Connecting with customers and fostering an engaging atmosphere. That’s what great salespeople do. It’s how they build relationships with their target market and how they get conversions. It is, unfortunately, often easier said than done. Working at this level takes an incredible amount of work, so much work that it seems barely manageable. That’s where sales engagement tools become useful.
Sales engagement tools are designed to make sales teams' workloads more reasonable. That means they can spend more time focusing on doing what they do best. Closing sales and generating revenue for the business. These tools work by enabling engagement in a scalable way. They encourage engagement at each step of the sales funnel.
In this article, we’ll share our choice of the best sales engagement tools on the market, but first, we need to answer some important questions.
- Why are sales engagement tools so important?
- What does a sales engagement tool look like for a user?
- What should you consider when choosing a tool?
Using Sales Engagement Tools For Growth
Businesses that are hungry for growth have taken to using sales engagement tools more and more. Leading benefits include growing your revenue and maximizing conversion opportunities. There is much more to these tools than that.
These tools allow businesses to create a platform that facilitates and encourages communication with potential customers from the top of the funnel to the bottom. Salespeople access an intuitive dashboard that allows them to do things such as:
- Track and research interactions
- Schedule emails or automate follow-ups
- Analyze specific data and analytics
- Monitor various engagement metrics
Sales teams are enhanced thanks to the sophisticated automation that many of these tools provide. They remove much of the admin that goes with customer engagement by automating the tasks. That means that your team’s time is spent on meaningful conversations instead.
What To Look For In A Sales Engagement Tool
Not all sales engagement tools are the same. They come in various shapes and sizes, each with their own merits and compromises. Throughout the comparison list below, we’ve shared the key features of each product and their price points. Budget is an important factor, but don’t settle for a tool within your price range that doesn’t have the features you need. There’s no point. Your team won’t use it, and it’ll be a wasted expense.
- Integrations: You already have a tech stack that the team is working with. You need your tool to integrate with your existing stack seamlessly, or you’ll face unnecessary roadblocks.
- Alignment with your goals: Your choice of tool has the potential to improve your business dramatically, but what are those goals? Will the tool help you achieve them?
- Budget: As mentioned above, budget is certainly a consideration. Try to focus on the value that the tool could deliver rather than seeing it as a straight cost.
- Features: Does the tool offer the core features that you require? Don’t be swayed by impressive-sounding features that you will likely never use.
- Reviews: User testimonials are a great way of gauging what your experience of the tool will be. Try to read reviews from businesses of the same kind of size and scope as yours.
- Support: There will come a point where you need assistance resolving an issue with the tool. You want to feel you can rely on the team offering that support.
Our Selection of Sales Engagement Tools
What follows is our comprehensive list of the best sales engagement tools. We’ve included a brief overview and then information on pricing, free trials, and the key features.
Instantly
Our first option is Instantly. Instantly offers sales engagement through the medium of email. A huge portion of sales is about communication. Having conversations at every point of their journey is one of the best ways of building engagement. It’s personal, and it treats each prospect as an individual.
Instantly, regardless of price, offers unlimited email accounts. That means every member of your team can reap the benefits Instantly has to offer. The question is, how does Instantly work?
Instantly delivers a platform that ensures your recipients are receiving your communication. Communication directly in their inboxes thanks to advanced email deliverability techniques. It’ll make sure it goes to the right place and that they receive it at the right time. Instantly can then automate follow-ups, freeing your team from the arduous task of chasing leads.
Talking of leads, within Instantly’s dashboard, you can import leads and then mark appropriate ones as active. At a glance, your team knows precisely who they should be focused on engaging with. Then, once your campaign is underway, you can dig into the analytics suite to gauge an understanding of what’s working and what needs improvement.
Pricing Tiers:
Growth: $37/month
Hypergrowth: $97/month
Free Trial: Available for both tiers.
Key Features:
- Unlimited Email Accounts
- Unlimited Email Warmup
- Active Leads
- Personalization At Scale Through Merging
- Automated Email Sequencing
- Comprehensive Analytics
- Support (Live Chat For Growth, Premium For Hypergrowth)
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Salesforce offers sales engagement across a wide range of industries to businesses of all shapes and sizes. The primary function is to manage sales leads and present them in an understandable way. It’s also capable of streamlining your campaigns through email automation. Campaigns then connect to an analytics suite that provides a variety of insights. Users often find the dashboard intuitive and accessible, even when using a mobile device.
The latest version of the tool includes a wide variety of AI features. These features tout a faster, more engaged sales process connected to Salesforce’s own AI.
Pricing Tiers:
Starter: $25/user/month (billed annually)
Professional: $80/user/month (billed annually)
Enterprise: $165/user/month (billed annually)
Unlimited: $330/user/month (billed annually)
Free Trial: Available for all tiers.
Key Features:
- Lead and Contact Management
- Opportunity Management
- Email Integration
- Reports and Dashboards
- Mobile Access and Administration
HubSpot Sales Hub
HubSpot Sales Hub is just one arm of the larger business platform that makes up HubSpot. The Sales Hub delivers a series of tools, each of which is designed to boost sales engagement. Stand-out features include email tracking, lead management, and meeting scheduling. Each is designed to streamline your sales process.
