & Optimise the B2B Sales Process
To take control of your funnel and maximise conversions, you need a system to reach your target customers, nurture them, and sell to them in a personalised way.
Realistically, you can’t do all that manually. At the same time, though, choosing the wrong platforms can be just as counterproductive.
You could end up wasting time, energy, and money implementing a solution that:
- Doesn’t align with your needs and goals
- Fails to connect with the previous and next phase of your funnel
So, let’s look at the best tools for each stage of your B2B sales process, including their key benefits, pricing, and who they’re best for.
Most important types of tools to manage your B2B sales process
Depending on your business model, you might need additional ones, too (such as e-commerce platforms or payment tools).
In most cases, though, you should first focus on the most important parts of the funnel, putting strong foundations and integrations in place with:
- Lead generation tools to reach your audience and capture their details
- Email marketing tools to nurture them consistently
- CRM systems to manage these leads and communications
- Sales engagement tools to stay on top of your outreach
- Proposal and contract engagement tools to seal the deal
- Analytics and reporting tools to measure your results
And remember: to create a funnel that works like a well-oiled machine, most of these tools must connect with each other, have smooth integrations, and exchange the right data (NOT work as standalone pieces!).
For example, when you generate new leads through a ScoreApp quiz, they’re automatically added to your email marketing platform and CRM, together with the segments and insights you choose to focus on.
Now, let’s dive into each of those funnel phases. We’ll get clear on their main goals and show you different tools to consider based on your priorities and budget.
Best lead generation tools for B2B sales
At the very start of your funnel, you must reach your target customers, bring them into your world, and capture their contact details (psst: this will then allow you to nurture them directly and stay in touch).
Here are some of the best lead generation tools to do that as a B2B company.
ScoreApp
ScoreApp is our quiz marketing platform, and while it’s incredibly versatile, we created it with one main goal in mind: help businesses attract warm leads, gain powerful insights, and increase sales.
For example, you could create a valuable quiz lead magnet like “FREE SEO Scorecard” for an SEO agency, “The Financial Goal-Setting Assessment” for a financial advisor, “What’s your entrepreneur profile?” for a business coach, and so on.
Your engaging and tactical quiz questions will segment your leads depending on their answers, and these contacts will be added to both your email marketing platform and CRM.
You can then trigger different sequences and touchpoints for each segment, nurturing them in a personalised way until it’s time to make them the right offer. A game-changer!
Why use it:
- Interactive quizzes and assessments to capture more leads (they have a whopping 30-50% conversion rate), standing out from competitors who still offer traditional lead magnets (like downloadable PDFs that only convert at 3-10%)
- Lead segmentation to divide your new contacts into groups
- Pre-qualifying your leads, identifying those who would actually be a good fit
- Smooth integrations with the most popular email marketing platforms, CRMs, and other external tools (perfect for creating a full funnel!)
- Triggering different email sequences based on each lead’s answers, nurturing them in a tailored way
- Collecting lots of data to inform your marketing and sales process, including in-depth analytics
- Adopting a more personalised sales approach and making custom offers to your prospects, closing more deals
Best for: B2B businesses ready to take full control of their funnel while creating a standout customer experience (personalising and optimising their touchpoints, emails, and follow-ups)
Pricing: freemium and from £24/month
Create your lead generation ScoreApp quiz today and for FREE
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
With it being responsible for a whopping 80% of all B2B leads, LinkedIn might easily be the BEST social media platform for your business.
You can use it for free, especially to post content. However, its paid sales navigator is a much better option to go more in-depth and take full control of your LinkedIn strategy and outreach.
Why use it:
- Get the very most out of your social media strategy and LinkedIn efforts
- Advanced search filters to find your target customers and decision-makers
- In-platform messaging and relationship maps to manage direct outreach
- Integration with your CRM to track and manage all lead generation and sales activities
Best for: B2B businesses targeting specific industries, companies, or roles, looking to focus on social selling and strategic outreach
Pricing: from £69.99/month
Best email marketing tools for B2B sales
Once you’ve captured your leads, it’s usually too soon to make them an offer or try to get them on a call.
