Selecting The Best Sales Engagement Tools for B2B Sales

Are you struggling to connect with prospects in the virtual sales world? Is it increasingly difficult to engage new leads and convert them into buyers?

Your team works hard, but it feels like you’re all just spinning your wheels and not making headway. Too many customers drop out early in the sales process, so you don’t really have a chance to deliver your pitch. How can you connect if you don’t have a chance to engage?

Sales engagement tools can revolutionise how you interact with prospective buyers. The right client communication tools can streamline your sales processes, organise and structure your strategy, and automate key aspects, like follow-ups. 

The best client communication tool ensures your sales team delivers timely, consistent engagement for every lead. These tools make it easier to provide timely follow-ups to avoid missing leads. Plus, your sales team can answer pressing questions without delay for a better buyer experience.

The Importance of a Diverse Sales Engagement Strategy

B2B buyers consume up to seven pieces of content before speaking with a sales rep, and 11% engage with more than seven. It’s unlikely that buyers will stick with one type of content, meaning you need a diverse approach to meet their needs.

For example, prospective buyers may see an ad on social media once or twice before visiting your website. They might do some additional research before they ever reach out to you. 

Did you know? Paid searches have the highest conversion rate at 2.9%, followed by organic searches at 2.8%. Direct mail, email, and referrals all have a 2% or higher conversion rate. Optimising your approach to all avenues gives you the best growth potential.

Using client communication tools to support sales teams means reaching your buyers where they work, such as through social media, email, and even direct mail. Adopting a diverse approach to buyer engagement casts a wider net and provides more opportunities for prospects to notice your brand.

The right client communication technology can help your team organise communications to ensure consistent messaging across all platforms. It also tracks engagement so you can see what’s working, refine what doesn’t, and optimise your approach.

While this approach might sound like more work, it can reduce the time spent on some tasks. Buyer engagement software can automate some of those time-consuming, mundane tasks so your team is free to focus on more complex duties.  

8 Best Client Communication Tools for B2B Sales

Building a diverse buyer engagement approach sounds good, but what does that look like in practice?  These eight client communication tools will round out any sales team’s toolbox.

Social Media Management Software

Social media is a must for any sales team, and using software to monitor several platforms from one interface can save time. It’s ideal for ensuring consistent messaging and providing a more comprehensive view of buyer engagement to know what’s working.

These management tools offer unique insights into buyer engagement and save your team time. Everyone can access the same information to monitor customer relationships, collaborate more effectively, and track key metrics, like keyword performance.

For example, if your marketing team wants to run a campaign to generate leads, they create and schedule posts. Your legal team can review the posts to ensure they are compliant and make changes before the posts go live. There’s no need for back-and-forth emails or chatter between teams. 

Additionally, your sales team can track progress and interactions with these posts to engage in real-time and set follow-ups with prospective leads. The real-time interaction with prospect comments on a post can boost buyer engagement. 

Top social media management software includes HubSpot, Hootsuite, and Zoho Social. These platforms allow teams to follow best practices in social media to optimise strategies, like creating a calendar and setting goals. Teams can even embed multimedia, like videos, to boost engagement.

Email Outreach & Marketing Software

Email remains one of the most effective ways to engage prospects by providing valuable information they can review anytime, anywhere. Using software to automate email campaigns saves your team time and effort by relying on templates to deliver vital information while keeping messaging consistent.

With the right software, your team can segment prospects and deliver personalised correspondence. 

Email Outreach Software

Email outreach is valuable for introducing your product, identifying new leads, building brand awareness, and establishing a community. 

Did you know? Many people ignore cold emails, but you can expect a response to 8.5% of those you send out. Prepare to send hundreds of outreach emails to make it worth your while. 

Email outreach software, like Apollo, HubSpot Sales, and reply.io, automates the process, making it possible to send and track multiple campaigns at once. It offers your team a way to use cold emails and track engagement with them to know what hits and identify potential leads based on open rates and click-throughs. 

Email Marketing Software 

When prospects sign up for your mailing list, they expect to receive valuable information about your product in their inbox. Email marketing software allows you to set up campaigns that automatically send emails to your mailing list. 

For example, you could set up a welcome campaign with a welcome email upon signup. Then, your team can set up personalised follow-up emails over the next week or two. 

Additionally, email marketing software, like Drip, HubSpot, and Mailchimp can track prospect engagement with the content. You can see open rates and if the prospect clicks through any links. 

SMS Software

SMS, or short message service, is an effective communication tool for businesses. Texting short messages to leads can convey key information, like a deal on your product. 

Using SMS for marketing and sales is quick, easy, and effective because the messages are succinct with clear calls to action. The most effective versions keep things simple by covering the key information and providing a single link.

Using SMS software, like Podium and Brevo, makes it possible to automate the process so your team only inputs a single message that then goes out to your entire list. It’s also easier to track engagement with the texts and links.

Reporting and Analytics Software

Running any campaign without tracking the response is pointless because you have yet to learn what is working. That’s where reporting and analytics software comes into play. It can draw data, both historical and real-time sales insights, from several sources to provide a clear picture of campaign performance. 

