Part Three: Essential Software to Help You Run Your Business

There are a huge number of tools out there to help you – including email marketing tools, social media scheduling tools and tools to help your business run more smoothly.

But here we are going to be sharing some of our favourite sales and advertising software, along with live chat tools and even some great software to capitalise on the power of word of mouth.

This is just a handful of our software favourites. Check out our other articles to find out some of our top picks for social media scheduling tools, CRM software, customer service tools and more.

All pricing is correct at the time of posting. We have kept prices in the currency in which they are advertised (usually dollars), rather than take an incorrect guess at what it might be in pounds, based on current exchange rates.

Once you’ve captured your leads and got them interested in your products or services, the next step is to ensure you make some sales. You also want to nurture your existing customers, so that they become repeat customers.

Online sales tools will ensure your whole team stays on track and focused on making those all-important sales. There are a number to choose from, so pick the one that best suits your business and make the most of free trials.

Salesforce is a popular piece of sales and lead management software for small and medium sized companies.

Its tools include lead management tools, cross-selling opportunities and tools to manage existing customers and sales teams. Its customer support functions help to build loyalty, essential to businesses operating in a crowded market.

Because it integrates with a wide range of sales and marketing software, it helps businesses both sell more and provide better customer service.

Salesforce is priced from £20 per user, per month.

HubSpot Sales is another one of HubSpot’s free tools for business. A great package for new and small businesses, it helps you save time on generating new leads and includes follow-up tools, so you can interact more effectively with prospective customers.

Users can set up HubSpot Sales in seconds and save hours on menial tasks and data entry.

HubSpot Sales is completely free of charge for individual salespeople, but priced at $400 per month for sales teams.

If you want up-to-date information on companies, CEOs, marketing managers and all of the key players in any industry, there are few, if any, better resources than LinkedIn.

To access all of that valuable information, you need LinkedIn Sales Navigator , which gives you an advanced search function and makes recommendations of the right people to contact. All of your information can be integrated into your CRM with a single click.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is priced from $64.99 per month for the basic package and is available with a free trial.

Influence is a conversion tool designed to boost sales. It is easy to install and includes a range of features, including customised pop-ups for your website, customer location tracking and insights into conversions and customer identity – making it easier to target the right kinds of customer.

Influence pop-ups are designed to boost sales and increase purchase intent through fear of missing out.

Influence includes real-time analytics, so you know what is working and what you need to optimise to increase conversions and sales.

Priced from $15 per month for start-ups with up to 10,000 unique visitors a month, Influence has a range of packages for businesses of all sizes. Free trials are available on all packages.

If you want your business and products to be visible to as wide an audience as possible, you need to look beyond your own website. There is a range of advertising tools available to target potential customers across the internet, whether they are on Facebook, Instagram, Google or elsewhere.

Google’s AdWords is a market leader in the field, which puts ads in front of potential customers when they search for related items. Your advert will appear on Google just as someone is looking for products and services like yours. This means the ads are always relevant and will increase the chances of people visiting your website and considering your products and services.

It is easy to create adverts with AdWords – decide where you want to advertise (globally or locally), create your message, set your budget and you are ready to go.

Setting up adverts is free. You only need to pay for advertising when prospects actually click on your ad. If you’re not sure what your budget should be, Google Ads will give you estimated results based on your planned spend.

To keep your costs at a manageable level, you set your own monthly budget cap and never go over it. You also have the option to pause or adjust your spend at any time.

AdEspresso is part of Hootsuite and lets you optimise your ads for Facebook, Instagram and Google.

With AdEspresso, you can create and test several variations of an advert in just a few clicks, allowing you to easily measure what works best for your audience, thanks to in-depth analytics.

The basic AdEspresso package costs $58 per month. All packages come with a 14 day free trial.

AdRoll helps your grow your brand by targeting your ads at the right people to drive traffic to your site. It connects your display ads with your email, social media advertising and your own online store to ensure your prospects can’t miss your business or your products.

AdRoll’s data helps you to make better decisions about how best to target your advertising to build your customer base.

With no set-up fee or contract, you set your own daily advertising budget with AdRoll and update it as often as you like.