They first need to trust you and see your B2B business as the logical solution to their problem. It’d also be ideal for you to see how they engage with your brand and content.
So, to maximise your chances of success, nurture your leads in a personalised way and monitor their behaviour.
There are all kinds of email marketing tools to do this, but here are some of our favourite ones.
ActiveCampaign
This comprehensive platform brings together email and CRM features, and it also has a big focus on marketing automation, which can save you a tonne of time.
Why use it:
- All-in-one platform combining email marketing and CRM capabilities
- Advanced automation and workflows
- Direct integration with ScoreApp (perfect for adding new segmented contacts through your quiz lead magnet, managing them, and sending different or personalised email sequences based on their answers)
- In-depth analytics and testing features
Best for: B2B businesses with a savvy marketing department that can dive deeper into segmentation and automation
Pricing: from £13/month
Mailchimp
Currently the most popular email marketing platform, Mailchimp is a simpler and fairly versatile option that still offers you plenty of handy features (even if you aren’t super techie or haven’t got the biggest teams).
Why use it:
- User-friendly platform with an intuitive interface and lots of email templates to customise
- Segmentation, automation, A/B testing, and campaign tracking features
- Direct ScoreApp integration to add your quiz leads automatically and nurture them with different email sequences, personalising them based on their answers
Best for: beginners, individuals, and small B2B businesses looking for a simpler but strategic email marketing solution
Pricing: from £16.08/month
Best CRM systems for B2B sales
Cold outreach, lead magnet sign-ups, different social media platforms… Regardless of where and how you generate your leads, you should keep them all in one place and use clear workflows.
That way, you won’t run the risk of someone falling through the cracks (for example, because a team member forgot to follow up). You can also use your data to tailor your marketing and sales approach around each prospect’s situation.
That’s where customer relationship management systems come into play.
HubSpot CRM
HubSpot is one of the most popular CRMs, but it’s now evolved into an all-in-one AI-powered platform (one that can bring together not just your customers and data but your teams, too).
Why use it:
- Free CRM with lots of scalable features (marketing, sales, customer service, content, and options for start-ups) that can grow with your business
- Advanced contact management features
- Automation, AI, lead scoring, and sales forecasting
- Direct integration with ScoreApp to manage your new leads, collect all their quiz data, and personalise your next touchpoints accordingly
Best for: growing B2B businesses with multiple teams that need a flexible, comprehensive, and scalable CRM
Pricing: freemium and from £14/month (per seat)
Keap (formerly Infusionsoft)
Unlike most competitors, Keap was specifically made for small businesses, and as well as a handy CRM, it’s one of the best marketing automation tools, too.
Why use it:
- All-in-one platform to generate leads, manage them, market to them (from emails to texts), and sell
- Particularly strong automation capabilities
- Lead scoring features
- Direct integration with ScoreApp, allowing you to add your new quiz leads automatically, store their data, and trigger personalised email sequences, texts, and workflows
Best for: small B2B businesses with a good budget, ready to move away from managing their leads manually
Pricing: from £201.13/month
Best sales engagement tools for B2B sales
As well as organic and inbound marketing, does your business rely on outreach? Then, it’s vital to stay on top of it and always be timely with your follow-ups.
This doesn’t have to feel messy! The right sales engagement tools will allow you to keep track of your cold outreach and lead nurturing (from calls to emails and other channels, like social media) on one platform.
Outreach.io
This is a handy AI-powered tool to make data-informed decisions and help your team members stay in the loop with your outreach, no matter who picks it up.
Why use it:
- Multi-channel platform to sync and manage your outreach and sales automation via email, phone, and LinkedIn
- Pipeline management, engagement and lead scoring, and sales forecasting features
- Advanced AI, personalisation, and automation to speed things up while maintaining a tailored approach
Best for: B2B sales teams relying on high-touch prospecting and outreach
Pricing: custom
Salesloft
This sales engagement tool can save you plenty of time and headaches. It enables teams to take control of their prospecting across different channels while automating their workflows.
