Best Sales Automation Tools

A business stays afloat with a steady flow of potential customers and clients. No matter what industry you are in, selling is always very competitive. So, you need to invest in a sales automation tool to automate the entire sales flow and get the best results (read revenue) for your business and team.

Best sales automation tools make sales reps' jobs easier and let them focus on their strong suit, selling. With that in mind, we present a detailed review of India's best sales automation tools in 2024.

We've also added a detailed guide on choosing the top sales automation tools.

What is a Sales Automation Software?

Sales automation software enables sales reps to automate repetitive manual tasks, the entire sales flow, and focus more on customers to increase conversion rate. A sales automation tool is essential for growing businesses that want to automate and simplify their business processes.

With a Sales automation platform, you can:

• Manage sales pipelines

• Automate follow-ups

• Reduce response time

• Train sales reps for increased productivity

• Provide consistent sales data

• Send payment reminders and invoices

• Reduce cost

Organizations usually combine sales automation tools with existing CRM platforms, marketing automation tools and email marketing software to streamline their marketing and sales efforts.

Essential Features of Sales Automation Tools

Sales automation tools must provide the right features to help employees close more deals. Let’s take a look at the crucial features of sales automation tools.

1. Sales Pipeline Management

   Efficient sales results come from a visual sales pipeline that displays the location of each sales opportunity. You can automatically upgrade prospects depending on triggers, saving your team the time and labour of manual work.  Ensure you get a sales automation tool to personalize the pipeline's stages in compliance with your sales process.

2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

   CRM is a necessary platform for every company. It remains at the core of all processes. If your sales automation software has a CRM, it’ll simply communicate across all the teams. It’ll help your team identify and improve ineffective practices.

   Moreover, a robust CRM Software will facilitate manual processes to reduce the data entry burden of the sales team.

3. Automated Calling

   Your sales team needs to make a lot of phone calls every single day. This effort can be reduced by automating the calling process with a power dialer or Sales dialer.

   Your team can set up the auto-dial feature with a single button. So, it’ll help your team to block out the time for warm calling

4. Lead Qualification & Scoring

   One essential component of sales automation systems is lead qualification. By allocating a score depending on the possibility and potential of conversion, it enables you to concentrate on more relevant prospects. By assisting you in identifying potential customers with the true intention of making a purchase, effective lead qualification helps you save time and resources.

   You can set up different criteria for lead scoring and automate it to streamline the entire lead scoring and qualification process

5. Notifications

   Your sales team's outreach depends on these timely updates. Your sales team can track different prospects that are actively interacting with your company and connect with them immediately.

   Notifications are beneficial when earlier dormant prospects begin to interact with your website once more. Your team can be prepared to continue the conversation where it ended

6. Document Management

   If your sales automation tool has document management capabilities, it’ll be a great choice for you. With a document manager, your team can understand the sales content that works and the ones that need improvement.

   You can monitor activity in the document management tool when your team sends content to a prospect. You can, for instance, see who is reading and sharing it within the prospect's company.

   You can ensure that you have buy-in with the organization if you notice a lot of sharing and interaction from top-level individuals. On the other hand, you won't have much buy-in if you provide a proposal or document and receive no interaction or sharing

7. Integrations

   Choose a tool that works well with many different applications. It will make your work more efficient and enable you to handle and centralise every data. You won't have to be concerned about updating your data across many platforms if you choose a solution that provides a broad range of robust integrations.

What are the Benefits of Sales Automation Tools?

Sales automation software is highly beneficial in boosting team productivity and helping companies scale their sales processes. Here are some of the main benefits a sales automation tool provides -

1. Increased Productivity

   Sales automation tools take the burden off of sales teams, so they can focus solely on selling, thus increasing productivity.

2. Boost in Sales

   As these tools automate the entire sales flow efficiently and provide qualified leads, organizations can successfully close more deals.

3. Consistent Sales Data

   Sales data need to be relevant without any discrepancy. Sales automation tools keep your prospect data on point and error-free.

4. Deal Management

   Sales automation tools ensure no missing steps or miscommunications with your prospects.

