Smart technology is everywhere. If you're like most business people, you can't help but feel that there are too many tools out there.
They all sound the same, which leaves you confused, frustrated, and uninterested in changing.
Let's cut through the clutter.
Here are a few awesome business tools you need to be using:
Business research tools
These tools help you learn all you can about prospective companies, existing clients, or industry partners:
1. Owler
The team that built the revolutionary Jigsaw email finder platform that Salesforce purchased for hundreds of millions of dollars is at it again with another blockbuster sales research tool.
Instead of researching people, Owler researches companies. It's easy to find and select which companies you want to follow. Each morning, you get a customized email with everything that happened at that company that you should know about.
This service, which costs many thousands of dollars per year from other companies, is completely free from the Owler team. Drop what you are doing and sign up now.
CRM and address books
These tools help you organize the people you know, the deals you need to close, and the marketing that gets you there:
2. Cloze
We have used them all — every CRM on the planet (or so it feels) — and Cloze is by far the best to use if you need to build and maintain relationships with people. It collects, organizes and manages all the people you need to know — right beside your email (and social) inbox. It's epic.
3. AgileCRM
It has 'CRM' in its name but with features like landing pages, social and web tracking, and smart email campaigns, it's really the best all-in-one marketing platform on the planet. And it's 1/10 the cost of Hubspot or Infusionsoft.
Security and password sharing
These tools help you keep your team safe and secure without emailing usernames and passwords around:
4. LastPass
Forget your passwords? Share your passwords over email? LastPass saves all your passwords for you and even allows you to set up sharing groups where you can allow family or friends to use your passwords — without them ever seeing what the actual password is.
5. Blur
It's the most technical personal security platform out there. It allows you to create disposable credit cards, phone numbers, or email addresses. It saves your passwords for you and notifies you when you might have gotten hacked.
Prospect research
These tools help you learn all you can about prospects you want to do business sometime soon:
6. AeroLeads
In a cluttered category of lead and prospect research, AeroLeads has the best combination of capture and results. They claim to verify email address and phone numbers multiple times before they pass it along to you. It works.
7. Capture
Ever want to zip through a website and vacuum up all the people and email addresses (and other contact information) you find there? Meet Capture by Ringlead. Not only will it capture leads on a website, it verifies the email addresses and exports everything to Salesforce.
Scheduling efficiency
These tools make it easy to schedule and prepare for awesome meetings:
8. Charlie App
Connect Charlie to your Google calendar (or Outlook) and it will automatically research everyone you are planning to meet with. An hour before your meeting, you'll get an email with everything you need to know about those people.
9. Assistant
At the push of a button, Assistant checks your calendar and suggests up to three days' worth of availability for meetings. It runs in Gmail, right where you are sending emails, so it is fast and a tremendous time saver.
