The success of any business depends on so many factors, and sales is a critical one. Sales can make or break a business. Unfortunately, Sales are equally tricky as they are essential, and they can easily overwhelm you, which is why every business needs sales automation software.
Thanks to the internet and Social Media, you can now reach millions of potential customers, and for you to not get lost in the world of sheets and notes, you need sales automation on your side.
The world of sales and technology has been advancing so rapidly that there are now so many options to choose from. This also means you can easily get lost and confused in it all, and you won’t be able to make the decision quickly.
This is why we’re here; to help you choose by introducing you to the best sales automation tools available so you can choose the solution that will work best for your business and make your life easier.
List of the Best Sales Automation Tools
- HubSpot Sales
- Pardot
- Pipedrive
- Freshsales
- Infusionsoft
- SALESmanago
HubSpot Sales
HubSpot sales are one of the best sales automation tools you can find today, and it’s easy to explain why. The solution provides a comprehensive set of sales tools to help your sales agents shorten and successfully navigate the entire sales lifecycle easily.
HubSpot sales cover the entire sales process and help your sales teams do everything from generating sales to closing deals.
HubSpot Sales works seamlessly with other HubSpot services such as HubSpot Marketing to give you even more functionality and features. Of course, being a product of HubSpot, you can find an extensive library of available integrations with third-party apps and services.
There’s even an add-on for Google Chrome so that you can use the solution more quickly.
HubSpot Sales Pricing
HubSpot Sales offers three pricing plans, with a free trial available.
- HubSpot Sales Free: Costs 0$/month, offers basic functionality, integrations, and access to HubSpot API.
- HubSpot Starter: Costs $50/user/month, offers all the basic functionality, and adds calling, prospects, meetings, and more.
- HubSpot Sales Professional: Costs $400/month for five users and adds advanced features such as multiple deal pipelines, predictive lead scoring, products support, salesforce integration, and more.
There’s a one-time setup fee of $250. That’s with the taxes not included.
Cons
HubSpot Sales Hub is one of the newer products of HubSpot, so it is still being developed, so you shouldn’t expect it to be as robust, for say, as HubSpot Marketing.
The filters also need to be more advanced since it leaves a lot to be desired and can be annoying when you want to drill down into something particular but is prevented by the solution’s limited filters.
The same can be said about the reporting features, and they need to be more advanced and allow for more options, as its limitations have proven to be a significant annoyance to managers. More templates would also be much appreciated.
Still, for what it offers in this price range, it makes it hard to argue against.
Pardot
Pardot is an excellent option. The solution provides extensive lead management and marketing automation tools that can significantly help your sales reps and extend their capabilities.
Pardot helps you automatically collect all your contact information in one place and visualize how you can optimize your sales funnel and automated marketing campaigns. The solution generates ROI figures for you so you can determine your strengths and weaknesses and make informed decisions to push your business forward.
Pardot is an excellent tool for a lead generation thanks to the fantastic templates you could deploy on your website and the smart forms that will automatically collect and validate the emails of your leads.
It then follows up with intelligent lead management by giving you an easy way to nurture, assess, segment, and qualify your leads with filters. After that, you can use excellent integration with CRM tools to complete your customers’ journey, all while keeping the sales and marketing teams in sync.
If you want to learn more about Pardot, check out this Pardot VS Marketo Marketing Automation Comparison.
Pardot Pricing
Pardot offers three pricing plans.”
- Growth: Costs $1,250/month – billed annually. Offer smart marketing automation and features. It gives you up to 10,000 contacts.
- Plus: Costs $2,500/month – billed annually. It offers deeper marketing automation and analytics. It gives you up to 10,000 contacts.
- Advanced: Costs $4,000/month – billed annually. It offers advanced marketing automation and analytics and artificial intelligence. It gives you up to 10,000 contacts.
Cons
Reporting in Pardot is not as extensive or as detailed as it could be. More customization options will also go a long way in improving the software’s overall experience. The integration with Salesforce also needs to be more comfortable and more profound.
Pipedrive
Pipedrive combines Customer Relationship Management and Sales in one easy-to-use solution. Pipedrive can efficiently pull in contact information and manage them in conjunction with the requirements and needs of the sales team.
Pipedrive’s mission is to empower sales teams to improve their lead prospecting, lead qualification, and sales pipeline management. It aims to help them manage their funnels better to close more deals in less time.
Out of all the essential features you get from one of the best automation tools for sales teams, It should be mentioned that the customizable web form templates are great. They are also fully automated and can easily convert visitors to your websites into contacts and leads, which it then provides to your sales team.
Pipedrive also allows you to link certain products to contacts to kickstart your sales pipeline. You can then extend the solution’s features and functionality by integrating it with more than 100 available third-party apps and services.
Pipedrive Pricing
Pipedrive offers three simple pricing plans. There are no contracts, setup fees, or unannounced fees that will hit you later on.
The prices below are all billed annually.
- Silver: Costs $12.50/month/user. You get full access to all sales management features. You also get access to chat and email support, smart email BCC, user permissions, goals, calendar view, and a customizable dashboard.
- Gold: Costs $24.20/month/user. You get everything in the silver plan, workflow automation, scheduler, sales inbox, and smart contact data.
- Platinum: Costs $49.17/user/month, and you get everything in the gold plan plus multiple dashboards, teams, revenue forecast reports, SAML SSO, and many more advanced features.
Cons
Pipedrive’s mobile applications need some work, and the solution’s integration with Google Apps, especially with Gmail, could use some work. They need to do some serious work with their alliance with email services in general.
