Whether your team is remote first, hybrid, or completely in the office, investing in tools that are going to improve communication across the team are a good idea. So we’ve compiled a list of our top 10 best sales collaboration tools to help your team break through communication barriers and team members are able to help each other get more deals across the finish line.
Note: Rattle is our own product. As we saw more and more companies practically living out of Slack (where a lot of sales communication and collaboration occurs), we wanted to bring the power of Salesforce to Slack. Collaborate with anyone across your team using dedicated channels, with alerts on deals as they move through the pipeline. Go here to create a free account and get started.
The 10 Best Sales Collaboration Tools of 2022
Rattle
At Rattle, we want to help sales teams move fast and sell more. However, they can’t do that if they’re spending countless hours managing Salesforce or collaborating with managers and coworkers only after a deal is at risk.
You can use Rattle to integrate Salesforce data directly into Slack, so your team stays updated on everything from missing MEDDIC information to deals getting stuck in the pipeline. Slack alerts may be used to inform your team of anything from updates to Salesforce records to new wins by the sales team. You can also keep your Salesforce data clean without having to manually remind your reps.
Here’s what some of our customers have to say about Rattle:
Pros:
- Bi-directional Slack/Salesforce integration connects two of your most potent tech platforms with full-featured integration (unlike the native integration)
- Customized Slack alerts make it easy to give your team exactly the data you want them to have for each workflow and alert
- Create specific deal channels and invite everyone on the team who needs to stay in the loop on a specific deal. Rattle will send alerts as changes are made to the account and as it moves through each stage of the deal.
- Send automated Salesforce reports to specific people on your team, giving you the ability to collaborate and take action right from Slack
- One-click integration makes it easy to get Rattle up and running as fast as possible
- No-code automation means that anyone on your team can create workflows without tons of specialized training
Cons
- Costs more than the native Slack/Salesforce integration (but you get way more features)
G2 Rating: 4.9/5
Pricing: Starts at $29 per user per month
Slack
Slack is designed to make communication easier for businesses. It's got a plethora of features, including open discussions, private groups, direct messaging, and deep contextual search and message archiving. Slack integrates with many other apps like MailChimp or Google Drive, making it easy to integrate into your tech stack. When it comes to sales communication and collaboration, Slack is found in almost every tech stack because put simply, it just works.
Pros:
- Offers a wide variety of data under one convenient platform
- Integrates with Salesforce, Zendesk, and other apps
- Provides customized notifications directly to your email
Cons:
- Users complain that it can be annoying to manage all the channels that pop up over time
- Some managers find that their reps get distracted in Slack instead of using it solely for work
- The interface is less intuitive than some users would like
G2 Rating: 4.5/5
Pricing: A basic Slack account can be activated for free, and professional plans start at $6.67 per user per month.
Seismic
Seismic is a market-leading solution for sales enablement and digital shopping experiences. Seismic's Storytelling Platform™ empowers marketing teams and sales teams to deliver content across all channels and sellers to engage with prospective buyers in a compelling way at every stage of the buyer journey. This platform not only encourages sales teams to communicate and collaborate better with each other, but it also encourages better communication with potential buyers through its intuitive buyer communication platform.
Pros:
- Offers real-time content engagement analytics, so you’re always working with the best data
- Integrates with Salesforce, Outlook, and other marketing automation platforms
- Includes an extensive and customizable content library, giving you more options to create custom buyer experiences
- Simple to navigate, so you should be able to get your team up and running on it fairly quickly
Cons:
- Many users wish there were more tutorials or chat support to help them learn the platform
- Search results tend to be non-optimized and can be overwhelming
G2 Rating: 4.7/5
Pricing: Seismic doesn't publish pricing and instead encourages businesses to book a demo.
Miro
One of the biggest challenges many sales teams face now that so many of us are working remotely is recreating the natural flow of in-person brainstorming sessions. Miro is one of the best solutions we’ve found, providing a digital whiteboard where team members can create digital sticky notes, build custom workflows, and organize ideas, all in an easy-to-understand visual interface. Sales team collaboration can happen in real-time or on each person’s schedule, giving teams the flexibility they need to create together in whatever way works best.
Pros:
- Has an easy-to-navigate visual interface that makes it more intuitive to use
- Includes both real-time and asynchronous collaboration options
- Video conferencing and voice calling are built-in, so you can choose how you want to collaborate with your remote sales team
- Syncs with Slack, Jira, and other productivity tech
Cons:
- May encounter slow load times occasionally
- Users complain that it can be difficult to track changes on a single document
G2 Rating: 4.8/5
Pricing: The basic option is free and includes unlimited team members; paid plans start at $8 per user per month.
Showpad
Using Showpad, organizations can improve their earnings by crafting engaging content experiences and timely, pertinent communication that drives sales. Sales representatives can utilize it as a sales content management system, a sales readiness coach, an sales effectiveness analyst, and a buyer engagement platform to customize their approach for a wide range of customer demands. Its custom buyer experiences make Showpad particularly unique, as it’s one of the few programs that acknowledges and prioritizes digital content experiences as a key factor in modern sales success.
Pros:
- Includes professional visual effects to enhance client presentation materials
- Provides coaching to sellers to help them identify and correct weak points
- Gives explicit details on customer interactions
Cons:
- The web interface can be slow
- Can be challenging to navigate the extensive content library and interface
G2 Rating: 4.6/5
Pricing: Showpad doesn't publish pricing but instead encourages potential users to contact them for a quote or demo.
