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Grow your revenue and profits with intelligent sales automation with Sales Cloud. Help every rep be more efficient. Close more deals. Collect cash faster. Boost growth and profit with intelligent automation and integrated tools from Sales Cloud. This Sale...Read more about Salesforce Sales Cloud
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FreeAgent CRM is a fully-featured CRM that helps your team get organized, gain visibility into day-to-day work, and get more done with a powerful, easy-to-use sales platform your sales team will actually love. Work smarter and faster with instant visibil...Read more about FreeAgent CRM
recommendations
Close is the sales engagement CRM designed to help SMBs turn more leads into revenue. At Close, were dedicated to the business of the future: smart, agile teams who work remotely. If you're a tech-enabled team who needs to scale without overpaying for ente...Read more about Close
recommendations
Built on top of monday.com Work OS, monday CRM is a no-code, customizable solution that empowers managers and sales teams to take control of their entire sales cycle - from lead capturing and sales pipeline management to post-sales management like client p...Read more about monday CRM
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Creatio is a global vendor of a no-code platform to automate workflows and CRM with a maximum degree of freedom. Creatio offering includes a no-code platform (Studio Creatio), CRM applications (Marketing, Sales and Service), industry workflows for 20 verti...Read more about Creatio CRM
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Ranked the #1 easiest-to-use CRM for small businesses and the #1 CRM by US News and World Report for four consecutive years, Less Annoying CRM has unmatched simplicity and service. Our seasoned CRM Coaches, with an average tenure over five years, provide ...Read more about Less Annoying CRM
EngageBay is an integrated marketing, sales, support and CRM solution designed to help small to midsize enterprises acquire, engage and convert website visitors into customers. The cloud-based platform lets businesses use marketing tools to build relations...Read more about EngageBay CRM
PhoneBurner is an outbound dialer and call center solution that empowers agents to conduct wildly efficient yet highly personalized outreach, and engage up to 4x more contacts in live conversations. The system offers functionalities that include power dia...Read more about PhoneBurner
Clari Copilot turns your revenue team into serial closers by helping them win every revenue-critical moment. With Clari Copilot’s conversation intelligence platform, reps and managers have everything they need to compete fiercely, spot revenue leak, and ...Read more about Clari Copilot
Groove is a market-leading sales engagement platform that enables sales leaders to execute their strategy in a smart, adaptive way. With Groove, revenue leaders can use automation to do more with less, driving greater efficiency and effectiveness across th...Read more about Groove
SalesBlink is a sales outreach automation platform that integrates a suite of features to streamline and enhance sales processes. SalesBlink focuses on automating email outreach, ensuring that sales emails and follow-ups are sent on autopilot, thereby incr...Read more about SalesBlink
Most CRMs are rigid, inflexible, and cost a lot of money to organizations, and Salesmate solves exactly these pain-points. Salesmate is a flexible, customizable, and cost-effective solution to multiple teams in your organization. The platform solves t...Read more about Salesmate
Ricochet360 is a cloud-based, integrated call center, customer relationship management and marketing automation solution. Designed for small to large businesses, it comes with a progressive dialer for users to automate processes such as engaging with prosp...Read more about Ricochet360
Mixmax is a sales engagement platform that helps businesses track emails, engage with customers and conduct surveys via a unified platform. It enables sales representatives to convert prospects into customers, send personalized emails to clients, automate ...Read more about Mixmax
TeamGram is a cloud-based integrated customer relationship management (CRM), quotation, proposal and sales management solution that helps businesses manage their workflows and sales cycle. TeamGram offers CRM capabilities that enable businesses to man...Read more about TeamGram
Outplay is a cloud-based sales enablement solution that helps enterprises interact with the target audience and gain visibility into various business metrics to increase revenue and growth. The software lets sales teams view, monitor, and organize their go...Read more about Outplay
VanillaSoft is a cloud-based sales management solution that combines features for CRM, lead management and telemarketing which helps sales teams in businesses manage their daily operations. VanillaSoft uses a queue-based sorting system that also provides ...Read more about VanillaSoft
ForceManager CRM, tailored for any-sized business with a field sales force, now integrates cutting-edge AI and Timeline Conversations. This combination ensures real-time, efficient sales activity measurement and management. Key features include: - AI-powe...Read more about ForceManager
Salesflare is an intelligent CRM and email outreach platform used by thousands of small and medium-sized B2B businesses, who want to sell more with less work. It automates the data entry user would normally have in a CRM by gathering data from social ...Read more about Salesflare
OnePageCRM is a simple contact management tool. While it has all the usual features of a customer relationship management (CRM) system, OnePageCRM is mostly known for its simplicity and unique to-do list functionality. You can use this CRM to add tasks/r...Read more about OnePageCRM
Front is a customer operations platform that enables support, sales, and account management teams to deliver exceptional service at scale. Front streamlines customer communication by combining the efficiency of a help desk and the familiarity of email, wit...Read more about Front
Simplify your CRM. All contacts, deals, your calendar, your sales pipeline analysis –? all in one place. Perfectly organized data that simplify your work and give you a thorough overview of your business. RAYNET CRM helps your salespeople and your manag...Read more about RAYNET CRM
Pipedrive is a web-based sales CRM software that helps sales teams of all sizes and industries close more deals. Used by over 100,000 companies, Pipedrive lets salespeople, business owners and everyone in between focus on selling with its customizable sale...Read more about Pipedrive
Platformax is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) solution that caters to businesses across various industries such as IT, marketing, advertising, accounting, consulting and more. Key features include lead scoring, task management, email ...Read more about Platformax
Reply is a sales engagement platform that empowers your sales team with AI-powered tools to automate sales outreach, generate leads, and close more deals. From building verified lead lists to crafting personalized sequences and responses, Reply simplifies ...Read more about Reply
Software Advice uses reviews from real software users to highlight the top-rated Inside Sales products in North America.
