Sales is an extremely demanding and ever-changing industry. If you want to stay competitive, you need to adopt the latest trends and technologies; otherwise, your competitors will leave you in the dust! One of the most revolutionary technologies being used in sales today is automation. If you can take full advantage of everything automation has to offer, you’ll see your numbers grow significantly in a matter of weeks.
But not all sales automation tools are worth your time and money. Out of the thousands of options available on the market, only a handful can actually make a considerable positive impact on how you do business.
This is why we put together a list of the best sales automation tools you can rely on to improve your productivity, generate more leads, and turn your team into a super-efficient sales machine.
Most sales reps are familiar with the mundane day-to-day tasks expected of them: answering emails, scheduling appointments, prospecting for leads and updating their CRM. In fact, sales professionals spend more time on these manual tasks than they do actually making a sale!
Sales automation does these tasks automatically. Any part of the sales process can be automated, from prospecting to closing a deal. The biggest benefit of automation is that it makes your sales reps much more efficient and allows them to refocus their energy on doing what they do best—selling.
When you’re manually logging all of your data—such as your client’s info, schedules, and tasks completed—there’s a moderate to high chance that you’ll miss a few on the way. There are sales automation tools that automatically record your activity throughout the day, as well as those that update your CRM, database, or documents with the right data. For example, ZynBit offers a Sidebar for Outlook that automatically syncs with SalesForce, so you never even have to open your CRM.
The more accurate your information, the less time you will waste double-checking—and the fewer leads you’ll miss out on because of an honest mistake.
Prospecting is one of the most important parts of a sales representative’s job. After all, customers are what keep the business running. But prospecting is tedious and time-consuming work that most sales professionals struggle to stay focused on.
If lead generation is one of your team’s biggest issues, then a sales automation software can certainly help. These tools can pull from a variety of sources to give you more qualified leads and a full profile of your prospects—everything you need to create a winning strategy to close that client.
Timing is everything, and that couldn’t be more true in sales work. Sales automation can streamline your communication so that you’re reaching out to your prospects when they’re most likely to convert. From email templates to personalized email sequences, these tools help you target leads at different points in the sales journey, increasing your chances of success every step of the way.
While setting up a meeting with a client isn’t a difficult task in itself, it’s often one of the hardest to nail down. This is because scheduling conflicts combined with irregular and inefficient communications can kill a deal before it’s gotten off the ground.
Some sales automation tools offer easy and hassle-free scheduling. Once you and your prospect have agreed to meet up, the software takes over—allowing them to choose their soonest availability, then automatically logging it into your calendar.
Automation tools don’t close your sales for you, but they do the next best thing: they take over your sales reps’ most tedious tasks so that they can work smarter and more efficiently. If a sales automation software can slash even just 30 minutes or an hour a day off your team’s current workload, that’s an extra 30 minutes to an hour that they can dedicate to the more pressing parts of the sales process, like converting prospects and closing deals.
While sales automation can be an incredibly powerful part of your operations, too much automation can make your business feel impersonal and robotic. It’s still important to strike a careful balance between using automation tools and maintaining some sense of humanity, especially when dealing with clients.
Not everything has to or should be automated—the best way to sell to someone is by treating and talking to them like a human being. You can’t rely on technology to engage with your customers or foster relationships in a meaningful way; that’s still the job of your roster of skilled sales reps.
Price: As low as $10/month/user
Best for: Overall automation with Salesforce, Gmail, Outlook, and other tools
Cirrus Insight is a powerful all-in-one tool that helps with every stage of the sales process. Everything from Salesforce-Email integration, to prospecting, to calendar sharing and customer engagement tracking, is easier with this tool. Plus, it automatically updates Salesforce with all of your activity; email, meetings, tasks, and customer engagement stats.
Visit Cirrus Insight’s website here.
Price: As low as $35/month/user
Best for: Finding and following up with prospects
This sales automation platform is a valuable tool for when you’re prospecting. You can verify a prospect’s contact information, create cold email and drip campaigns, track sent emails, and automate data entry with some of the most popular apps in the sales industry.
Visit Prospect.io’s website here.
Price: Free for basic plan; paid plans as low as $8/month/user
Best for: Scheduling meetings with clients
Visit Calendly’s website here.
Price: Pricing available upon request
Best for: Collecting contacts and creating email campaigns
Growbots is used by hundreds of top brands to generate customer lists and target them with the right, personalized campaign. Sign up with Growbots, and you’ll have access to over 200 million contacts in their network, plus an A/B testing feature for your email templates.
Price: As low as $12/month/user
Best for: Tracking emails
Gain insight into what happens with your emails after you’ve sent them. Yesware shows you if a prospect has opened your emails or downloaded your attachments, giving you valuable info about the effectiveness of your emails.
Price: Pricing available upon request
Best for: Creating automation “recipes”
Send a congratulatory email when a client updates their LinkedIn. Get a notification when your competitors launch a new project. Monitor social media for rants and complaints related to your product/service. The scenarios you can create with IFTTT (If This, Then That) are limited only by your imagination!
Price: Free for basic plan; paid plans as low as $20/month/user
Best for: Automating between apps
Zapier works like IFTTT, except it helps you automate tasks between apps. For example, you can automate the import/export of your customers’ contact info, send Slack DMs once a meeting has been scheduled, and more.
Price: As low as $97/month/user
Best for: Filtering through qualified leads
Connect with key decision-makers in other companies. LeadFuze builds you an email list based on your parameters, such as job, industry, and location. Plus, it helps you automate email campaigns and client follow-ups.
Visit LeadFuze’s website here.
Price: As low as $39.20/month/user
Best for: Easy visual automation
If you’re more of a visual person, then Autopilot will be a great automation service for you. Like IFTTT and Zapier, you can automate between apps. Except this time, it has an easy to understand drag-and-drop interface that helps you plan out your automation scenarios in a way that’s easy to visualize.
Visit Autopilot’s website here.
Price: Free
Best for: Providing flexible scheduling options for clients
Assistant.to pulls from your calendar to find your available time slots. Then, it sends that info to your prospect, allowing them to choose which one to book for your meeting. It even composes the email for you! Plus, it’s absolutely free, as long as your sales team is using Gmail as an inbox.
Visit Assistant.to’s website here.
Sales automation tools were created to make your sales job easier. Instead of spending hours generating reports, categorizing emails, or trying to pin down clients, you can use that time where it matters the most: creating positive experiences, developing sincere relationships with your clients, and converting leads into customers.
All of these tools will come in handy, but if you have a limited budget, then ZynBit is your best bet. Not only does it integrate seamlessly with your most-used sales tools, but it also automates processes like scheduling, updating your CRM, and following up with prospects. ZynBit is perfect for any smart and savvy sales organization!