DealHub
DealHub's CPQ, CLM, and Remote Selling solution enables sales groups to establish and maintain consistent, personal communications with clients throughout the buying process, improving the customer experience. DealHub users receive sales insights and sales information at every step of the sales process. DealHub also generates sales playbooks that guide each rep through the sales procedure, ensuring consistency.
DealHub includes all the tools that teams need to manage customer contracts throughout the life of the agreement. Digital DealRooms generate dynamic content in real-time and include e-signature tools that make it easy to close deals without scheduling in-person signings.
Pros:
- Makes it easy to organize all pricing into one clean document, which is much easier for customers to understand and approve
- Syncs with Salesforce to keep pricing and deal information consistent across both platforms, reducing confusion among the sales team when pricing structures are updated
- Speeds up the contract generation process, allowing reps to build custom sales presentations faster than ever
Cons:
- Some users have found the integration process slow and cumbersome
- User training and support could be improved, as many users found this to be the biggest hindrance to integrating DealHub into their workflow
G2 Rating: 4.7/5
Pricing: DealHub doesn’t publish pricing and instead urges users to book a demo.
Highspot
Highspot provides a variety of content tools and resources to help salespeople generate more leads. It allows them to discover the most relevant content for their situation, present it in different lights, and determine whether customers find it engaging. In addition, marketers can use Highspot's advanced analytics to determine how well their content performs across the entire sales process and obtain actionable advice to fine-tune their pitches and presentations.
Pros:
- Sales reps can easily create stunning content that converts
- Organizes content well, which is a huge lifesaver when you’re trying to put together a last-minute pitch
- Highspot training tools support sales reps and help them continually improve their pitches while giving sales managers insights into what’s helping the best performers succeed
Cons:
- Highspot is dependent on manual processes to keep content up to date and clean, which can eat into the time savings it gives you
- The platform tends to be less user-friendly than other tools, with many users wishing the interface was more intuitive to help them integrate it faster
G2 Rating: 4.7/5
Pricing: Highspot does not publish pricing but instead urges potential customers to book a demo and request custom pricing.
Google Drive
You likely already know and love it, but Google Drive remains one of the most popular tools available to sales teams. It makes filesharing and co-editing easy between team members, and it allows you to easily share documents with your customers with a low likelihood of compatibility issues.
Pros:
- Already included with any Gmail account, meaning most of your team and customers already have it
- Compatible with most document formats, so you can send everything from pitch decks to contracts through the platform.
- Integrates with most of the other popular productivity tools, so whether you use it a little or a lot, you can easily work it into your tech stack to fill gaps that other programs can’t.
Cons:
- Doesn’t have a ton of additional features outside of file sharing
- Lacks advanced collaboration tools like version tracking, making co-editing content inside of the program more cumbersome than other platforms
G2 Rating: 4.6/5
Pricing: Basic plans start at just $1.99 per month
Asana
Asana's ease of use and numerous integrations are what make it such a terrific project management system. Asana's Slack and Gmail plug-ins help keep Asana tasks in step with the actions required to finish them. Additionally, it's incredibly scalable, with tools that function just as well with a team of five as they do with a team of five hundred. It also includes all the conventional project management tools, allowing team members to receive assignments with status updates and empowering managers to track the progress of every job.
Pros:
- Asana works on the web, desktop, plus your mobile device, so it’s easy to keep everyone connected no matter where they are or what device they’re using
- Easily integrates with tons of other productivity tech, so you can easily track all the different elements of your workflow
- Makes it easy for reps and managers alike to track and prioritize their tasks, no matter how many there may be
Cons:
- Lacks some more specific search functions, especially in sub-tasks, making searching through tasks a bit more time consuming
- Certain advanced features are limited to higher payment tiers, which means it can get really pricey for smaller teams that want every feature
- You have to upgrade the entire team if you want to upgrade, which may feel unnecessarily expensive if only a few team members benefit from added features
G2 Rating: 4.3/5
Pricing: Basic plans are free, and Premium plans start at $10.99 per month.
Guru
Guru connects with Slack to provide product information to sales enablement, customer support, content marketing departments, and knowledge management platforms. For example, suppose you’re working with a product team that’s constantly delivering new product features. In that case, Guru is an essential tool to make it easy for sales reps to always present customers with the latest versions of your product without interrupting their sales flow.
Pros:
- Creates a single source of truth for product information, which cuts down on tons of confusion that can consistently happen between sales and product teams
- It makes content retrieval easy, so reps get the information they need precisely when they need it (even if it’s at the last minute)
- The card format makes it easy for reps to quickly understand and digest new content, saving critical time after a new update is pushed
Cons:
- Some users complain that Guru can be slow to load, eating into the time savings
- Requires someone to maintain the knowledge base to keep it up to date
G2 Rating: 4.6/5
Pricing: Starts at $6 per user per month
Why Collaboration is Crucial to Closing More Deals
Collaboration among sales teams to win deals is nothing new. However, sales funnels have become more sophisticated, so communication has only become more critical for sales teams. Still, there’s often so much information to keep track of as sales volumes increase that a lot can get lost in the shuffle, eating away at more of your team’s time as people constantly try to play catch up with each other.
This has only gotten worse since remote employees have become more common, which can cause further breakdowns in the communication pipeline between a collaborative team (even small teams).
Many teams have already turned to programs like Slack that offer collaboration and automation features to help them work together faster and more efficiently. However, many team leaders (likely including you) have realized that relying entirely on a single messaging platform doesn’t entirely fulfill that “in sync” feeling you used to get from gathering in an office together.
Adding new collaboration tools to your stack can positively impact your team’s productivity and closing rates. When you remove communication barriers and make it easier for people to get the information they need from the right person or place at the right time, reps become more empowered to give each potential client the pitch they need to seal the deal.