Engaging with customers in real-time and being available to answer their questions is a great way to make sales – and to keep customers coming back for more in the future. There are a number of live chat tools available.

Drift is a great value live chat too, which helps you deliver a personal service to customers by having a conversation with them. With Drift, you build your own chatbot to create the perfect conversation flow for your website. With absolutely no coding required, it is a good choice for technophobes!

Drift includes a free package, which is great for small businesses starting out who just want a very basic chat option. Its cheapest package for sites who want to proactively start conversations is priced at $50 per month and there is a $400 monthly package for small teams.

Intercom is another live chat tool to help customers get to know your products and get the most from your business. Chatbots will target your best leads when they are ready to buy, helping you to make more sales.

With Intercom, you can send targeted message to customers and prospects and provide personalised help. You can also build up a complete picture of customers and segment them, based on their attributes and behaviour.

New start-ups can apply to get all of Intercom’s Pro products for $49 per month, which is usually priced at $153 per month. The Essential package is $87 per month and both packages are available on a free trial.

Callpage lets you start talking to visitors after just a five minute set-up. With every visitor to your site being a potential customer, you can call them directly before they navigate away.

Visitors can connect to you within seconds, wherever they are located, meaning you can quickly answer their questions and win their business.

Callpage offers a free package, which includes up to 15 calls per month. The professional package, which offers a large range of features, is priced at $135 per month and is available on a seven day free trial.

With Bontact , live chat uses all of the chat packages your customers use, including WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Bontact provides one tool for use with SMS messages, web chat and voice messages, and the more channels you add, the more you should see your sales increase.

Customers can make a smooth transition from one device to another with just a single click. Conversations will automatically sync to any CRM tool, so you can be sure that you will never lose them.

Bontact’s lowest priced package is $30 per month, which includes unlimited interactions. All packages include a 14 day free trial.

Some software can’t quite be categorised, but it is still valuable and still well worth a mention, so here’s a few ‘best of the rest’ tools which could really make a difference to your business.

Quotient is a great way to make your quotes look more professional and to iron out any potential problems, giving you the edge over your competitors. It is easy to use, with everything in one place.

Your customers and potential customers will receive an email with a personalised link to their quote, with nothing to download or install. You can add images, files or website links to your quote, to make sure you customer has everything they need to help them make a decision.

Customers can ask questions directly, forming a clearly documented ‘paper trail’ through the process, before an ‘I accept’ check box seals the deal.

It is priced at $25 per month for freelancers and sole traders, or $45 per month for teams of two to five people. You can try Quotient for 30 days for free.

Your proposals encourage clients to make the final decision on whether you get a job or not. Better Proposals helps you create proposals that customers can’t ignore, in minutes rather than hours. From a cover page that makes the right impression to a huge range of customisable templates for your copy and a beautifully designed email, Better Proposals takes all of the hassle out of creating proposals, whatever your line of work.

Better Proposals is billed monthly, from £15 per month for the basic package. With no contract, you can cancel at any time. Think it could help your business? You can try Better Proposals for free for 14 days.

Word of mouth is a powerful lead generation tool, but it is rather limited. Extole is an advocacy marketing platform, which takes the power of word of mouth online. It helps turn happy customers into advocates of your brand, which in turn helps you generate more leads and make more sales.

With Extole, encourage your customers to share their positive experiences of your products or services. Rewards on registration, and when friends buy following their recommendation, will encourage people to sign up.

Extole doesn’t publish its pricing online.

You can’t always be certain you know what people are looking for from your website. So the best way to find out is simply to ask them. You can use WPForms on a self-hosted WordPress site to create a poll or survey to give you the information you need.

It is an easy to use drag and drop form builder, which anyone can use without training or coding skills.

The basic package is priced at $79 per year and gives you unlimited forms. The higher cost packages allow you to integrate forms with MailChimp, AWeber, Zapier and more.

As you can see, there is a huge range of software out there to help your business do even better. Many of these have got similar functions, so take advantage of the free trials and look at the pricing to see what would work best for you.

If budget is tight, aim for the packages which will give your business the biggest wins, which might be software to track sales, tools to generate emails or social media scheduling tools. Every business is unique and you need to take the time to find out what will make a real difference to your company.