Inside Sales Software: The Top 5 Solutions for your Business

What is an Inside Sales Software ?

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Inside Sales Software: definition

An inside sales software is a tool aimed at facilitating the job of sales. This type of software is used by inside sales teams to manage their sales activities, track customer interactions, and streamline the sales process. Nowadays, an inside sales software is essential for any sales team.

Why use an Inside Sales Software?

There are several reasons that make inside sales software essential for a sales team:

• Contact management: Inside sales software can help manage the contacts database to enable segmentation and targeted communication
• Analytics and reporting: Inside sales software usually analyzes customer data and interactions to provide insights into sales performance, pipeline status, and forecasting.
• Sales automation: Inside sales software can automates traditional sales tasks such as follow-up emails, appointment scheduling, and data entry.
• Lead management: Inside sales software can perform lead scoring and be optimized to prioritize high-potential leads for sales reps to focus on.
• Collaboration features: A good inside sales software will come with collaboration features to improve the efficiency of your sales team (possibility of reacting to the work of your teammates, tagging them…) 

Maybe your sales team already uses an inside sales software. But it may not be the best… So you might be interested in what's next: the top 5 best inside sales software (according to me). 

The TOP 5 Inside Sales Software solutions 

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Claap: the best option overall

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What is Claap?

Claap is originally a meeting assistant. It transcribes the audio and video of your meetings and has a recording feature in case it’s not sufficient. As a salesperson (who doesn’t know Claap yet) you’re certainly doing tons of calls everyday. So think about how it could change your life. No note taking anymore, and no need to summarize your notes as Claap also does it for you.

This is a really useful feature for a sales team, but this is only part of the reason I consider the tool as the best inside sales software. Because Claap is a lot more than that.

Claap increases your conversion rate

Claap is an asynchronous meeting tool. It completely changes your way of communicating with prospects/clients. Let me introduce claaps: 2 to 5-minute videos you can record easily using Claap’s interface. Let me explain: you just have to click on a button and you can record your screen while having your camera on. Once your claap is recorded, you can send it to your prospects instead of the traditional (and boring) e-mail. And this is a real game changer: 

“Every time I was doing that I had like 40% conversion rates compared to like 3, 4, or 5% with normal approaches.”  (Guillaume De Nacquard, from Surfe)

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Claap improves your efficiency

Once you’ve adopted Claap, you’ll stop doing traditional synchronous meetings. And this greatly simplifies your life as a salesperson: instead of trying to find a slot that fits your agenda and your prospect’s and then taking 30 mn in a synchronous meeting, you just record your claap, send it and your prospect can watch it whenever they want.

If you’re not convinced yet, let me add some elements: 

• Countless ways to share your claaps : Your prospects/clients will always be able to see your claaps. Because you can attach them to an e-mail, embed them to a website or just share them on your Claap’s workspace.
• Collaboration and interaction are facilitated : You could think you’d miss the live interaction offered by a synchronous meeting. But you’d not. Your prospects/clients can consult your claaps in your workspaces at any time, and leave comments or feedback on a specific part of the video (even a specific part of the screen). They can even send video replies to your claaps if they want a “traditional approach”.
• AI features: Claap is equipped with AI features to simplify your life: it summarizes your meetings and highlight key points, allowing you to gain insights on what to do  to improve the customer relationship and close the deal !

Our clients have changed their way of communicating, and it works :

"I've managed to shorten my sales cycle because I replace 30-minute meetings with prospects with three five-minute videos. I've literally seen ten days just fall off of that process and allow me to go quicker. " (Alejandro Salinas, from Surfe)

Claap’s limitations

I want to be totally honest and objective, so here are the limitations of Claap: 

• Compatibility: Claap’s desktop app is currently only available on Mac. Windows is on the way.
• Limits of the Free Plan: Claap only allows 10 video uploads with the free plan. 

Claap’s pricing

• Basic: Free with an upload limit of 10 videos.
• Starter: $10/month per user with unlimited videos upload/storage.
• Pro: $30/month per user with access to AI features.
• Enterprise: Custom

Zoho: the most comprehensive option 

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Zoho’s main advantages

• Comprehensive platform: Zoho provides a comprehensive range of business, collaboration, and productivity applications. With Zoho, you have an Inside Sales software that can also serve as an HR platform, a project management tool and more
• Many useful features for your sales team: Zoho is equipped with a large range of useful features to help your sales team. These features include lead scoring, lead segmentation, email marketing, sales reports… 
• Sales automation: Zoho improves the efficiency of your sales process with features like lead and deal management. It also come with Blueprint, which helps you define best practices for your sales team, streamlining processes and ensuring that every team member follows the most efficient workflow
• Actions automation: Zoho CRM offers basic automation features. For instance, you can set up instant actions using the Standard plan. But you’ll only unlock the full potential of Zoho’s automations if you subscribe to more advanced plans that include features such as scheduled actions, webhooks, custom functions, auto-responders, and segmentation. 
• Advanced AI features: Zoho’s top-tier plans include advanced AI capabilities, helping you find necessary data and identify anomalies based on sales trends. It includes conversation intelligence features, and Zoho is for instance able to automatically populate client information based on your communications.

