SalesLoft
Sales Engagement Platforms
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Products most recommended by our advisors over the past 30 days.
Products most recommended by our advisors in the last 30 days. Our advisors assess buyers’ needs for free and only recommend products that meet the buyers' needs and budget.
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Vendors pay Software Advice for these referrals.
Top Recommended Products
Products most recommended by our advisors over the past 30 days.
Products most recommended by our advisors in the last 30 days. Our advisors assess buyers’ needs for free and only recommend products that meet the buyers' needs and budget.
Vendors pay Software Advice for these referrals.
Vendors pay Software Advice for these referrals.
Compare All Sales Engagement Platforms
Workbooks offers growing companies a SaaS platform to run their business and engage with their customers – at an affordable price. Workbooks designs, develops and implements its own software, which is targeted specifically at mid-...Read more
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, moni...Read more
SalesLoft is an online sales engagement system designed to boost sales and revenue of enterprises. It equips sales groups with tools for communication, email tracking and more in a single platform to deliver better sales experienc...Read more
iSalesCRM is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) solution that helps small to large enterprises manage leads, improving sales operations. It comes with an administrative dashboard, which enables users to categoriz...Read more
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 sort...Read more
Groove is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) solution that helps small to large enterprises manage prospects and streamline sales operations. The centralized platform enables sales personnel to create multi-step ...Read more
Textline is a cloud-based text messaging solution, which enables businesses to connect with clients using phone numbers. Customer support teams can and include images, emojis, URLs and other file attachments within messages. Key ...Read more
Cirrus Insight is a customer relationship management application. It helps users track and sync emails, create and edit Salesforce records, log calls and create email campaigns. Cirrus Insight’s key features include sales pro...Read more
More than 7.5 million businesses around the world trust RocketReach. Among them are some of the biggest - Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and 95% of the S&P 500. RocketReach's machine learning distills 1000s of public data points...Read more
Reply is a cloud-based lead generation, contact management and email automation tool suitable for businesses of any size. The solution can be used for outbound and inbound sales, human resources and recruiting, business developmen...Read more
Software pricing tips
Read our Sales Engagement Platforms Buyers GuideSubscription models
- Per employee/per month: This model allows you to pay a monthly fee for each of your employees.
- Per user/per month: Users pay a monthly fee for users—normally administrative users—rather than all employees.
Perpetual license
- This involves paying an upfront sum for the license to own the software and use it indefinitely.
- This is the more traditional model and is most common with on-premise applications and with larger businesses.
Rated best value for money
SalesHandy is a cloud-based data analytics and sales enablement solution which helps small to midsize businesses create and implement marketing strategies. The software provides tools to determine trends in customer behavior as we...Read more
ClearSlide is a web-based sales engagement platform intended to help increase sales teams’ efficiency and close deals. The solution offers quick access to content, insights and communication and helps in improving customer communi...Read more
SoPro is a technology-enabled lead generation service that helps small to large businesses to identify and engage with qualified prospects. SoPro's experts target, research, and engage prospects on behalf of any sales team. Prospe...Read more
Blueboard is an employee rewards and recognition software designed to help businesses incentivize top talent through experiential rewards to promote long-term behavioral change and drive referral volume. Key features include peer-...Read more
Playbooks is sales engagement platform that utilizes AI to assist strategic sales teams in targeted selling. It allows users to create engagement strategies for phone, email, social, SMS, and video. These engagement strategies inc...Read more
Klenty is a sales engagement platform designed to help businesses automate processes related to email marketing, lead management, drip campaigns, cadence tasks and prospect activity tracking. Key features include event-triggered e...Read more
GetAccept is a cloud-based electronic signature solution suitable for sales teams across various industries. The solution can be used for e-signing documents including contracts, agreements, human resources and personal documents....Read more
Demodesk is the #1 customer meeting platform for sales and success. We empower every rep to become a top performer – by guiding sellers in real-time, automating non-selling tasks, engaging customers in the meeting and analyzing in...Read more
Accordium is a cloud-based electronic signature and workflow automation solution that enables sales teams to track negotiations, manage sales pipelines and share electronic contracts. Users can automate the signing process and rec...Read more
Revenue Grid is Salesforce-native customer engagement tool that helps your sales team with guided selling techniques. It covers the full sales cycle from first touch to closing and upselling. Revenue Grid allows you to analyze, ex...Read more
Popular Sales Engagement Platforms Comparisons
Buyers Guide
Last Updated: June 18, 2021
Sales teams are responsible for customer prospecting, lead scoring and nurturing, forecasting, upselling, cross-selling, and much more. They constantly interact with customers via channels such as calls, texts, and emails, and use several tools to manage these interactions. However, tracking every single customer interaction or touch point isn't an easy job.
A sales engagement platform consolidates customer communication across channels and tools—from call logs to social media—to help sales teams track complete buyer-seller interactions using a single, centralized platform. It also automates sales workflows and processes to help save time and ensure high productivity among sales professionals.
To help you select a sales engagement platform that's right for your business, we've created a buyers guide that includes the necessary information you'll need.
Here's what we'll cover:
- What is a sales engagement platform?
- Common features of a sales engagement platform
- What type of buyer are you?
- Benefits of a sales engagement platform
- Market trend to understand
What is a sales engagement platform?
