Sales engagement software gathers and processes data on all sales rep and buyer interactions across multiple channels. Its omnichannel engagement, automation, artificial intelligence, and other core capabilities help sales teams improve the buyer’s journey. This sales interaction system also optimizes your selling content and overall sales process, helping drive conversion and build a strong rep-buyer relationship.  

We have compiled a list to help you attain your sales engagement goals. Check out the best sales engagement software solutions in 2024 below.

Looking for even more sales software solutions? Check out our Sales Software Buyer’s Guide.

HubSpot logo. Freshsales logo. Salesforce logo. Zoho logo. Salesmate logo. ActiveCampaign logo.
Best for Sales engagement automation Multi-channel sales engagement AI capabilities Sales enablement Sales cadence management Personalized marketing
Star Rating 4.83/5 4.70/5 4.59/5 4.51/5 4.50/5 4.42/5
Key Features Conversation intelligence; Conversation routing; Advanced sales sequences; Account-based marketing; (ABM) tools and automation; AI sales forecasting; Prospecting workspace Built-in chat, email, and phone; Customizable email templates; Custom fields and sales activities; Sales sequences; Multiple sales pipeline Built-in AI; Lightning Sales Console; Email marketing campaign mgmt.; Salesforce meetings; Salesforce mobile app; Advanced pipeline mgmt. Documents library; Configure, price, quote (CPQ); SalesInbox; Zoho meeting integration; Wizards Meeting scheduler; Online web form builder; Built-in communication tools; Sales sequences; Custom modules Sales engagement automation and one-to-one email; Personalized chat and email support; Sentiment analysis; Split automation; Win probability; AI; Email deliverability tools
Learn More Visit HubSpot Visit Freshsales Visit Salesforce Visit Zoho Visit Salesmate Visit ActiveCampaign

Best sales engagement software

HubSpot Sales Hub: Best for sales engagement automation


Pros

  • Flexible plans for all sizes of teams
  • Advanced sales sequences
  • Availability of account-based marketing (ABM) and automation tools
  • Improved sales forecasting with AI projections

Cons

  • No inbound call features
  • Onboarding can take long due to complex advanced features
HubSpot CRM logo.

Our Rating: 4.83/5

  • Conversation intelligence: The system automatically tracks a caller’s interest and generates detailed reports, providing accurate insights into a call’s content.
  • Conversation routing: The CRM automatically assigns incoming emails and chats to appropriate sales team members.
  • Advanced sales sequences: The system automates outreach, creates flows of personalized emails as well as A/B test messages, and sets up task reminders. 
  • ABM tools and automation: Sales teams can leverage lead scoring, properties, sales templates, and reports to nurture leads, create effective pipelines, and increase customer renewals. 
  • AI sales forecasting: The platform has predictive AI for forecasting future sales and calibrating an accurate sales forecast based on historical data.
  • Prospecting workspace: HubSpot is one of the best sales prospecting tools to manage leads and prospecting activities in one place, turning more leads into deals.
  • Call transcription and coaching: The CRM is designed to automatically record and transcribe calls for coaching purposes and greater visibility of customer conversations.

  • Free plan available for unlimited users
  • Starter: $18/user/month for 2 paid users
  • Professional: $450/user/month for 5 paid users
  • Enterprise: $1,500/user/month for 10 paid users

When it comes to automation for sales engagement, HubSpot Sales Hub stands out. This customer relationship management (CRM) system offers suitable plans with sales engagement features, such as advanced sales sequences and conversation routing, for small and medium-sized businesses to large companies and enterprises. These advanced features allow sales teams to automate follow-up emails, calls, and other sales outreach efforts seamlessly. 

Conversation intelligence is the strongest core feature of HubSpot Sales Hub, which allows managers to train new sales representatives, determine top performers and performance patterns, and leave valuable feedback during a call. HubSpot Sales Hub optimizes sales engagement and core sales operations like lead generation and sales forecasting with its ABM automation tools, AI capabilities, and prospecting workspace.

