Posts in category: Sales Automation

One of the biggest productivity killers of any busy sales team is time lost completing small tasks.

From scheduling meetings to following up with leads, sending contracts and creating proposals their to-do list soon becomes a neverending list of back and forth administrative tasks.

But what if there was a way to streamline these tasks and let machines do the heavy lifting so that your sales reps can focus on what matters most.

Well, with the help of sales automation you can help your sales reps win back their time and say goodbye to repetitive tasks once and for all.

But with so many options available on the market it’s often easy to get lost in which tools actually save them time and increase productivity without costing a fortune.

Don’t stress, we’ve got you covered!

Here’s our list of the best sales automation tools available on the market that will save you and your team time, money and energy.

Let’s dive in!

Sales Automation Tools

• Calendly
• FindThatLead
• JustCall
• Lemlist
• Lusha
• Salesmate
• Scrab.in
• Better Proposals
• HelloSign

Calendly

First up in our list of sales automation tools is none other than Calendly.

Calendly makes light work of scheduling with its well designed, easy to use platform that allows you to share your availability via your own customisable link. What’s more, is you can customise based upon a number of variables including availability, meeting location and more.

You can also trigger automated SMS and email reminders and collect pre-payments for paid events while also converting timezone availability for your visitors making scheduling hassle-free for you and your contacts.

Key Features

• Ability to schedule unlimited events
• Send personalised SMS and email reminders
• Collect pre-payments before events
• Sync all appointments with your existing calendar
• Customise your availability as required

Pricing

• Basic – $0 forever
• Premium – $10 per user / month
• Pro – $15 per user / month

FindThatLead

Ever find yourself spending countless hours trying to find quality prospects for your outreach campaign?

You could throw hundreds, if not thousands at paid advertising campaigns or you could take your prospecting game to a whole new level with FindThat Lead.

FindThatLead allows you to search, verify and even get the contact information of qualified prospects with professionals all around the globe using their all-in-one prospecting platform. In just a few simple steps, you can search, validate and start connecting with potential clients with ease.

Key Features

• Search for business email addresses around the globe
• Validate existing email addresses lists with ease
• Find and connect with local business owners by keyword
• Build and send personalised email outreach campaigns

Pricing

• Growth – $49 per month (1 user)
• Startup – $150 per month (4 users)
• Suite – $399 per month (6 users)

JustCall

Despite the evolution of social media and online conferencing, the telephone still remains a commonly used method of communication when it comes to customer service and sales.

JustCall lets you and your team communicate with ease via its cloud-based telephone platform while offering a host of features that go beyond the traditional telephone. From the ability to register and use local numbers from over 70 countries, to send and receive SMS messages and more, JustCall allows you to take your telephone outreach to new levels. 

Key Features

• Use local numbers from over 70 countries
• Create personalised greeting messages
• Auto-dial and connect calling
• Voice transcription of calls
• Advanced reporting of call data

Pricing

• Standard – $25 per user / month
• Premium – $50 per user / month
• Enterprise – Request Quote (Minimum 100 users)

Lemlist

When it comes to preferred sales strategies, cold email generally gets a bad wrap.

And while the days of generic, bulk sending of email campaigns to email lists will probably not only cost you time and resources, it may also lead to your domain being flagged as spam.

Lemlist reinvents cold email outreach with its easy to use, intuitive platform that allows you to build highly personalised email campaigns that nurture and convert prospects into qualified sales leads at scale without the risk of your domain being flagged.

Key Features

• Create highly personalised email campaigns
• Ability to split test multiple campaign variables
• Automate follow up via multiple channels
• Sync data with your CRM platform
• detailed reports on campaign performance

Pricing

• Email Warm-Up – $29 per user / month
• Email Outreach – $59 per user / month
• Sales Engagement – $99 per user / month

Lusha

Being able to build a list of accurate leads for sales outreach isn’t easy. Incorrect email addresses, dated profiles and more often lead to you wasting countless hours in sales outreach.

Lusha allows you to build laser targeting lists for prospecting with access to 100 million profiles providing you with accurate sales saving you time and resources while ensuring you are reaching out to the right person within a company every time.

