Outbound Sales Automation- Tips and Tools

Outbound sales can be challenging and time-consuming, as you need to identify prospects, reach out to them, write emails, follow up, and schedule meetings. 

But what if we tell you that you could automate your outbound sales process and achieve better results?

Curious? 

Well, read this blog to know how to automate your outbound sales process, and explore tips and tools to achieve your sales goals faster. 

Let’s get started! 

Outbound Sales Automation- Table of Content 

• What is Outbound Sales?
• Why Should You Automate Your Outbound Sales Process?
• Best Outbound Automation Tools for Each Stage of Your Sales Cycle 
• 5 Tips for Effective Outbound Sales Automation
• Outbound Sales Automation Tools- Key Takeaways 
• FAQs

What is Outbound Sales?

Outbound sales refers to directly connecting with people (potential customers) via calls, messages, emails, or social media. 

It refers to a ‘marketing technique’ in which the company reaches out to the customer first rather than waiting for them to learn about the company and respond. 

Why Should You Automate Your Outbound Sales Process? 

Outbound sales are important in generating leads, reaching out to potential customers, and closing deals. 

Hence, automating your outbound sales process can help you streamline your workflow, freeing up valuable time and energy that would otherwise be spent on repetitive, manual tasks.

Let’s take a look at the benefits of automating your outbound sales:

1. Saves Time

Automation will save a lot of time for your sales team and take away repetitive and manual tasks, allowing them to focus more on closing deals. 

2. Scalable Growth

Automation enables you to scale your sales activities parallelly as your business grows. 

Your sales team can reach a larger number of prospects and grow your sales pipeline with less effort. 

3. More ROI

Using outbound sales automation tools can help you execute more sales activities and scale your business in less time, resulting in more ROI. 

4. Cost-Effective

While you might need to invest in automation tools, the long-term savings in time and resources and improved conversion rates make it a cost-effective solution for your outbound sales process.

Best Outbound Sales Tools to Automate Each Stage of Your Sales Cycle

Different tools offer unique features to help you successfully tackle one or more sales cycle stages.

To meet your needs and achieve your sales goals, we’ve compiled a list of tools for each stage of outbound sales. These tools can help you streamline and automate your entire sales process.

Let’s explore these outbound sales stages and the tools that can automate them:

Prospecting

Outbound sales start with identifying your Ideal ICP and gathering important information about them.  

While reaching out to your prospects, you need to qualify them on the following factors such as: 

• Can your services/product actually solve their pain points
• Do they have the budget to buy your product
• Are they looking for products like yours
• How large is the company 

The more leads you qualify, the more your sales efforts will be focused on those leads who are most likely to convert. 

Here are the 2 best tools you can use to automate outbound prospecting

• Saleshandy B2B Lead Finder 
• Apollo.io

Best Tool To Automate Outbound Prospecting 

1. Saleshandy B2B Lead Finder 

G2: 4.6/5 ⭐ (560+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.5/5 ⭐ (100+ reviews)

If you want to find your ideal customers and their accurate email addresses and phone numbers, then Saleshandy’s B2B lead finder is the best outbound sales automation tool. 

It has the largest, most up-to-date B2B database of 700 + million profiles & 60 million companies. 

To free up your sales team’s time to find the right ICP, it offers 13+ advanced filters, such as company name and location, role and department, contact info, employee count, years of experience, revenue, and industry, to filter data. 

Pros 

• You can build a targeted list of prospects using advanced filters. 
• Customer support is great. 
• You will get both emails and phone numbers in one tool. 
• It has a comprehensive and accurate database. 
• The interface is easy to use. 

Cons 

• You will get only 5 free leads once you sign up. 

Pricing (Billed Annually) 

B2B Lead Finder (Only Email)

• Lead Starter – $24/month for 1000 credits/month (billed annually)
• Lead Pro – $49/month for 2500 credits/month (billed annually)
• Lead Scale – $79/month for 5,000 credits/month (billed annually)
• Lead Scale Plus – $159/month for 10,000 credits/month (billed annually)

B2B Lead Finder (Email + Phone Numbers)

• Lead Starter – $32/month for 1000 credits/month (billed annually)
• Lead Pro – $66/month for 2500 credits/month (billed annually)
• Lead Scale – $135/month for 5,000 credits/month (billed annually)
• Lead Scale Plus – $269/month for 10,000 credits/month (billed annually)

2. Apollo.io

G2: 4.8/5 ⭐ (6,900+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.6/5 ⭐ (340+ reviews)

Apollo.io is another prospecting tool you can use to automate the process of finding leads. You can access it’s updated and growing live database of 275M contacts and 73M companies to get your prospect’s contact information and behaviour analysis.