Freshsales
Freshsales is an excellent sales management software that helps businesses capture leads, nurture them, and then funnel those leads towards conversion smoothly.
It helps sales teams keep up to date with the status of their contacts and keep tabs on where they are in the sales stages.
Freshsales performs as a central hub for contact management, sales, marketing, and even support. One of the selling points of Freshsales is its lead scoring, which sort sales-ready prospects from thousands of contacts in seconds.
The solution also offers end-to-end CRM with excellent features such as a built-in phone, sales pipelines, email tracking, and more. It allows you to track multiple sales pipelines and manage thousands of contacts without getting overwhelmed.
Freshsales Pricing
Freshsales offers five pricing plans.
- Sprout: Free forever, costs nothing, and you get contacts, deals, leads, email, integrations, mobile apps, and other basic features you need to get started.
- Blossom: Costs $12/month/user, and you get everything in their Sprout plan plus Marketplace, basic reporting, up to 250 bulk emails/user/day, and more.
- Garden: Costs $25/month/user, and you get everything in their Blossom plan plus advanced reporting, territories and lead assignment, and advanced CRM customization.
- Estate: Costs $49/month/user, and you get everything in their Garden plan, plus reports dashboard, multi-currency support, event tracking, and smart forms, and auto profile enrichment.
- Forest: Costs $79/month/user, and you get everything in their Estate plan plus EUC data center, audit logs, and IP whitelisting.
Note that all these prices are if paid annually, and there’s also a 30-day free trial that you can opt for if you want to try the solution before committing, and you don’t even need a credit card to do it.
Cons
Freshsales need to work on their reporting and offer more advanced and customizable reporting. Their event tracking segment also requires attention; the same can be said about their mobile applications.
If you are looking for something intuitive, Freshsales is not for you, as there’s a bit of a learning curve here. The user interface is quite complex, and their support team is busy or unavailable when you need them the most, which is frustrating.
Infusionsoft (Keap)
Infusionsoft is a web-based sales automation solution that can automate and streamline your business’s sales and marketing efforts. Infusionsoft helps enterprises keep consistent brand messaging throughout all of their campaigns.
It also helps businesses create personalized customer experiences that can turn leads into loyal customers.
Like Freshsales, Infusionsoft acts as a centralized hub where you can keep all the contact information of your clients and keep them organized. The solution also eliminates redundant sales activities to make your sales teams more productive.
Infusionsoft combines CRM, marketing automation, contact management, and e-commerce to help your business grow. You can also integrate it with other marketing tools to connect with leads through social media, email, and offline channels.
Infusionsoft Pricing
Infusionsoft offers different pricing packages depending on the number of contacts you have and not the features you get.
The plans are:
- Up to 500 contacts: Costs $80/month.
- Up to 1,500 contacts: Costs $104/month
- Up to 2,500 contacts: Costs $144/month
- Up to 5,000 contacts: Costs $184/month
- Up to 10,000 contacts: Costs $240/month
- Up to 25,000 contacts: Costs $280month
- Up to 50,000 contacts: Costs $304/month
You get all the features, unlimited emails, and one user account with any plan you choose. Onboarding a new user costs $299. eCommerce and Sales pipelines are additional features that can be added with an additional cost to the monthly payment.
There’s also a free 30-day trial to test the solution’s features before committing.
Cons
Infusionsoft’s reporting tools need some work; they produce data but are not the most useful data.
The solution is also not easy to use, even though its user interface is well-thought-out. The learning curve is steeper than it should be, and some users find it quite tricky and time-consuming to learn how to use the solution.
SALESmanago
SALESmanago was built for businesses looking to grow using automation. The solution offers dynamic features such as the ability to quickly identify website visitors and build behavioral profiles for these visitors. It can also identify anonymous visitors in real-time.
SALESmanago offers an advanced behavioral engine, advanced tracking, scroll maps, and heat maps. That means that you will not only know who visited your website, but you will also be able to identify whether a user has seen, pointed, or clicked on elements such as buttons or images.
The solution’s predictive marketing module consolidates transactional and behavioral data. It analyzes them to predict whether these users will need to buy extra consumables, repurchase a product that will likely run out soon, or extend current service subscriptions.
SALESmanago Pricing
SALESmanago offers several different pricing plans, but they are quite complicated. The solution provides two types of accounts, B2B, and B2C & eCommerce. Each of these accounts offers three different basic modules, pro, and elite.
The pricing depends on the size of your database as you can see:
Basic: License Fee of €49/month +
- Up to 200 contacts: Free
- Up to 1,000 contacts: €49/month
- Up to 10,000 contacts: €199/month
- Up to 30,000 contacts: €299/month
Professional: License Fee of €149/month +
- Up to 1,000 contacts: €199/month
- Up to 10,000 contacts: €499/month
- Up to 30,000 contacts: $600/month
Enterprise: Custom Quotes.
They also offer a 30-day free trial.
Cons
The solution is not made by people whose English was their first language, so if you are planning on counting on their literature to learn how to use the solution, you better look elsewhere. They also offer fewer integrations with third-party apps and services compared to their competitors. This has turned out to be more problematic than previously thought since the solution isn’t an all-in-one solution. Many users need specific features that they can only get with integrations that aren’t available.
The lack of social media tools is also quite disappointing, considering the solution does offer integrations with Google and Facebook. Still, you can only use Facebook’s digital advertising and can’t, for example, do the scheduling.
Well, that’s it. These are the options we think that most businesses would benefit from. Still, we’re interested to know if you’re using any of these or if you have experience using another Sales Automation tool?