Your team doesn’t have to devote hours to collecting and deciphering the information to determine what’s successful and what needs refining. Use Google Analytics, HubSpot, Zoho, or Power BI for the most comprehensive and user-friendly reporting options.

Knowledge Bases

Like FAQs and online discussion forums, knowledge bases offer buyers a self-service option. Many customers want to find answers to questions before they reach out to a sales representative, and easy-to-search knowledge bases fill that need.

You often need several teams to contribute to these sections to ensure accuracy. Using the right software allows cross-team collaboration to provide more complete and accurate answers. Platforms like ZenDesk, Notion, and Zoho allow teams to monitor forums and refine FAQs based on analytics.

Customer Feedback and Survey Apps

Getting feedback from your buyers helps uncover concerns and issues while reinforcing that you value their feedback. Making buyers feel valued builds trust and loyalty to establish repeat business. 

Feedback and survey software like SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, and AskNicely can be personalised for each customer. They allow you to create short, easy surveys with a mix of questions to get a pulse on your customers’ needs and desires.

Video Engagement Tools

Fun, engaging videos can go a long way in educating and entertaining buyers. A personable video with clear images can reinforce your brand messaging and deliver critical information to enhance the overall buyer experience.

Be cautious about overdoing the special effects because it can feel too busy. Use whitespace to draw attention to key information, like a call to action. You can even reuse the videos and images across all platforms for consistency.

Live Chat and Live Assistance Platforms

Modern technology has created a world where immediate responses are the norm. Waiting too long for an answer can prompt buyers to look to another brand that provides an immediate response. Live chat and assistance platforms allow teams to provide that instant response to clients, address concerns faster, and offer solutions.

REVE Chat and Intercom are two options for integrating live chat to appease prospective buyers without doing extra work or draining your team.

The Forward Factor: Supercharging Your Buyer Engagement Experience

Choosing the right software and tools for your team can feel overwhelming. Finding the right balance is difficult, and you need multiple tools. 

Forward is your sales team’s secret weapon, providing the ideal solution to mastering buyer engagement. Bring everything together in a centralised hub so your entire team can access the same information and keep tabs on every prospect at each step in the sales pipeline.

Seamless Integration With Your Favourite Tools

Forward’s seamless integrations make it easy to connect the sales engagement automation platforms you already use to create a streamlined process. 

It’s easy to manage and track social media, email, and SMS campaigns by connecting with all platforms your team uses. Your sales team can easily monitor prospect engagement and provide timely responses so nothing slips through the cracks. 

Centralised Deal Content

Simplify the sales process through centralised deal content for a streamlined engagement model. Ensure that prospects have consistent access to necessary materials for an elevated buyer journey.

For example, you can use the dashboard to set up and deliver an email outreach or marketing campaign along with an SMS campaign. Then, track the progress of the campaigns to see how they fare and make adjustments as needed. 

Mutual Action Plans

Create transparency and accountability for a streamlined sales process with interactive mutual action plans. The interactive approach engages prospects and establishes a faster, easier closing process. Increased transparency boosts customer trust and loyalty for long-lasting relationships. 

As part of your process, you could set up an automatic survey to send to prospects at various points. This approach makes the buyer feel valued, translating to positive reviews and better customer feedback.

Real-time Collaboration

Every successful deal requires support from multiple teams. Avoid the back-and-forth emails and unproductive meetings with real-time collaboration between teams and buyers.

Forward makes it possible to share documents, upload content, and chat in real-time to ensure consistency, accuracy, and timeliness. When everything is organised in one place, your team can deliver timely responses, giving your buyers a seamless experience while making them feel valued and heard. 

Personalised Micro-sites

Personalisation is more important in a digital world, and Forward offers you a chance to deliver that experience for every buyer. Create a personalised micro-site for a tailored buying experience that makes a lasting impression. Make your buyers feel special to increase the chance of converting them into loyal customers.

Pre-defined Templates

Are you worried about how much time it takes to run campaigns? Leverage Forward’s library of predefined templates to save time without compromising personalisation or accuracy. With options for various sales settings, your team can reduce administrative tasks and boost productivity without compromising the customised buyer experience.

Real-time Prospect Tracking

Sales teams need quality, accurate longitudinal and real-time analytics to gain insight into buyer behaviours. Forward offers extensive analytics to give sales teams the quality information they need. 

Your team can react quickly and efficiently when they have appropriate and accurate data to drive decisions. Forward tracks data across all platforms, from social media to live chat, to learn what your buyers ask most often, what products they engage with, and more. 

Enhance Client Engagement With Forward

Buyer engagement is more challenging than ever in an increasingly virtual world. Many prospects seek a blend of interpersonal interactions and self-service, meaning you need to leverage multiple platforms.

Using several platforms creates additional challenges for consistency and accuracy. Forward gives your sales team the power to stay on top of every platform from one convenient dashboard. 

Further, Forward's digital sales room integrates with the best client communication tools to boost productivity without compromising the buyer experience. It’s the ultimate option for streamlining your business processes to meet sales goals. 

Boost buyer engagement when you try Forward for FREE!