Top tools to automate remote B2B sales

There’s a growing need for automation tools in B2B sales. And it’s no surprise — this McKinsey study shows that the number of distinct sales channels has doubled in the past decade, and approximately two-thirds of B2B buyers in 2021 opted for remote human interactions or digital self-service. To meet prospects where they are and hit your targets, it’s more crucial than ever to have the right tech stack.

Our team faces the same challenges. So we’re curating a selection of indispensable tools to help you simultaneously work with more prospects, shorten your sales cycle, and increase your conversion rate. These tools have been vetted by sales leaders and growth marketers with over a decade of experience in software sales at Stripe, Apple, Kevin, and Paddle.

Build a pipeline of prospects and qualified leads

If you’re working in a sales-led organization, you’re probably no stranger to identifying and reaching out to leads through LinkedIn Sales Navigator. However, if you run a product-led business, people come to you first. Qualifying them means evaluating their need for your product, the size of the revenue opportunity, and their purchase intent.

Your marketing page signup conversions are the first indication that people need your product. Ask more qualifying questions in the signup flow to understand these leads better. You could build a custom form for this, or use a third-party solution like Typeform. Adding extra steps will likely cause drop-off, so offer a customized onboarding flow or a personal demo as a reward. You’ll learn more about your customers, and your customers will learn more about your product — it’s a win-win!

Next, you need to know which companies your signups are coming from so you can decide where to focus your sales outreach. To automatically enrich signups with firmographic data, we recommend platforms like Lusha, Hunter, or Clearbit. Setup requires a sales operations engineer, but once it’s active and you’re driving traffic to your site, you’ll save time by prioritizing the right leads. If you don’t have an engineer on hand, check out Pocus — a new product-led sales platform (currently in beta) that helps nontechnical teams uncover sales potential based on product data.

Now it’s time to figure out your leads’ purchase intent. The best way to do this is by asking more questions through conversational marketing platforms like Drift or Intercom. If you offer a freemium plan or a free trial, make sure leads engage with your product before you message them. Focusing on people who’ve experienced the value of your product — your product-qualified leads — will increase your win rate.

Once you’re done using quantitative and qualitative data to pinpoint contacts with the greatest sales potential, plug in a sales engagement platform like Outreach or Reply. These tools will help you scale your outreach through automation and optimize it with personalization and A/B testing.

Create engaging presentations for your demos and proposals

We know you’re busy — but so are your prospects. Instead of inviting them to a call via email, which can lead to a lot of back-and-forth, send them a link to your Calendly or SavvyCal. That way, they can book the time that suits them best. Make sure your scheduling tool automatically shares a call link to avoid causing friction (and drop-off). Tools like Zoom, for instance, integrate with Calendly to automatically create conference call links. You can also schedule video conference calls with Whereby or DemoDesk.

The call is your chance to get creative. To make your demo worth your prospect’s time, go over some general questions — What’s their main pain point? How familiar are they with your product? — and then shift their focus to your presentation. Provide context on what makes your product unique and how it can solve their problem. If you’re looking to spruce up your sales deck, Pitch can help you create beautiful presentations that’ll keep your prospects attentive and interested. If you’re sending a proposal async, record yourself talking over slides so your prospects can engage with your presentation in their own time.

Track the progress of your sales pipeline

After the call, you’ll need to log your prospect somewhere secure and report the deal status to your management team. Most of this work can be automated in a customer relationship management (CRM) system. 

Selecting the right CRM comes down to your company size. If you’re an early-stage startup, you can track your deals manually in Notion. However, if you need to divide sales opportunities between a larger team of sales reps and do a more detailed pipeline analysis, consider a dedicated CRM tool like Pipedrive, HubSpot, or Close. Your scaling plans should also inform your choice — migrating an entire customer database will become more complicated and sensitive as your company grows. 

Close deals and sign contracts

In the end, what really matters is closing the deal. And that means getting someone to sign on the dotted line — fast. Two of the best tools for obtaining an eSignature are HelloSign and DocuSign. 

After closing the deal, don’t forget to celebrate! At Pitch, we use Zapier to send updates on closed deals from HubSpot and revenue movements from ChartMogul to Slack. This way, our entire team can enjoy wins together.

Learn from past calls to improve your performance

Your past sales calls can yield valuable information, such as which selling points resonated best with your prospects. But who has time to listen to hundreds of calls? Luckily, tools like Avoma or Gong can automatically transcribe calls, and they use AI to identify frequently occurring patterns. Topics like competitor mentions, objections, pricing negotiations, and feature requests are automatically categorized and analyzed so that sales leaders can quickly understand what compels and deters prospects. 

Reinforce best practices with sales enablement solutions

Now that you’ve set up a system to get relevant customer insights, you can create messaging and collateral to help your sales team sell better. Of course, you’ll also need a place to store all of your decks, one-pagers, and battle cards so they can be easily accessed and updated. 

If you’re working in an enterprise business and have a dedicated sales enablement team, sales content management systems like Seismic or Highspot can help make collateral available on demand. But not every team has the budget or capacity to set up and roll out such a tool.

Most companies need a simple, scalable way to equip their sales team with the latest messaging and brand guidelines. One way to provide this is through an approved presentation template. Pitch makes it easy for teams to collaborate and stay visually consistent. When sales reps need to put a new spin on a deck, they’ll already have a template that includes the latest product visuals and messaging. Instead of having to worry about images and copy, they can spend their time tailoring the deck to each client. 

Perfect your pitch

Once you’ve found the right tools, it’s time to work on nailing your pitch! Check out our guide to sales for some ideas to get started.