The sales strategy, and its constituent processes, can make or break any business. This is especially so in the current globalized economy where the top businesses in every industry have access to very advanced resources and tools.
In the past decade, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools were a must-have. In the current decade, and possibly the next foreseeable future, the defining will be Sales Engagement Platforms, or SEPs. Depending on your business needs, you can combine both tools or just go with the SEPs.
What Are Sales Engagement Tools?
Sales engagement tools or software are programs that streamline the integration of the sales process and the associated marketing efforts. The best tools in the market can effortlessly manage the sales messaging and materials, monitor the sales communication channels, and create personalized sales journeys.
To the sales team, SEPs provide a singular UI from which they can plan, execute, track and monitor customer interactions across different sales platforms. By automating all major menial tasks like email sequencing and data analysis, sales engagement tools free up your customer-facing teams to focus on other important high-value activities.
In essence, SEPs are geared towards finding more prospects, increasing conversions, and subsequently attaining sustainably high sales figures.
What is Sales Automation?
Did you know that most sales teams still spend around 50% of their time on sales tasks that can be automated? Sales automation is already beginning to play a major role in the sales process as it automates many manual tasks that are currently carried out by salespeople. A recent study found that over 80% of business leaders are looking into sales automation solutions because they realize how important it is for them to streamline their sales management processes.
Sales automation will help you close more deals by freeing up all the time spent on routine tasks so you can spend it on high-value activities that drive revenue. And with powerful tools like automated email campaigns, automated follow-up emails, a visual sales pipeline, and automated segmenting and assigning of leads, it’s a no-brainer.
Why Go For Sales Engagement Platforms?
As mentioned above, the main selling point of sales engagement platforms is their automation of many extraneous but time-consuming tasks. The list of benefits doesn’t stop there. Here are additional benefits of integrating SEPs into your sales strategies:
- Increased Sales – Most sales engagement tools come with in-built sales intelligence. This gives them the capability to collect and monitor millions of data points at a time, analyze it and identify possible sales triggers. Knowing what events can trigger sales helps the sales team craft more purposeful and targeted campaigns, which lead to higher sales.
- Better Communication – SEPs provide a single UI for all sales communications, which helps the sales reps to keep track of all inward and outward communication. This helps avoid miscommunications, resent messages, and the curious case of lost email threads.
- More Data to Work With – Data is the life force of all successful businesses. For your sales outreach to be effective, you need to be well aware of your customers and their preferences. Some of the most important data in this regard includes email opens and clicks statistics, and the specific time periods with most engagements. Having this information on your hands lets you know who to target, when and how.
Top 10 Sales Engagement Platforms in 2022
From sophisticated enterprise-grade solutions to more basic platforms that provide decent functionality, the list below contains a solution for every type and size of business.
1. Mailshake
If you are looking for simplicity, and a coherent sequence of customer engagements – otherwise known as sales cadences – then Mailshake is the solution for you. The software is particularly good at sending large amounts of cold emails at scheduled intervals. It also allows you to track these emails, their responses, and engage with prospects all from a single dashboard in one sequence.
If branding and appearances matter to you, the What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) email template design and management functionality will probably impress you.
Its campaign management tools are also quite good, integrating analytics with Drip Campaigns and Dynamic Content that keeps your outreach messages fresh, authentic, and effective at all times.
2. PersistIQ
You will be hard-pressed to find a more suitable solution for outbound marketing than PersistIQ. Among its greatest strengths are its ability to convert your LinkedIn searches into email subscribers. Once you have a formidable email list, the program allows you to create outreach campaigns and automate follow ups to ensure you convert as many leads as possible.
Although it’s more of an email engagement platform, PersistIQ also comes with an in-built dialer that allows you to make calls if and when you need to. Most importantly, the software has a great sales intelligence engine that allows you to sieve data according to whichever metrics you like and therefore receive more accurate metrics.
3. Outreach
As one of the original SEPs, Outreach is one of the biggest sales engagement platforms in the world, serving over 3,300 businesses. Below is an overview of its key features:
- Very advanced Machine Learning AI that generates extremely accurate predictions and effective automations.
- A simple and user-friendly dashboard that provides a clear view on all ongoing campaigns, existing leads and potential deals.
- Wide range of communication channels including phone calls, email, SMS, and social media
- A voicemail tool that allows your leads to leave important messages when you are offline
- Seamless integration with many Customer Relationship Management tools
4. Woodpecker
This platform comprises several tools that ease decision-making among your sales reps so they can reach their goals quickly. Woodpecker is an exceptional tool for lead management, lead scoring, and lead generation. Its cutting-edge technology in email deliverability allows your sales team to verify their contacts in real-time to reduce the number of undeliverable emails.
