The First 5 Tools you should invest in - entry-level start-ups.

It doesn’t matter what industry; starting a business will come with immense challenges. It can feel incredibly tough, stressful, and lonely when you’re first starting the business. However, many business tools can seriously help your company grow and prosper in those tumultuous start-up days.

You’re probably going to need to keep costs and outgoings low in your start-up days. Therefore, you might not want to spend thousands of dollars on tools, but the following business tools offer fantastic value to start-ups.

Here are some of the best entry-level entrepreneur tools for any business.

1 - A Sales/Customer Home Base

Every start-up requires business tools that will enable companies to handle CRM data. A CRM system allows companies to store prospect data, track customer interactions, and store customer data. Furthermore, a CRM system can enable companies to store data from emails, live chats, marketing materials, social media, and telephone data.

Hubspot

A fantastic option for companies is Hubspot, which offers founders a comprehensive CRM platform. Hubspot is a platform that makes it simple for companies to work together, enabling companies to collaborate on sales, customer service, and marketing. Hubspot’s software includes a comprehensive marketing hub, allowing companies to run a successful inbound marketing strategy.

They also offer founders a sales hub to boost sales. All users will enjoy a full suite of tools, enabling customers to shorten deal cycles, increase sales productivity, and humanize the sales process. Moreover, Hubspot offers customer service software to make it effortless for companies to connect with their customers.

The software will help companies succeed with their customers and turn their customers into business promoters. Of course, operations are vitally important to a successful start-up, and Hubspot offers an operations hub to automate a business’s processes and ensure that teams stay aligned.

Pricing:

Starter - $45 per month

Professional - $450 per month

Enterprise - $1,200 per month

2 - An Internal Comms Tool

When a company first starts in a competitive industry, they’ll need to ensure all their staff communicates effectively. One of the biggest reasons start-up companies fail is poor communication between the people within the organization. If a company has practical business tools to handle communication, a team will be more engaged and more transparent in their operations.

Slack

Many organizations rely on emails to communicate, but Slack offers a faster and more effective way to communicate. In 2021, nearly everyone has a smartphone and/or tablet(s). Slack is just the perfect app that works on any phone, computer, or tablet. It enables companies to instant message, text message, and email from the same platform. In turn, making communication far more straightforward and streamlined.

Furthermore, Slack offers the opportunity to video and conference call via the app. The COVID-19 pandemic meant everyone had to communicate virtually, using apps such as Zoom and Skype. However, Slack has an excellent video call option, enabling a team to have a streamlined conference call service that is easy to use.

Slack also offers teams the chance to set reminders on upcoming events. There is a built-in reminder option, and you can even add Google Calendar to the app. Therefore, you can bring all your communication into one place instead of multiple platforms.

Pricing:

Standard version - $6.67 per month

Plus version - $12.50 per month

3 - A Prospecting Research Tool

Every start-up will need to build its customer base, but unfortunately, it can be challenging in the early days. Many companies waste thousands of dollars on market research, often leading to failed start-ups and disappointment. Nonetheless, in 2021, some excellent and affordable business tools can help companies with prospecting research.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an excellent tool for completing all prospecting needs. The tool enables companies of all sizes to grow, build, and nature their customer base. In addition, the application offers actionable information, allowing users to understand their leads and prospects more deeply.

The platform also offers users real-time updates, enabling users to see how their leads are performing. The tool also allows users to directly communicate with people who’ve visited their profile via the InMail feature. Users can access the PortDrive Presentations, which are fantastic for creating interactive and creative sales content.

Furthermore, users love the fact that LinkedIn Sales Navigator separates professional and personal brands. That allows businesses to focus on different things at different times, allowing companies to personalize their messages accordingly.

Pricing:

Professional - $64.99 per month

Team - $103.33 per month

Enterprise - There is no set price, and companies have to contact LinkedIn to find out the fee.

4 - A Sales Engagement Tool

Sales engagement tools are critical for improving current workflows for sales. In 2021, many founders will use various devices, such as email inboxes, phone systems, and much more, to check their sales strategies. However, the benefit of using a sales engagement platform is linking every bit of sales data together so a sales team can save time searching for important information.

SalesLoft

SalesLoft is one of the best sales engagement business tools on the market, and it can dramatically help companies improve their sales. The platform offers users the ability to enhance their sales communications and track sales calls and emails in one place. The company promises to increase demos and qualified appointments by up to 300%.

In addition, the tool is excellent at saving time because of its approximate cadence automation and creation. The system is highly organized and intuitive, offering users a straightforward user experience.

The platform is superb at offering personalized outreach to customers, which helps companies get far better revenue in the long run. Moreover, the platform provides an integrated dialer, salesforce integration, user administration, and cadence scheduling.

Pricing:

$100 per month for the pro version, but companies can request a quote on their website.

5 - A Intelligent Call Review Tool

Call review software is fantastic for understanding how the market perceives a product. Before you launch any product, founders need to understand your market and have some idea about how the market sees your product. With that said, it’s not always that straightforward, but some business tools can help a lot.

An intelligent call review software can help leadership teams at early-stage companies understand their prospect's responses and perceptions of their product. Because as the team and product evolve, having these recordings acts as validation for the way you sell, the way you build your product, and most importantly; how customers feel like they can use your tool.

Gong

Gong is one of the best call software review tools on the market. Companies will enjoy a service that captures customer interactions across emails, calls, and meetings. Then, the software enables companies to understand what’s being said in those interactions and how that impacts sales.

Furthermore, the software will give companies real-time insights into getting bigger and better deals to build a start-up. The company has excellent customer results, including a 44% increase in win rates, a 60% reduction in time ramp, and a 38% reduction in sales cycle length.

Gong is proud to offer users deal intelligence, people intelligence, and market intelligence that can build a start-up from the ground upwards.

Pricing:

Gong offers personalized pricing, so companies will have to contact them directly and request pricing.

Learn more about sales

If the sales process is overwhelming you, Uvaro has a comprehensive sales training program for all sales employees! Start your sales career with us or hire talented individuals from our excellent online courses. It doesn’t matter what your sales employees require; Uvaro can deliver anything from cold-call theory, prospecting through video and email, and objection handling. Hire better sales talent today.

If you enjoyed this article, learn about other tools:

• Sales Intelligence Tools
• Sales Engagement Platforms
• Sales Compensation Tools
• Sales Training Programs
• Free Sales Tools
• Video Selling Tools
• Email Finding Tools
• What is a CRM?
• Workshops for AI in Sales
• Tools for Early-Stage Start-Ups
• e-Signature Tools
• Productivity Tools for Career Success