The pricing seems like a dramatic jump from tier to tier, but it is priced in a way that encourages growth. It’s worth noting that there is a free version of the software, but it is severely limited in comparison to the paid tiers.
Pricing Tiers:
Starter: Starts at $45 per month
Professional: Starts at $450 per month
Enterprise: Starts at $1,200 per month
Free Trial: Available
Key Features:
- Contact and Lead Management
- Email Tracking
- Meeting Scheduling
- Pipeline Management
Apollo.io
Apollo is another email tool that graces our list. The tool has a sophisticated array of email marketing and sales tools that help sales teams engage with their prospects. Integration with your current email provider should be straightforward. That's thanks to the long list of connections that Apollo offers. Once integrated, you’ll be able to filter emails and leads, manage pipelines, and track important analytics.
At higher pricing tiers, you’re able to access the dialer feature. With it, you’re able to make calls to your prospects from within Apollo, making for easy tracking and monitoring. Calls can be recorded, transcriptions taken, plus everything can all be logged into the CRM.
Pricing Tiers:
Basic: $49/month
Professional: $96/user/month
Custom: Price on request
Free Trial: Available
Key Features:
- Email Credits
- Sequence Automation
- Buying Intent
- Integration with Email Providers
- Advanced Reports and Dashboards
- Dialer (Professional and Custom plans)
- Customizable Reports (Custom plan)
Salesloft
Salesloft works by creating what it calls cadences. Cadences are a set of various touchpoints, such as calls and emails, that are made to build engagement with a prospect. These cadences are all managed from within Salesloft and help teams manage and track activity across the sales process. It’s not the simplest of tools to get to grips with, but the support provided comes highly recommended.
Pricing Tiers:
Prospect
Sell
Engage
Enterprise
Note: There is no pricing information available from Salesloft. To access pricing, you must schedule a demo with one of Salesloft’s sales team. They do, however, say that they offer pricing for businesses of all sizes.
Free Trial: Demos available
Key Features:
- Sales Email
- Calendaring
- Mobile App Access
- CRM Sync
- Integrations
- Security and Governance
Groove
Groove is a sales engagement platform that covers a lot of ground. It has features that focus on analytics, productivity, automation, engagement, and financial insight. If you’re a Salesforce user already, then Groove could be a welcome option as it’s one of the few that directly integrates with it. You do, however, have to be a larger business to access Groove, thanks to the high minimum annual spend.
Groove pulls data from across your network to provide insight into opportunities. It can let your team know when renewals are due, what your team’s next steps should be, and even deliver automated lead engagement.
Pricing Tiers:
Core License: $50 - $160/user/month (Annual commitment, minimum annual spend of $10,000)
Free Trial: 14-day free trial (Salesforce users)
Key Features:
- Salesforce Integration
- Email and Calendar Integration
- Analytics
- Mobile App
- Customization and Scalability
Outreach
Outreach delivers automated email outreach through sequencing. The platform also enables further engagement with prospects by allowing them to book meetings with your sales team themselves. The tool connects with your prospect database to ensure each set of communication you send is personalized.
Some users have recently reported that the new UI is frustrating to use, but when it does function properly, it is a powerful product.
Pricing Tiers:
Accelerate License: $80/user/month
Optimized License: $140/user/month
Free Trial: Not mentioned
Key Features:
- Sequencing
- A/B Testing
- Outreach Dialer
- Buyer Sentiment Analysis (Optimized License)
- Team Reporting (Optimized License)
Reply
Reply is an AI-first sales engagement platform that includes prospecting. Once prospects are added to the tool, sales teams can engage with them across multiple channels. Their AI is called Jason, and it is a B2B conversational assistant. This assistant can generate emails for you, build sequences, and even reply to prospects as emails come in.
Reply also integrates with your calendar and booking tools. Meaning prospects can easily book sales meetings and demos. There are a host of other integrations (especially with CRMs) plus endless possibilities when connected to Zapier.
Pricing Tiers:
Sales Engagement Starter: $60/user/month
Professional: $90/user/month
Custom: N/A
Free Trial: 14-day free trial
Key Features:
- Multichannel Communication
- Automated Email Sequences
- Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Hubspot Integrations
- Analytics and Reporting
Key Takeaways
Embracing a sales engagement tool is going to do great things for your sales team. They’ll feel more empowered, more able, and in a better position to engage with your prospects. The welcome byproduct of that is that they’ll close more deals. You’ll see more conversions. That means a growing, healthy business that generates more revenue.
These tools are an investment, but they’re an investment that could significantly impact your business. Remember to see them as a thing of value rather than another subscription-bearing cost.
- The best sales engagement tools will be embedded into your current stack through integrations.
- These tools are designed to enhance and enable your sales team. Make sure that the features you select will best serve your team.
- More and more tools are delivering state-of-the-art AI features and powerful automation. These features have the potential to both streamline and accelerate your sales process.
A crucial part of sales engagement is cold outreach to prospects. You’ll need a comprehensive tool to help with that process and to follow up afterward. That’s precisely what Instantly offers, and you can get started with it today.