Top 15 Sales Knowledge Management Tools

Key Takeaways

• Sales teams are struggling due to ever-increasing knowledge needs and poor systems for accessing information.
• AI-powered knowledge management tools bridge knowledge gaps.
• A good AI sales enablement tool helps agents throughout calls, as well as assisting with post-call wrapup and analysis.
• Look for a tool that supports integrations with your current app, as well as strong AI support and management tools.
• KMS Lighthouse is currently your best choice for an all-around sales KMS system.

Are Your Sales Teams Losing Deals Due to Knowledge Gaps?

Modern sales teams are often caught in a bind: increasingly complicated products and savvy customers demand every rep have deep knowledge of the products, but older knowledge management solutions can create barriers to information discovery.

Typical problems include:

• Institutional knowledge not being captured in the system, forcing reps to rely on experienced gurus for deep knowledge.
• Data silos that prevent a sales team from accessing necessary cross-department knowledge.
• A higher call volume than your managers can reasonably oversee, track, grade, and provide feedback for.
• Sales reps becoming so distracted looking for necessary info that they lose focus on the customer and their signals.
• Burdensome bureaucracy which forces reps to spend more time on documentation than actually making sales.
• Slow onboarding and new hires who need consistent oversight for extended periods.

A modern AI-powered sales knowledge management system can handle all these issues and more. With the right software tool, you can streamline your sales motions while empowering your reps to make more sales!

What Does a Sales Knowledge Management System Need to Do?

A sales KMS should be laser-focused on the needs of your sales agents and their managers. This isn't a general-purpose database such as your tech support team might need; your reps need knowledge specifically aimed at generating leads and making conversions.

This includes:

• AI analysis of calls in-progress, offering up suggestions, Battle Cards, and interactive decision trees based on contextual clues and buyer signals.
• Intuitive access to needed product information – ideally offered up proactively by the AI, before the agent has to go looking.
• Robust call summary, documentation, and review to speed up the "paperwork" of sales calls.
• Deep integration with your existing CRM, cloud systems, and other necessary software tools, with both read and write capabilities.
• Training tools built into the software itself, speeding up onboarding and retraining.
• Management tools that speed up oversight, review, and feedback.

In short, the goal of sales enablement software is to take your enablement to the next level: giving your agents better access to necessary sales information that turns directly into improved revenues and ROI.

The Top 15 Sales Knowledge Management Tools

1 – KMS Lighthouse

Currently, KMS Lighthouse is the leader in all-in-one AI-powered KMS systems. It's designed to be easy to deploy, with training built directly into the system, alongside robust AI assistance helping with everything from knowledge discovery to on-call sales pitch assistance. KMS Lighthouse may lack some specific niche features, but it's a great all-rounder for most sales teams.

2 – Bloomfire

Bloomfire is another strong all-rounder, with strong knowledge discovery and AI assistance. It also offers excellent knowledge governance tools, necessary for maintaining your KB over time. However, the quote-based pricing may be an issue for smaller operations looking to maximize their spend.

3 – Momentum

Momentum focuses on making your sales reps' lives easier by using AI to automate numerous per-call functions such as creating call summaries and auto-populating MEDDPICC fields. These are also added to the KB for easy future retreival. It's good for teams that generate a huge amount of data that would otherwise need to be entered manually.

4 – Guru

Guru's strength is keeping reps on-track within their workflow. It utilizes pop-up windows and browser extensions so that the AI is always available no matter what your reps are doing. However, it's less adept at information discovery and will need human oversight to keep the KB reliable.

5 – SpekIt

SpekIt's headline feature are its "speks" – microcards of relevant information offered up contextually, as needed. This makes it a strong sales playbook software option, great at providing necessary bite-sized info and helping new hires get up to speed. However, it's less useful for long-form information and lacks AI content generation features.

6 – Confluence

If your operation already utilizes the Atlassian ecosystem, Confluence is an obvious upgrade. Confluence integrates directly into Atlassian systems to pull information, while being a solid choice for AI-assisted sales enablement software in general. It's only worth considering if you're already using Atlassian, though.

7 – Salesforce Knowledge

Salesforce Knowledge is the KMS designed to integrate into the larger Saleforce ecosystem, with deep links directly into the Salesforce CMS. It can bridge the gap between sales and customer support, providing benefits and collaboration opportunities to both. However, as with Confluence, it doesn't make sense unless you're already standardized on Salesforce.

8 – Docket

Docket is a lightweight KMS designed for fast implementation and easy usage, especially for smaller operations, although at the expense of a deeper tool set. It focuses on providing AI assistance for calls and updating internal information based on calls. Just don't expect in-depth content governance tools or editorial workflows.

