11 Sales Automation Tools (+ How to Use AI Sales Automation)

What are sales automation tools?

Sales automation tools are digital platforms that help businesses automate sections of their sales process. This type of software can be used to enhance every part of a sales funnel, including:  

• Lead generation 
• Cold email 
• Lead management 
• Appointment setting 
• Sales forecasting

Modern businesses have plenty of options for advanced sales automation solutions that can increase productivity and improve their ability to track and analyze key sales metrics.

Benefits of sales automation tools

There are many benefits of working with sales automation software. However, the following three are the most impactful when moving the needle for your business. 

1. Increase sales productivity  

Stop letting your sales reps get bogged down with tedious and repetitive tasks (think data scraping/entry, administrative tasks, etc.). With sales automation tools, you can empower your team to reach pique productivity. Leverage modern CRMs and lead generation software to help your team do what they do best: close more deals. 

2. Drive revenue

While many articles touch on the benefits of sales automation tools, this is the goal most companies are after: increasing sales. All the automated lead scoring, forecasting, and nurturing help your team optimize your org's bottom line and experience sustainable growth year-over-year (YOY). 

3. Reduce employee churn 

Another benefit of investing in a sales automation tool is reducing the risk of burnout among your sales staff. You'll see higher employee retention when you help your reps thrive in their careers and make it easier for them to succeed. 

11 sales automation tools

1. Copy.ai

Copy.ai is a content generator that automatically writes your marketing and sales copy for you. And while it’s certainly one of the top AIaaS tools around, it also serves as a powerful sales automation tool. 

That’s because Copy.ai doesn’t just automate your writing, but it now automates a major part of your sales workflow, too: generating personalized cold emails based on a prospect’s public LinkedIn profile. 

In other words, now your sales outbound strategy can be thrown on autopilot.

All you need to do is copy your prospect’s LinkedIn URL:

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And you’ll have a personalized cold email generated for you in seconds: 

Plus, with our API, you have access to easy integrations to your email service provider (ESP) and upload LinkedIn URLs in bulk. This will allow you to send personalized messages at scale to improve your sales process with scheduled follow-ups.

The same information can be used to generate LinkedIn InMail messages, too:

This gives your team a multi-channel sales strategy that lets you automate the boring stuff and save your reps’ energy for those crucial human interactions. 
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Automates: Personalized cold email and LinkedIn outreach.

Price: $49/month for unlimited text generation and automated workflows. 

Ideal for: Sales teams of any size looking to streamline results. 

Get started with Copy.ai (no credit card required) today!

2. Hubspot Sales

Hubspot is a well-known customer relationship management (CRM) tool with a built-in sales platform: Hubspot Sales. This software helps teams capture leads, track emails, and manage their pipeline. It also serves as a great tool for marketing automation if you want to align the two departments and all team members on the same page.

One of the key features of Hubspot Sales is its lead capture and management capabilities. This tool lets you identify and prioritize qualified leads based on their level of engagement and potential value. 

The platform also lets your sales reps schedule and track email responses, which can improve communication and drive more sales. 

Plus, Hubspot Sales has a pipeline management feature that allows teams to track the progress of their deals and forecast future sales. And it provides detailed analytics/reporting capabilities that empower sales teams to track key metrics. 
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Automates: Lead scoring, forecasting, and email marketing (email templates, drip campaigns, etc.) 

Price: The sales automation software starts at $450/month. 

Ideal for: Larger companies with an enterprise-level budget. 

Learn more about Hubspot Sales today. 

3. Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell is another CRM – like Hubspot Sales – that can automate large parts of your sales funnel, like organizing leads, tracking customer interactions, and handling your sales pipeline. 

One of the distinguishing features of Zendesk Sell, though, is that it has a built-in phone system. This allows salespeople to reach out via phone or SMS to new leads. 

These interactions are integrated with your emails, too, so all your lead-based communication is organized and stored in a centralized place. 

As your leads respond to your messaging, Zendesk Sell will help you identify the right times to reach out to new prospects. Plus, you can integrate your favorite sales apps/tools with Zendesk to create a powerful sales stack that boosts your company’s bottom line. 

