Time is money, but not all time has the same dollar value. Cleaning up the CRM takes time, but doesn’t directly generate revenue. Making 100 cold calls, on the other hand, does.
The more repetitive tasks you automate, the more resources you have to go out and win new business.
That’s why choosing the best sales workflow software is a business critical decision—and why we’ve compiled our top picks in this guide.
Best sales workflow software, at a glance
- Default: Best sales workflow software for RevOps teams
- HubSpot Sales Hub: Best sales workflow software with built-in CRM
- Salesforce: Best sales workflow software for enterprise
- Clearbit: Best sales workflow software for AI capabilities
- 6sense: Best sales workflow software for market intelligence
- Gong: Best sales workflow software for conversation intelligence
- Outreach: Best sales workflow software for prospect & customer nurture
- Copper: Best sales workflow software for outbound email
What is sales workflow software and how does it work?
In a nutshell, sales workflow automation software eliminates (or at least greatly reduces) repetitive tasks and manual tasks, freeing up your sales team for more human-centric activities. Here’s a summary of what sales workflow software can do to automate the sales cycle:
- Streamline internal processes through interoperability and platform orchestration
- Automate sales funnels to ensure a seamless handoff from marketing to sales
- Instantly pull third-party lead data to enrich profiles and improve routing
- Identify current account owners or ideal closers and route accordingly & set meetings
- Send follow-up messages to reduce no-shows and increase second meetings
- Automate administrative tasks like sales proposals and contracts to eliminate back and forth
1. Default: Best sales workflow software for RevOps teams
For RevOps teams looking for sales workflow software to handle automations, CRM integrations, and provide a common orchestration layer for all your sales processes, Default provides all the essential features you need for your entire sales process in one revops tech stack.
Features
- Real-time sales automation tools that route based on real-time enrichment, captured data, CRM insights, and behavioral data from customer interactions with your PLG funnel
- Automated scheduling and follow-up emails at the point of conversion
- Drag-and-drop, no-code workflows with a range of advanced customizations
- Deep integrations and orchestration capabilities for your underlying tech stack
Limitations
- Does not have a built-in CRM, although we do integrate with Salesforce and HubSpot
- Not a point solution—the platform is meant to cover all aspects of your sales automation tools
Pricing
Default operates on three pricing tiers, all of which offer unlimited meetings, forms, and routing. Startups with small sales teams should start with the Essential tier, offering 250 enriched leads per month and five seats. Scaling revenue teams should adopt the Growth tier, with 1,000 enriched leads per month and up to 10 seats. Finally, large software companies should use the Enterprise tier, which offers unlimited enriched leads per month and 20+ seats.
2. HubSpot Sales Hub: Best sales workflow software with built-in CRM
Image source: IMPACT Branding & Design
If you absolutely need your sales workflow software to be built into your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and you have a growing sales team, HubSpot Sales Hub is the best option. The layout is intuitive and the pricing, while it can be complicated, is designed to grow as your business does.
Features
- Lead management & prospecting via one personalized workspace to provide a holistic view of customer interactions
- Email templates that can be customized for specific leads
- Email and call tracking so you know when a potential customer is at peak engagement
- Semi-automated task management
- Meeting schedulers, playbooks, document tracking, and in-app payment management to streamline all sales activities
Limitations
- Sales follow-up tasks are only partly automated—some require manual action
- Workflows and automations offer limited flexibility and are only available with the Enterprise plan
- CRM features and lead scoring functionality are fairly basic
Pricing
HubSpot Sales Hub’s pricing starts at $90 per user per month for the professional hub, and $150 per user per month hub seat. Most automations and lead routing features come with the Enterprise plan only.
Alternatively, read our guide on the best lead routing software.
3. Salesforce Sales Cloud: Best sales workflow software for enterprise
On the other hand, if you’ve already reached enterprise level and want built-in sales workflow functionality inside your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, Salesforce Sales Cloud is a powerful tool. Although the most complex of the options here, it can be a good choice for mature orgs with advanced requirements and complex sales processes.