5. Call scheduling

   Sales automation tools ensure you don't miss a meeting, call, or follow-up with your clients. It also offers a call/meeting scheduling feature to book meetings easily.

6. On-Time Reporting

   You don't need to create manual reports. Instead, you can report anytime to your manager with the help of the CRM. It also helps generate live analytics of your campaigns.

7. Smooth Communication

   Sales automation tools keep everything in one place, making collaborations easier. It also encourages faster communication.

8. Cost-Effective

   These tools save you from the hassle and cost of hiring multiple sales reps to keep the sales flow up and running.

Factors to Consider When Choosing the Best Sales Automation Tool

Getting a sales automation software is an important decision; hence you need to consider various elements. Below are the key factors to consider while choosing the right sales automation tool -

1. User Interface

   The platform's user interface controls how you interact with and use the software. The user interface must be simple and easy to understand, with a little learning curve.

   Ask the vendor if they offer a demo (or a free trial). Look for navigation alerts that explain the features and functions when you hover over specific fields while taking a free trial or a demo

2. Data Enrichment

   Look for a data enrichment feature when purchasing a sales automation tool. It is always preferable to have more details about your prospects, such as their company's size, industry, job title, social media links, the current technology they employ, and so on. When you reach out to potential customers with enough information, it will make you appear more credible.

   You can filter data from many sources using sales automation solutions to ensure you only have the most pertinent information available. You'll find it useful when speaking with potential customers. They will be appreciative that you took enough time to know them well

3. Meeting Scheduler

   If things go well after you reach out to prospects, there is a good probability that you will schedule an in-person or online meetup. Traditionally, you would have to exchange emails for settling on a time and day that works for you and the prospect.

   It will be simpler to arrange a meeting if your tool provides a meeting scheduler. You need to provide the prospects with a link to your calendar, from which they can choose a time and day

4. Integrations and Features

   Examine the platform's features and integrations. It'll be a good idea if you try platforms with various features, even those you won't use or need, to help you identify the ones that will be most beneficial to your company. Consider your current technology and ensure that the software solution integrates with it.

5. Customer Support

   You want committed technical support to assist you when installing new software in the organization. Make sure you think ahead about the type of support you want, including phone, live chat, or email and the level of support like generic, dedicated, and 24/7 helpline.

   Customer service often varies depending on the provider. Know the response times and the types of support and resources offered by the company so that you can resolve your issues

6 Best Sales Automation Software & Tools in India

Below is list of the top 6 sales automation software. You can compare them based on the features and pricing plans.

1. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is initially a reliable CRM platform that offers end-to-end sales automation. It enables you to track the entire sales pipeline and offers excellent deal management.

This tool offers more successful sales with its intelligent recommendations and sales process optimization. Moreover, you can automate the entire sales flow or a few steps from it with custom triggers.

It comes with an AI-powered sales assistant that offers intuitive recommendations and relevant insights. Also, you can nurture your leads through its email campaign automation.

The best thing about Pipedrive is that you can integrate it with a multitude of business applications, such as cold emailing tools, marketing automation tools, cadence tools, etc.

Ideal For 

Pipedrive is best for small and medium businesses that are looking for an inexpensive CRM with an in-built sales automation tool.

Standout Features

• AI-powered sales assistant 

• Email campaign automation for lead nurturing 

• Deal management and tracking

• Third-party integrations

• Custom reporting dashboard

Pricing Plans

• Essential: US$ 9.90 per month

• Advanced: US$ 19.90 per month 

• Professional: US$ 39.90 per month

2. Snov.io

The second-best sales automation tool is Snov.io. Much like Pipedrive, Snov is also a comprehensive sales automation tool with a free, customizable CRM platform. 

Create new deals, prospect for leads, store prospect data, send cold emails to your prospects, track the sales pipeline, and book meetings – you can control all these things within its dashboard.

Snov can automate the entire lead generation process and the outreach efforts so that sales reps can focus only on selling. It also offers you insightful data to personalize communications with your prospects and build meaningful relationships.