Pricing: 5/5

Core features: 4.73/5

Usability and interface: 5/5

Support and training: 4.59/5

Integration and compatibility: 5/5

Security and innovation: 5/5

User scores: 4.13/5

HubSpot Sales Hub is a robust sales engagement tool that automatically logs calls, emails, social media interactions, and other sales engagement activities. This customer relationship management (CRM) system also allows sales reps to obtain a 360-degree view of the sales pipeline with its artificial AI sales forecasting and prospecting workspace. 

One of the most notable core features of HubSpot is conversation intelligence. This helps sales managers understand how reps are performing on customer calls so they can provide effective coaching with data-driven insights. Moreover, conversation intelligence can be integrated into HubSpot Smart CRM’s calling service to further bolster sales engagement.

Freshsales: Best for multichannel sales engagement


Pros

  • Multichannel communication features on all plans
  • Customizable email templates
  • Quickly accessible on mobile device
  • Robust native app and third-party integrations

Cons

  • Fewer third-party integrations than its competitors
  • Free plan doesn’t have reports
Freshsales logo.

Our Rating: 4.7/5

  • Built-in chat, email, and phone: The CRM automatically logs phone, chat, or email conversations without requiring additional software or hardware. 
  • Email templates: Create tailored email templates to engage with potential customers quickly.
  • Custom fields and sales activities: Sales teams can customize their CRM account for contacts, accounts, and deals, and create sales activities specific to their business.
  • Sales sequences: Set up automated workflows or scheduled series of sales touchpoints to launch personalized outbound campaigns.
  • Multiple sales pipeline: This feature enables teams to build customized stages in multiple sales pipelines based on their sales process.

  • Free plan available for up to three users
  • Growth: $15/user/month for unlimited users
  • Pro: $39/user/month for unlimited users
  • Enterprise: $69/user/month for unlimited users

Freshsales’ standout feature is its built-in chat, email, email, and phone features that don’t require extra software or hardware. The mobile app promotes sales engagement while on the go with its capability to send bulk emails, set up appointments, add tasks, and log calls. It also automatically logs every sales rep’s incoming or outgoing call and displays all conversations in a centralized dashboard, making this CRM the best for multi-channel sales engagement. 

With built-in cloud telephony, Freshsales helps sales teams close deals quickly with contextual conversations. Users can access call notes, logs, and recordings to effectively communicate relevant information with prospects, follow up on previous conversations, and transfer calls to another team member with full context. And the best part is that these omnichannel capabilities are all available in its free plan. 

Pricing: 5/5

Core features: 4.54/5

Usability and interface: 5/5

Support and training: 4.18/5

Integration and compatibility: 5/5

Security and innovation: 5/5

User scores: 3.75/5

Freshsales is a multichannel tool for sales engagement equipped with phone, email, and chat. This sales engagement platform allows reps to create email templates, like follow-up emails, to engage with prospects quickly. Sales managers can purchase local and toll-free numbers and assign them to sales reps and track the number of outgoing calls they make at a particular time. 

This CRM optimizes the sales process by giving salespeople valuable insights on deals through its many tools for managing multiple sales pipelines. Another advantage of using Freshsales is its customization options. Sales reps can enhance personalized emails with placeholders, tags, filters, sharing, and bulk emailing capabilities for outbound campaigns and other sales engagement activities.

Salesforce Sales Cloud: Best for AI capabilities


Pros

  • Greater visibility to sales forecasts with AI
  • Access almost all desktop features, database, and AI tools on the mobile app
  • Campaign management tools are available across all plans

Cons

  • Limited telephony features
  • No email support
Salesforce Marketing Cloud Intelligence.