Features
- Activity management to automatically capture customer interactions (emails, events, and engagements) in the CRM
- Lead management features that enable customers to track deals across the channels leads engage with along their buying journey
- Account and opportunity management to surface deal-specific insights and unify data
- Forecast sales tools to stay on top of emerging trends among potential customers and help align your sales strategies around business growth
- Unified & consolidated pipeline management to identify potential issues with your sales processes
Limitations
- Although it has powerful functionality, Salesforce Sales Cloud is far from intuitive, and is difficult for new users to pick up without training
- Enterprise-level pricing makes this a challenging fit for small and early-stage companies
Pricing
Salesforce Sales Cloud is the most expensive option on this list, starting at $165 per month per seat for the Enterprise tier (which, unlike most options, is the bottom tier instead of the top). However, this entry-level tier does include most workflow management features. The Unlimited tier ($330 per user per month) is a step up and includes Salesforce’s AI features. And for $500 per user per month, you can add Data Cloud management, Revenue Intelligence, and more premium features.
4. Clearbit: Best sales workflow software for data enrichment
Virtually every sales workflow tool espouses some kind of AI-powered feature. But the one that does AI best is definitely Clearbit. That, plus their extensive database, is why we’re proud to call them an integration partner.
Features
- Comprehensive database with 100+ attributes and millions of data points to provide valuable insights potential customers
- Automated updates to records the moment a change is detected via AI
- AI-powered improvements constantly enhance the database
- Powerful APIs and webhooks make integration with your GTM stack (e.g. Default, your Customer Relationship Management system) much easier
Limitations
- Data enrichment point solution, which means other capabilities are limited
Pricing
Clearbit does not provide public pricing data.
See how Default leverages Clearbit data through our enrichment capabilities.
5. 6sense: Best sales workflow software for market intelligence
Comprehensive market intelligence, ABM support, intent data, and predictive analytics are only a few of the reasons 6sense is a dominant player in the market. Here’s why it’s earned a place on our list.
Features
- Extensive B2B company and contact data that integrates directly with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and ERPs to help reps and leaders make more informed decisions
- Predictive analytics and buyer intent data for real-time, dynamic, and actionable insights that enhance your sales strategies through data-driven decisions
- Prioritization dashboards to surface the high-quality leads and improve sales productivity
- Automated sales pipeline workflows to drive action at the optimal moments
Limitations
- Enterprise-level pricing makes this sales tool inaccessible to small and early-stage companies
- Depth of insight is likely not useful for companies until their first 1,000 customers
Pricing
6sense offers a free starter account, but most of the features mentioned above aren’t included in it. No pricing information is available on their website, although we know from experience that 6sense tends toward the pricier end.
6. Gong: Best sales workflow software for conversation intelligence
For companies of all sizes, but especially early-stage startups, most of the sales information you need comes through conversations with customers. Unfortunately, surfacing and automating action on these insights is difficult to do at scale—that is, unless you have Gong on your side.
Features
- Wide range of AI-powered insights capture from video calls, phone calls, emails, and more
- Automated contextualization to provide insight into sales performance that can and in closing deals
- Personalized guidance for your sales team and sales leaders based to drive increased sales effectiveness
- Integrations with the rest of your tech stack
Limitations
- Great AI-powered insights, limited functionality—you’ll need to integrate
- Relies on manual action on the part of sales teams and their managers
Pricing
Gong pricing is not publicly available on their website.
7. Outreach: Best sales workflow software for prospect & customer nurture
Image source: Demand Gen Report
Once a lead is captured, enriched, routed, and scheduled, what then? Ongoing nurture is important not just for presale engagement, but post-sale—as reducing churn and drive upsells also contribute to sales goals. Outreach is an excellent sales workflow platform and compliments Default in a number of interesting ways.
