Sales reps spend just 35% of their time on actual selling. The rest is consumed by admin, prospecting, and managing tools. If that sounds familiar, it’s time to rethink how your team works. With the right sales productivity tools, you can cut the clutter and let your team focus on what matters: building relationships and closing deals.
Today, we’ll show you the top tools to help you reclaim your time and improve results.
The ROI of sales productivity tools
Nothing speaks louder than numbers, so we broke down the potential savings your sales team can achieve using productivity tools. From automating repetitive tasks to managing pipelines and improving team collaboration, the features outlined below show how much money – and time – you can save.
For this analysis, we assumed a sales team of six full-time employees, each earning $60k per year. This translates to an hourly wage of $28.85, based on a standard 40-hour workweek.
Using this range, we estimated potential time savings per person for various features of sales productivity tools. The table below shows how these time savings translate into monthly and annual financial savings for the entire team:
By automating tasks and leveraging the right sales productivity tools, your team could save nearly $100,000 annually. The goal isn't just to save money - it's to drive growth and close deals. The return on investment is undeniable even when factoring in the cost of these tools.
Let's discover some tools you can use to get your sales team to the next level.
Top sales productivity tools
#1 - Customer relationship management tools
CRM tools are often overlooked, but with the right setup, they can work like personal assistants for your sales team. From tracking every customer interaction to analyzing sales performance, a good CRM takes the guesswork out of managing your pipeline. It’s the foundation for productive, organized, and scalable sales operations.
Example: Capsule CRM
Capsule is a CRM built for businesses of all sizes, offering features designed to simplify and enhance your sales processes.
- Contact and lead management: Keep all customer information in one place to ensure your team never loses track of important details
- Visual sales pipeline tracking: Get a clear overview of your deals at every stage to better forecast sales and spot bottlenecks
- Customizable workflow automation: Save time on repetitive tasks like follow-up emails or project management arrangements
- Email marketing for inbound and outbound campaigns: Run personalized email campaigns directly from your CRM to nurture leads and retain customers
- Sales analytics: Gain actionable insights into performance metrics to identify what’s working and where to improve
- Task management and team calendars: Assign tasks, set reminders, and coordinate with a shared team calendar
- Integrations with marketing tools: Connect Capsule with your favorite tools, like Zapier, Xero, Quickbooks, or Transpond, to streamline operations and maintain data accuracy across platforms.
Starting at just $18 per user/month, Capsule gives you up to 30,000 contacts and a shared sales mailbox. Best of all, you can test its capabilities with a free 14-day trial.
#2 - Sales engagement tools
Sales engagement is the journey from lead to deal, where every interaction builds trust and moves the prospect closer to a decision. These tools guide that journey by tracking each touchpoint, ensuring no opportunity is missed. They also facilitate communication and provide insights that help your team close deals faster.
Example: Outreach.io
What if you could see which sales strategies work, which deals are at risk, and how your team performs in real-time? Outreach.io delivers AI-powered insights into deal velocity, pipeline conversion, and rep productivity, helping you make data-driven decisions.
With features like advanced pipeline management, AI-driven sales forecasting, and conversation intelligence, Outreach.io automates marketing workflows and improves sales efficiency.
Pricing is based on a per-user model. Outreach.io offers five different packages with custom pricing that you can request.
#3 - Sales forecasting tools
Without forecasting, sales teams can’t reach their full potential. Sales forecasting tools give teams a clear view of future performance by analyzing historical data, market trends, and current pipelines. These insights help sales leaders create accurate plans and set achievable goals.
With all that considered, working on actual sales becomes more focused and impactful.
Example: Weflow
Among many sales forecasting tools, Weflow stands out with its ability to auto-capture emails, meetings, and contacts directly into your CRM, saving reps hours of manual data entry. It also provides detailed deal insights and warnings, like deal risks and health, ensuring your team stays proactive.
Weflow's AI-powered opportunity scoring and prediction models use 300 data points to provide actionable insights. Prices start at $20 per month.
#4 - Sales prospecting tools
Whenever you need to fill your pipeline with quality leads, sales prospecting tools do the heavy lifting. These platforms go beyond just finding contacts – they provide detailed insights for personalization, filter out low-quality leads, and automate follow-ups to keep your outreach consistent.
Example: Clearbit
You might be struggling to find accurate lead data or improve the quality of your existing database – that’s where Clearbit comes in. Known as one of the world’s leading B2B data providers, Clearbit offers tools to build lists from scratch, enrich existing data, and uncover buyer intent.
Its global coverage and a blend of proprietary, public, and AI-sourced data ensures your sales team works with the most reliable information. Whether it's lead scoring, lead routing, or dynamic form shortening, Clearbit can help you scale your B2B activities.
#5 - Sales dialers
Sales dialers remain the most effective tools for closing deals as calls drive meaningful connections with prospects. These tools usually use VoIP technology to supercharge productivity. Your team can improve their approach with automatic call logs, call recordings, and detailed analytics provided by sales dialers.
