About the list…
It drives me crazy to hear so called “gurus” complain of business-to-business (b2b) sales and marketing being too vanilla or conformist. It simply isn’t true.
In fact, it’s the on-the-fly strategy and flurry of tactics that drive so many of us towards b2b…and keep us here.
But what I truly love most about b2b sales and marketing is the ongoing innovation and problem solving in places like San Francisco and Silicon Valley, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Boulder and Portland.
Walk into a coffee shop in any of these cities, and you’ll surely find a determined team of entrepreneurs “growth hacking” a new tool or platform to help make us more efficient and effective at our jobs.
Splitting my time between San Francisco and Phoenix, I get to learn about and demo quite a few of these products. And in the spirit of the new year, here are fifteen of my favorites that I encourage you to seriously consider adding to your arsenal in 2015.
And I’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to tweet me at @ScottSalkin or email ssalkin@allbound.com.
Scott Salkin
CEO & Founder
Allbound
@scottsalkin
2. 15 “Must-Know” Sales and
Marketing Tools for 2015
1. Gainsight
2. Spiderbook
3. Datanyze
4. SalesLoft
5. Socedo
6. Clearslide
7. Yesware
8. Doubledutch
9. Leadspace
10. Mailbox & Acompli
11. CoTap
12. Salesforce1 Mobile
13. Hubspot CRM
14. TrackMaven
15. Allbound
About the list…
It drives me crazy to hear so called “gurus” complain of
business-to-business (b2b) sales and marketing being
too vanilla or conformist. It simply isn’t true.
In fact, it’s the on-the-fly strategy and flurry of tactics
that drive so many of us towards b2b…and keep us here.
But what I truly love most about b2b sales and marketing
is the ongoing innovation and problem solving in places
like San Francisco and Silicon Valley, Phoenix, Salt Lake
City, Boulder and Portland.
Walk into a coffee shop in any of these cities, and you’ll
surely find a determined team of entrepreneurs “growth
hacking” a new tool or platform to help make us more
efficient and effective at our jobs.
Splitting my time between San Francisco and Phoenix, I
get to learn about and demo quite a few of these
products. And in the spirit of the new year, here are
fifteen of my favorites that I encourage you to seriously
consider adding to your arsenal in 2015.
And I’d love to hear your thoughts, so feel free to tweet
me at @ScottSalkin or email ssalkin@allbound.com.
Scott Salkin
CEO & Founder
Allbound
@scottsalkin
3. 2
Gainsight.com // @GainsightHQ
Gainsight is the first and only complete Customer Success Management
solution that helps businesses grow faster by reducing churn, increasing upsell,
and driving customer advocacy.
ü Get a 360° view of customers and drive retention across customer
success, sales, marketing and product management.
ü Leverage customer intelligence and automation to proactively reduce
churn and identify upsell opportunities.
ü Unify your customer data to proactively manage retention and growth.
ü Let real customer behaviors drive your interactions with them in things like
QBRs or automated emails.
ü The only solution 100% native to Force.com so your data is secure, real-
time and unified.
4. 2
Spiderbook.com // @SpiderbookInc
Spiderbook™ shows you how everything and everyone in the business world are
related. With a few simple clicks, you connect the dots among companies,
people, partners, products and documents—to discover the fastest paths to
closing deals. Using Spiderbook, you quickly see:
ü Who does business with whom?
ü Who are the decision makers that really make things happen?
ü What important deals have they done?
ü Who can get you a warm introduction?
ü Which companies are going to influence this deal?
ü Who are you competing with for this business?
5. 3
Datanyze.com // @Datanyze
Datanyze is the sales prospecting tool powered by technology data. By crawling
millions of websites each day, Datanyze helps businesses understand not only who
is using their competitors’ software, but also when they started or stopped using it.
ü Get the most accurate and up-to-date information on the technologies any
website is using.
ü Get a competitive advantage for customer acquisition and retention
ü Target the right leads at the right time.
ü Know when one of your biggest accounts signed-up for a demo with one of
your competitors.
ü Find relevant, accurate company information with important metrics like
revenue and employee count.
ü Add data and insight to your customer and prospect data in Salesforce,
Marketo and other CRM and automation platforms.
6. SalesLoft.com // @SalesLoft
SalesLoft lets you automate list building through the power of social networks
and sync contact information directly to your CRM.