Key Features

• Auto-enrichment of contact data
• Filter contacts based upon specific variables
• Integration support with your CRM and other sales platforms
• Web extension for easy enrichment

Pricing

• Starter – $0 per month (5 credits)
• Professional – $99 per month (100 credits)
• Premium – $199 per month (300 credits)
• Enterprise – custom

Salesmate

When it comes to SaaS platforms that help grow your business, having a reliable CRM platform can make or break your business.

Salesmate goes beyond the traditional CRM platforms by offering a powerful, easy to use platform that increases your sales teams productivity and gives them a birds-eye view of every sales opportunity so that they know exactly who to focus on next.

From automating workflows to detailed sales reporting and built-in calling and text messaging Salesmate takes your team to the next level.

Key Features

• Create automated, personalised outreach campaigns
• Send SMS messages and make phone calls
• Trigger activity reminders and sales actions with ease
• Easily store, track and manage deals and contacts
• Get detailed reporting on multiple data points

Pricing

• Starter – $15 per user / per month
• Growth – $50 per user / per month
• Booth – $50 per user / per month
• Enterprise – custom

ScrabIn

Looking to grow your social media reach on autopilot?

Scrab.in allows you to build automated, highly personalised lead generation campaigns through LinkedIn without you having to spend hours sifting through LinkedIn profiles daily.

In just a few minutes, you can have your LinkedIn campaign up and running that automatically searches, engages, connects and messages prospects on auto-pilot allowing you to spend more time in other areas of your business.

Once Scrab.in has done the heavy lifting for you, you can then continue to reach out to the most relevant prospects through more personalised messages.

Key Features

• Scan and visit 1st, 2nd and 3rd profiles
• Visit up to 15,000 profiles per month
• Send automated messages and invitations
• Export leads to CSV

Pricing

• Plus – $12 per user (1 plus license)
• Ultimate – $59 per month (1 ultimate license)
• Ultimate – $399 per month (8 licenses)

Better Proposals

First impressions count and being able to present a personalised, eye-catching sales proposal that blows your target audience away isn’t always easy.

BetterProposals lets you create professionally designed, interactive proposals that make your proposal stand out from the crowd while also proving you with detailed insights into how each prospect engages with your proposal.

Key Features

• Create professional, personalised proposals
• Detailed insights on the proposal engagemnt
• Automated follow up with prospects
• In-built signature support
• Secure payment processing

Pricing

• Starter – $19 per user / per month (10 proposals)
• Growth – $29 per user / per month (50 proposals)
• Booth – $49 per user / per month

HelloSign

Working hand in hand with a high-quality sales proposal is being able to create a seamless contract signing process that makes contracts easy for you and your new clients.

HelloSign makes light work of legal contracts with their easy to use e-signing platform that allows you to create, sign and send legally binding contracts without the need of expensive legal teams or snail mail.

Key Features

• Create professional, legally binding contracts
• Send signature requests directly to new clients
• Pre-created templates for faster sending
• Adult trail support via time stamping

Pricing

• Starter – $19 per user / per month (10 proposals)
• Growth – $29 per user / per month (50 proposals)
• Booth – $49 per user / per month

And there you have it, 7 top-rated sales automation tools that you can implement within your business to save your sales team time and money and help you grow your bottom line.

Ready to Increase Your Sales Teams Productivity?

Feel free to sign up for a free trial of these tools and see how much time your team has to focus on what matters most, selling.

Which tool are you most interested in trying and why? Let us know in the comments.

Happy automating!

When it comes to CRM platforms available on the market, there is no shortage of options.

However, one CRM that stands out from the crowd in terms of features and price that we can’t go past is no doubt Salesmate.

Since its founding in 2016, Salesmate has been at the forefront of innovating the way sales teams manage their workload on a daily basis.

But how does it come to some of the major players in the market?

In this Salesmate review article, we’re going to provide you with a comprehensive overview of Salesmate’s features, pricing and more to help make your decision process easier when it comes to choosing the right CRM for your business.

Let’s dive in!

Salesmate Review 2023

• Overview
• Features
• Pricing
• FAQs
• Alternatives
• Summary

Overview

Having been founded only in 2016, Salesmate can often be considered as one of the newcomers within the CRM space, however, this hasn’t stopped it from disrupting an already crowded market and marking its name as one of the top-rated contenders within the industry.