9 – eGain

eGain is tuned specifically for call centers that experience high call volumes and need robust AI assistance for management and call documenting. It can support both inbound and outbound teams simultaneously with a strong single-source-of-truth database. However, its usefulness outside of high-capacity call centers is more limited.

10 – Highspot

Highspot is focused on content and coaching, with a strong emphasis on training. If your operation generates a lot of content and your team struggles to keep up, Highspot could be a good option. It even incorporates AI-powered roleplaying for live training opportunities. Like other niche entries on this list, however, it isn't a good all-around choice.

11 – Kendo

Another sales onboarding software tool focused on coaching and feedback, Kendo utilizes AI to summarize and grade every call with comprehensive notes. This could be highly useful for call centers with over-burdened management, or for operations seeking a single standardized way of tracking call center metrics.

12 – Outreach

Outreach integrates AI agents and a personable AI assistant named Kaia directly into reps' and agents' daily workflow, similar to Guru. It also features strong collaboration features, including live meetings within the app. This makes good for information sharing, although it's weaker on the management side.

13 – Document360

Document360 is a strong all-purpose KMS that lacks some sales-specific features, but could still be a good choice due to its close compatibility and integration with Microsoft systems. It can assist with knowledge gathering, KB management, content creation, and call oversight, backed up by solid AI assistance.

14 – Stonly

Another mid-tier all-rounder, Stonly focuses on making it easier to create and manage documentation for a growing operation. It can be embeded into a range of apps and webpages, and is overall a solid product even if it lacks a strong central focus.

15 – Salesloft

Salesloft is focused on providing support to agents mid-call, leveraging intelligent AI analysis of caller signals to offer personalized suggestions for converting each lead. Alongside this are strong management tools, although it's light on coaching/training options.

How Do You Choose the Right KMS Tool for Your Sales Motion?

Different tools are better for different sales motion situations. To cover some of the most common motions:

• Product-led growth. Focus on fast intuitive information delivery. Your reps should have to put in minimum effort in answering questions and finding proper sales pitches, to keep volume up.
• Inside sales and/or sales-led growth. You need AI tools capable of deep analysis of customer data, call history, and mid-call signaling. The AI becomes a co-pilot, helping your rep navigate challenging pitches.
• Outbound / cold call. Again, look for AI systems capable of meaningfully supporting agents mid-call by analyzing lead signals for any sign of an opening.
• Enterprise. Knowledge, knowledge, knowledge. Your reps may be called on to function as CS, even tech support, and must have free access to company-wide data as needed to hold onto clients.
• Field sales. Look for lightweight cloud-based solutions which can run on any device, prioritizing speed and accessibility over depth.

How Do You Drive Sales Team Adoption of a Knowledge System?

Perhaps ironically, the best way to drive sales team adoption is to sell the solution. Your rollout should be conceptualized as a campaign. Bring up known agent/rep complaints and pain points, and show how the new AI KMS will be able to overcome those issues.

Convince your reps that the new toolset will lead directly to more sales (and therefore more commissions) and they'll happily adopt it.

Beyond that, executive buy-in is also key. The more enthusiastic the C-suite is about your new sales playbook software investment, the more official backing you'll receive to help keep everyone on the same page.

What Does Good Sales Knowledge Hygiene Look Like in Practice?

Even the best AI-powered sales enablement software still needs significant human oversight, especially when it comes to maintaining the knowledge base.

You should:

• Have clearly-defined tags and naming conventions that are standardized across all entries.
• Immediately log all changes to the KB, including time and user.
• Establish alerts monitoring the age of KB entries and flagging potentially out-of-date information for human review.
• Have the AI automatically capture new information and potentially add it to the KB, with a human in the loop monitoring changes.
• Run regular audits with AI assistance, vetting and verifying information across the KB for consistency.

Your KMS tool should be viewed as a single source of truth within an operation – but that's only possible with robust oversight.

In Conclusion: Better KMS Tools Boost Sales

Your sales team needs more help making sales in a hyper-competitive global business market. AI-powered sales knowledge management tools provide assistance throughout every stage of the sales process, from helping to generate leads out of your CRM, to assisting mid-call, to streamlining management and review.

KMS Lighthouse lights the way! Our best-in-class KMS system is already trusted by companies around the world in fields such as banking, insurance, and telecommunications. Our KMS is easy to implement with robust AI assistance, deep software integrations, built-in training systems, and much more. KMS Lighthouse offers fast ROI up-front, with room to scale as your operation grows.

To learn more, just contact us, or schedule a free demonstration.

Frequently Asked Questions