ü Easily build accurate sales and marketing lists.
ü Search for titles, industry, location, social network groups, and more, directly
from your browser.
ü Capture social data for your search terms as indexed by Google.
ü Capture name, title, company, email, phone number, location, industry, and
more for every prospect you import.
ü Grab data on social profiles, no matter your level of connection.
ü Export an unlimited number of prospects to Excel or Google docs.
ü Add completed prospect records, including custom fields, directly to your
Salesforce CRM.
ü Import prospects directly from social network search results, taking full
advantage of their advanced filters.
4
7. 5
Socedo.com // @Socedo
Socedo helps sales and business development professionals leverage social
platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter to automatically discover leads and build
relationships more effectively.
ü Automatically finds prospects on Linkedin and engages with them on both
Twitter and Linkedin using a customizable workflow.
ü Get critical insights into your custom criteria and your engagement with your
social leads.
8. 6
Clearslide.com // @Clearslide
ClearSlide empowers sales teams to engage and close more business by
improving customer-facing interactions (Web, email, face-to-face) by providing
real-time visibility and analytics for both sellers and sales leaders.
ü Share your content with one click; no tech issues, no snafus.
ü Understand how your customers interact with emailed content.
ü Stay connected to your customers, your content, and your pipeline.
ü Increase the consistency and the impact of your sales messaging through
a single library of approved content.
ü Gain access to sales activity, reported by company, team, salesperson, or
customer.
9. 7
Yesware.com // @Yesware
Yesware gives salespeople unprecedented feedback and analytics on how and
when their email messages are received and viewed by their prospects.
ü Know exactly which prospects are most interested in what you’re selling
with tracking notifications.
ü Quickly send personalized emails to up to 200 people at once.
ü Save and reuse the messages you find yourself writing again and again.
ü Get detailed analytics on emails opens, replies, link clicks, and template
response rates.
ü Place calls from your inbox and easily log them directly to Salesforce.
ü Know what content closes deals, who viewed your presentation, how long
they spent on each page, and how often they accessed it.
10. 8
Doubledutch.me // @Doubledutch
Doubledutch transforms events and conferences from good to great with data-
driven mobile technology. Use engagement data from your mobile event app to
ensure that each event is better than the previous one.
ü Deliver an up-to-date mobile event guide at any time and let attendees
easily create their own personalized agenda.
ü Embed surveys and polls into your app and incentivize feedback.
ü Facilitate digital and in-person networking.
ü Drive sponsorship opportunities with promoted messages, a sponsor
directory, branded splash page, push notifications, and more.
ü Integrate with event platforms such as Cvent, eTouches, Active, and more.
ü Link profiles to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to publish updates from
one central hub.
ü Scan attendee badges directly and access data in real-time or import into
your CRM or marketing automation system.
11. 9
Leadspace.com // @Leadspace
Leadspace finds you highly-targeted prospects by performing online research
into your existing customer base to uncover the professional profiles that
describe which buyers are most likely to purchase your product or service.
ü Find the prospects most likely to become your customers.
ü Understand the "professional DNA” of your perfect prospect, such as job
function, technologies used, professional groups, seniority level,
department, and more.
ü Access detailed information, social media links and contact info for new
prospects and for leads and contacts already in Salesforce.
ü Add any prospect into Salesforce with the click of a button.
12. MallboxApp.com // @Mailbox
Mailbox is a mobile-first inbox that’s taken
the very best experiences from the apps
we use everyday and applied them to your
email, challenging assumptions about
how email works and redesigning the
inbox for a world on the go.
ü Get email delivered to your phone
at lightning speed.
ü Use the colorful swipe-based UI to
make processing easy.
ü “Snooze” messages to focus on
what's important now.
ü Quickly swipe messages to your
archive and scan entire
conversations.
ü Automate common actions, from
swipes to snoozes.
ü Add all your Gmail, Google Apps,
and iCloud accounts to enjoy a
simple, unified inbox.
Acompli.com // @Acompli
Acompli empowers professionals to do
more with advanced email, full
calendaring, easy file sharing and all your
important people in one fast, easy-to-use
mobile application that supports
Microsoft Exchange, Office 365, Google
Apps and Gmail.
ü Automatically surface important
emails and tell others to come back
later.
ü Integrate your calendar schedule
meetings and share available
times.