Features
- Streamlined sales workflows leverage templates and snippets to enhance sales rep productivity
- Advanced features for sequencing to consolidate multiple stakeholders and responses into a single thread
- Automated data sync with your CRM to maintain accurate information across customer journeys
- AI-powered sentiment analysis to help craft personalized emails and outreach that will improve customer satisfaction
- Built-in analytics and reporting features to measure and improve ongoing performance for your sales efforts
Limitations
- No built-in lead enrichment capabilities
- No built-in lead capture and conversion capabilities
Pricing
Outreach’s priced per user with no platform fees. Some of their top plans include:
- Engage. This plan features basic sales engagement features—templates, snippets, & sequences—to help sales teams be more efficient in their roles.
- Call. This package includes voice calling plans and phone numbers to support outbound motions. Call plans are priced based on consumption.
- Meet. This plan includes AI-powered conversation intelligence to provide real-time assists, meeting post-mortems, and coaching signals to improve performance across the platform.
- Deal. This plan is designed to give a high-level view of deal status to aid in identifying risk, understanding pipeline motions, and keep deals moving forward.
- Forecast. This more robust option enables access to automated roll-ups and scenario modeling to improve forecast accuracy and enable predictable results.
8. Copper: Best sales workflow software for outbound email
Copper is billed as an all-in-one sales and marketing tool. That’s not entirely accurate. Yes, it’s great for outbound communications and contact management, but lacks many of the robust capabilities sales teams need to support fast-growing organizations
Features
- Seamless Google Workspace integrations, including CRM functionality, to seamlessly manage contacts within your workspace
- Email marketing tools including bulk email, automated sequences, templates, merge fields, and more
- Automated recurring tasks and notifications
- Analytics and reports to provide insight into ongoing performance issues
- Built-in pipeline and deal tracking
- Numerous integrations to handle accounting, scheduling, documents, phone, productivity, and more
Limitations
- No automated lead capture and enrichment capabilities
- No build-in calendaring or routing workflows
- Relies extensively on third-party integrations to support its more advanced capabilities, and these integrations are supported by Zapier, not native
- Most functionality needed by B2B sales orgs is only available through one of the upper pricing tiers
Pricing
Copper offers an affordable pricing structure, starting at just $12 per user per month. The Starter plan includes basic functionality and Zapier integrations, while the Basic plan includes task automation, pipelines, and more. The Professional plan, Copper’s most popular option, includes workflow automation, bulk email, and reporting. Finally, the Business plan, starting at $134 per user per month, includes email sequences, website tracking, lead scoring, and more.
How to choose the best sales workflow software
Given all of those options, how do you choose the best one? While we’ve provided our recommendations for each one’s best use case, choosing the best one is ultimately up to you. Here are some key factors to consider when deciding where to place that investment:
- Limited need for integrations. Every time your sales data leaves one platform for another, you risk broken flows, bottlenecks, and lost data. Instead, you should use an all-in-one platform or common orchestration layer for your tech stack.
- Intuitive UX/UI. The easier a platform is to use, the faster you can build and ship workflows. Plus, it’s easier to drive adoption among your team when the technology is easy to use.
- Flexible, customizable automations. You want a sales workflow software that maps to your business, not the other way around. The more flexibility you have with automations and workflows, the better.
Frequently asked questions about software workflow tools
Why is sales workflow software important?
Without sales workflow software, your day-to-day will be overcome by manual tasks. The more you can automate your sales pipeline management, the more resources you have to deploy against revenue and growth.
Who can benefit most from sales workflow tools?
Anyone in the sales organization can benefit from sales workflow tools. Sales executives can optimize costs, sales managers can increase organizational efficiency by reducing human error, and salespeople can automate menial tasks to help them reach quota faster.
Do I need to replace my current sales workflow tools?
Not necessarily. But if you have more than 3-5 tools in your stack, we highly recommend a common orchestration layer (like Default) to ensure all your sales-related activities operating smoothly and seamlessly.
Final thoughts on sales workflow software
Although it’s not immediately obvious, investing in sales workflow software has a serious ROI. Because however much you end up spending, it’s almost certainly less than the dollars your team could bring in making more cold calls, sending more outbound emails, or responding to more inbound leads.
So if you want to unlock your sales team’s full potential by automating manual processes, the time to choose your sales workflow software is now. Every minute you wait, you’re missing out on potential revenue.
See how Default unifies sales workflow functionality in a single platform here.
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