A sales engagement platform is an integrated software suite combining features related to customer relationship management (CRM), sales enablement and acceleration, collaboration and communication, and reporting and analytics. It helps the sales team interact and engage with prospects and customers across multiple touch points, including emails, calls, text messages, and social media.
The platform lets sales professionals create personalized customer content and schedule outreach activities using the same tool, saving them the trouble of having to toggle between different applications. It also automates processes such as email marketing and tracking to help save time and increase efficiency.
Common features of a sales engagement platform
Most sales engagement platforms have integrated CRM, sales management, data management, communication and collaboration, automation, and reporting capabilities. Let's discuss these in detail.
| CRM capabilities | ||
|---|---|---|
| Email management | Send emails via an integrated email client, such as Outlook, or directly through the tool. Use prebuilt or customizable email templates. Some platforms offer two-way email sync that lets you record both sent and received emails through the tool. You can also access the team inbox to reply to any unresponded emails. | |
| Email tracking | Track which emails were opened and how they performed in terms of engagement. Use these metrics to create targeted content and figure out the right time to send outreach emails. You can also send follow-up emails to the better-engaged leads, as they have a higher chance of conversion. | |
| Sales management capabilities | ||
| Lead management | Score leads automatically to focus on the strongest ones and personalize communication to convert them. You can also use rules-based routing to ensure the leads are automatically routed to your most-qualified sales rep. | |
| Sales call management | Manage sales calls—make and transfer calls, log call details (such as call duration and reason), record calls, and save them for future reference. You can also record a greeting message to be set as your business caller tune. | |
| Sales campaign management | Plan and execute sales campaigns across channels, set campaign goals, create personalized content for targeted messaging, and track metrics to monitor campaign progress and performance. | |
| Data management capabilities | ||
| Customer data management | Create dedicated customer profiles that contain complete customer information (contact details, web activity, social media profile data, previous interactions, etc.). | |
| Communication and collaboration capabilities | ||
| Collaboration | Share, save, modify, track, and upload files (Word, Excel, PDF, etc.) via the web or mobile applications. Set file sharing permissions, and decide who gets to view, edit, delete, or share the files. | |
| Omnichannel reach | Communicate with prospects and customers via multiple channels, including text messages, emails, web conferences, live chats, and social media platforms (such as Facebook and Instagram). | |
| Automation capabilities | ||
| Workflow automation | Automate sales operations and workflows to save the time spent on daily repetitive tasks. You can set rules to automate customer-related tasks (such as billing and sending follow-up emails) as well as internal workflows (such as approving deal discounts and travel expenses). | |
| Reporting and analytics capabilities | ||
| Custom reports | Generate sales reports for metrics such as conversion rate, total sales volume, revenue by sales rep, etc. You can also customize these reports and share them via emails in PDF and Excel formats. | |
| Sales intelligence | Collect and analyze customer and prospect data from social media channels, blogs, websites, etc. to get smart insights into their needs, motivations, preferences, etc. | |
What type of buyer are you?
Before you start evaluating sales engagement platforms, you'll want to know which buyer category you belong to. Most buyers belong to one of the below categories.
- Small business buyers (up to 500 employees): These buyers usually include small businesses looking to integrate their marketing and sales efforts or moving from old, disparate systems to one integrated platform. They should consider a sales engagement tool that lets them manage sales emails, track omnichannel customer interactions, and generate basic reports. Once they've established a substantial customer base, they can choose to scale their outreach efforts using advanced features such as sales intelligence, engagement analytics, and lead management.
- Midsize and large business buyers (over 500 employees): These buyers are midsize or large enterprises with a sizable customer base. They should opt for a sales engagement tool with capabilities such as lead management, call management, sales intelligence, and advanced reporting and analytics. Since these buyers have larger teams to onboard and a growing customer base to manage, they should also look for workflow automation capabilities to help save time and improve sales productivity.
Benefits of a sales engagement platform
There are several benefits of using a sales engagement solution. Here are a few of them:
- Informed business decisions: A sales engagement platform generates reports that offer insights into customer journeys and sales activities. These reports can be leveraged to take accurate data-driven business decisions related to the sales strategy, investment in sales and marketing efforts, etc.
- Higher customer engagement: Customers are more likely to respond when they are contacted via their preferred communication channels or when they receive personalized offers and discounts. Sales engagement platforms offer omnichannel communication capabilities, backed by sales intelligence, to help the sales team offer positive customer experience, leading to better engagement.
- Improved collaboration: Sales engagement software allows the sales team to collaborate on tasks, exchange notes, share files related to customer interactions and sales activities, and more. This capability ensures sales professionals work in sync and are updated in real time.
- More time-saving: Sales teams can use the platform to automate various tasks, such as sending follow-up emails, setting billing reminders, and approving leave requests. They can also use premade content templates to draft sales emails. These capabilities help save time and allow the team to focus more on closing deals.
Market trend to understand
Here's a market trend related to sales engagement technology that you should be aware of:
- Use of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) for better sales engagement: Businesses are investing in AI and ML capabilities to gather insights on customers' purchase intent and analyze their behavior across touch points (website, social media, emails, calls, etc.). These insights help segment customers for better targeting. The technology is also being used to develop algorithms for scoring leads and identifying the ones that are most likely to get converted.
Note: The application selected in this article is an example to show a feature in context and isn't intended as an endorsement or a recommendation. It has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable at the time of publication.
