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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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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%.
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
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Pricing: Clari doesn’t publicly display pricing.
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
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Pricing: Mindtickle doesn’t publicly display pricing.
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
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Pricing: Salesloft doesn’t publicly display pricing.
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.
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
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Pricing: Xactly doesn’t publicly display pricing.
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
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Pricing: Performio doesn’t publicly display pricing.
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
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Pricing: Everstage doesn’t publicly display pricing.
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
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Pricing: CaptivateIQ doesn’t publicly display pricing.
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
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Pricing: Spiff can be included in the Salesforce Sales Cloud, where pricing depends on use cases and features.
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.
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
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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
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Pricing: Pricing for the Salesforce Sales Cloud is determined by features and use cases.
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
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Pricing: Features can be purchased individually or in a bundle for $65 per user per month.
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
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Pricing: SAP doesn’t publicly display pricing.
In this section, we’ll dive into the best SPM software focused on sales readiness and 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
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Pricing: Oracle doesn’t publicly display pricing.
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
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Pricing: Pricing is determined by use case.
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.
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Pricing: Bigtincan doesn’t publicly display pricing.
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:
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.