Ideal For

Snov.io is suitable for businesses of all sizes, but as it has an easy-to-use interface, it suits SMBs and startups better.

Standout Features

• Sales pipeline building (up to 100 steps) 

• Deal management 

• Easy-to-use interface 

• Internal team management

• Email integration

• Team management

Pricing Plans

• Trial: Free trial for one month 

• Starter: $30 per month 

• Pro: $75 per month 

• Custom: $999 per month 

3. HubSpot

HubSpot is a market leader with its sales and marketing automation tools. HubSpot Sales Hub offers prospect tracking (within the sales pipeline) and contact management. 

You can avail a free version of HubSpot with all the functionalities of a sales automation tool, but it also offers a CRM tool to streamline your workflow.

You get email marketing solutions and pipeline tracking all from the same dashboard. HubSpot also offers business insights to help you step up your sales.

Ideal For

The free tool is best for startups and small businesses. HubSpot offers various plans for businesses of different sizes.

Standout Features

• CRM tool 

• Easy integrations

• Sales pipeline visibility 

• Lead nurturing 

• Internal collaborations

• Performance tracking 

Pricing Plans

• Starter: $45 per month 

• Professional: $450 per month 

• Enterprise: $1200 per month 

4. Zoho

Zoho CRM is the most popular and best sales engagement platform for Indian businesses. It automates the entire sales workflow with custom conditional triggers so that you reach your prospect in time.

It also offers an excellent CRM tool and AI assistant. In its intuitive dashboard, you can save email templates, generate new leads, launch email campaigns, and stay connected with your team members.

Ideal For

Most Small to medium-scale businesses prefers Zoho. It is also a viable option for big organizations.

Standout Features

• AI assistant

• CRM tool

• Data personalization

• Workflow management

• Custom triggers

Pricing Plans

• Free for three users

• Standard: Rs.800 per month 

• Professional: Rs.1400 per month 

• Enterprise: Rs.2400 per month 

• Ultimate: Rs.2600 per month

5. Smartlead

Smartlead steers clear of all the sales automation tools with its feature-rich performance and affordable pricing plans.

Smartlead offers unlimited email accounts with timely email warmups so you can stay connected with your prospects and land directly in their inboxes. You can focus on selling as Smartlead can send follow-up emails to your prospects with custom conditional triggers. 

It offers a master inbox to connect all your email accounts into one and make communication easier. 

What makes it stand out is Smartlead offers unlimited team members and white-labeling. It also allows you to check the performances of individual email accounts. This sales automation tool offers A/B testing and timely reports with intuitive analytics. 

Ideal For

Smartlead is popular among SMBs and mid-large organizations. Its scalable pricing plans are ideal for all kinds of businesses.

Standout Features

• Email warmups

• Custom conditional triggers

• Unlimited email accounts

• Unlimited team member addition

• Master inbox

• A/B testing 

• Whitelabelling 

• Timely reports and analytics

Pricing Plans

• 14-day free trial

• Basic: $24 per month 

• Popular: $57 per month

• Pro: $78 per month 

• Customized: Fully customizable upon discussion

6. Agile

Agile CRM automatically creates a new task for your team. It automates every process from automating almost everything from telephony to follow-up emails. Increase your ROI with complete contact views, real-time alerts, and deep analytics.

Ideal For

Small and mid-size businesses that want to access all the sales automation functionalities at affordable cost. Moreover, their basic plan is completely free for up to 10 users.

Standout Features

• Get contact details from your prospects from every angle, which includes conversations, call notes, social presence, web activity etc.

• Sync Agile CRM with Google calendar so that you can remain updated about the latest meetings.

• Increase your sales efficiency with the help of drag-and-drop Project Management capabilities.

• Have constant insight into your sales activity with advanced analytics, reports, and metrics for faster growth.

• Agile CRM provides integration with some of the best telephony services such as Twilio, RingCentral, VOIP and Bria Accounts.

• It comes with Automated scoring, which provides you with automatic alerts and qualifies leads faster and more accurately.

Pricing Plans

• 10 Users: $0

• Starter: $8.99

• Regular: $29.99

• Enterprise:$47.99