Why use it:
- Multi-channel outreach via email, phone, and LinkedIn
- Advanced workflows and AI features
- Personalisation and dynamic fields and templates
- Handy task reminders and features for team collaboration
Best for: B2B businesses looking to manage outreach across different channels while bringing their teams together and saving time with automation
Pricing: custom
Best proposal and contract management tools for B2B sales
By this stage of the funnel, you’ve been generating leads, nurturing them in a personalised way, and making them the right offers. Now, it’s time to close the deal!
A professional proposal and contract management tool will make a great impression with your customers. It’ll also speed up the process and make it easier to keep track of all those potential deals (without running the risk of losing momentum).
DocuSign
When it comes to B2B contracts, this is probably the best tool to send them, manage them, and get them signed as soon as possible (all while guaranteeing a superior and smooth customer experience).
Why use it:
- Managing all your contracts in one place
- Collecting secure and legally binding digital signatures
- Custom branding and templates
- Integrations with external tools, especially CRMs and cloud storage
Best for: B2B companies and small businesses that only need a cost-effective solution to send contracts, specifically
Pricing: freemium and from £8/month
PandaDoc
As well as contracts, this tool allows you to manage all kinds of documents. This makes it a more comprehensive solution when sending out proposals and kickstarting your onboarding process.
Why use it:
- Creating different types of documents, managing them, and collecting digital signatures
- Customisable proposal templates to impress your prospects
- Real-time tracking and automated reminders to speed up your onboarding
- Smooth CRM integrations
Best for: B2B companies looking for an all-in-one solution for their entire onboarding process, managing proposals, quotes, contracts, and payments
Pricing: from £15.36/month
Best analytics and reporting tools for B2B sales
Building a full funnel and clear sales process is the first step. Once you have that in place, though, you can’t leave everything to chance and just hope for the best.
You must measure your efforts and improve everything accordingly. Otherwise, you could lose leads along the way, frustrate your prospects, and miss out on sales.
So, create your funnel using tools with good built-in analytics (for example, ScoreApp shows your landing page conversion rate, how many participants complete your quiz, where they drop off, their results, and much more).
To go more in depth, you can consider external tools that monitor more specific metrics. Here are two of the best ones.
Google Analytics
This is Google’s own tool to collect and analyse data related to your website traffic as well as marketing campaigns linked to it.
While it can be less relevant for other parts of your funnel, it’s one of the best when it comes to understanding and optimising your SEO and organic search, in particular.
Why use it:
- Understanding who is interacting with your website and how, tracking your traffic, conversions, and customer journeys
- Staying on top of your website and marketing goals, measuring results
- Integrations with third-party platforms, especially CRMs and SEO tools
Best for: B2B businesses wanting to harness their website as much as possible, from SEO to conversions
Pricing: free
Zoho Analytics
This Business Intelligence software offers a more holistic overview of your data. It pulls insights from different channels, bringing everything in one place and making it easier for you to spot patterns and trends.
Why use it:
- Affordable BI solution to identify past and present trends and predict future values
- Analytics from multiple data sources, such as your CRM, marketing tools, email platforms, sales, and more
- Custom reports, predictive analytics, and real-time dashboards
- Direct integration with Zoho CRM and ScoreApp
Best for: B2B businesses looking for more comprehensive analytics (and especially those that are already using Zoho CRM)
Pricing: from £19/month
All prices correct at the time of publishing this article
Build a full B2B funnel and optimise your entire sales process with ScoreApp
There are all kinds of tools to manage your B2B sales process. As teased before, though, you shouldn’t rely on disjointed ones: everything should work smoothly and in synergy, helping you generate leads and turning more of them into paying customers.
When you start with a ScoreApp quiz? You get to set the right tone and inform your ENTIRE funnel!
- Capture more leads with a valuable and attractive quiz lead magnet
- Segment them based on their answers, and collect a tonne of data
- Add them to your CRM system and email marketing platform, all automatically
- Personalise your email nurturing sequences, building trust, FOMO, and engagement with relevant messages
- Make the right offer for each lead at the right time
- Monitor your analytics to improve your B2B funnel even further
So, don’t waste time and money on standalone tools. Build a full quiz funnel that integrates with your key platforms and works towards your goals.
Start by creating your ScoreApp quiz lead magnet today and for FREE.
