It’s an interesting time in the world of sales. According to HubSpot’s State of Sales Report, salespeople say that selling got harder last year, from trouble getting in contact with decision-makers to longer deal cycles and the struggle of standing out from the competition.
The good news? Today’s technology can help sales teams overcome—and even wildly surpass—these hurdles. Sales performance management software can help sellers thrive in today’s sales world. From offering incentives to sellers to inspire them to reach their goals to automating the sales process to motivating them through accurate sales forecasts, it makes their jobs easier and gives them back the time they need.
Today, we’ll review some of the best sales performance management tools out there so your sellers get the support they need to become your top performers.
Best Sales Performance Management Software: Overview and Use Cases
Sales performance management tools run the gamut from forecasting tools to sales coaching platforms to help your revenue teams shorten sales cycles, close more deals, and drive more revenue.
- Consensus: Demo automation and product experience management platform
- Clari: Buyer, deal, and pipeline intelligence
- Mindtickle: Learning management and content management solution
- Salesloft: AI-driven buyer engagement platform
- Xactly: Central hub for incentive compensation plans
- Performio: Incentive plan creator and performance tracker
- Everstage: Gamification incentivization tool
- CaptivateIQ: Commission calculation and coaching platform
- Salesforce Spiff: Incentive compensation management tool
- Pipedrive: AI-driven CRM and pipeline management software
- Salesforce Sales Cloud: All-in-one sales solution
- Weflow: Revenue intelligence platform with automatic forecasting.
- SAP Sales Cloud: Retail-focused sales solution
- Oracle Sales Performance Management: Territory, quota, and compensation management platform
- Ambition: AI-driven sales coaching tool
- Bigtincan: Sales readiness platform
What is Sales Performance Management Software?
Sales performance management software is an umbrella term for a diverse set of tools that improve the overall performance of sales and go-to-market teams. Depending on the tool chosen, it can reduce the number of manual tasks a seller must complete, offer salespeople insight into their current pipeline trajectory, and create incentives to help sellers reach their goals.
They can also give sales leaders a centralized hub to see how their reps are performing and can turn these insights into teachable, coachable moments. In the next section, we’ll break down the different types of sales performance management tools.
Types of Sales Performance Management Tools
Are you looking for sales coaching assistance? Maybe you want to gamify your sales training or improve your sales cycles. Whatever you’re looking for, there’s a sales performance management tool for you. Of course, some SPM software includes various capabilities on one platform.
- Sales enablement: Sales enablement tools provide training, content, information, and other material to all salespeople in your company in one centralized location.
- Incentive and compensation management: These tools use existing deal data to help users create and implement incentive plans and commission structures to inspire sellers to reach their quotas.
- Pipeline management: These types of sales performance management tools analyze the current sales pipeline and tell sellers about potential issues with the deal, opportunities to engage, and how to best close the deal.
- Sales training and coaching: Sales performance management tools focused on sales training and coaching use features to find opportunities to improve the performance of a seller and their overall skill set.
- Sales analytics and forecasting: These features track real-time data on a sales team’s performance, present the analytics to sellers and their team leaders, and use the data to forecast revenue trends.
Benefits of Using Sales Performance Software
Let’s face it—even if your sales team is regularly hitting quotas, you may still be looking for ways to go above and beyond. This is where sales performance management software comes in. Benefits of implementing this software include:
- Shorter sales cycles: Sales performance management software can help sellers better address their buyer’s needs and improve stakeholder discovery, which can drastically cut down the sales cycle. For instance, users of Consensus’ product experience software have seen their sales cycles decrease by, on average, 30%.
- Higher revenue: Using sales performance management software enables sellers to pinpoint opportunities for higher growth. Consensus users see their close rates increase by an average of 50% and double their deal sizes.
- Better seller experience: Reps today say that selling is getting harder, but sales performance management software makes selling easier by automating manual tasks, providing motivation and incentives, and finding training opportunities that boost their skill set.