With a focus on helping sales teams become more productive, Salesmate offers a diverse range of features in a well designed, easy to use platform that doesn’t break the bank.

This unique approach has lead to them win multiple awards within their space and is rated one of the top-ranking CRM’s on the market in terms of price, quality and customer service and they have no signs of slowing down in disrupting the market.

Features

Contact Management

Say goodbye to dated spreadsheets for managing your contacts with Salesmate’s contact management you can store and manage all of your most important contacts all under one roof.

Matched the ability to filter based upon specific criteria, view sales and engagement activity and auto-assign new contacts Salesmate makes light work of your contact management. What’s more, it also includes auto contact enrichment giving you up to date contact data when needed.

Pipeline Management

Get a birds-eye view of all current new and existing sales opportunities within your pipeline thanks to Salesmate’s pipeline management feature allowing you to prioritise sales opportunities and close new business with easier.

Salesmate also allows you to build tailored automation workflows that can be triggered when deals reach a specific stage within your pipeline so that your sales reps can focus on selling.

Smart Emails

Take your email outreach to the next level with Salesmates built-in email automation features which allows you to track email engagement activity, create personalised email templates for easier outreach and sync your email activity with your mails service ensuring accurate data for each and every contact.

Salesmate also allows you to create a shared team inbox for internal notes and increased collaboration across distributed teams.

Smart Queue

Never miss an important follow up again with Salesmate’s Smart Queue feature which allows you to create customised task workflows that automatically inform you which task needs to be completed next by your sales reps.

Salesmate also includes a smart dialer feature allowing you to automatically dial numbers saving your sales reps time day in, day out.

Sequences

Turn your sales prospects into warm, qualified leads like clockwork with Salesmate’s sequences feature which allows you to create tailored outreach workflows using a combination of email and text ensuring your brand is always front of mind with your audience.

Salesmate also allows you to trigger activity based reminders if and when needed ensuring you never miss a beat during the outreach process.

Customisation

Each business and unique and thanks to Salesmates customisation features, you can tailor it to match your business regardless of your industry, sales process, target audience or use case.

From building custom sales pipelines to field customisation, custom activity types, user roles and permissions, custom reporting and personalisation of timezones and currency Salesmate leaves no stone unturned when it comes to working with your business.

Mobile CRM

Salesmate makes it easy for you to work where you want when you want with their native Salesmate CRM application for both iOS and Android users ensuring that you have access to your most important sales data when you need it most.

With the ability to log calls, send emails using pre-created templates, manage deals and even notify you of important events when they happen Salesmate gives you the power to close more business regardless of whether you’re in the office or on the road.

Integrations

Salesmate allows you to work seamlessly with their growing list of native integrations allowing you to automate workflows within your daily tasks while ensuring your data is accurate across all platforms.

They also offer a diverse range of integration support using Zapier and Integromat which allows you to connect 1,000s of tools to Salesmate and automate just about any workflow you can think of.

Pricing

Salesmate offers a range of pricing options to suit businesses big and small and some of the most competitive pricing within the industry with plans starting from just $15/month.

• Starter – $15 month/$12 per month (billed annually)
• Grow – $30 month/$24 per month (billed annually)
• Boost – $50 month/$40 per month (billed annually)
• Enterprise – Custom

FAQs

How much does Salesmate cost?

• Salesmate’s pricing varies depending upon the features you are looking for with plans starting from $15 per month.

Does Salesmate offer a free trial?

• Yes, Salesmate offers a free 15-day free trial to get started.

Can I migrate my existing subscribers to Salesmate?

• Yes, Salesmate allows you to import your existing subscribers and also has qualified Salesmates consultants who can assist you with migration.

What customer service options does Salesmate offer?

• Salesmate provides support via live chat and email.

Alternatives

Still not sure Salesmate is right for your business, here are some other platforms we recommend exploring when choosing a CRM platform for your business.

• ActiveCampaign
• Pipedrive

Summary

Overall Salesmate sets the bar when it comes to providing a feature-packed, well-designed CRM platform with outstanding customer service to match.

 One thing that sets Salesmate apart from some of its competitors is its vision to go beyond the way we think and use CRM platforms to increase our sales teams efficiency and productivity on a daily basis saving you time and money in the long run.