Larger sales teams might find Zendesk less robust than other tools like Hubspot Sales; that said, many organizations will be drawn to Zendesk’s simplicity and pricing. 

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Automates: Lead scoring, forecasting, and email marketing. 

‍Price: Sales automation tools start at $19/month. 

Ideal for: Companies of all sizes. 

Learn more about Zendesk sell today. 

4. Salesforce Sales Cloud 

Salesforce Sales Cloud is a sales automation platform that is part of the Salesforce CRM. One key feature of Salesforce Sales Cloud is its lead and contact management functionality. This helps you organize and prioritize leads based on their level of engagement and potential value. 

The software also includes a built-in email system that helps sales reps track and schedule follow-up messages. Then, you have access to a sales pipeline so you can track the progress of your team’s deals, as well as forecast future sales.

Finally, like most other sales automation tools on this list, you have access to analytics that can provide actionable insights that lead to higher profits. 

Salesforce Sales Cloud is more feature-rich than Zendesk and a strong competitor to Hubspot Sales. That said, Salesforce Sale Cloud is more competitive than Hubspot Sales and can be a great sales solution for any size business.  

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Automates: Lead scoring, tracking, forecasting, and emailing. 

Price: Sales automation tools start at $25/month. 

Ideal for: Any size business can get started with Salesforce Sales Cloud. 

Learn more about Salesforce Sales Cloud today. 

5. Gong

Gong is a unique tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze conversations with sales reps and give real-time guidance/coaching to improve their performance. 

Gong isn’t a CRM like some of the other tools on this list but instead functions as an AI-driven sales coach. That said, Gong does integrate with other CRMs (like Hubspot and Salesforce, for example), providing you with a tech stack that can improve sales. 

Gong provides users with actionable insights and accurate forecasts in record times. And by analyzing the data in each customer touchpoint along the way, AI can help you understand what’s working, what’s not, and how to fix the latter. 

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Automates: Lead scoring, tracking, and forecasting. While this tool analyzes email conversations, it doesn’t function as an email service provider (ESP) or a CRM. 

Price: You’ll need to contact the support team for pricing. 

Ideal for: Larger companies with an enterprise-level budget. 

Learn more about Gong today. 

6. Outreach.io 

Outreach.io is a feature-rich sales execution platform that helps you build and fill your sales pipeline. You can use Outreach to increase sales through lead generation (find those key decision-makers!), deal management, and revenue forecasting. 

Plus, this platform is designed to help you with every aspect of your sales strategy, including: 

• Account-based sales
• Outbound sales
• Inbound sales
• Closing
• Retention and Expansion
• Recruiting 

While Outreach does integrate with a wide variety of apps, it’s known for strong security and keeping customer data safe. 

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Automates: Every aspect of creating and closing a pipeline.

Price: You’ll need to contact the support team for pricing. 

Ideal for: Larger companies with an enterprise-level budget. 

‍Learn more about Outreach.io today. 

7. Overloop.com 

Overloop.com (formerly Prospect.io) is a multi-channel outbound platform that automates your sales funnel. It helps you send the right combination of cold email campaigns and LinkedIn outreach messages to increase the number of prospects you reach. 

This platform comes with a variety of sales tools, such as:

• An email finder
• Chrome extension
• CVS importer
• LinkedIn importer
• Chrome extension 

Plus, pricing is simple and relatively affordable for most businesses at just $99/month. 

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Automates: Cold email and LinkedIn messaging. It also handles contact management but wouldn’t be a full-fledged CRM like Hubspot or Salesforce. 

Price: There is only one plan starting at $99/month. If you need to find more than 250 email addresses, though, you’ll need to purchase more credits. 

Ideal for: This is a good tool for any size business but likely not a priority tool for young startups. 

Learn more about Overloop.com today. 

8. Lemlist

Lemlist automates your cold email and sales outreach by warming domains, prospecting leads, and giving you multi-channel functionality. 

For example, you can send a cold email one day, schedule a follow-up message a few days later, and create a cold call reminder shortly after. It also notifies you of the best time to cold call new leads depending on how they engaged with previous messaging. 

And because this platform warms your domains before the cold emailing begins, you can feel more confident about landing in your prospect’s inbox once you have their valid contact information.

