Sales software helps you turn potential customers into paying customers: simplifying the sales process, making it easier to communicate with customers and letting you measure how your methods are working. Building flexible, customisable tools can make your job a whole lot easier. 

If you’re working in a sales team in a medium-large organisation, there’s a good chance you’ll have a pretty convoluted sales process. There might be multiple stages to go through before the deal is sealed: setting up demos, getting proposals approved, negotiating and desperately pleading. The more complex the process, the more valuable using the right software, and setting up automations can be. 

Off-the-shelf sales tools usually have standardised workflows and a set way of organising leads through the sales process. But not every business is the same. Plus, businesses evolve. No-code tools make it possible to build sales platforms that fit the exact way you do business at every stage.  

Wtf are no-code sales tools? 

Sales software is a type of internal tool that help you manage and organise the different steps your team takes to turn leads into satisfied customers. No-code platforms allow you to build a custom system using either pre-built templates or a drag-and-drop interface that meets all your needs, without calling on a team of developers. With no-code tools, you can create a sales hub that brings together all your different data sources and your outgoing customer communication (like emails, SMS or phone calls) in one place.  

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For example: 

Let’s say you work in a sales team for a SaaS product. A no-code platform like Clay allows you to set up automations to go out and find you more leads. If prospecting isn’t enough, you could use a platform like Zapier to enrich the leads with more information and even assign a “lead score” to separate the wheat from the chaff. 

How can no-code tools improve your sales process? 

• You can create customisable tools to fit your business. In contrast to out-of-the-box solutions, no-code tools give you nearly endless flexibility. You can create features and integrations with your website or other apps (like email platforms or calendar booking apps) and create a customisable dashboard that makes your team’s job far easier.
• Automations are a game-changer. With tools like Zapier, you can ensure that important parts of the process happen automatically – like sending an email to a customer who’s looked at a specific page, or booking a call with someone who has reached out to you. That saves plenty of time to let you focus on the work that actually matters. 
• Design really unique experiences. No-code tools give you the chance to get creative. You don’t need to wait on an IT department or team of developers to build out new automations or integrations. That means you can move quickly when inspiration strikes and come up with creative ways for leads to engage with your brand. 
• It makes sales data way easier to understand. Sales are all about the numbers. But you need to understand where they’re coming from and why they’re relevant to apply them to future sales strategy. No-code tools give you the chance to collect the data you’re curious about and present it in digestible ways. 
• It increases collaboration. Creating one intuitive hub, that anyone on the team can use and access, increases collaboration within the team. It also means anyone can get an immediate snapshot of what’s happening. 

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Who needs to know?

Sectors:

Pretty much all sectors could benefit from this, but especially those with convoluted sales processes such as SaaS products. The sales process looks different for every business and no-code tools are perfect for building software solutions tailor-made for your industry, your customers, and your team’s goals. 

Departments:

The sales team springs to mind. But their flexibility makes it possible to create a thriving cross-departmental ecosystem that includes marketing, customer success, product development, and even executives. Really, a no-code solution allows you to loop in any department that would benefit from having more visibility into sales data to run the business better. 

What’s the nuance? 

• You need to leverage department expertise. Only those intimate with the process will really understand the different elements your no-code tool needs to take care of. Members of the sales team need to play a major role in creating no-code tools, even if IT or a centre of excellence is driving the process.   
• User-friendliness is the name of the game. It doesn’t matter how powerful a tool is if the people in the team find it difficult to use or aren’t able to use it to its full potential. The user interface is super important – the easier your tools are to use, the more likely it is to take root in your organisation. 
• You might need to understand how your data is organised. Depending on what no-code tools you use and which data sources you use, you might need to have some in-depth knowledge about how your database is organised. You may even have to build your own database, which you could do with Google Sheets or other no-code database software platforms. 
• Testing and tweaking are critical—but so is communication. No-code tools give you the chance to build and test new sales workflows and implement new strategies really quickly. However, you also have to create a feedback loop to make sure that your team knows about the updates. You also have to be sure to check on your sales data to see if your changes are making an impact on the bottom line. 

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Which no-code tools work best for sales teams? 

Beginners: 

Pipedrive is a straightforward platform that allows you to build a totally custom sales pipeline. You can easily use their templates and import data from a spreadsheet or your CRM. It also has built-in automation features to streamline common tasks. 

Intermediate:

Airtable is a no-code all-star that makes it easy to build tailored sales pipelines and connect marketing, customer success, and even asset management all in one custom platform. To kick it up a notch you can integrate Zapier for an extra level of automation. 

Advanced: 

Retool is great for developers and one of the heroes of internal tools for enterprises. The low-code platform lets you build a sales development dashboard so team members can sift through leads and take actions like updating info, extending trails and enriching lead info.