If you’re looking for an affordable yet robust CRM that does the hard work for you then you can’t go past Salesmate for your CRM solution.

And there you have it! Our in-depth Salesmate review article provides you with an overview of its features, pricing and more to help you make the right decision when it comes to choosing a CRM solution for your business.

Ready to see if Salesmate is right for your business??

Get started today with a free 15-day trial which provides you with access to all features so that you can explore the platform in detail or let us take care of it for you with our Salesmate consulting services including account setup, data migration and more to ensure you get the most out of your CRM.

Happy automating!

Whether you’re a one-man-band or an up and coming small business going faster than a speeding ticket, one of the most important backbones of any successful business is the ability to track down and store information on your leads. Chances are when you first looked into getting a CRM you were probably overwhelmed by the options available on the market so stuck to an at-first, simple spreadsheet that’s now snowballed into a giant morass of email addresses, phone numbers, formulas and broken macros — that sound about right?

Mate, it’s time to ditch the Monday morning colonoscopies and get a CRM.

Beyond not having mind-numbing spreadsheets to deal with, CRMs provide you with critical data that shows you exactly what actions your leads are taking so you can reach out to them at the right moment and convert them easier than what you can say “Cat in a hat!”

Thankfully, with advancements in technology, you can do exactly that to ensure your sales pipeline is hitting the right notes and resonating with your precious leads.

Thing is, with CRM platforms popping up faster than mushrooms in horse shit, how can you be sure you’re making the right decision for the long term growth of your business? Well, it just so happens that I always keep a spreadsheet (wink wink) of personal CRM favourites of mine handy just in case I’m in hearing distance of someone going, “These #$@*&^ macros are driving me up the @%#^@ wall up again!!”

Ready? Here’s my list of favourite CRMs for 2023.

Best CRM Platforms

• Freshsales
• Salesforce
• Pipedrive
• Insightly
• Hubspot

Freshsales

Right, we’ll kick off with the new kid on the block. Freshsales came about in 2016 and hasn’t stopped innovating since. Where Freshsales tries to be different is they think beyond just providing a CRM platform that works with other sales tools like your trusty email, phone calls, or event tracking. The folks over at Freshsales try to provide you with a holistic sales platform that gives you everything you need to manage your lead generation and sales campaigns with precision. How good are they at it? Let’s see.

Overview

Freshsales came about from an internal need for a robust platform that broke the rules of traditional CRMs. The Freshsales team wanted a solution that spoke to the challenges they experienced every day, so built a platform that allowed them to manage all their day-to-day activities like email outreach and call tracking. But they took it further than that and ended up building a solution that takes care of a wide scope of daily sales activities without the need to endlessly switch between different tools.

Since it came on the scene back in 2016, I must say the Freshsales platform has continued to evolve and is a tool I like to use. It’s become a trusted name within the CRM space by building out a host of solutions that sales teams love. There’s that and it’s got a great price tag — double threat!

Usability

Freshsales brings new life to the CRM space with a well-thought-out user experience and interfaces that are not too bad on the eye. You can easily navigate between your leads, contacts, accounts and deals using the navigation tools that aren’t tough to get accustomed to. You’ll start managing your growing database like a pro within a few days and the customer support ain’t bad if you get stuck.

Key Features

• Allows you to send outbound email campaigns directly within the platform
• Allows you to make calls directly within the platform
• AI-based lead scoring based on a lead’s individual activities

Pricing

Freshsales takes every business situation into account and comes up with a full range of pricing options. Their Sprout Plan provides you with a limited free-forever account while still offering all the essential features you need to get started. It also offers additional features used by growing sales teams, all of which are available on a free 30-day trial.

• Sprout – $0 free forever plan
• Blossom – $19 per user, per month/$12 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Garden – $35 per user, per month/$35 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Estate – $65 per user, per month/$49 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Forest – $99 per user, per month/$79 per user, per month (billed annually)

Salesforce

Next cab off the rank is Salesforce. Established in 1999 in a rented apartment, Salesforce has grown to become the biggest name in the CRM game. It’s a platform that provides big sales teams with all of the bells and whistles they could ask for and is known for building and acquiring other tools and APIs that all fit within the Salesforce product family offering.