Moreover you can download it’s Chrome extension and use it on Salesforce, Gmail, LinkedIn or any company website to get insights instantly.

Pros

• Apollo helps you focus on your best potential customers using AI.
• You can contact your prospects through email, phone calls, or LinkedIn messages.
• You can record and study your conversations with Apollo’s smart conversation analysis tool to understand your interactions better.
• With Apollo’s intent analysis feature you can find people who might already want what you’re selling.

Cons

• Apollo’s pricing plan is higher than the alternatives.

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually)

• Free – $0 per month (60 Mobile & 120 Export Credits/year)
• Basic – $49/user per month (900 Mobile & 12,000 Export Credits/year)
• Professional – $79/user per month (1,200 Mobile & 24,000 Export Credits/year)
• Organization – $99/user per month (2,400 Mobile & 48,000 Export Credits/year)

Outreach 

Now that you have found leads, you should contact them, get to know them better, and smoothly pitch your offer/services. 

You can contact your prospects through cold emailing and calling- two proven methods for effective outbound sales teams. 

However, manually managing these outreach channels can be a daunting task; hence, you can use automation tools to streamline the outreach process. Depending on your preferred outreach method, you might want to consider:

• Saleshandy – If cold emailing is part of your outbound sales process.
• DialPad AI Voice– If cold calls are part of your outbound outreach strategy.

However, whichever approach you take, ensure outreach is personalized and relevant to each prospect. 

• To make sure your outreach is personalized: 
• Conduct proper research
• Learn about the challenges and pain points 
• Offer value to get their attention

Best Tools to Automate Outbound Outreach 

3. Saleshandy

G2:  4.6/5 ⭐ (560+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.5/5 ⭐ (100+ reviews)

Saleshandy helps you automate all your cold email outreach efforts without much manual effort. Its AI-powered reply detector scans and categorizes replies as “interested,” “not interested,” or “meeting booked.” 

With automated categorization, you can quickly identify promising leads and prioritize your follow-up efforts accordingly and eliminate the manual effort of going through each reply to understand the prospect’s level of interest

You can send personalized and unique emails at a scale with features like an AI Email writing assistant, merge tags, and spintax to maximize engagement and reply rates. 

Moreover, it offers features like sequence score, email warm-up, and email sender rotation to save your sales team time that would go into building a strong sender and domain reputation. 

Pros

• Saleshandy allows you to test up to 26 variations of email copy and subject lines with the A-Z testing. 
• You can connect unlimited email accounts, create unlimited sequences, and invite unlimited team members without paying additional charges.
• It has powerful integrations, APIs, and webhooks to boost productivity. 
• Its unified inbox allows you to manage conversations and reply to all your leads from one place. 

Cons

• Saleshandy only offers a 7-day free trial. 

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually)

• Outreach Starter: $25 /Month (unlimited email accounts)
• Outreach Pro: $74 /Month (unlimited email accounts)
• Outreach Scale: $149 /Month (unlimited email accounts)
• Outreach Scale Plus 100k: $219/month (unlimited email accounts)

Saleshandy offers variety of pricing plans; you can check out the detailed pricing plans here.

4. DialPad AI Voice

G2: 4.4 ⭐ (1700+ reviews) 
Capterra: 4.3 ⭐ (500+ reviews) 

DialPad AI voice is a cloud-based cold call software that allows your sales team to do phone calls and video conferencing. 

Moreover, it has robust AI  tools like live transcription functionality and sentiment analysis to automate the mundane tasks of your sales representatives. 

You can free up a lot of your sales team’s time by adopting this all-in-one solution and establishing a seamless communications system in just minutes. 

Pros

• It offers real-time transcription and automated post-call summaries. 
• Dialpad integrates seamlessly with tools like Salesforce, G Suite, Microsoft Office 365, and Zendesk.  
• It provides a spam call detection option. 

Cons

• Fewer integrations are available in the lower pricing plans.  
• Dialpad’s features are complex; hence, you would require some time to utilize its capabilities fully​. 

Pricing (Billed Annually) 

•  Small businesses: $25 User/Month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing

The primary problem with outreach is that you may not get responses at all.

Thus, do not shy away from following up. Fortunately, with tools like Saleshandy, you can automate follow-up emails from the very first email to the final one.

Moreover, if you are confused about whether to choose cold email, call or include both in your outreach strategy, read here.

Meeting

Your sales team must be spending most of their time scheduling meetings and following up with the prospects to confirm their availability, which can be a big distraction when you have other important tasks in line. 

Thus, outbound sales appointment automation tools can help you automate sales admin work, organize and manage meetings by bringing key decision-makers together, and focus on achieving your sales goals.