- Improved buyer enablement: It’s not just reps who think that today’s B2B market is getting harder to navigate. One survey found that 77% of B2B buyers say that their last buying decision was complex or very difficult. Sales performance management software offers a range of tools that make the buying process easier, like demo automation platforms that let buyers explore a product at their own pace.
- Optimized sales pipeline: These types of tools also assist with pipeline management by offering insights into how to engage next, such as how Consensus offers analytics that tells reps what demos are getting the most eyes and who is sharing your demos the most in a buying group.
Best Sales Performance Management Software for Sales Enablement
Sales enablement provides sellers with the content, training, tools, and resources they need to better engage with buyers, close more deals, and reach quota attainment.
Nearly 80% of sellers say that sales enablement content is crucial in helping them make a sale, with product demos being considered the most effective form of content. In this section, we’ll talk about the best sales performance management software with unbeatable sales enablement tools.
1. Consensus
Consensus is a Product Experience Platform that helps users create unique, educational, inspiring, and truly engaging product experiences that optimize sales performance. The platform’s ultimate goal? To fix the buying experience. Today’s buyers want a self-service experience that enables them to buy the way they want, when they want, and how they want.
Consensus makes buying simple by giving buyers access to product experiences when and where they want them. Combining demo automation technology with industry-leading insights, and AI assistance, Consensus helps revenue teams create, share, and track product experiences that modern buyers want and close deals faster. The platform offers:
- On-Demand Video Tours: Buyers get personalized video demos throughout their buying journey. They tell Consensus what features they care about most, and they get a video tour that perfectly addresses their use cases and pain points. Sellers get intent data that tells them key insights into the buyer that help them better engage and sell.
- Interactive Product Tours: Buyers view and try out your product in a controlled, contextualized guided tour. These tours are simple to build, easy to navigate, and help your buyer envision what it would be like to use your platform.
- Automated Product Simulations: Buyers explore one-click sandbox demo experiences that skip engineering and time constraints. In just seconds, they get a data-rich POC experience that lets them unpack the functionality of your product.
- Actionable Intent Data: Consensus offers analytics that gives sellers a deeper look into what their buyers really want, from feature rankings to new stakeholder discovery to organizational heat maps. With DemoBoards, your buyers can share their demos with key stakeholders, boosting your stakeholder discovery, a crucial metric when in today’s B2B buying world where most deals require the approval of six to 10 stakeholders.
As your champions and stakeholders go through the product tours and simulations, you receive vital intent data that tells your sellers where, when, and how to interact with their buyers next. Consensus users see shorter sales cycles, bigger deals, more deals—and overall better relationships with their buyers.
Key Features:
- Demo Creator: Create demos for every stage of your customer journey, designed for a personalized experience every time.
- Product Tours: Show your buyers the features they want to see and tell a story through a unique multimedia tour.
- Screen Recorder: Capture and edit video demos right through Consensus.
- Chrome Extensions: Create video demos instantly with the help of Consensus’s Chrome Extensions, going beyond screenshots to build a more interactive experience.
- Demo Player: Deliver interactive demos on any browser or device.
- DemoBoards: Provide your buyers with a secure, branded, and customized landing page that shows off your product.
- Playlists: Share multiple product experiences in one link, keep content relevant, and guide buyers throughout their journey.
- BuyerBoard: Give your champions a place to show your product to key stakeholders and colleagues.
- Content Downloads: Supplement your demos with additional content that can be easily downloaded by your buyers.
- Public Links and Merge Links: Create custom links that can be shared via your social media, email campaigns, website, and more.
- Demo Library: Build a centralized hub for your demos that’s accessible to your team and easily searchable.
- Demolytics: Track how your buyers are engaging with your demos to receive intent data that helps you better qualify and interact with your leads.
Pricing: Consensus builds custom plans based on licenses and use cases.
Consensus users have seen their stakeholder discovery rate increase by more than 50%, added $30 million in revenue related to demo automation, and shortened their sales cycle by 60%.
