Table of Contents
More leads coming into your sales cycle is a great thing — if you can manage it. Automating your sales workflow, like meeting scheduling or lead handoff, helps your team deliver a consistent (and winning) strategy in less time. You’ll need the right tools to do sales automation well, though. This guide covers the best sales automation tools to use in 2023, with reviews from sales reps like you.
You can learn about all 12 tools or browse by app type:
What are sales automation tools?
These days, every department in an organization can benefit from automation. The social media team uses online marketing tools to manage marketing campaigns, and customer success tools use data to reduce churn. But what can sales teams automate?
Sales automation tools are software-based solutions that automate:
Lead research
Contact management
Sales training
Sales metrics
Sales automation tools can tackle specific tasks or offer full-suite solutions that seamlessly integrate into your customer relationship manager (CRM) and improve customer relationships.
How the best sales automation software benefits your team
Sales automation tools act like extra sales team members that act instantly and can process large amounts of data. Since cloud-based sales automation software apps put your work on autopilot, they can help your team:
Deliver a consistent customer experience
Ensure every sales rep follows sales playbooks
Reduce meeting no-shows and cancellations
Eliminate back-and-forth emailing with potential customers to schedule appointments
Automatically assign leads to the correct sales rep
Nurture more leads in less time for a healthier bottom line
Learn from previous deals to improve your sales process
Create a centralized database to streamline customer research
Streamline administrative tasks to spend more time on high-impact work
Leverage advanced multi-channel customer journeys that are impossible by hand
All-in-one sales automation platforms
Centralized sales hubs and CRM software are the heart of your sales automation workflow. All-in-one tools have features like qualified lead databases and automations for repetitive tasks like lead assignments. A Salesforce study revealed that sales managers combining sales rep coaching with technology-driven insights have higher win rates than teams without sales tech.
1. Salesforce Sales Cloud
Business pricing: Starts at $25 per user per month
Free trial: 14 days
G2 rating: 4.3/5
Use if: your team wants a robust suite of tools that works across channels and departments
Salesforce Sales Cloud users see an average 29% increase in productivity thanks to the CRM and features like account and contact management, a mobile app, and process automation. The drag-and-drop editor creates workflows, auto-assigns sales tasks, makes custom proposals, and guides salespeople to optimize every effort.
One user shared that they use Salesforce Sales Cloud for “sales automation, account tracking, contacts, leads, and opportunities. We manage our pipelines from end to end within the crm and have full visibility into forecasting, task management and so on.”
Salesforce users enjoy integrations with popular apps like Slack, Calendly, and GSuite tools like Gmail.
2. HubSpot Sales Hub
Business pricing: Starts at $90 a month
Free trial: No
G2 rating: 4.4/5
Use if: your team wants a comprehensive CRM that’s easy to set up (G2 users rank HubSpot Sales Hub easier to set up than Salesforce Sales Cloud).
HubSpot Sales Hub is a popular all-in-one sales management and automation platform that’s often compared to Salesforce Sales Cloud. In fact, HubSpot Sales Hub is G2’s #13 Software Product in 2022.
The sales automation platform has email templates and tracking, automated follow-up, pipeline management, and sales analytics. Like Salesforce, HubSpot’s Sales Hub integrates with Calendly for automatic meeting scheduling.
3. Outfunnel
Business pricing: Starts at $119 per month
Free trial: No
G2 rating: 4.3/5
Use if: you want to leverage your existing tech stack
Outfunnel isn’t an all-in-one sales automation platform like the previous two tools are. Instead, Outfunnel connects all your sales, CRM, and marketing automation tools to create a comprehensive system with the tools you already have. One G2 review noted, "The app connector is very easy to set up and allows me to create a seamless CRM integration between your marketing tools. Tools like Zapier are great, but Outfunnel goes a step further.”
Outfunnel augments your sales process with automatic lead scoring based on your sales and marketing data and automated lead handoff. Connecting Outfunnel to a meeting scheduling app also eliminates the need for manual data entry for prospect meetings.
Meeting management
Meetings with leads allow sales teams to learn about pain points and pitch their product. Still, scheduling and managing appointments manually is a huge time sink. Tools that make scheduling easy and give sales reps and leads a place to connect are essential to an efficient sales team’s tech stack.
4. Calendly
Business pricing: Starts at $12 per person per month
Free trial: 14 days
G2 rating: 4.7/5
Use if: your team wants to spend less time scheduling meetings and more time closing deals
There are two ways to schedule calls with sales prospects. You can ask them about their availability, email back and forth a few times to find a common availability, send them a calendar invitation, and hope they show — or you can use Calendly.
Calendly lets you set up a calendar with your real-time availability preferences, share that link with your customers, and let them pick the time that works best for them. There are also automatic reminders via email or SMS before and after appointments to reduce no-shows and custom automated workflows. If your team shares responsibility for prospect calls, you’ll benefit from custom meeting distribution rules like Round Robin or equal distribution.
You can learn more about why sales pros should automate scheduling in this guide.
Webinar: How to Build Your Competitive Advantage With Sales Automations
An expert panel shares new ways to outperform your competitors.
5. Zoom
Business pricing: Zoom One Pro starts at $149 per user per year
Free trial: Free basic account available
G2 rating: 4.5/5
Use if: you want to automatically add reliable video conferencing to your meeting invites
Zoom is a video conferencing tool that grew 53% in 2021 that has multiple sales team use cases. For example, you can link Zoom and your scheduling app (like Calendly) to attach a video conference link to your meeting invitations automatically. Sales reps can also choose to always show the participant’s name on the screen so you don’t accidentally forget.