Learn how products are chosen“Usability” includes user ratings for Functionality and Ease of Use.
“Customer Satisfaction” includes user ratings for Customer Support, Likelihood to Recommend and Value for Money.
Reviews analysis period: The reviews analysis period spans two years and ends the 15th of the month prior to publication.
This detailed guide will help you find and buy the right inside sales software for you and your business.
Last Updated on March 16, 2023Inside sales software contains a wide variety of applications, drawing from a very diverse group of more traditional software platforms. For example, inside sales software functionality has crossover with:
General purpose CRM software,
Sales force automation software,
Contact management and lead management software,
Call center software,
Predictive dialers and more.
And these days, many vendors are even throwing some artificial intelligence into the mix! As you've probably guessed by now—or may have already learned before arriving here—finding the right inside sales software for your organization's specific needs and goals can be very challenging. We've created this Buyer's Guide to help you make the right choice. In this Buyer's Guide we discuss:
What Is Inside Sales Software?
Common Features of Inside Sales Software
Inside sales refers to sales processes in which the seller contacts sales prospects from inside the seller's offices. It's defined in contrast to outside sales in which the seller travels to meet the sales prospects where they work, in their offices or wherever they conduct their business.
These days, inside sales is far more common and the distinction seems a bit outdated. Digital communication tools are so prevalent and so efficient, that outside sales is typically only used in a handful of niche industries.
For example, pharmaceutical sales still relies on the outside sales model, as pharmaceutical sales representatives often have more luck meeting up with healthcare professionals (doctors, nurses, hospital administrators) in their workplaces.
Inside sales is the preferred model for a majority of digital businesses. Software and IT solutions companies, digital services and a majority of B2B sellers rely on the inside sales model.
Inside sales departments rely on phone, email, live chat or other remote communication tools to reach their sales prospects. Each of those communication tools can be a standalone application or part of a suite of integrated tools. These make up one half of the collection of tools provided by inside sales software.
Inside sales representatives also need to know who to reach out to, who those contacts are and any information related to their sales prospects, for example the origin of the lead, any previous communications and sales history. Again, this information can be provided by a standalone tool—lead scoring software, for example—or as a collection of integrated tools.
Together, these two families of IT solutions make up the bulk of inside sales software. The exact mix of tools included varies by vendor and the target industry. In the following section we outline a variety of these common tools and features.
Dashboard in Salesfusion giving overview of prospects, open and closed sales
Dialers and call handling | Handle the frontend telephony functions, like placing calls, putting calls on hold and transferring calls. They need to be combined with a business telephony system, which can be standalone or integrated. |
Presence tools | Monitor the activity of individual sales reps and report their availability status to others in the office. |
Playbooks/scripting tools | Playbooks define sales process workflows and progression. Scripting tools help prompt salespeople while engaged with prospects on the phone. |
Email templates | Provide a selection of pre-configured response and outreach emails. They are customizable and can be used with auto follow-up tools and combined with other triggers. |
Auto follow-up | Automatically send emails based on a variety of triggers, for example after first contact, whenever new information is sent or received or any variety of interactions. |
Provide a text-based real-time communication channel, usually integrated with a company's website. Live chat tools increase engagement and lower the barrier to first contact. | |
Social listening | Social listening tools help monitor a company's social channels, such as Facebook and Twitter accounts, and alert the sales team when they spot pre-programmed indicators of interest. |
Contact lists and histories | Provides basic contact management functionality within the inside sales platform. History records are maintained automatically and can be used for secondary outreach and to find upselling opportunities. |
Contact/lead scoring | Helps high-volume sales departments organize their sales prospects and existing clients based on their expected and or historical value to the company. |
Appointment setting/augmentation | These provide basic calendaring functionality, sometimes with client-facing, public calendars showing salesperson availability. Appointment augmentation tools can suggest, provide related content and materials. |
Content engagement/email tracking | Monitor the use and access of sales materials by clients and sales prospects. Email tracking tools can monitor which emails are opened, helping improve engagement. |
Coaching/training | Helps onboard new sales representatives, letting them get up to speed while working together with managers or senior staff. |
Predictive analytics | These tools analyze historical data to predict future recommended actions. Predictive dialers, for example, help determine which prospect numbers to dial or which leads should be contacted first. |
Inside sales platforms are advertising artificial intelligence and machine learning tools with increasing regularity. However, in practice, these tools are still in their infancy and buyers should beware that they don't overspend on marketing hype.
Predictive analytics tools are the main real-world use of advanced machine learning technology in most inside sales platforms. These tools take the form of applications such as:
Predictive dialers that try to match the pace of agent availability with the outbound calling queue. The goal of this machine learning tool is to maximize sales representative's use of time on the phone without making prospects wait too long.
Playbook management, which helps guide sales representatives by suggesting the next best action (e.g., phone call, email or to send marketing materials) based on how well those actions have performed in the past with comparable prospects.