7 More Must-Have Sales Tools

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We couldn’t stop at 7 Must-Have Tools for today’s sales professional, there’s too many great ways to sell more effectively, communicate better, and streamline your mountain of follow-up tasks.

And you know, it’s really not about the tools, it’s about the problems you can solve, that you didn’t know you had. So here’s phase two of our seven must-have tools.

Your own personal training device. Finding articles over at SalesMarks.com is a great way to stay sharp, but if you don’t have an iPod, the time has come. If you’ve got one, start subscribing to sales-related podcasts to take advantage of your air travel and windshield time. No more talk radio. No more classic rock. Feed that brain with content that will help you in your life and your career.

A backup VOIP phone. Skype, Gizmo Project, or MagicJack. Choose your weapon, but you ought to give one of these a shot. Let’s say you’re stuck in a hotel room with wifi, but you’ve also got a bad cell signal or a dead battery . One of these low-cost options could easily bail you out. Our choice is MagicJack—a plug-and-play USB solution that requires no real installation and makes crystal clear, dirt-cheap calls.

A better way to prospect and network. Whether you’re looking for a way in to high-profile accounts or watching out for your own career, LinkedIn, Jigsaw and Demandbase offer powerful ways to get contact names. LinkedIn is really a network, and we prefer this method to ultimately meeting the right people for your career, but Jigsaw is a need-names-now solution. Demandbase makes the list because of your ability to spend a little, yet still get important contact names at the companies you want, rather than simply buying a list of 1,000 or more companies.

Unified communications. Last week we mentioned getting an electronic fax number. This week, we recommend combining your cell phone and landline numbers. With GrandCentral (yes they’re still officially in “beta” mode, but they are now owned by the all-everything Google), all my calls route through my GrandCentral number (which is free), which then rings both my cell phone and office simultaneously. RingCentral offers this too, though packaged with a lot more and not free. Customers get one number to make one call, and I have one voicemail box to manage. And all those voicemails are delivered to me by email.

A simple, low-cost solution for customer feedback. It doesn’t matter if you work for a large company or a small one, you can so very easily set up Surveymonkey or Wufoo to help you poll your customers for service and product quality feedback, it’s a no-brainer. Why more companies don’t try this is beyond me. Not only can you survey them, you could set the survey up to help you announce next month’s product or service promotion at the end.

Widespread Internet access. “I gotta get online!” you shout as you drive unnecessarily from place to place, seeking wifi access to use your laptop. Stop doing this! Sign up with T-Mobile for wifi access, or make the plunge and get yourself a wireless broadband card and get rolling.

An online resource for great sales tools. How could we leave SalesTeamTools off the list? If it weren’t for us, you wouldn’t know about many of these tools, right? Get organized, find access to solid sales training tools, and—coming soon—stay up-to-date on new resources that will make your air travel less stressful.