Our Rating: 4.59/5

  • Built-in AI: The CRM has generative, predictive, and conversational AI for sales management and engagement, with grounding prompts (generate more precise and personalized responses) and out-of-the-box actions (implement dynamic multi-step plans) in Einstein Copilot.
  • Lightning Sales Console: This console consists of all the sales tools reps need to sell faster, like the sales dialer (automatically logs calls), macros (automate the repetitive tasks), and prospect records, promoting a more intuitive and comprehensive sales experience.
  • Email marketing campaign management: Use email templates, send mass emails, schedule meetings, and track email engagement and other marketing campaigns across all channels.
  • Salesforce meetings: Provide sales agents a full view of all meeting attendees and the next steps after a call.
  • Salesforce mobile app: Sales teams can access all Salesforce engagement features through the mobile app, including predicted engagement and AI voice assistant, to personalize daily briefings.
  • Advanced pipeline management: The CRM lets you track key sales metrics, including engagement performance indicators like email open rates, for a healthier sales pipeline.

  • Free trial available
  • Starter Suite: $25/user/month
  • Professional: $80/user/month
  • Enterprise: $165/user/month
  • Unlimited: $330/user/month
  • Unlimited+: $500/user/month

Our expert score is 100 for Salesforce Sales Cloud’s AI capabilities. Its built-in AI assists sales reps in generating leads, forecasting sales, and nurturing prospects. With predictive analytics and generative AI, sales agents can respond to prospects quickly via chat, email, or even during a call through its smart next-step recommendations.

With this easy-to-use CRM, you can tap the best leads and create new opportunities, and give your sales teams an extraordinary advantage. The CRM also stands out for its AI-powered mobile app. Salespeople can work smarter while on the go by utilizing its mobile app to access all features, including CRM analytics and the Einstein Copilot. This conversational AI assistant generates more precise and personalized responses and summarizes records, which helps sales reps accelerate deal closures, providing more personalized client engagement. 

Pricing: 3.75/5

Core features: 4.84/5

Usability and interface: 5/5

Support and training: 4.59/5

Integration and compatibility: 5/5

Security and innovation: 5/5

User scores: 3.75/5

Salesforce is a renowned leader in sales software, expanding its solutions to marketing, commerce, customer service, data cloud, and AI. Specifically, Salesforce Sales Cloud has a built-in AI that eliminates manual logging and automates relationship discovery. When writing an email, for example, the AI provides sales agents with critical context, such as a user’s pain points gathered from their online behavior and responses to follow-up correspondence—helping better engage with sales leads. 

The AI capabilities of this sales engagement platform also include conversation insights, automatically logging, transcribing, and extracting action items like prospect calls. Moreover, the system provides all the selling tools reps need to prospect leads, manage relationships, and close deals in one place.

Zoho CRM: Best for sales enablement


Pros

  • Free third-party integrations for sales enablement
  • Smart web forms for lead generation
  • Robust lead scoring capabilities

Cons

  • Complex navigation due to its many features
  • Integration requires support assistance
Zoho logo.

Our Rating: 4.51/5

  • Documents library: Integrate your Zoho CRM for free with sales engagement apps, like Zoho Writer, to empower your team with sales enablement tools. 
  • Configure, price, quote (CPQ): The system assists in configuring product bundles and pricing rules to generate customized quotes effortlessly.
  • Portals: Use this sales engagement software for granting portal access to customers, allowing them to add, view, edit, or generate documents related to personal details.
  • SalesInbox: This drag-and-drop email management feature lets you compare deals and prioritize emails that are most likely to generate revenue. 
  • Zoho Meeting integration: This sales engagement software lets sales reps hold online meetings with contacts, straight from the CRM.
  • Wizards: This feature captures high-quality customer information by generating and dividing sequential forms into a series of screens and triggering automated actions upon form submission. 

  • Free trial available up to 3 users
  • Standard: $14/user/month
  • Professional: $23/user/month
  • Enterprise: $40/user/month
  • Ultimate: $52/user/month

Zoho CRM has built-in sales enablement tools for training, team collaboration, and management of vendor and partner relationships. You can also find plenty of sales training programs to choose from, making this CRM our top choice for the sales enablement category. 

