Sales automation software: a buyer’s guide

Sales automation software aims to streamline your sales workflow, allowing you to close deals faster. 

But what is sales automation software? What types are there and which do we recommend? This guide covers everything you need to know. 

What is sales automation software?

Sales automation software is the technology used to automate the sometimes monotonous tasks that are key to building simple and profitable sales journeys. It can cover Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, email marketing software and lead generation software. 

Automating tasks reduces the workload for your sales team, helping them to focus more on closing deals and generating more revenue.

Sales automation also allows companies to automate the relationship between marketing and sales teams, stay ahead of the curve and nurture client relationships where it matters most. 

What are the types of sales automation?

Sales automation provides sales reps with the opportunity to close more deals without sacrificing human interaction. The most common type of sales automation tool is customer relationship management software, like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or HubSpot.  

Nuanced tasks, such as providing contact information, scheduling meetings and writing emails can also be automated to save time and enable salespeople to focus on the right tasks.  

Often, sales automation platforms are cross-functional and empower various aspects of the sales journey. ​​An example of this would be the developments in cloud-based CRMs and new built-in AI functionality, which can automate a few contextual processes within your sales operations.

The various types of sales automation may include: 

• Prospecting. Using a sales automation tool can help to find and filter prospects. For example, it could identify prospects related to a company's products or services much faster than a manual process. It allows reps to identify leads at scale with relevant prospect suggestions.
  
• Lead enrichment. To generate quality leads you need B2B data such as industry, company and job title. This process can be streamlined by using a data enrichment tool.In order to build a pipeline, you need full and correct data, so sales reps can focus on reaching suitable leads.
  
• Email scheduling. Creating personalised emails can be streamlined with a sales automation tool. For example, if a prospect has seemingly gone cold, but is still showing interest in your website, it may be worth setting up an automated email reminding them that the door is not closed. Sales email automation software can be extremely helpful in guiding prospects through the sales funnel and gaining trust over time.
  
• Meeting scheduling. Some platforms will let you send your public calendar link directly to prospects, this allows them to choose a time and book a meeting directly in your calendar. This eliminates the need to back and forth with scheduling and reduces the chance of no-shows.
  
• Deal management. This involves tracking every stage of a deal in order to streamline the closing process. A deal management tool allows you to organize, track, maintain, prioritize and analyze deals, regardless of where they are in the sales pipeline.
  
• Sales contract automation. Sales teams want to create, share and get sales agreements signed quickly to capture revenue and close their deals. Automating certain elements of the contract workflow speeds up sales cycles by reducing manual work and friction. 

What are the benefits of using sales automation software?

Sales automation tools reduce friction in the sales process, benefitting the sales team members and the business as a whole. 

There are numerous benefits to implementing sales automation software, such as:

Increasing productivity and efficiency 

Reducing the number of manual low-level, time-consuming tasks from your workflow allows sales reps to do more with their time. Automating these administrative and repetitive sales tasks can increase productivity. For example, Sales automation tools can handle tasks like data entry, lead qualification and follow-ups.

Improve lead generation

Identifying who is actually likely to buy for your business can help you identify where energy is best spent. Instead of focusing on every customer that interacts with your company, sales can nurture warm leads and move them down the sales funnel. 

Minimise churn

Maintaining a strong relationship with prospects after they become clients is key to retention. Automation can make it easier to maintain customers, as maintaining key data gives you a better idea of how to upsell and maintain relationships. For instance, if a client’s level of product usage drops below a certain predefined level, the appropriate workflow can be triggered to try and re-engage the account.

Better reports

As the above suggests, knowing how prospects and customers are interacting with you is key. Data can empower sales teams to make decisions that work for that deal at that time and do what they need to do to push a deal through. Using a CRM to capture, centralise, and clean data is a key tool for success.   

Improve customer experience

In 2024, customers expect fast and efficient service. Automation can ensure that customers quickly receive the sales collateral that they need to make a decision. On top of this, you can deliver proposals and cost quotes fast, moving negotiations forward. 