These are the best tools to automate the meeting process:

• Calendly
• Appointlet

Best Tool to Automate Outbound Meeting Scheduling 

5.Calendly

G2: 4.7⭐ (2000+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.7 ⭐ (3000+ reviews)

You should consider Calendly to automate your meeting scheduling process, save your sales team time by reducing no-shows, and organize appointments​. 

Calendly stands out as one of the best outbound sales appointment automation tools, helping you eliminate meeting scheduling friction. 

You can share a link with your availability and let your prospects select the most convenient meeting time.

Moreover, you can automate and customize the pre-meeting reminders and confirmations to reduce no-shows. 

Pros

• It has an intuitive, clean, and simple interference. 
• Calendly integrates with Salesforce, Google Calendar, and Outlook.  
• The mobile app is available. 

Cons 

• Constant bugs in the software. 
• You cannot manage multiple calendars simultaneously.
• Limited customization functionality. 

Pricing (Billed Annually)

• Free: $0
• Standard: $10 /seat/mo
• Teams: $16/seat/mo
• Enterprise: $15k/ year

6 Appointlet

G2: 4.4/5 ⭐ (10+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.8/5 ⭐ (90+ reviews)

Appointlet is another meeting scheduling platform you can use to simplify online scheduling allowing you to stay focused at core work. You can directly connect your calendar and set your time availability .

You can keep track of your meetings and send automated confirmation and reminder notifications to avoid attendee no-shows.

Pros

• You can embed your scheduling page on any website
• With Appointlet you can easily cancel or reschedule meetings.
• You can share personalized booking links via email or text.
• It lets you create white-label your scheduling page.

Cons

• The customer support assistance is not responsive.

Pricing Plans (Billed Annually)

• Free: $0 Unlimited Members
• Premium: $ 8 /member /month
• Enterprise: Customized

Lead Management & Nurturing 

It is important to track the status of your leads to prioritize your sales efforts. 

CRM software is the central hub for all the data related to your leads.  Moreover, you can efficiently manage and nurture them and keep their data updated. 

Here are the 2 CRM software you can use to automate your outbound sales

• Salesforce
• Pipedrive

Best Tools to Automate Outbound Lead Management & Nurturing 

7. Salesforce 

G2: 4.3/ 5 ⭐ (19,950+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.4/5 ⭐ (18,200+ reviews)

Salesforce is the best customizable sales CRM. It uses AI assistant Einstein 1. to help your sales team sell faster, smarter, and more efficiently.  

With Salesforce, you can get complete visibility of your sales pipeline, forecasting, and rep performance. 

Salesforce gives you Tableau insights and a unified view of your data, enabling you to forecast more accurately, continuously grow your pipeline, and optimize your revenue streams for maximum impact. 

With these data-driven capabilities at your fingertips, the possibilities for accelerating your outbound sales are endless.

Pros

• You can boost your revenue performance with AI-powered visualizations. 
• With Salesforce, you store your prospects’ data, including their interaction history, preferences, and contact details. 
• You can tailor and automate activities, tasks, reporting, dashboards, page layouts, and sales processes according to your requirements.  
• You can track and manage your leads, assign them to the right sales reps, and get real-time updates on their progress.

Cons

• You will find the tool a little complex if you are a beginner. 
• The UI is not appealing when compared to the alternative tools. 
•  Users face frequent glitches while working as it takes time to get loaded. 

Pricing 

• Customized pricing plan.  

8. Pipedrive

G2: 4.2/5 ⭐ (1,800+ reviews) 
Capterra: 4.5/5 ⭐(2,900+ reviews)

The next best CRM you should have in the stack of your outbound sales automation tools is Pipedrive.

It is a sales-focused pipeline management CRM that enables you to automate your entire sales process, track your sales pipeline, and manage leads. 

Moreover, with its robust analytical capabilities, you can get real-time sales reports and get the ins and outs of your sales funnel. 

Pipedrive’s forecasting, team monitoring, goal-setting, and advanced sales metrics help you to make informed and data-backed decisions.

Pros

• It has a drag-and-drop pipeline editor.
• Pipedrive supports 100+ third-party integrations. 
• Get customizable sales reports and dashboards. 
• You can automatically distribute leads and assign them to your sales team. 

Cons

• There is a learning curve with Pipedrive. 
• The email integration feature is unreliable, and issues with syncing emails have been reported. 

Pricing (Billed Annually)

• Essential:  $12 per seat per month
• Advanced: $24 per seat per month 
• Professional: $49 per seat per month 
• Power: $59 per seat per month 
• Enterprise: $79 per seat per month

Close Deals

Ultimately, after a successful demo/meeting call, your next step is to close the deal. Here are the two outbound sales automation tools you can use to seal the deal. 