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2. Clari
Clari is a revenue enablement platform that uses artificial intelligence for sales engagement and intelligence. It automatically captures and provides insights into buyer data, monitors the health of sales pipelines, develops action plans to close deals, and predicts future revenue. Clari integrates with Consensus to enable users to track buyer engagement and receive detailed insights all in one place.
Photo courtesy of Clari
Key Features:
- Clari Copilot: Get real-time coaching and actionable insights.
- Clari Inspect: Monitor the health of a sales pipeline.
- Clari Forecast: Predict and manage sales forecasts.
Pricing: Clari doesn’t publicly display pricing.
3. Mindtickle
Mindtickle is a sales enablement tool that functions as a learning management system (LMS) and a content management system (CMS). It also provides users with digital sales rooms to engage buyers, AI-driven coaching insights, conversation intelligence, and sales forecasting.
Photo courtesy of Mindtickle
Key Features:
- Mindtickle Copilot: Use AI to roleplay with buyers, automate manual tasks, and plan training exercises.
- Revenue Readiness Index: Set benchmarks for sales training and coaching.
- Analytics: Build custom dashboards and track revenue, seller training, and buyer engagement.
Pricing: Mindtickle doesn’t publicly display pricing.
4. Salesloft
Salesloft is a revenue orchestration platform that uses AI to tell users when and how to engage with buyers based on buyer signals. The sales engagement tool includes conversation intelligence, deal insights, and sales forecasting abilities.
Photo courtesy of Salesloft
Key Features:
- Plays: Automatically generate one-off tasks based on buyer signals.
- Rhythm: Organize workflows automatically.
- Drift: Receive recommended email content and engage via Bionic Chatbots.
Pricing: Salesloft doesn’t publicly display pricing.
Best Sales Performance Management Software for Incentivation and Gamification
Multiple studies have found that gamification is a great way to boost engagement and motivate employees, with one study finding that gamification boosts learning enjoyment by more than 40%. These sales performance management tools focus on creating compensation incentives for sellers, as well as adding gamification tactics to inspire them to reach their goals.
1. Xactly
Best for: Creating a unified source of truth for compensation and go-to-market performance
Xactly is an intelligence revenue platform that lets users create workflows for go-to-market strategies, assign tasks, and predict sales and pipeline forecasts. It also helps users make compensation incentive plans based on performance.
Photo courtesy of Xactly
Key Features:
- Incent: Administer incentive plans for go-to-market teams.
- Manage: Assign tasks from a unified sales plan.
- Forecast: Predict revenue from the current and predicted pipeline.
Pricing: Xactly doesn’t publicly display pricing.
2. Performio
Best for: Creating incentive plans for go-to-market teams
Performio takes the data users import, organizes and validates it, and uses it to determine payouts for go-to-market teams. It also tracks seller performance and displays it through automated reporting.
Photo courtesy of Performio
Key Features:
- Calculation Library: Manage all sales commission plans in one place.
- Leaderboards: Showcase top performers.
- What-If Calculator: Show sellers their future under their compensation plan.
Pricing: Performio doesn’t publicly display pricing.
3. Everstage
Best for: Integrating gamification incentivization into an existing tech stack
Everstage is a sales compensation platform that uses imported and tracked data to determine commission calculations. It then uses automated features to process commissions, integrates into an existing tech stack to display gamification functionalities to sellers wherever they’re working, and provides analytics and insights on sales performance.
Photo courtesy of Everstage
Key Features:
- Crystal: Use predictive intelligence to tell sellers their future payout based on performance.
- Integrations: Integrate commission, quota attainment, and payout status visualizations on Slack or Microsoft Teams or integrate Everstage’s full suite of features into Salesforce.
- Time Machine: Model commission plans based on historical data.
Pricing: Everstage doesn’t publicly display pricing.
4. CaptivateIQ
Best for: Coaching go-to-market teams to reach their commission goals
CaptivateIQ is an incentive compensation management tool that lets users automate their commission calculations and payouts, motivate and coach sellers, and track and provide insights into sales performance. It includes a proprietary calculation engine that tracks and models data in real time.