Overview

With its wealth of industry experience, size and market standing, Salesforce has been able to build out a robust product offering. However, like most other humungous platforms on the market, you do end up with a steeper learning curve and more screens to flip through. Depending on your preference for simplicity, it may get a bit dizzying, but this is subjective criticism, to be honest. Apart from it being a tad intimidating, the panoply of apps, integrations and features pack a punch but will require a dedicated…ahem… sales force, to master.

Salesforce also provides features that aren’t necessarily required within the garden variety CRM. For those starting out, the platform can be more complex than needed, resulting in sales teams having to complete training or learn about features they may not end up using.

Usability

Salesforce is a CRM platform for high-adrenaline sales teams that masquerade their markets like wolf packs. However, with so much terrain to navigate, it gets a little complicated for the smaller teams who are looking to get off to a less intimidating first-time venture into the world of CRM platforms. The upside about Salesforce? There are as many as there are APIs and powerful features.

Obviously, if you’re on the savvy side of technology and can flip between screens like a Russian gymnast on a pommel horse and you need more than the usual tools, Salesforce is the CRM for you. If your team is growing and you typically manage massive amounts of leads, need hyper-segmentation, mobility, and integrations are a must-have, then Salesforce should be your poison of choice.

Key Features

• Native integration with a whole bunch of other products in the Salesforce family
• Robust sales reporting and deep data analytics features
• Features can be added and removed to suit individual needs

Pricing

Unlike Freshsales, Salesforce’s pricing plans cater more towards the established business and enterprise organisations. While they do offer a free trial and an entry-level plan, it doesn’t come in as favourably as Freshsales and other platforms at $25 per user, per month (billed annually). Now, this doesn’t essentially make Salesforce a bad choice for the budget-conscious startup, but it does mean you have to be confident that it’s the right platform for you before committing as it will be a little tough to switch to another platform, should you choose to do so.

• Lightning Essentials – $25 per user(up to 5 users) per month (billed annually)
• Lightning Professional – $75 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Lightning Enterprise – $150 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Lightning Unlimited – $300 per user, per month (billed annually)

Pipedrive

Pipedrive’s mission is simple: to help you close deals faster. With its well-thought-out design and feature stack, it’s good at doing exactly that. Their platform helps sales teams to focus on the most important aspects of their jobs and allows them to be more productive and profitable. This means less researching, looking for lead data scattered all over the office and getting on with closing deals.

Overview

Pipedrive doesn’t skimp on offering small-to-medium businesses a value-based platform. It gives you all the basic tools — and them some — to nurture and convert leads at the press of a button. With an easy-to-use pipeline management feature, built-in email sending and receiving, the ability to add relevant activities and advanced reporting, Pipedrive is a CRM I really like and think it’s definitely worth a test drive for those looking to up the ante on their lead generation game plan.

Usability

Pipedrive likes to keep things simple while still offering all the features sales reps need to stay on top of their game. They provide a clean, easy to use interface that’s controlled by one central navigation bar located at the top of the main dashboard. From there you can move between each feature as required to keep your pipeline pumping.

Key Features

• Activity reminders and mobile notifications to ensure everything is up to date
• Send and receive emails from directly within the platform
• Provides one of the top-rated CRM apps for iOS and Android

Pricing

While Pipedrive doesn’t offer a freemium version, their prices come in much more reasonable than Salesforce, which is great if you’re just getting started. Their Silver Tier Plan starts at $15 per user, per month and includes everything you need to get started. If you’re after some of the more advanced apps you’ll need to upgrade to the Gold Plan which is still a very reasonable $29 per user, per month, all of which are available on a free trial to get you started.

• Silver – $15 per user, per month/$12.50 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Gold – $29 per user, per month/$24.20 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Platinum – $75 per user, per month/$62.50 per user, per month (billed annually)

Insightly

There’s nothing unsightly about Insightly, in fact, it’s a pretty decent CRM platform with a few aspects about it that make it unique and value-packed for sales teams who want to get a contextual view of their leads. Insightly connects all your leads’ peripheral data such as external partnerships, hierarchies that influence buying decisions, turnovers and more to bring each individual buying process into sharp focus.

Overview

Okay, so the thing I dig most about Insightly is that it allows me to segment and categorise leads pretty easily. The platform is fairly straightforward on the surface but has a broad enough range of features to give you a decent toolset that includes a visible sales pipeline and workflow tools that automate much of the heavy lifting associated with lead research, qualification and complex buyer processes.