Zoom also has conversational intelligence tools that provide feedback like how long your sales rep spiels are and whether or not they listed the next steps. These automatic insights are a great way to get instant feedback and add quantitative data to sales rep performance reviews.
6. VideoAsk
Business pricing: Starts at $24 per month
Free trial: Free basic account available
G2 rating: 4.5/5
Use if: you want to add a personal touch to your sales process
VideoAsk by Typeform lets your sales team create custom videos for qualified leads to add a personal touch to the sales process. You can even use videos to automatically warm leads on your behalf with recorded questions and answers.
VideoAsk integrates with Calendly to automatically funnel those warm leads into your automatic appointment scheduler. Stanley Tate used this strategy on his website and increased his conversion rate to 98%.
7. Chorus
Business pricing: Custom pricing
Free trial: No
G2 rating: 4.5/5
Use if: you want to learn more from each customer interaction
Sales reps have a lot to juggle on prospect calls, and Chorus helps them make the most of every minute. One review shared that “Chorus allows me to be an active listener in my calls. I don't have to worry about extensive note-taking since Chorus records, transcribes, and highlights specific events in the meeting (i.e., competitors mentioned, next steps, etc.).”
The app ranked #6 on G2’s Best B2B Sales Automation list and can help with automatic sales forecasting and AI-driven pipeline warning signs in addition to meeting recordings and analysis.
8. Gong
Business pricing: Custom pricing
Free trial: No
G2 rating: 4.7/5
Use if: your team values continuous learning and improvement
Gong is one of the fastest-growing companies in North America and G2’s Best Software Product of 2022. The app promises to help sales teams “stop losing winnable deals” with AI-driven customer intelligence. Gong records sales calls and then uses AI to make recommendations and forecasts.
For example, you can track sales rep stats and share automatic feedback on what everyone should do more or less of. Automating learning moments and pipeline management helps your team make corrections quickly to close more sales.
Lead management
Your sales pipeline needs leads, but finding and managing them is complex. These lead management tools help you stick to repeatable and reliable strategies with less hands-on busy work.
9. Typeform
Business pricing: Starting at $83 per month
Free trial: Free basic plan available
G2 rating: 4.5/5
Use if: you need to collect information for lead scoring without boring prospects
Capturing inbound leads is an essential part of closing deals. Really, you can’t have one without the other. Typeform is a no-code tool that lets you create beautiful, interactive lead intake forms. The app makes forms that are enjoyable for potential customers and highly effective—Volvo generated 300% more new leads with 200% higher conversion rates with a Typeform landing page.
There are even sales templates if you aren’t sure how to create a page to collect contact data and phone numbers. Plus, when you connect Typeform and Calendly, you have a powerful system that automatically turns visitors into leads and sets up a sales appointment or SaaS demo without you having to lift a finger.
10. ActiveCampaign
Business pricing: Starting at $149 per month
Free trial: 14 days
G2 rating: 4.6/5
Use if: you want to ensure every lead gets the same sales playbook experience
ActiveCampaign lets you automate each step of the lead nurturing and sales process and is G2’s #2 Best B2B Sales Automation tool. For example, you can create a workflow that automatically sends welcome email campaigns and sales team notifications for every new contact form submission.
The sales CRM automatically creates tasks based on your parameters, like setting up a phone call for high-value deals or a drip campaign email sequence for a smaller account. Automatic segmentation lets you deliver the right experience at the right time without constant monitoring. Since ActiveCampaign works across your funnel, it connects with top apps like Mailchimp, Hubspot, Salesforce, Calendly, and Google Sheets.
11. Outreach
Business pricing: Custom pricing
Free trial: No
G2 rating: 4.3/5
Use if: you want automatic lead management with a robust dashboard
According to G2, Outreach is the best sales product of 2022. Outreach offers email tracking and automation features like real-world tested playbooks and AI-driven sales rep insights and suggestions.
With an automatic dashboard, sales leaders and decision-makers can investigate deals that require action. In contrast, sales reps use advanced multi-channel lead nurturing sequences. One user said, “Outreach helps us automate follow-up and outbound efforts to maximize efficiency. I can't imagine how long our process would take without it.”
12. Growbots
Business pricing: Starting at $199 per month
Free trial: 14 days
G2 rating: 4.5/5
Use if: you want an easier outbound marketing workflow
Growbots is an automated outbound sales tool with lead generation and nurturing features. Sales teams can create a curated outreach list from Growbots' 100 million person database. Then, teams can create and schedule personalized emails, A/B test email marketing campaigns, and analyze results.
Growbots’ database automatically updates, so you always have up-to-date contact information. You can also import your lead data. One user noted, “The Growbots platform generates leads I would never have found on my own, not to mention the countless hours I would have spent to get a fraction of the results.”
Now is the time to automate your sales workflows
If you want to make the next 12 months your best sales year yet (think: more wins and less frustration), you need to automate. Giving your sales team the right automation tools will increase their efficiency and boost your company’s bottom line.
No matter your company size, now is the time to invest in the tools necessary to identify, access, and nurture prime leads — and close the deal.
Get started with Calendly
Ready to make your scheduling process more efficient?
Ebook: 8 expert tips to simplify the most complicated B2B sales meetings
Simplify your meeting cadence, land meetings 45% faster, and close more deals.
Related Articles
STAY UPDATED
Subscribe to
the newsletter
Submit your email, and once a month we'll send you our best time-saving articles, videos and other resources.
Easy access for easy bookings
Share your Calendly link right from your browser, so you can schedule meetings without the back-and-forth
Easy
ahead
We take the work out of connecting with others so you can accomplish more.
About
Solutions
Popular Features
Support
Add-Ons
Developers