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Join nowThe right sales software can automate your workflows, provide real-time insights, and help you nurture customer relationships like a pro.
By Erin Hueffner, Writer, Salesblazer
March 18, 2025
For experienced sales professionals, working toward ambitious targets comes with the territory. But to gain an edge in a highly competitive marketplace, sales reps need more than skill and professionalism — they need the best sales software available.
Whether it's improving sales productivity, streamlining lead management, or building and maintaining customer relationships, using the best tools at your disposal can be the difference between a good sales year and a great one. In this article, we'll explore the best sales software options on the market in 2025, including key features that can serve you in the day to day.
Sales software is used to automate and streamline the sales process. It helps companies manage costs, drive better outcomes for customers, and accelerate the sales lifecycle in a variety of ways. Sales software also enables sales leaders to track representative performance (via sales tracking software), develop sales forecasts, and identify training opportunities for their teams.
That said, sales software is a big category that encompasses a wide range of tools. It also includes sales planning software, revenue lifecycle management software, and sales intelligence tools. Other common sales software applications include incentive compensation management software, conversation intelligence software, and pipeline management platforms.
The right mix of tools depends on what your company needs.
Gain a full understanding of your team's needs and budget before choosing sales software. There are few common features you should look for in a product to help your search. Let's take a look at a few of them:
The following list of top sales software tools is based on user reviews curated by G2 and Capterra. Both sites score applications based on user feedback, features available, and overall satisfaction.
G2 uses a five-star system focused on usability, customer satisfaction, and market presence, while Capterra (which also uses a five-star system) incorporates user ratings across categories like ease of use, customer support, and value for money. Each of the tools listed here has a minimum rating of four stars.
Salesforce Sales Cloud is an AI-powered sales management solution that also offers contact management and lead-tracking functionality, which are key CRM elements. Users can take advantage of its robust reporting tools, as well as improve and automate workflows via its advanced AI tools. Sales Cloud offers a host of native sales productivity tools integrates seamlessly with a host of sales productivity tools. It features accurate lead scoring, enables automated email followups to prime prospects, and offers real-time sales reports so teams and their leaders can stay on target.
How it helps sales teams:
Pipedrive is a CRM aimed at helping users track pipelines, manage deals through its AI tools, and automate the sales process. It integrates with commonly used sales tools, and it's especially geared toward small businesses seeking to expand their reach and profitability. Users like its reporting and analytics features and pipeline management abilities, as well as its easy-to-use design.
How it helps sales teams:
Outreach is a sales execution platform designed to help sales teams achieve smoother workflows through AI insights. It helps sales reps work more efficiently by automating tasks while also assisting with pipeline optimization. Reviewers like Outreach's customer support team and its ability to integrate with other sales tools.
How it helps sales teams:
Hubspot Sales Hub is a CRM that has lead management functionality and streamlined dashboards so sales teams can monitor progress toward their goals. Users of Sales Hub cite its simple design as a selling point, as well as the company's customer support operations.
How it helps sales teams:
SAP Sales Cloud is a sales automation and CRM platform designed to optimize the sales process. It provides customer insights, connects data from disparate sources, and can be used on tablets and mobile phones for sales reps working in the field. Reviewers point to the platform's ease of use, ability to integrate with other products, and its sales automation features as strong points.
How it helps sales teams:
Monday CRM has AI and automation features that were designed to help sales teams work more efficiently. Reviewers note that Monday's CRM is flexible and enables sales teams to customize workflows and collaborate efficiently with cross-functional teams such as marketing.
Freshsales is a CRM that leans heavily toward automation, especially common manual tasks such as followups. Sales teams can use the platform to nurture customer relationships, obtain sales insights via AI, and manage leads. Users appreciate that the CRM is highly customizable and cite its lead scoring system as a helpful tool for prioritizing leads.
Apptivo was created to assist sales and marketing teams manage their activities more efficiently, while also providing standard CRM functionality such as lead and pipeline management, workflow automation, and reporting. Users on Capterra like the responsiveness and expertise of the Apptivo customer support team as well as the platform's customization options.
Choosing the best sales software is about doing your due diligence.
Gain a deep understanding of not just the common features of sales software, but what users like and don't like about the platforms you're considering. Consider which sales software solution will grow with your business, and don't underestimate the power of a solid customer and technical support.
Meanwhile, think about what your team will need to adopt new sales software. A properly trained sales team will be much more likely to embrace the new software and make the most of its functionality. It can be especially helpful to research what functionality your team wants before you make a final decision. Finally, ask your new software partners how easy it will be to migrate data from your disparate systems.
Armed with this knowledge, you're now in a good position to begin your hunt for the perfect sales software for your team. When your sales reps see a significant boost in closed deals and you've blown past your sales targets, you'll know that you made the right choice.
The best sales software depends upon your business and industry needs, but generally includes features that support enablement, pipeline management, prospect and customer engagement (e.g. email), forecasting and reporting, quoting, and order management. More advanced sales software includes automation and AI functionality that allow sales teams to complete tasks with a lot of manual work, like updating deal records. Also, look for a tool that allows you to scale your operations without having to add multiple point solutions that require integration and/or ongoing updates.
Sales software's impact on productivity comes in three forms: the centralization of tools and work streams that avoid swivel-chairing, the use of clean and comprehensive data to share insights that help sellers and leaders make impactful strategic decisions, and automation/AI that do manual work for sales teams, freeing them up to focus on higher-value tasks like relationship-building.
Yes, there are many sales software solutions available for small business. The key is finding one with the functionality that meets your unique business needs, is intuitive to set up and maintain (without dedicated tech support), and allows you to scale your sales efforts without needing to replace the software as you grow.
Many of the challenges faced when implementing sales software are true for any business software: migrating data to ensure it remain clean and complete, making time to train new users, getting users to adopt the new software, integrating the software with any existing systems still being used, and support for the software on an ongoing basis.
AI improves modern sales technology in three ways: 1) Predictive AI analyzes historical sales data to determine patterns that will inform future performance. This is how sales teams get forecasts without manual number-crunching. 2) Generative AI uses source materials like data sheets and customer profiles to create net-new content quickly, like engagement emails. 3) Agentic AI uses human-generated instructions and source material to operate autonomously or with limited human support, taking on work like outreach to inbound leads. All of these types of AI can be connected to or embedded in sales software to improve seller productivity and reduce the length of a sales cycle. It should be noted, however, that for AI to work effectively it needs clean, comprehensive data — otherwise, the outputs may be misleading or incorrect.
Writers drafted these FAQs with the help of AI.
This article is for informational purposes only. This article features products from Salesforce, which we own. We have a financial interest in their success, but all recommendations are based on our genuine belief in their value.
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