A major strength of this sales engagement tool is its configure, price, quote (CPQ) tool for creating accurate custom quotes quickly. The CRM executes predefined rules automatically when a sales rep generates a quote. This means customers don’t have to wait for a quote, which helps close deals quickly. The performance tracking and sales territory management tools allow managers to determine the strengths and weaknesses of sales reps quickly across all sales territories.

Pricing: 5/5

Core features: 4.86/5

Usability and interface: 4.06/5

Support and training: 3.34/5

Integration and compatibility: 5/5

Security and innovation: 5/5

User scores: 3.75/5

Zoho CRM empowers sales teams with sales enablement tools. Sales teams can create a document library of sales scripts, comparison sheets, product feature lists, and other essential documents for sales engagement and other sales activities. Zoho SalesIQ, another Zoho product, can be connected to Zoho CRM to create a powerful sales enablement engine with its lead generation, website visitor tracking, visitor analytics, and live chat solution rolled into a centralized platform.

Integrating with Zoho Meeting allows sales teams to manage virtual discussions, launch web conferences, access email templates, and share links to recorded videos for sales engagement. With all these features, we can say that Zoho CRM is one of the top customer engagement software systems in the market. It’s a customer engagement, sales engagement, and sales enablement platform in one.

Salesmate: Best for sales cadence management


Pros

  • Easy-to-use meeting scheduler
  • Unlimited email storage across all plans
  • Customizable calling capabilities

Cons

  • Minor usability and integration issues
  • Limited modifications in email synchronization
Salesmate logo.

Our Rating: 4.5/5

  • Meeting scheduler: This feature lets you embed your calendar’s link on your website and sync meetings to the calendar so prospects can choose a slot and automatically book a meeting.
  • Online web form builder: Capture prospects’ data by generating personalized web forms in minutes and share or embed them on landing pages with this tool.
  • Built-in communication tools: Built-in calling and text for covering every communication channel that makes a good cadence.
  • Sales sequences: The automated sales cadence follows the instructions a sales rep or manager gives and performs the task automatically to engage customers.
  • Custom modules: Sales reps can manage leads, customers, and accounts in a single platform.

  • Free trial available
  • Basic: $23/user/month
  • Pro: $39/user/month
  • Business: $63/user/month
  • Enterprise: custom pricing

We gave a perfect 100 rating for Salesmate’s sales cadence capabilities, enabling sales teams to determine the best time and ways to connect with potential customers. We love how you can customize making voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) calls using Salesmate by setting up Skype calls, calls with Lync, or via Google Voice and other Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based phone systems. This helps salespeople grab a prospect’s attention for sales cadence and engagement. 

A major advantage of Salesmate is its excellent sales cadence tools like an automated meeting scheduler and web form builder. The built-in meeting scheduler allows prospects to book appointments and automate meeting confirmation by integrating Google and Microsoft calendars with the CRM. 

Pricing: 3.75/5

Core features: 4.56/5

Usability and interface: 4.38/5

Support and training: 5/5

Integration and compatibility: 4.5/5

Security and innovation: 5/5

User scores: 5/5

Salesmate is a sales engagement platform known for its built-in sales cadence management tools such as a built-in meeting scheduler, drag-and-drop prebuilt email templates, and web forms. This sales engagement platform has sales sequences for automating all follow-up engagement and sales activities via emails or text messages.

ActiveCampaign: Best for personalized marketing


Pros

  • High email deliverability rate
  • Split or A/B test multiple emails at once
  • Unlimited email sends monthly

Cons

  • Call or telephony features require integration
  • Limited free trial
ActiveCampaign logo.