Boost sales

In theory, all of the above will boost sales. Automating your processes streamlines the process and creates a unified approach across the sales team. Automating your sales workflows reduces the risk of error and takes redundant tasks off your team members’ to-do lists.

The 11 best sales automation tools in 2024

It’s good to know how these tools can help you, but which are the tools you should be using? The list below highlights some of the most popular and hidden gems of the sales automation software world. 

1. Salesforce 

‍Features

Salesforce is perhaps the best-known CRM tool in the business. Built for small, medium and enterprise businesses, Salesforce is a scalable platform that allows workflows to be automated.

Salesforce allows users to automate: 

• Forecasting. Creating accurate forecasts and templates that simplify data analysis. Salsecloud provides a real-time view of a sales team’s forecast and uses collaborative forecasting to make quick updates.
  
  
• Inspect pipelines. Sales teams can manage their pipelines with a single view of pipeline metrics, opportunities and week-to-week deal changes. Members can see insights from call recordings, emails, cases and close date predictions in the same place.
  
  
• AI assistance. Salesforce now uses AI in sales workflows to automatically generate such sales tasks as composing emails, scheduling meetings and preparing for the next interaction with a prospect.

Using Salesforce means that teams no longer have to jump between a fragmented stack of tools. Salesforce integrations are also a key feature, meaning it can seamlessly integrate into your existing tech stack. 

Salesforce helps people to connect better with their customers through automation, from generative AI to real-time data through its interactive CRM. 

Reviews

Salesforce is the top-rated CRM tool on the market, with a rating of 4.4 on Capterra and 4.3 on G2. 

Over 2,000 reviews of the software mention the ‘sales process’ with independent G2 reviews stating: 

Sales cloud has transformed the way in which we manage all sales reps in our face-to-face channels.” - Independent review, G2

Its complex price structure and the fact that businesses need modification and integrations make it too expensive for start-ups and smaller enterprises” - Independent review, Capterra

2. Microsoft Dynamics 365

Features

Microsoft Dynamics is considered the other leader in the CRM space, produced by one of the top five most valuable companies in the world.  

The Microsoft Dynamics 365 product suite is part of a comprehensive set of tools built to perform practically every aspect of business management. 

Naturally, Microsoft Dynamics also integrates with the full suite of Microsoft products, including Word, Excel and Outlook. This makes it a valuable option for businesses that rely heavily on these products for day-to-day operations. 

Like Salesforce, it provides a complete view of your customer base. This includes features that predict customer intent, improve lead generation and qualification, and enrich customer relationships. 

Reviews

Dynamics has a G2 rating of 3.8 and a Capterra rating of 4.4, putting it above Salesforce.  Here are some of the pros and cons of the platform, as told by those who use it:

Dynamics 365 Sales provides us with a powerful set of tools and capabilities to streamline our sales processes, enhance customer relationships, and make data-driven decisions - Independent review, G2

The initial setup and implementation of Dynamics 365 can be a bit complex and time-consuming, and there is a bit of a learning curve for new users - Independent review, Capterra

3. HubSpot 

Features 

Hubspot Sales Hub was built into the wider HubSpot CRM platform. With ‘Hubs’ for marketing, operations, CMS and sales, Hubspot offers solutions to increase leads, accelerate sales and simplify processes. Its Sales Hub features automation at all levels, from creating sales contracts to tracking and closing deals. 

It lists its most popular features as: 

• email templates
• lead management and prospecting
• sales automation
• call tracking 
• deal pipelines
• integrations 
• meeting scheduling and 
• Hubspot AI

HubSpot is often considered by those who already use the platform to assist in other areas of their business, such as marketing. It offers a wide range of automation at a range of price points, making it a highly suitable option for smaller and mid market businesses looking for multifunctionality. 

Reviews

Hubspot Sales Hub is actually ranked in the top 50 Sales tools of G2 and boasts a 4.4-star rating, in addition to its 4.5 Capterra rating. 

One independent review did comment on its forecasting ability compared to Salesforce, so that is worth bearing in mind.

It could be better in terms of forecasting. That's a thing Salesforce does very well and Hubspot lacks in that department - Independent review, Capterra

‍4. Gong

Features 

Gong is a revenue intelligence platform that captures your customer interactions across phone, web conferencing and email. 

Gong records any time your team interacts with customers or prospects. It saves your team time by understanding what was said in these interactions. The AI-enabled tool is able to process the full context of customer interactions, from key topics and top questions to action items and relationship dynamics.

Like the CLMs above, Gong alsp integrates with around 100 other platforms. This streamlines data and boosts productivity. 

Reviews

Gong is rated 4.7 out of 5 overall on G2. More specifically, the revenue management tool is rated 9.3 for ease of use, 9.3 for quality of support and 9.1 for ease of setup. This makes Gong the best-reviewed software provider for customer service. 

Using Gong offers invaluable insights for improvement without the need to be on every call - key in a high volume, fast-moving sales function - Max Baldry-Steen, Senior Account Executive at Juro 

5. Salesloft 

Features 

Salesloft is a leading AI-powered revenue workflow platform that aims to help sellers and sales teams drive more revenue. 

Salesloft is branded as a one-stop shop for sellers to execute all of their digital selling tasks, communicate with buyers, understand what to do next and get coaching and insights set to win deals. 

Salesloft covers a lot of ground, boasting capabilities in: 

• sales forecasting
• lead management
• sales acceleration
• sales tracking 
• sales automation 
• call recording 
• cold emailing
• sales training 
• call tracking and 
• more

Reviews

Salesloft is rated 4.5 out of 5 overall on G2 and is scored 8.5 out of 10 for ease of use. It actually ranks higher than market leader Salesforce on both counts, but some independent reviews criticise it for having a ‘challenging learning curve’. 

That said, another reviewer praised the platform for

The ability to create effective outreach cadences and having data analytics into testing email campaigns is absolutely crucial - Independent review, Capterra 

6. Zapier 

Features

Zapier is an online automation tool that connects your existing apps and services. 

Using Zapier, you can connect two or more apps to automate repetitive tasks without coding or relying on developers to build the integration. This is priceless in a sales context, as it allows integrations that will close deals to be built quickly. 

For example, a Zapier integration can send new leads from a user's ad platform directly to your CRM. This is key to speeding up sales processing, opening up time for sales reps to focus on more creative tasks and generating more leads. 

Zapier is a great tool for scaling business as it increases productivity and keeps development costs down. 

Reviews

Zapier is well-loved, with a 4.5-star rating on G2 and 4.7 stars on Capterra.  The software is rated 8.6 out of 10 for ease of use, 8.3 for quality of support and 8.7 for ease of setup, based on independent G2 reviews. 

It allows us to integrate all of our sales and marketing platforms and achieve a unified business across all channels - Independent review, G2 

7. Cognism 

Features

Cognism is a sales intelligence platform that helps sales teams source phone numbers and email addresses of ideal leads for their product or service. 

Cognism uses machine learning and AI technology that is able to crawl millions of records and websites to gather contact information.

Cognism enables team members across the Go-to-Market (GTM) function. it allows sales teams to directly dial verified contacts making it easier to prospect for new leads. It can also connect with CRM platforms, including:

• Salesforce
• HubSpot
• Pipedrive
• Salesloft 

Reviews

Cognism has an impressive 4.7 stars on G2 and is rated over 9/10 across all three specific categories of G2 review, ease of use, quality of support and ease of setup. However, there are only around 400 reviews currently available for the platform, so it is less widely reviewed than other platforms on this list. 

Capterra lists its top ‘pro’ as having: ‘Way more filters than the other tools in the market. This helps narrow down the right prospects including technographic and special moments that go beyond company size, industry, job titles, and revenue.’

8. Pipedrive 

Features

Pipedrive is a CRM designed for sales teams, and as the name suggests, the platform is specifically for pipelines. As it's more suited to one purpose, it's a more affordable option than some CRMs. 

With Pipedrive, contacts can be created and tracked all the way through the sales pipeline, from getting that all-important first meeting to the closing of a sale and the onboarding process. 

Each step in this process is customizable, to ensure that it meets the needs of individual teams. As the platform is designed by sales professionals, it claims to have an edge over competitors when it comes to managing the sales cycle. 

Pipedrive can be integrated with a platform like Juro, meaning that sales teams can automate the creation of a contract when a deal reaches a certain stage within the sales cycle.

Reviews

Capterra reviews rate the platform a 4.5 out of 5 while G2 reviews show the platform as a 4.2. G2 lists some of the platform's highest-rated features as opportunity & pipeline management, performance and reliability and contact and account management. 

However, it also highlights that the platform is weaker in certain areas including email marketing, campaign management and marketing ROI analytics, key top-of-the-funnel areas.

The CRM gives a holistic view of our sales pipeline, making it possible for us to recognize bottlenecks, put in priority deals, and allocate resources efficiently - Independent review, G2 

9. Outreach 

Features

Outreach describes itself as a sales engagement platform aimed at helping sales teams automate their outreach process. 

The platform automates multiple elements of the sales journey including: 

• engagement
• deal management
• conversation intelligence
• rep coaching
• deal insights
• pipeline management and
• forecasting.

The platform automates sales engagement, revenue intelligence and revenue operations functionalities on one unified platform. It also has over 90 integrations including Google Mail, Salesforce and Outlook. 

Reviews

G2 lists Outreach as one of the top 50 sales products of 2023, alongside a 4.3-star rating. Users praise its email outreach automation, putting it 1 per cent above the average rating compared to competitors. However, they also highlight that the user interface of the platform can be difficult to engage with. 

One independent reviewer on Gartner wrote about what the platform stands apart from other options, stating: “Additional product features like scheduling, task management and sales analytics make this tool stand out from the crowd” later adding that “various technical glitches or slow loading times can be a bit frustrating.” 

10. Juro

Features 

Juro is an AI-enabled all-in-one contract management platform that enables sales teams to streamline the creation, execution and management of routine contracts at scale. 

A contract management platform like Juro ensures that contract admin doesn’t block revenue growth, from creating contract templates to negotiating contracts with powerful AI. 

Some key features for sales include: 

• streamlining collaboration between teams and counterparties
• instant visibility into contracts and their data
• powerful integrations let you sync your contracts and CRM in real time

Reviews 

Juro’s reviews place it as one of the top-performing contract management tools on the market, with ratings of 4.8 out of 5 on Capterra and 4.8 out of 5 on G2.

In more detail, the contract management platform is rated 9.2 for ease of use, 9.8 for quality of support and 9.3 for ease of setup. 

“Since implementing, we've reduced our sales cycle, created a user-friendly way to sign contracts internally and externally, and managed our data in a more robust way - Independent review, G2

I'm always impressed at how easy it is to make changes and adjust formatting - something Ironclad sucked at…I'm very glad we switched - Independent Review, G2

11. Calendly

Features

Calendly is a scheduling software that aims to make the process of booking and attending meetings more streamlined.

The software allows users to highlight and share calendar details with another person, who can then choose a suitable time to meet. Both parties receive reminders and links to meetings, making operations such as recruitment and customer support easy.

Calendly has integrations with key platforms including Zoom, Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, Slack, Zapier, and more. 

Reviews

Calendly is rated a 4.7 out of 5 on Capterra and G2. It is used by over 50,000 companies worldwide and is rated 4% better than its competitors on its integration with Zoom, a market leader in video conferencing. 

Users praise the platform for its integrations, scheduling and time-saving qualities. However, some users note that they experience occasional issues with calendar integrations - though these seem few and far between. 

Through Calendly's data, we are able to track key trends and activity around our customers' scheduling habits, such as their preferred meeting days and channels, and their preferred sales representatives - Independent review, G2 

What is the best sales automation software? 

As you can see, there are numerous sales automation solutions on the market, each catering to different aspects of the sales journey.

When deciding on a tool that’s right for you, it’s important to ask the following:

• Does this fit in our budget? 
• Does this solve a revenue-related problem?
• Do these specific features benefit us?
• Does this solution have the integrations we need?
• Are all users covered? 

There are plenty of solutions on the market, so make sure to do your research and find the best solution for your business/ 

If you think that reducing contract admin could help you to close deals faster, get in touch below.