In response to yesterday’s post Installing a Selling System, a reader asked me what tools I favored for each of the steps in the system I described.

There’s no question that the act of selling, building trust, and educating prospects has been dramatically impacted by the onslaught of online tools available today, but I think the perfect blend lies in fusing the online with the offline. Selling is still about building relationships and few things compare to hugs and handshakes in the relationship arena.

Smart marketers and salespeople are using technology to help provide additional points of contact, training, and research in ways that enhance, rather than replace, the overall process of moving people to making a purchasing decision.

With that in mind, here are my tech toolbox suggestions for amplifying the selling system. This is not meant to be the complete list of every option, but more of a starter list of tools I like to help get you thinking about fusion. (Details on each step)

Discovery – Move a lead to the next planned step

• Wufoo – a brilliant form building tool that can be used to present a series of qualifying questions that feed your CRM pipeline
• Flowtown – a tool that appends an email lead with a full suite of social media and online activity giving you a much richer picture of a prospect. (Integrates with Wufoo and email service providers)

Presentation – the planned act of presenting your unique approach, case statement and story

• iPad – the small, yet brilliant display of the iPad running Keynote or even a PDF viewer makes the perfect intimate presentation tool. Don’t create the 50 slide info dump, but use a handful of slides to create impact and reinforce your primary point of view and story.
• SlideRocket – an online slide presentation tool that can be used live or as an on demand show. The power of this tool is the ability to create presentations that contain multimedia and forms tied to your CRM system

Nurturing – Keeping a prospect interested and engaged as they move through their buying cycle

• Office AutoPilot – a little known tool that has the power to run your entire marketing automation process. The full suite includes form based email marketing, direct mail integration, lead scoring and tracking, and pURL technology, but best of all, it’s built with the small business in mind.
• InfusionSoft – another small business oriented tool that includes CRM features, autoresponders, branching and personalized follow-up based on click tracking
• Constant Contact, Vertical Response, MailChimp, AWeber – all great, reputable email marketing services that allow you to create multifaceted email follow-up campaigns

Transaction – a process that focuses on delivering a remarkable experience once a prospect decides to buy

• MavenLink – one of the many online project management suites, but focused on simplicity for the service provider. Using a tool like this allows you to create an online portal for every client and give them access to orientation materials as well as an online collaboration space for project work.
• Central Desktop – another project management tool, but with a nice wiki feature for building lots of easily searchable content for your customers.
• Jott – this tool does a lot of things, but primarily it’s a way to speak a message and have it sent via email. Try this right after you meet with a new client and send the action steps from your just completed meeting via email as you drive back to the office.

Review – one of the most overlooked points in selling is measuring results, both your’s and the client’s

• MyNextCustomer – a simple way to measure phone calls, web leads and sales from social media, seo, paid search and offline marketing campaigns to determine where your highest conversion payoff is.
• GetSatisfaction – a very nice tool that facilitates the act of bringing customers and companies together to create a better shared experience.
• SurveyGizmo – my favorite online survey, poll and questionnaire tool