Photo courtesy of CaptivateIQ
Key Features:
- SmartGrid: Use a calculation engine to receive real-time forecast modeling and show sellers their estimated payouts.
- Assist: Use a built-in AI solution to streamline manual tasks, provide personalized guidance to sellers, and deliver insights into an incentive program.
- Enterprise Workflow Automation Suite: Automate commission workflows.
Pricing: CaptivateIQ doesn’t publicly display pricing.
5. Salesforce Spiff
Best for: Incentive transparency with sellers
Spiff is Salesforce’s incentive compensation management tool. Users can provide reps with customized commission statements, future estimates, and insights into their performance. They can also automate commission workflows.
Photo courtesy of Salesforce
Key Features:
- Commission Estimator: Predict future commissions.
- Rep Statements: Give sellers transparency into their statements, progress, and potential earnings.
- Automation: Automate commission workflows.
Pricing: Spiff can be included in the Salesforce Sales Cloud, where pricing depends on use cases and features.
Best Sales Performance Management Software for Pipeline Management
With pipeline management tools, sellers receive just-in-time insights into what’s happening in their sales pipeline, which can prevent the loss of a deal and ensure that the seller is engaging right when and how they need to engage. In this section, we’ll unpack the top sales performance management software focused on pipeline management.
1. Pipedrive
Best for: AI-driven pipeline management
Pipedrive is a CRM and pipeline management tool that offers a centralized hub where users can visualize the sales pipeline, automate administrative tasks, receive insights into sales performance, and track all customer communications. It also has built-in email marketing software and AI-driven features, like an email creation and summarization tool.
Photo courtesy of Pipedrive
Key Features:
- AI Sales Assistant: Receive AI-driven recommendations on next steps.
- AI Deal Summarization: Receive deal summaries generated by OpenAI.
- Pipeline Reports: Automatically generate reports on a sales pipeline.
Pricing:
- Essential: $24 per user per month
- Advanced: $49 per user per month
- Professional: $69 per user per month
- Power: $79 per user per month
- Enterprise: $129 per user per month
2. Salesforce Sales Cloud
Best for: Data-driven forecasting and pipeline management tools
The Salesforce Sales Cloud is a part of the Salesforce CRM dedicated to sales and go-to-market teams. Users can automate sales processes and workflows, automatically capture lead and activity data, manage pipelines and forecasts, and receive reporting on seller performance, current pipelines, and future revenue trends.
Photo courtesy of Salesforce
Key Features:
- Account and Opportunity Management: Get deal-specific insights and build account plans in one place.
- Forecast Management: Build forecasts based on real-time data.
- Pipeline Management: Track pipeline changes and receive insights on ongoing trends.
Pricing: Pricing for the Salesforce Sales Cloud is determined by features and use cases.
3. Weflow
Best for: AI-powered forecasting
Weflow is a revenue intelligence platform that auto-captures customer data and interactions. Using this data, it offers AI-driven insights into deal health, automates forecasting, and creates interactive charts that show why and how the forecast is changing.
Photo courtesy of Weflow
Key Features:
- Activity Capture: Auto-capture emails, meetings, and contacts through Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 and store in Salesforce.
- Opportunity Snapshots: Track pipeline changes.
- Deal Alerts: Receive warnings on deal actions or inaction.
Pricing: Features can be purchased individually or in a bundle for $65 per user per month.
4. SAP Sales Cloud
Best for: Retail sales execution
The SAP Sales Cloud is a sales solution that provides users with an overview of each customer, AI-driven recommended next-steps, and sales automation features. It also offers an overview of sales performance at each retail store location, as well as a mobile-friendly app and visit scheduling for retail locations.
Photo courtesy of SAP
Key Features:
- AI Recommendations: Receive automated insights into accounts and recommendation actions.
- Store Overviews: See overviews of sales performance at each retail store.