Our Rating: 4.42/5

  • Sales engagement automation and one-to-one email: Sales teams add a personal touch to the sales process by tailoring offers and sending prospects the content they want via automated email.
  • Personalized chat and email support: ActiveCampaign provides self-help tools, live chat, and email support for sales teams.
  • Sentiment analysis: This feature utilizes natural language processing (NLP), triggering automation as customer sentiments change to improve sales offerings.
  • Split automation: Sales teams can create powerful sales and marketing automations, making customer communication more flexible for better sales engagement.
  • Win probability AI: Salespeople can use this sales engagement software to predict which deals are likely to convert to laser-focus their sales efforts. 
  • Email deliverability tools: The CRM includes spam check, domain authentication, campaign preview, and predictive sending.

  • Free trial available
  • Plus: $19/user/month
  • Professional: $49/user/month
  • Enterprise: $99/user/month

ActiveCampaign’s major strengths are its automation, win probability, and email deliverability features. Its automation capabilities tag email contacts at the exact moment they engage with sales engagement content. Moreover, the win probability AI can predict won or lost deals, helping salespeople focus their time and efforts on deals that are more likely to win.

ActiveCampaign ensures emails reach the inboxes of prospects, assesses spam scores, and optimizes email sending with perfect timing. Sales managers can track email deliverability metrics like open, bounce, delete without reading, and complaint rates using the platform. On the other hand, sales reps enjoy sending an unlimited number of emails monthly (for up to 250,000 contacts) when implementing marketing and engagement campaigns.

Pricing: 3.75/5

Core features: 4.7/5

Usability and interface: 4.38/5

Support and training: 5/5

Integration and compatibility: 3.63/5

Security and innovation: 5/5

User scores: 4.5/5

ActiveCampaign excels the most in personalized marketing because of its excellent email deliverability rate. In fact, ActiveCampaign is the highest in EmailTooltester’s 2024 deliverability test, with a 94.20% average deliverability rate.

Sales engagement automation tools assist reps in delivering relevant, targeted, and engaging email campaigns. This sales engagement tool suits growing teams needing unlimited email testing to personalize their marketing and sales engagement strategies.

Key components of sales engagement software

Sales teams can leverage sales engagement features like automation and AI to generate high-quality lead and customer interactions efficiently. Still, you might not necessarily need all the bells and whistles a sales engagement software provides. The features you have to consider depend on your business’ size, nature, and applicable use cases.

Below are some key components of sales engagement software to help you choose the most suitable solution for your needs. 

Automation tools

As we can expect, all sales engagement systems have automation capabilities. Therefore, it’s crucial to determine the automation features you need that’ll handle critical areas of your sales engagement activities or those that can greatly affect how you can positively engage with prospects and customers. The best practice is to find a solution that provides you with a good combination of automation features based on your intended use cases.

Here are the common automation features of sales engagement software: 

  • Predictive dialing tools for auto-dial and call log syncing to automatically log calls, notes, and transcripts to the CRM
  • Automated messaging workflows for developing personalized, multichannel campaigns 
  • A/B testing to determine the best message flows and those needing fine-tuning
  • Advanced sales engagement activity capture in real time  
  • Email sync for automatically logging emails to the CRM 
  • Calendar sync for automatically syncing meetings from the calendar to the CRM
  • Online scheduler for dropping customizable scheduler email links 

Sales cadence management tools

Sales cadence refers to a series of touchpoints with potential and existing customers. It’s every sales team’s rule book, outlining the sequence of actions that sales reps must perform to complete a process. With the right sales cadences, sales reps can determine the best time to call or wait, winning back lost prospects and closing more deals.

Sales managers can specify email templates and call scripts for each prospect’s action. Depending on the outcomes of sales calls or emails, sales managers can also build branched cadences with various outreach.

Below are some examples of sales cadence tools for more engaging selling:

  • Sales sequences for automating a series of timed text messages and emails 
  • Calling features like call recording to reach prospects and enhance productivity
  • Email automation for putting sales cadence management on autopilot
  • Drag-and-drop email templates for personalizing emails and SMS
  • Split or A/B testing tools for comparing two sales engagement campaign variations
  • Analytics to track sales engagement performance metrics like email open rates

Sales revenue management tools

The best sales engagement platforms assist teams, like finance, account management, and marketing, and outside sales departments to build valuable, timely touchpoints across all stages of the buyer journey. Choose a sales engagement software that’s highly customizable for your different teams. Color-coded or themed boards make cross-functional collaboration and performance evaluation a lot easier since each team member knows what board to work on, what needs to be finished, and what metrics to track.

