With the new year in full swing, you probably have your sales goals and quotas set for the coming year. Though I hope you weren’t cramming too much at the end of the year to hit your numbers, it’s realistic that it might have been pretty hectic.

While it’s natural to want to take a bit of a break and ease your way into the new fiscal year, now is actually the time to re-examine and find ways to improve your processes. A great way to do that: researching sales apps from the AppExchange. Below are some of the things to focus on in the upcoming year, and the apps that can help get you moving in the right direction toward a great 2016.

Examine every aspect of your sales cycle

Let’s face it: there can be a lot of touch points in a sales cycle. From prospecting, to managing leads, to closing opportunities, there are a lot of possibilities for your sales team to fall short or drop a ball. That can be enough to sour a potential customer on your solution for a long time. It’s difficult, however, to identify and fix a leaky process with all the other priorities on your list. But evaluating your customer touchpoints now can prevent chaos when the year is reaching its conclusion.

Velocify Pulse is a full-featured solution that optimizes each stage of the sales cycle — from prospecting all the way to conversion. With Velocify Pulse, respond to new prospects quickly, better prioritize your daily sales activity, and generate predictable revenue through automation tools that integrate directly into Salesforce.

Make data entry easier so you can focus on selling

What if your job as a sales rep focused only on talking with customers and working to close deals? How much more productive would you be if you could remove the administrative tasks from your to-do list? While we can’t promise you this utopia, we’re here to let you know relief exists in the form of apps that bring the ease and familiarity of Excel directly into your Salesforce instance.

One such app is Apttus X-Author, a solution that gives Salesforce users the ability to work in Excel, instead of the browser, for nearly everything they do in Salesforce. As a result of X-Author’s functionality, users see improvement in Salesforce data migration and management, a boost in Salesforce productivity and adoption, and a lot of time saved.

Increase revenue with CPQ through effective upselling and cross-selling

No matter where you are in your fiscal year, it's always a good time for sales leaders to think about ways to increase revenue per customer -- you can add more functionality to a deal or sell a completely different product offering. When a customer fills out a contact form on your website, thus becoming a lead, it can be an arduous process to align their needs with your company’s correct product offering at the right price. Using Configure-Price-Quote software can help simplify this by providing sales reps with the right product and pricing for each customer.

The product configurator from SteelBrick CPQ guides your sales reps to the best products and services for each customer, ensuring you are not only maximizing revenue but also value. SteelBrick CPQ helps reps generate accurate sales quotes and proposals to ensure the consistent application of pricing and discounting rules when quoting.

If you’re looking for more sales apps, check out the Sales category on the AppExchange.