11 SaaS products that help convert leads into actual sales

Leads are great. But even if you’re swimming in them, that doesn’t mean you’re actively converting as many as you could be.

Luckily, there are some incredibly powerful SaaS products out there that can help move the needle forward. I asked a panel of fellow founders from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) the following:

Name one SaaS product your business uses to convert more leads into actual sales and why is it so effective.

Below are their top 11 picks:

1. Qualaroo

With Qualaroo, I can “nudge” specific segments of users to pay attention to a message, overcome their objections and convert them into buyers. The conditional logic features are gold.
– Patrick Vlaskovits, The Lean Entrepreneur

2. ONTRAPORT

ONTRAPORT is a complete CRM system that helps with everything from automation of tasks to processing payments. Its lead scoring feature finds your hottest leads based on your definition of a “good lead” and pushes them to the top of your sales team’s attention automatically.
– John Hall, Influence & Co.

3. Contactually

Relationships are everything in business. Maintaining and building relationships is an important part of turning leads into sales. Luckily, there’s technology specifically designed to help you do just that.

Contactually helps aggregate all of your networks and contacts into a central hub that tracks your relationships. You can bucket your contacts into groups, set up automatic reminders and track your progress with your network. Growing a network is all about consistently adding value over time and Contactually can help you do that.
– Matt Hunckler, Verge

4. InsightSquared

InsightSquared unlocks all of the information in Salesforce and makes it visual and actionable for my sales and marketing teams. It helps us determine what deals have a lot of positive activity and shows us which ones are going stale so we can act on them. It also shows us how many leads have not been contacted in the past 14 days so we can change that.

It ties our marketing campaigns to our sales and shows me the ROI for all our campaigns. I went years looking for this solution and finally found it three months ago.
– Andrew Angus, Switch Video

5. RelateIQ

RelateIQ is a new smart CRM system that we’re using with great success. Right now, we are using RelateIQ to organize sales contacts on a daily basis. The system allows us to pursue new opportunities to generate sales while also keeping up to date on our past relationships with contacts within our industry.

It’s a living database that keeps us organized and effective when it comes to selling and tracking the progress of every lead through the sales funnel.
– Doreen Bloch, Poshly Inc.

6. Salesforce

Let’s stick to the basics of sales: consistency is key. Better organization keeps you consistent with follow-ups and allows you to convert leads into sales, which is why we use Salesforce.

In a lot of cases, people might not buy off the first impression with your company. You need to keep detailed notes from the meeting, and then be able to follow up later on when the time is right for the buyer.
– Andy Karuza, Brandbuddee

7. ReachLocal

With ReachLocal, you get an instant message every time a new lead is uncovered, and it allows you to immediately send a targeted message. Follow-up reminders are available for team members as well.
– Andrew Schrage, Money Crashers Personal Finance

8. Glance

Glance is the fastest and easiest-to-use screen sharing program. We used GTM, and it was too slow and cumbersome for some of our clients. Glance runs in the cloud, integrates with Salesforce and has the fastest and easiest load time.
– Sam Saxton, Salter Spiral Stair and Mylen Stairs

9. Highrise

Highrise is a CRM that is perfect for small businesses. It allows me and my assistant to keep track of all deals currently in the pipeline and monitor their health through frequent check-ins and email follow-ups, and it also integrates with my billing system.

37Signals has mastered the art of simplicity while also serving as a robust and functional lead-tracking and conversion system. The collaborative nature of the service allows anyone on your team to jump in if they think they can help convert a lead and ultimately bring a deal to close.
– Michael Costigan, Youth Leadership Specialist

10. Preact

Preact has been a very useful tool for gaining insights into user behavior and communicating with our customers on the fly. Our customer success team loves the data-driven approach to identifying the behaviors that lead to people becoming more loyal customers.
– Robert J. Moore, RJMetrics

11. Yesware

My sales team swears by Yesware. It shows the sales people when and how often emails are opened so they can call the prospect immediately when they’re thinking about our product. It also syncs with Salesforce for better activity tracking.
– Sarah Schupp, UniversityParent

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, the YEC recently launched #StartupLab, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses via live video chats, an expert content library and email lessons. 

Image credit: Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock