The 10 Best Sales Automation Software Solutions

Automation tools do just that, making jobs easier and more effective. Imagine offloading repetitive, time-consuming tasks like follow-ups or data management. Imagine instead being able to focus on what matters: closing deals and building strong customer relationships.

There’s a reason more businesses are turning to sales automation and AI in 2024. 63% of sales leaders say AI is making it easier to compete with other businesses in their industry, with benefits including reducing manual task time, understanding customers better, and providing personalization.

But it’s not a case of signing up for the first software you come across.

You must know which tools are best for your team and how to use them effectively. Do they have the right features for your needs? Can they be customized? Do they meet your budget? What’s the onboarding process like?

We’re here to help you answer these questions and more. Read on to discover the best sales automation tools that can help you stay competitive and drive growth.

What is sales automation software?

Before we dive into the list of tools, let’s recap.

Sales automation software streamlines various aspects of the sales process. It does what it says on the tin.

The idea is that automating repetitive tasks — whether it’s lead generation, follow-ups, or report creation — allows teams and businesses to operate more efficiently.

That means sales teams can focus on more critical elements of their role that help your business stand out and succeed. You know, closing deals, nurturing relationships, and so on.

Like many types of software, sales automation tools come in different forms. It can be standalone or integrated within larger CRM systems.

Either way, they handle various sales-based activities, including lead distribution, scoring, and nurturing communications. For example, they allow sales teams to assign leads, automatically send personalized emails, and score leads based on predetermined criteria without manual input.

Unsurprisingly, one key characteristic of an automated sales system is that it eliminates the need for manual data entry. So, the mundane but essential process of logging information like contact details and call data is done automatically. 

Additionally, software offers easy data visualization and report generation, allowing sales teams to create custom dashboards and reports on metrics like revenue and monthly sales.

However, one of the most valuable features is automated lead generation. The process involves using digital tools to simplify finding potential customers by automating time-consuming tasks. 

For example, sales teams can create and automatically send email templates to prospects based on specific triggers, seamlessly combining email marketing and lead generation.

Of course, we’d be remiss not to mention the VIP of automation today: AI. It’s playing a major role in shaping the future of sales automation.

You can use generative AI features to create automated customer emails, while predictive AI helps identify leads most likely to make purchases based on their past behavior. This transforms how businesses approach sales and is worth considering during your research of the best tools.

No one knows what the future holds. But AI is already proving its worth. It could help further enhance sales automation tools with smarter predictive analytics, improved CRM functionality, and more streamlined mobile experiences for salespeople.

As a result, sales teams will be able to predict customer behavior and trends better, making sales automation more intuitive and effective than ever before.

What are the benefits of using a sales automation platform?

We’ve already touched on some of sales automation software's more common and obvious benefits.

In their simplest form, these tools automate repetitive, time-consuming tasks, saving teams valuable time and effort. But there’s more to them than that.

Let’s dive into the biggest benefits of adopting the right sales automation solution for your business.

1) Increased productivity

This is arguably one of the most obvious (and much-needed) benefits of automation in general. Sales automation increases productivity by reducing time spent on manual tasks like data entry, scheduling, and lead scoring. 

Automating these processes frees your sales team to focus on strategic activities such as developing sales strategies and closing deals. For example, SuperOffice used tools like Dealfront to cut time spent researching prospects by 70%, enabling their team to concentrate on high-value tasks while effectively managing new opportunities.

2) Boosted sales performance

Sales automation directly impacts your ability to close deals. 

With automation tools tracking customer data throughout the buyer’s journey, your sales reps can access valuable insights that shape more personalized and effective sales strategies. 

This data-driven approach makes it easier for reps to convert leads into customers. By removing administrative burdens, your reps can focus on sales prospecting with the right message at the right time, ultimately increasing their chances of success.

3) Improved customer retention

Retaining existing customers can be just as important as attracting new ones. 

Automation makes customer retention easier by streamlining post-purchase communications. Rather than manually scheduling follow-up emails or messages, the tool handles this task on your behalf, ensuring timely outreach without human error. 

This is crucial for nurturing customer relationships, upselling, cross-selling, and encouraging repeat purchases.

4) Enhanced reporting and analytics

Automation tools streamline data gathering and analysis and give you access to detailed reports and insights into sales performance and pipeline. 

Rather than looking at a wall of incomprehensible data, the tool makes it easy to digest. Easy-to-digest data means sales managers can make accurate, informed decisions, speed up strategic planning, and improve accuracy. 

Automation enhances forecasting and overall sales performance by tracking metrics like call-to-sale ratios and pipeline trends.

5) Better customer experience

Sales automation enhances the customer experience by providing quicker responses, faster quotes, and more personalized interactions. Rather than diminishing the "human touch," automation handles routine tasks, allowing your team to focus on meaningful personal interactions. This results in a more engaging and responsive experience, boosting customer satisfaction and loyalty.

6) Minimized repetitive tasks

Data entry, follow-ups, lead qualification—these daily tasks may seem quick and easy. But if you have a long list of leads, the time spent doing each quickly adds up. 

Automating these frees up sales reps to focus more on selling. Many tools have features like AI-driven chatbots and notetaking tools to manage these routine duties. 

As a result, reps spend more time focusing on high-quality leads and driving them through the pipeline.

7) Streamlined sales management

It’s not just your sales reps who benefit from automation. These tools help managers to optimize content, forecast trends, and monitor team performance. 

Power them with AI, and you can also track the individual performance of reps and refine sales scripts. Managers can also analyze CRM data to get more accurate sales forecasts, reducing the burden of training and pipeline management.

8) Lead generation and nurturing

From generating high-quality marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) to distributing those leads to the right reps, automation tools streamline lead generation and nurturing. 

Teams use tools to send follow-up emails automatically, score leads based on predefined criteria, and track where each lead is in the buying journey. 

Doing this means your team is always focused on the highest-quality leads, leading to higher conversion rates and a shorter sales cycle.

9) Improved data entry and visualization

Sales automation platforms automatically handle data entry, reducing errors and accurately recording call logs, customer interactions, and updates. They also generate custom dashboards with clear visualizations of key sales metrics, making it easy to access reports on closed deals or snapshots of your sales pipeline. 

The 10 best sales automation tools

Now you understand the core benefits of automating your sales processes and lead generation efforts. Let’s dive into the tools that will help you realize these benefits.

Disclaimer: This comparison is intended for guidance purposes only and has been provided in good faith and to the best of our knowledge using the information available at the date of publication. All ‘Trademarks’ are the property of their respective owners. We are not endorsed by, directly affiliated with, maintained, authorized, or sponsored by any trademark holder referenced herein.

1) Dealfront

Designed to simplify lead generation and management, Dealfront is a game-changer for sales teams.

The sales intelligence software gathers GDPR-compliant, deep B2B data to help you identify the best leads. It shows you which customers demonstrate true buying intent and captures leads directly from websites, instantly syncing them with your CRM. 

The Leadfeeder Website visitor tracking tool also lets you see which companies are looking at your website and solutions. Besides saving time, this ensures your team focuses on and engages the right prospects. 

Dealfront’s detailed company profiles also offer valuable insights, so your outreach is always spot on. With direct access to decision-makers' contact info and over 100 unique filters to find your ideal customer, connecting with the right people is easier than ever.

You can also set up trigger events based on buying signals from prospects. This gives your team an edge, as you can prioritize outreach to those prospects at the right time and with the right message.

Dealfront also automates repetitive tasks like lead capture and CRM updates, boosting your team’s efficiency as they’ll spend less time on admin. With smooth CRM integration, the process from lead generation to deal closure is seamless, keeping your sales pipeline flowing effortlessly. 

Pricing: Contact Dealfront for flexible pricing and packages to meet your needs.

2) HubSpot

HubSpot is a CRM and sales automation platform that simplifies how businesses manage their sales, marketing, and customer service efforts. Known for its user-friendly design, HubSpot centralizes lead management, allowing teams to track and nurture leads. 

Email automation sends personalized emails and follow-ups automatically, helping sales teams save time while staying connected with prospects. 

HubSpot’s sales analytics capabilities offer insights into performance and deal tracking so teams can stay on top of their goals while automation workflows eliminate repetitive tasks like data entry.

HubSpot integrates with over 1,600 apps, including Zapier, making connecting with other tools in your company’s tech stack easy. 

Users report that the interface is intuitive, and its workflow builder allows users to create custom processes easily. If you’re looking for a solution that covers sales, marketing, and customer service, this is a good option. 

That said, it can be expensive for those needing advanced features.

Pricing: HubSpot Sales Hub Starter is aimed at individuals and small teams with plans from $15/month/seat; Sales Hub Professional starts at $90/month/seat for businesses and enterprises. Free tools are available for up to 2 users.

3) Salesforce

Salesforce is a sales automation and CRM platform designed to help businesses better manage customer relationships. 

Customer insights give sales teams a detailed view of client activity, contact history, and internal discussions. This helps sales reps tailor their approach to meet their clients' specific needs and behaviors. 

Lead tracking capabilities guide leads through the entire sales funnel, which allows teams to prioritize prospects and manage opportunities. Its real-time sales forecasting feature provides accurate predictions based on current and historical data to support informed decision-making.

In addition to tracking and forecasting, Salesforce automates routine tasks like follow-up emails. 

The platform connects with various third-party tools to create a more efficient and productive workflow. Although it’s known for its complexity, customization, and advanced analytics make it a versatile solution for organizations with complex sales processes that require more flexibility.

Pricing: SMB solutions start from $25/user/month; enterprise solutions start from $165/user/month, billed annually 

4) Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a sales automation CRM particularly suitable for small businesses. It allows you to customize sales pipelines, workflows, and stages to tailor the CRM to fit your specific business needs. 

The platform allows you to automate repetitive tasks like sending follow-up emails, generating sales reports, setting reminders, and managing email sequences. Meanwhile, its lead management tools help users track leads through the sales funnel and prioritize high-value opportunities.

Pipedrive's shared access capabilities give everyone access to sales data and communication tools. Teams can work, share insights, and coordinate efforts in one place. 

The platform also offers customizable insights and reporting tools, allowing users to track performance, set goals, and adjust strategies based on real-time data. And with email synchronization, all communications are automatically logged, so nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

Pricing: Plans range from $14/month/seat to $99/month/seat, billed annually

5) Nutshell

Nutshell is a CRM platform that combines customer relationship management with sales automation. 

The platform allows sales and marketing teams to organize customer data and centralize interactions and sales activities so they have a complete view of relationships and histories. 

On the sales automation side, the platform is designed to help teams automate non-selling activities—what it calls “the small stuff.” It helps teams move leads through the pipeline by automating tasks from lead assignment to lead advancement.

You can visually track sales pipelines and get a clear overview of deal progress for accurate forecasting, making it easier to predict outcomes and allocate resources accordingly. 

The platform’s email marketing automation lets you automate drip sequences. Triggering emails based on user behaviors—such as signing up for a demo—allows for personalized follow-ups that increase engagement and conversions.

Managers can also set up automated reminders to ensure reps complete tasks promptly. Meanwhile, the platform’s Funnel report and other sales analytics tools help leaders measure the health of their sales funnel.

Pricing: 14-day free trial; paid plans start at $16/user/month

6) VanillaSoft

VanillaSoft is a sales engagement platform designed to streamline communication and enhance efficiency in lead management. 

The platform automatically assigns and prioritizes leads based on geography or lead score criteria. The queue-based lead assignment system also minimizes downtime by providing leads in a ready-to-work queue.

The leads and sales tracking feature allows you to monitor the performance of individual sales reps to provide coaching where necessary. This also helps align sales and marketing teams, as you can see which lead channels deliver the highest ROI to improve inbound marketing.

Automated email and SMS campaigns allow sales reps to send personalized messages triggered by specific actions, such as making a call or a prospect submitting a form. 

To enhance outreach efforts, VanillaSoft provides dynamic call scripting and the ability to drop pre-recorded voicemails for consistent messaging. The cadence management feature automates workflows for timely multi-channel follow-ups, making it easier to stay in touch with leads and move them through the sales funnel.

The platform also provides robust analytics and reporting tools that offer real-time insights into performance, enabling sales teams to track KPIs and optimize their processes continuously. With automated lead scoring, VanillaSoft helps reps concentrate on the most promising opportunities.

VanillaSoft integrates with various tools and apps, including Salesforce, Gong, and DocuSign, to automate workflows and sync lead data and call activity. 

Pricing: User prices start around $110/month

7) 6sense

6sense is an AI-driven sales and marketing platform that uses predictive analytics and intent data to help sales teams pinpoint prospects most likely to convert. 

The platform analyzes buyer intent signals such as web behavior, search history, and engagement patterns. 

6sense also gives you access to its B2B account and contact data search engine to identify prospects that align with your ideal customer profile.

Account identification allows sales teams to recognize anonymous website visitors and match them to known accounts so you can see who is interacting with your brand and tailoring outreach accordingly. 

Additionally, 6sense automates lead scoring and qualification by evaluating engagement and intent data, providing sales reps with a ranked list of leads based on their readiness to buy.

With sales intelligence capabilities and real-time alerts, teams are notified when key accounts actively research or engage with content.

The platform’s AI-powered Conversational Email capabilities also allow you to create personalized cadences and messaging.

With features like buyer journey tracking and a revenue operations dashboard, teams can access detailed reporting and analytics to monitor performance, predict revenue outcomes, and identify potential bottlenecks in the sales process.

6sense integrates with sales, marketing, and operations platforms, including Salesforce, HubSpot, G2, Salesloft, and Marketo. 

Pricing: Free plan available; contact 6sense for tiered pricing

8) Gong

The Gong Reality Platform is a sales platform that promises to increase pipeline productivity, win deals, and drive revenue growth by analyzing customer interactions with AI. 

Gong captures conversations between customers and your teams from calls, emails, and more. AI then processes the full context of these conversations and identifies central topics, most-asked questions, necessary action items, and key relationship indicators. 

Sales reps can use the valuable insights into customer needs, pain points, and objections provided by AI analysis to fine-tune their messaging and approach. 

Gong’s AI-driven deal intelligence also offers real-time tracking of deal progress, which allows sales teams to act promptly and strategically.

The performance tracking and pipeline management features analyze historical data to accurately forecast deal closures and provide targeted coaching for your team. 

The Gong Reality Platform offers over 100 integrations to help you create a single, authentic source of data to boost productivity, align teams, and optimize performance.

Pricing: Gong’s pricing is based on the number of users supported. Contact their team for a personalized quote.

9) UserGems

UserGems is a sales and marketing intelligence platform that tracks relationship signals to help companies identify high-potential prospects.

By tracking customer job changes, UserGems enables sales and marketing teams to stay connected with former champions and advocates as they move to new companies and leverage past relationships to create valuable new leads.

Thanks to automated data collection and enrichment, coupled with AI-driven insights, businesses can engage with prospects who already know and trust their brand, which significantly increases the chances of a successful sale.

UserGems refreshes and verifies its data weekly to ensure that it remains accurate and continues to provide useful insights.

UserGems offers automated workflows and customizable alerts that integrate with existing CRMs and tech stacks to ensure that no high-value connection is missed while reducing manual work. 

The platform also provides insights on customer movement trends, helping businesses prioritize outreach and segment their campaigns more effectively.

Pricing: UserGems does not advertise it’s pricing online. Contact the company for more information.

10) Outreach

Outreach is a sales engagement platform that aims to unlock productivity and  enable pipeline management in a single tool.

Outreach streamlines the sales process by automating workflows, improving communication, and providing data-driven insights for sales teams. With Outreach, users can automate repetitive tasks, such as follow-up emails and reminders, allowing sales teams to focus on high-impact activities and reduce manual workload.

The platform uses advanced analytics to provide a comprehensive view of each engagement, helping sales teams understand which strategies resonate best with their audience. 

Outreach also offers A/B testing capabilities, enabling teams to experiment with different messaging and approaches to optimize response rates. 

Its multi-channel engagement tools include email, phone, social, and more, allowing sales reps to connect with prospects across preferred communication channels.

Outreach integrates with popular CRM systems and other sales tools, creating a unified system that captures valuable customer interaction data. 

Pricing: Outreach offers per user pricing with no platform fees. Request pricing on their website.

Optimize sales automation with Leadfeeder

Sales automation software is crucial for businesses of all sizes to stay ahead of the competition. If you want to waste time manually trawling the web, searching for leads, and writing separate messages for each based on guesswork, these tools are not for you.

If you want to make sure every lead entering your sales funnel will convert, these tools will help you do that.

The list above has a sales automation system to suit almost every team, whether you want to improve your sales team’s performance or leverage intent data to find and target the right accounts.

Many of these tools can be integrated with Leadfeeder to optimize your sales automation efforts further. Leadfeeder empowers sales reps by giving them access to hidden leads to deliver better results. You can then personalize outreach to warm leads, beat competitors to a sale, and strengthen your sales strategy.

Automated features like lead scoring, custom alerts for high-value prospects, detailed reporting and analytics, and automated workflows for routine tasks help streamline sales efforts and improve efficiency.

Two-way Leadfeeder integrations such as Pipedrive, Salesforce, and HubSpot allow your team to work smarter, ultimately driving more effective sales processes.

Feed high-quality leads in and let the sales flow through!

FAQs on sales automation software

How does sales automation software work?

Sales automation software automates tasks across the sales funnel, streamlining your lead management to close more deals with high-quality leads. These platforms can automatically capture and score leads, personalize emails and follow-ups, track deal progress, and sync with CRM systems to enhance customer interactions. 

Why do sales automation platforms matter?

Sales automation platforms boost sales efficiency by automating repetitive tasks like data entry and follow-up emails, enabling sales teams to focus on relationship-building and closing deals. 

Automation improves task consistency, reduces errors, and enables faster response times, improving conversion rates. These platforms also personalize communications, enhance customer experience, and provide data-driven insights for performance tracking. Integrating with CRMs and other tools, they streamline workflows, align marketing and sales, and drive revenue growth.

What features should I look for in an effective sales automation tool?

Choose a sales automation tool with features like seamless CRM integration, accurate customer data, and marketing automation connections. Key functionalities include customizable email templates, automated lead management, performance reporting and sales forecasting, and data analytics. Additional features like data enrichment, meeting schedulers, proposal automation, and landing page builders can enhance productivity and growth.

What is the difference between CRM and sales automation software?

CRM software and sales automation tools both improve customer-facing processes. However, CRM focuses on managing customer interactions throughout their journey, aiming to build strong relationships. It includes features like contact management, sales tracking, customer support, and centralized data storage for easy access by teams.

On the other hand, sales automation software automates repetitive sales tasks such as lead scoring, email sequences, task management, and sales forecasting to boost efficiency.