Example: AirCall
Aircall is built for sales teams that rely on high-volume calling and need efficiency at scale. It combines VoIP technology with smart features like local and international numbers, shared team inboxes, and CRM integrations to provide real-time customer context during calls.
Tools like IVR menus and call tagging simplify workflows for customer service, while audio quality controls ensure professional communication. Starting at $40 per license, Aircall is a cost-effective choice for teams looking to improve call management.
#6 - Cold email tools
Cold outreach has become more regulated and challenging, but when done right, it can still be a game-changer for sales. The problem? Manually managing cold outreach can eat up your team’s time and energy. That's where cold outreach tools come in handy - they automate the process, allowing you to scale your outreach efforts.
Example: Woodpecker
Woodpecker is designed to scale your cold email outreach while maintaining quality and personalization. It automates time-consuming tasks like email address validation, inbox rotation, and adaptive sending to ensure high deliverability and engagement.
With condition-based campaigns and centralized inboxes, sales teams can easily tailor reaching out to prospects.
Starting at $29 a month for 500 contacts, Woodpecker is a good choice for teams looking to save time spent on cold outreach.
#7 - Sales proposal tools
Sales proposal tools change how you respond to ‘Send me a proposal.’ Instead of relying on basic PowerPoint presentations or email attachments, these tools let you create sleek, high-converting proposals designed to impress and close deals faster.
Example: Better Proposals
Better Proposals is a modern proposal tool designed to help businesses of all sizes create sleek, high-converting proposals with ease. This WYSIWYG editor and industry-based templates make creating professional documents a breeze.
Top features include proposal tracking to monitor who viewed your proposal, how long they spent on it, and which sections grabbed their attention. Integrations with CRMs and other sales tools ensure one-click data synchronization – while electronic signatures and online payment options remove friction from the customer decision-making process.
At just $19 per month for up to 50 proposals and a 14-day free trial, Better Proposals is a good choice for teams looking to win more deals.
#8 - Lead enrichment tools
Generating leads is just the beginning – truly effective sales require knowing everything about your prospects. Lead enrichment tools expand your knowledge by gathering, verifying, and appending valuable data points to your existing leads.
You can use these tools to enhance contact records with details such as phone numbers, emails, addresses, locations, and even social profiles, making connecting with your target audience easier. With enriched data, you can improve lead scoring, increase sales conversion rates, and save time on manual research while ensuring your database is accurate and actionable.
Example: Clay
Clay is a lead enrichment tool built to provide your sales team with accurate, actionable data. Pulling from over 75 data sources enriches your existing leads or helps you create entirely new lists with detailed contact profiles.
Its key benefits include automated updates to CRM records, insights into buyer intent, and tools for identifying your Total Addressable Market (TAM). Pricing starts at $134 per month, with a free plan offering 1,200 credits for smaller teams to explore Clay’s features.
#9 - Time management tools
Ever feel like time slips away before you’ve tackled what matters? Each week, precious hours vanish, and many salespeople can’t pinpoint exactly ‘what’s on.’ Often, it’s sales procrastination – spending time on low-priority tasks instead of what drives results. Time management tools can change that. They help sales teams stay organized and track where their time goes, cutting down wasted hours.
Example: Clockify
Time is money, and Clockify ensures none of it goes to waste. This time-tracking solution is perfect for businesses managing multiple projects or sales workflows. Tools like timesheets, real-time tracking, and calendar management make teams more productive and accountable.
Clockify provides detailed reporting to give you insights into productivity, project budgets, and team efficiency.
Best of all, Clockify is free forever for unlimited users. Premium plans start at just $4.99 per user per month for those needing advanced features like scheduling and expense tracking.
Sales communication tools
There’s no sales success without communication – both with customers and within your team. External communication drives deals forward, but internal communication ensures everyone is aligned, informed, and working efficiently. Modern sales communication tools do much more than send messages. Integrate them with other solutions to keep your team informed about new sales opportunities.
Example: Slack
Slack can help sales teams increase productivity by centralizing communication and integrating with existing tools. It’s not just for chatting or sending sales snippets. Slack is a platform where teams can collaborate, share updates, and stay aligned on deals without wasting time switching between apps.
With functionalities such as CRM integrations, workflow automation, and shared channels, Slack makes it easy for every team member to access the necessary information. Document sharing, audio/video calls, and real-time notifications keep everyone in the loop. While the free plan is great for smaller teams, paid plans (starting at $7.25 per user per month) unlock advanced features and unlimited message history.
Wrapping up
What if your sales team could spend more time selling and less time buried in admin work? Productivity tools don't help salespeople with just a few simple tasks. They open doors to efficiency you didn’t think possible.
Capsule allows you to unlock hidden potential in your processes, personalize outreach effortlessly, and give your reps the edge they need to make sales. Curious about what Capsule could do for your team? Try it free today and see the difference.