• Close.io
• HubSpot SalesHub

These tools have top-level functionalities to turn leads into revenue streams. Take a closer look at them: 

Best Tools to Automate the Entire Outbound Sales Cycle 

9. Close.io 

G2: 4.7 ⭐ (1000+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.7 ⭐ (100+ reviews)

Close.io is an all-in-one sales communication CRM for start-ups or mid-sized organizations. You can send emails, calls, and texts to your leads from a single inbox. 

Moreover, it has productivity tools like custom workflows and sales enablement tools to help you reach more prospects and grow revenue fast.

You can customize fields and activities in the Close CRM to fit your unique sales workflow and get a high-level Pipeline health overview to find and fix bottlenecks in your sales funnel. 

Pros

• It unifies your outreach, engagement, and automation into a simple, flexible CRM.
• You can adopt multi-channel outreach with this tool. 
• It has an intuitive and KPI-based report dashboard.
• Close is an easy-to-use tool. 

Cons

• It has basic reporting features. 
• Customization features are limited. 

Pricing Plans(Billed Annually) 

• Startup: $49 per user per month
• Professional: $99 per user per month
• Enterprise: $139 per user per month

10. HubSpot Sales Hub

G2: 4.4 ⭐ (11,000+ reviews)
Capterra: 4.5 ⭐ (400+ reviews) 

HubSpot Sales Hub is a built-in Hubspot CRM with sales engagement tools and robust analytical capabilities for growing teams.

You can get high-level insights, qualified leads, and aligned sales enablement materials to enhance your operation efficiently.

Moreover, it allows you to manage all your sales activities in one personalized prospecting workspace, thus boosting speed and productivity across the sales team, helping them qualify leads faster. 

Pros

• It has tools for managing sales activities, pipelines, meeting scheduling, etc.
• You can seamlessly set your HubSpot Ecosystem. 
• Hubspot customizes your workflows, deal stages, properties, and workflows, allowing you to tailor the platform to your needs.

Cons

• Hubspot has poor outreach tool capabilities. 
• It has a lot of bugs. 

Pricing Plans

• Free Tools: $0
• Sales Hub Starter: $15/mo/seat
• Starter Customer Platform: $15/mo/seat
• Sales Hub Professional: $90/mo/seat

5 Tips for Effective Outbound Sales Automation

Follow these tips to get the most out of outbound sales automation 

1. Build Quality Prospecting Lists 

 Build an accurate prospect list to ensure your sales team doesn’t waste time contacting the wrong prospects. 

You can use sales-protecting tools to build a highly targeted list of your prospects with their accurate contact information, industry, etc. 

2. Identify Your Target Audience

Identifying your targeted ICP is important to create a personalized and relevant outbound sales strategy. 

Deciding your target audience primarily includes: 

• Demographics
• Technographics
• Goals
• Challenges

3. Personalize Your Outreach

Personalization is the key to success in your outreach campaign; therefore, ensure that you create personalized email copies by entering the recipients’ names, companies, and specific pain points.

4. Monitor Important Data

While doing outbound sales it is important to monitor metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and ROI to check what is working for you and what needs to be improved. 

5. Use Multichannel Outreach 

To get maximum results from your outreach campaigns, try reaching out to your prospects via various channels, such as emails, social media, and cold calls. 

Key Takeaways- Outbound Sales Automation

• Outbound sales automation removes time-consuming tasks, accelerates lead generation, and allows you to focus on the important parts of your sales strategy.
• Here is the list of best outbound sales automation tools:
  • Prospecting: Saleshandy B2B Lead Finder
  • Outreach: Saleshandy & DialPad AI Voice
  • Meeting: Calendly
  • Lead Management & Nurturing: Salesforce & Pipedrive 
  • Close Deals: Close.io & HubSpot Saleshub
• To make sure that your outbound sales automation is effective, you should build a quality lead list, identify ICPs, monitor your data, use multichannel, and personalize your outreach. 

FAQs

1. Are outbound and inbound sales different? 

In inbound sales, prospects contact you with their business requirements, whereas in outbound sales, you go to the customer and pitch your offerings first.  

2. What factors should you use to measure the success of your outbound sales automation?

You can focus on the following metrics to measure the success of your outbound sales automation:

• Response rate
• Conversion rate
• Click-through rate
• Meeting booking rate
• Customer lifetime value 
• Customer acquisition value 
• Sales cycle length
• Return on investment 

3. What are some common mistakes you should avoid in outbound sales automation?

Here are some common mistakes you must avoid while strategizing and launching your outbound sales campaign: 

• Lack of personalization  
• Over-automation
• Ignoring data quality 
• Not testing and optimizing 
• Poor targeting