The top sales engagement platforms have the following revenue support features:

  • Actions for active messaging to organize all lead and customer interactions in one place
  • Workspaces for collaborating on accounts to create high-quality sales engagement opportunities 
  • Workflow management for assigning tasks to other teams or departments 
  • Account-based engagement to boost prospect and customer response rates
  • Activity log for generating real-time insights calls, emails, and other sales engagement activities
  • Template performance tools like call scripts and email templates reduce lead or customer handling time to accelerate overall engagement performance  

CRM integration capabilities

Many sales engagement tools are already included in CRM systems. The best CRM platforms for engagement can be integrated with third-party apps for teams to benefit from more advanced functionalities. A good example is syncing Google or Outlook email accounts to the CRM system to streamline email sales engagement and marketing campaigns. 

Check out the following CRM integrations and capabilities when shopping for sales engagement software:

  • Native CRM integration to improve data security and eradicate data latency, sync errors, and API calls
  • Email CRM integration to create, view, and update CRM records right from the inbox 
  • Social media integration to capture more contact details and view mutual contacts and leads 
  • In-app CRM data access while working directly in the sales engagement app
  • CRM reporting for activity tracking to ensure accurate forecasting

Benefits of using sales engagement software

Sales engagement involves multiple interactions between sellers and potential and existing customers. But sales teams can’t track every interaction without the right tech tools. That’s when sales engagement software comes into play. This tool can help sales teams implement various sales engagement tasks to reap the following benefits:

Satisfied customers 

A centralized dashboard provides a full view of all interactions between reps and customers. Sales cadences, automated workflows, and AI predictive analytics pinpoint buyer pain points and personalize sales engagement efforts.

Streamlined communication

A top-notch sales engagement software has customer service tools like email, telephony, and sales territory management. Being able to answer calls, chats, emails, and SMS in one place promotes more streamlined, omnichannel communication. These capabilities improve efficiency and focus more on sales engagement activities. 

Greater productivity

Sales engagement tools have automation tools like email sync and auto-dial that can improve workflow efficiency and sales rep productivity. The analytics tools can be used by sales managers to monitor individual and team sales engagement performance metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer satisfaction. 

Higher conversion rate

Sales interaction software streamlines outreach, marketing, and other sales activities so that reps can spend more time engaging with prospects across the stages of the buyer’s journey. For every successful touchpoint, the prospect becomes closer to becoming a paying customer because they feel carefully guided, valued, and updated with the latest information they need to know about terms, pricing, etc.

Choosing the best sales engagement software solution for your business

The best sales engagement software automates and personalizes communication, tracks engagement metrics, and facilitates seamless collaboration within sales teams. These platforms enhance customer interactions and improve lead management, leading to higher conversion rates. 

If your company prioritizes robust automation, choose HubSpot Sales hub. On the other hand, Freshsales is best for teams looking for an omnichannel tool. Salesforce Sales Cloud is a top choice for harnessing AI capabilities, while Zoho CRM makes a great sales enablement and engagement rolled into one CRM. Also, Salesmate has an edge in sales cadence management whereas ActiveCampaign is best for launching personalized marketing campaigns.  

Check the best sales engagement software in 2024. If none of these vendors meet your needs, check out our Sales Engagement Software Guide to browse other solutions.

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FAQs

Direct contact is a good example of sales engagement, wherein sales reps make direct customer contact like via sales calls and sending emails. Another example is automated interactions, wherein a customer or prospect has indirect contact with the company.

Sales engagement software has unique varying functions that are vital to any business. On the other hand, a customer relationship management (CRM) system organizes contact information and prospect and customer interactions, wherein many CRMs have integrated sales engagement tools.