Usability

As I said, Insightly has a large enough range of features without it being intimidating to the first time CRM user. It makes getting off the ground easy and you quickly learn the feature-set as you get your teeth sunk into it. It’s got some nice integrations to give it more versatility so you can use most of your existing tech with Insightly. It also offers CRM solutions to the larger organisation without letting the small guy feel left out.

Key Features

• View and manage organisational hierarchies, partnerships with rich user data
• Automated lead capture and distribution ensures each lead is delivered to the right rep
• Automate repetitive tasks and manage schedules with task milestone dates

Pricing

Insightly was built on the foundation that every business needs a good CRM, even if they can’t afford one. So, in 2009 they launched the world’s first free CRM. Unfortunately, giving something away for free isn’t essentially an ideal business model so they have since had to expand into paid plans to keep the lights on at the Insightly office. However, their original free plan remains intact and is worth checking out if you’re browsing anyway.

• Free – $0 per month (limited to 2 users)
• Plus – $29 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Professional – $49 per user, per month (billed annually)
• Enterprise – $99 per user, per month (billed annually)

Hubspot

Now here’s a platform that needs little introduction, however, no list of marketing tools would be complete without a mention of the Hubspot. The kings and queens of inbound marketing are well-known for their knack for cracking the, at times very aloof, buyer persona and helping brands build bulletproof content marketing strategies. I’m a proud Hubspot Certified Inbound Marketer myself and must say that I’ve learnt a lot from these clever folks over the years. Okay, so what’s the deal with their CRM?

Overview

The first thing I want to mention about the Hubspot CRM is that it’s 100% totally free, forever. That’s according to Hubspot so it’s got to be true. The CRM itself is what you’d expect from Hubspot with a broad range of features and tools built to make life easy for busy sales teams. The CRM integrates nicely with the Hubspot sales and other platforms which opens up a whole new world when you start connecting to them.

Usability

If you know Hubspot you’ll have no hassles getting to know the CRM’s interface. The folks at Hubspot HQ are serial information sharers so there’s always help available in the form of tutorials, blogs and handy FAQs. Now, the thing with the Hubspot platform is that they’re not naive enough to give you a complete CRM for free so expect to see a feature or benefit missing here or there as a means to get you onboarded to the full, honeymoon, luxury, VIP, deluxe suite of applications. And because Hubspot is such a darn good platform you can expect to fork out some serious moolah when it comes to taking the plunge and signing up for the full suite or other paid-for products and services.

Key Features

• User-friendly deals page lets you manage your pipeline with total visibility
• Log sales activities of leads across social media, email and calls
• Detailed lead overview page allows you to easily view your leads information

Pricing

Hubspot has opted for a completely freemium CRM pricing model. While most would call it a sneaky marketing trick, the CRM itself is a pretty reliable, feature-packed piece of work that works like a charm. Nice work, Hubspot!

• Free – $0 per month (forever)

Conclusion

And there you have it, a detailed breakdown of the leading CRM’s available on the market at the moment. Now, it’s over to you to make a decision which is best for your needs. Take these babies for a test drive and kick that Excel sheet to the damn curb once and for all.

Remember, every business is different so be sure to make a decision that’s going to support your needs and not just for the short term. Your CRM is the backbone that supports your entire sales team and gives you the automation and flexibility you need to be a kickass sales pro, instead of burning daylight trying to make sense of convoluted, booby trap-laden spreadsheets — that shit’s so 1995 anyways.

Why we recommend and use Freshsales

We use Freshsales as our chosen CRM for both ourselves and our clients as it works well with other platforms that we use within our marketing campaigns. Matched with a modern, clean UX and jam-packed with features that enable you to go beyond traditional CRM platforms, we simply dig Freshsales. Now, we’re not saying you should too, but that’s the platform we’ve become most comfortable with and we’ve got the leads and customers to show for it.

Go on and get your CRM testing off the ground and see which works the most ideal for you. Your business might have its own unique proclivities and demands that some of the other CRMs we mentioned have that Freshsales doesn’t quite match. But whatever you do, tear up that damn spreadsheet, Mr Gorbachev!

I’m out…(…drops mic and walks away…)