ü View and attach files from Dropbox,
Google Drive, OneDrive and email.
ü Find important emails, people and
files faster.
ü Access people and related emails,
meetings and files to manage
relationships better.
10
13. 11
Cotap.com // @Cotap
Cotap is a simple, secure mobile messaging app for fast, easy workplace
communication. With mobile-first simplicity that users love, and the enterprise-
grade security businesses need, Cotap reaches all employees where they’re
most likely to read a message: on their smartphones.
ü Instantly connect with anyone at your company.
ü Stay aligned with remote and traveling team members.
ü Easily share Box, Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive files
without unnecessary downloads.
ü Connect with Salesforce to create conversations around accounts and
opportunities, or message prospects and customers directly.
ü Seamlessly sync conversations across all devices and never miss a
message with apps for your desktop, the Web, iOS and Android.
ü Monitor employee use and engagement and see real-time analytics on
when alerts are read.
14. Mobile App
12
Salesforce.com/mobile // @Salesforce
The new Salesforce1 mobile app delivers vital sales information you need,
wherever you go, keeping your CRM current and allowing you to manage and
convert leads, contacts, accounts and opportunities right from your phone.
ü Make faster decisions with real-time dashboards for sales, service,
marketing, and business performance.
ü Own your day with a comprehensive view of all your meetings, account
details, and tasks to be completed.
ü Keep deals moving by quickly seeing where you are in the process, what’s
important at each stage, and the most urgent information.
ü Add new contacts, update opportunities, and keep accounts up to date.
ü See a comprehensive view of all your tasks.
ü Collaborate on projects with colleagues and customers on the go.
ü Open and edit Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
15. CRM
13
Hubspot.com/CRM // @Hubspot
HubSpot CRM connects to Gmail, Google Apps, Outlook, and Apple Mail, logging
emails with your contacts easily and automatically. It features a database of
contacts, companies, deals, and tasks, and offers a simple and powerful timeline
view to help sales teams seamlessly navigate and chart opportunities and leads
in one simple view.
ü Make it intuitive for salespeople to track emails, record calls, and manage
data, freeing up valuable selling time.
ü Connect to the places where the modern sales process takes place - on
your website, in email, on phone calls, or across social media.
ü Control your content marketing performance while getting a 360 degree
view of prospects and customers.
ü Add custom fields, filter records, select and organize columns, and save
different views easily.
ü Integrate with the HubSpot Marketing Platform to effortlessly capture,
score, and hand off leads to your sales team.
ü Access data anytime, anywhere on HubSpot’s app for iOS and Android.
16. 14
TrackMaven.com // @TrackMaven
TrackMaven empowers your digital marketing by analyzing your marketing
content -- across paid, owned, and earned channels -- alongside your
competitors’ content. Using this data, you can identify marketing opportunities,
optimize your content distribution timing and channel decisions, and track your
progress in real-time.
ü Identify marketing opportunities, optimize content distribution, and track
progress in real-time.
ü Find trending content in specific channels or market segments.
ü Discover topics and tactics to engage your audience more compellingly.
ü Put your content into market on the right channels at the right time and
frequency based on benchmarks and best practices.
ü Monitor content engagement and performance relative to competition.
ü Use dashboards, reports and alerts to analyze results and improve.
ü and Android.
17. 15
Allbound.com // @GoAllbound
Allbound challenges the outdated assumptions of how B2B sales and marketing
enablement should work by redesigning the model for a world on the go. Our Sales
Cloud and Channel Cloud platforms take the best experiences from the apps we use
everyday and applies them to critical areas of business where they’re long overdue.
Replace cobbled-together, outdated sales and marketing portals and learning
management systems with the first end-to-end marketing and sales enablement
automation platform in the cloud. Allbound lets you bring all the people in your sales
channels, and all of the resources and tools they rely on, together in one place.
ü Deliver training and resources, content and collateral, lead generation and
incentives to your field sales and resellers–in one mobile-ready platform.
ü Quickly locate the most timely, relevant and effective content for specific
prospect and customer requirements.
ü Easily launch proven lead generation campaigns and access customizable
marketing collateral and sales tools that help build pipeline.
ü Measure key data points with more than 20 built-in reports and infinite
custom options to help maintain ROI requirements and brand standards.
ü Add, remove and change users, access rights, system settings and content in
just seconds with an intuitive administration center.