- Visit Planning: Use surveys to gauge what a retail location needs and schedule a visit to the site.
Pricing: SAP doesn’t publicly display pricing.
Best Sales Performance Management Software for Sales Readiness
In this section, we’ll dive into the best SPM software focused on sales readiness and management.
1. Oracle Sales Performance Management
Best for: Territory and quota management
Oracle Sales Performance Management’s suite of tools assists with incentive compensation, quota management, and territory management. Set, balance, and modify territories; allocate and modify quotas; calculate sales compensation; and track sales performance against goal metrics.
Photo courtesy of Oracle
Key Features:
- Incentive Calculations: Use a what-if modeling tool to analyze compensation scenarios.
- Quota Planning: Calculate quotas based on sales intelligence.
- Territory Management: Create territories based on geography, business units, product lines, industries, and named accounts.
Pricing: Oracle doesn’t publicly display pricing.
2. Ambition
Best for: Sales coaching
Ambition is a sales performance, readiness, and enablement tool that offers AI-driven features for coaching and performance tracking. Using Ambition AI, the software offers just-in-time AI insights for training, delivers analytics measured against key goal metrics, and provides leaderboards and awards to sellers.
Photo courtesy of Ambition
Key Features:
- Coaching Orchestration: Receive real-time insights on a seller’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities.
- Coaching Pre-Read: Get a daily briefing on seller performance metrics.
- Scorecards: Assign custom metrics and track individual rep performance.
Pricing: Pricing is determined by use case.
3. Bigtincan
Best for: Sales readiness
In 2021, Bigtincan acquired Brainshark and turned it into its sales readiness solution. This sales enablement tool offers just-in-time training and everboarding. Using AI features, users can build interactive courses, evaluate conversations for feedback, roleplay with buyers, and incentivize learners through leaderboards and prizes.
Key Features:
- Course Editor: Create courses and optimize them with AuthoringAI.
- CoachingAI: Practice conversation and presentations and get AI-driven insights.
- RolePlayAI: Speak with a sales simulator to prepare for buyer interactions.
Pricing: Bigtincan doesn’t publicly display pricing.
Choose the Best SPM Software to Optimize Sales Performance
Sales performance management software improves your sellers’ overall ability to close more deals, manage better relationships, and become the top seller you know they can be. You might want to add several types of sales performance management software to your tech stack to help your reps thrive. But where do you start?
When it comes to boosting sales performance, few strategies are as impactful as investing in sales enablement. Why? Sales enablement equips your team with the tools, resources, and strategies they need to excel at every stage of the sales process. It’s not just about selling more—it’s about selling smarter. Sales enablement creates the foundation of any effective sales transformation by:
- Empowering sellers to drive results: When your sellers are equipped with the right resources, they’re better prepared to handle objections, address buyer pain points, and confidently guide conversations.
- Creating personalized, buyer-centric experiences: Sales enablement tools give reps access to buyer insights, automated content delivery, and scalable personalization. This approach ensures buyers feel understood and valued, which directly influences deal outcomes.
- Improving collaboration across teams: When everyone is on the same page, working toward shared goals, and using consistent messaging, you minimize misalignment and help sellers have more impactful, value-driven conversations with prospects.
- Accessing data-driven insights for smarter selling: By analyzing buyer engagement, sales enablement tools reveal what resonates with prospects, which features they care about most, and how sellers can adjust their approach to drive results.
- Building a strong foundation for long-term success:
Sales enablement is not just about immediate wins—it’s about creating a system that supports sustained growth. By focusing on enablement first, organizations can ensure their teams have the skills, tools, and frameworks needed to adapt to evolving buyer demands and market conditions.
How can you scale your sales enablement efforts? Try Consensus. Consensus saves your sellers valuable time, from streamlined demo creation to allowing buyers to share demos with stakeholders, effectively letting the buyers sell themselves on your product. Sellers also get crucial intent data that tells them the best way to interact with their buyer and close that deal—growing deal sizes, reducing sales cycle time, and raising win rates.
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