Like most email sales tools, Lemlist allows you to personalize messaging by dynamically adding your recipient’s name, company, job title, etc. to the copy. This allows you to send personalized emails at a massive scale. 

Finally, Lemlist integrates with most CRM and other lead gen tools making it a good addition to any tech stack already in motion. 

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Automates: Cold email and follow-up messaging. 

Price: Plans with sales engagement automation start at $99/month. 

Ideal for: This is a good tool for any size business but not a priority tool for young startups. 

Learn more about Lemlist today. 

9. ActiveCampaign 

You might know ActiveCampaign as an ESP, but it can also function as a CRM software and sales automation tool. 

Many businesses aren’t at the point where they need to invest large amounts of money into platforms like Hubspot and Salesforce. Instead, they need a way to organize and segment new leads to send consistent weekly/monthly messages. 

This is exactly what ActiveCampaign allows you to do (with impressive functionality). 

ActiveCampaign has a suite of tools that help you create sales pipelines and nurture relationships with potential customers. It teaches you the right times to send your follow-up campaigns and gives actionable insights into when a human representative should take over. 

Plus, you’ll have access to a powerful lead scoring tool to pinpoint the warmest leads to go after. Doing so will give your representatives the highest chances for repeated success. 

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Automates: Cold emailing, follow-up messages, lead nurturing, and lead scoring. 

‍Price: Plans with sales engagement start at $66/month. 

‍Ideal for: This is a good tool for any size business and can be a great option for small businesses just starting out.

‍Learn more about ActiveCampaign today. 

10. Gmass

Gmass is a convenient tool that helps you turn Gmail into a mass email service. This makes it perfect for automating sales emails directly from your Gmail inbox. This feature-rich platform has everything you need and more to close deals, including: 

• Automated follow-up messages
• 1-question survey templates 
• Segmented campaigns
• Shared reports for teams 
• Email list building (subscriber growth)
• Unsubscribe management
• And much more

While this tool doesn’t offer more functionality than other email providers on this list, it does come with one big advantage: it’s hosted on a platform most users are already familiar with. 

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Automates: Cold emailing, follow-up messages, and team reporting. 

Price: Plans start at $19.95/month. 

Ideal for: This is a good tool for any size business and can be a great option for small businesses just starting out.

Get started with Gmass today. 

11. Calendly

Every sales team should have an appointment-setting tool like Calendly. It allows sales representatives to share their calendars. This improves the user experience for your new prospects as they can schedule a time most convenient for them to chat. 

By removing the friction from the appointment-setting process, you can be guaranteed to see more calls booked. This is how companies like ClickUp were able to double customer engagement. 

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Automates: Appointment setting. 

Price: There’s a forever-free plan. Paid plans begin at $8/seat/month.  

Ideal for: This is a good tool for any size business and is a must-have for any B2B sales team.

Learn more about Calendly today. 

Where to get started with sales automation tools?

Having looked at some of the best sales automation tools on the market, which one should you go with? This depends on your organization’s size, budget, and ambition:

• Smaller Teams: Start small with platforms like Copy.ai, Gmass, and Calendly. Let Copy.ai generate personalized emails to your prospects based on their LinkedIn URL and send them directly from your Gmail account. This is a small but powerful stack that can help any startup gain early traction.
  
  
• Medium Teams: Invest in a few tools to automate your sales process. You’ll likely want to choose a combination of Copy.ai (for personalized email generation) and a sales CRM like Hubspot or Salesforce. The CRMs will give you more functionality than a smaller tool like Gmass, and you likely have the budget for a mid-level plan. 

• Large Teams: Experiment and invest in the tools that will help you scale growth more efficiently. You’ll likely want platforms like Copy.ai and CRM, but you can spring for other tools like Gong (for sales coaching, lead scoring, etc.). Remember, sales is the bread and butter of your company, so you’ll want to keep that sales engine running smoothly. Fortunately, you’re at the size where you have the resources to do so. 

But no matter what your situation, you should check out Copy.ai’s cold outreach email tool. Freshly released, this feature is revolutionizing modern cold outreach by providing personalized messaging at scale. 

And since Copy.ai allows you to get started at zero risk (no credit card required), it’s easier than ever to get started with sales automation tools.