It will learn from your past sent emails to intelligently predict which email recipients are likely to become paying clients. This saves time spent chasing clients who will not invest in your brand. Your sales team can create outreach campaigns within minutes and customize their messages with this tool.
With Woodpecker, you can manage multiple clients simultaneously thanks to a single-click login access for client accounts and a dashboard displaying real-time analytics. The ease of sending newsletters, sequence emails, and promotional emails on this platform will be particularly useful for sales reps managing multiple client accounts.
5. Klenty
This sales engagement platform allows you to manage and nurture your sales prospects. Klenty applies sales cadences for contacting sales prospects and has a call-recording feature that enables you to evaluate your sales reps. If you major in email marketing, this is the solution for you. It integrates with Outlook, Exchange, GSuite, and Gmail to manage spam through email throttling. This will prove crucial when you do not want to turn off clients with endless marketing emails that will only be labeled as spam.
Klenty is easy to operate and allows your sales reps to reply to emails straight on the platform. It facilitates integration with numerous third-party applications, including Pipedrive CRM, Hubspot, Zoho, and Salesforce CRM. This means your staff can easily export or import prospective client details, sync emails, and set triggers for task creation. Klenty has a monthly subscription with the plans based on the features you want.
6. SalesLoft
If you are a B2B company, SalesLoft is your ideal option. This Atlanta-based platform launched in 2011 works alongside your CRM tool to save time for your sales reps. SalesLoft centers on the automation of interactions between your sales reps and clients while leaving room for personalized engagements. You can implement and plan your sales cadences on the platform while allowing sharing of saved sales playbooks among reps.
On SalesLoft, there are multiple sales opportunity management features and automated sales workflows to ease selling. The platform also conducts in-depth sales intelligence and generates reports that will prove beneficial for your sales cycle. The ability to customize your email templates on SalesLoft means your messages will stand out rather than look like simple marketing emails.
7. Reply
If you have been searching for prospects on LinkedIn, Reply is your best sales engagement platform. Founded in 2014, this platform has serious automation. It primarily helps you keep in touch with your leads because it works with phone calls, WhatsApp messaging, SMS and emails. With these options, you can stay in touch with clients and send follow-up reminders so that they do not forget about your brand.
On Reply, your sales reps can start the day with the Reply Scheduler, which includes calls and tasks for the day. This tool helps them refine and optimize their sales strategies. Reply comes as a Chrome extension and is fully compatible with Gmail. It is an ideal sales engagement platform for individual business owners, LinkedIn users, and startups.
8. Groove
Groove is the leading sales engagement platform for enterprises using Salesforce. Built for the needs of full-cycle sellers, Groove automates non-sales activities so that reps can spend more time building relationships and generating revenue.
Among the many features: Multi-Channel Campaign Automation. Create multi-step Flows to engage contacts with personalized emails, SMS, LinkedIn messages, calls, and more. Streamline Workflows, Prioritize Tasks Organize your workflows, assign tasks, and collaborate on account lists and opportunities using real-time data from Salesforce. Spend less time calling and more time talking with the fastest and most reliable sales dialer in the industry. Be more productive, optimize every call with performance data, and generate better outcomes.
9. Koncert
If you want a sales engagement tool to maximize your B2B and inbound sales, settle for Koncert, formerly called ConnectLeader. The tool grew out of a stack combining sales automation, learning management systems, and CRM. It primarily focuses on reaching new prospects. Koncert has multiple products. One of these is TruInbound meant for inbound sales. It will collect your prospects from social media posts, blogs, and online forms, among other CTAs. It then qualifies your leads and routes them to the best sales rep.
With Koncert, you also have TruCadence for your B2B sales leads. This sales cadence tool will show you the best channel and time for reaching your lead for the highest conversion rates. You can also access analytics tools for your metric reports on Koncert.
10. Mixmax
This is among the few sales engagement tools for businesses on tight budgets and startups. This is because its free plan offers follow-up reminders, up to a hundred opened email-tracking monthly, and email templates. If you want more, there are budget-friendly subscription premium options available for you on Mixmax. This tool centers mostly on email functionality.
Mixmax allows sales reps to share their availability with clients, put surveys in emails, automate email sequences and track email metrics like click rates. The sales engagement tool has several automation tools to take over your data entry and allow you to grab leads straight off LinkedIn. It also allows easy personalization of sequences. Mixmax is your best choice when centering on email marketing.
FYI it’s for Gmail only.
Conclusion
If you weren’t convinced that your business needs a Sales Engagement solution, you hopefully are now. That our list featured ten very formidable options means choosing one platform will not be easy.
However, each of the highlighted SEPs has its own strengths, which featured in the descriptions, and has a distinct price tag. To find the best answer to your business’s needs, you need to first