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Zoho’s limitations

• Support issues: Zoho's support system may be free but it’s not the fastest. Some users reported having bad experiences with long wait times for responses, which can be problematic and frustrating when dealing with critical issues.
• Frequent bugs: Zoho’s updates are known for causing bugs, which can be annoying, even though they’re usually quickly solved.

Zoho’s pricing

• Free : With 3 users and essential features like leads, documents and mobile app
• Standard : $14/month/user with basic features like sales forecasting and scoring rules
• Professional :  $23/month/user with additional features such as email integration and social CRM
• Enterprise :  $40/month/user with AI functionalities
• Ultimate : $52/month/user with all the features

Outreach: the best sales engagement platform

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Outreach’s main advantages

• Comprehensive tool: Like Zoho, Outreach is a comprehensive tool. Outreach comes with sales engagement features, but also revenue intelligence and revenue operations features. Its features include deal management, email automation and revenue forecasting.
• Task and activity tracking: Outreach allows you to track and manage sales activities such as calls, emails, and meetings. This feature helps your sales teams stay organized, prioritize tasks effectively, and ensure that no follow-up or engagement opportunity is missed.
• Advanced reporting capabilities : Outreach provides a detailed analysis of email performance, including open rates, click-through rates, and reply rates. This is great to find the best marketing strategy !
• Linkedin integration: Outreach integrates with different tools but I think Linkedin is an interesting one. For instance, Outreach can automatically extract prospect data from Linkedin and use the data to send personalized cold outreach emails.

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Outreach’s limitations

• Not very intuitive UI: Some users mentioned issues about Outreach interface, because the tool offers so many capabilities that it can be overwhelming.
• Limited support : Customer service for small and medium businesses is reportedly lacking, with many users experiencing minimal assistance and long response times

Outreach’s pricing

Unfortunately, Outreach doesn’t give any pricing information. But you can expect to pay around $130 per user per month. In addition to that, you’ll also certainly have to pay an onboarding fee between $500 and $1000 and an implementation fee ranging between $1000 to $8000. There is also a minimum number of seats required (20).

Chili Piper: the best sales accelerator option

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Chili Piper’s main advantages

Chili Piper is mainly a meeting assistant. It will help your sales team increase lead engagement and conversion rate thanks to several key features: 

• Automated lead qualification: Chili Piper qualifies and routes leads to the right sales rep using forms on your website. It automates lead assignment and facilitates first contact for the sales reps.
• Smart lead assignment: The tool is able to assign leads to sales reps using pre-defined criteria (geographic location, organization size…)
• Smart Scheduling: Chili Piper offers a platform allowing clients to directly schedule calls with your reps by selecting the best available slot with just a click. The agenda of your reps is, of course, automatically modified as a consequence. You can even set rules to allow prospects to schedule a call only if they fit your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) !
• CRM Integration: Chili Piper integrates with many CRMs, enabling real-time visibility of meeting details, reschedules, and interactions.

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Chili Piper’s limitations

• A bit too focused on meeting scheduling: If you’re looking for a meeting scheduler, you’ll hardly find a better option than Chili Piper. But if you’re looking for a more comprehensive tool, Chili Piper might be a bit limited in terms of features… 
• Sometimes slow to load

Chili Piper’s pricing

• Free plan (ChiliCal Free): With limited features
• Standard plan (ChiliCal Teams): $22.5/month/user

Notion: the best free option

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Notion’s main advantages

Like Chili Piper, Notion is not a pure inside sales software. But its versatility and its price (we’ll see later) make it a very interesting option in my opinion.

• Workspace organization: Notion allows the different teams of your company (including the sales teams) to have an overview of all company activities thanks to its workspace organization. This also improves collaboration and you could, for instance, access and share documents with the marketing teams in one click.
• Document creation: Notion allows you to create advanced documents including text, checklists, embedded videos, and even code snippets if needed. This is quite useful to create sales proposals, pitches, and client presentations.
• Project management features: Notion’s project management features enable sales managers to record, organize, and view tasks by status, owner, and timeline. It helps them manage and coordinate sales projects easily.
• Collaboration features: Notion facilitates collaboration among sales team members. Sales reps can leave feedback directly on documents, tag colleagues for input, and react to comments using emojis. 
• Search function: The robust search function in Notion allows you to quickly find information across workspaces. You won’t have to fear losing a document before a meeting anymore !

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Notion’s limitations

• Lacks actual sales features: Notion is great to increase the productivity of your sales team. But it doesn’t have sales-specific capabilities like Claap or Zoho could have.
• Limited search function: Some users complained about the search function in Notion, the results being sometimes very slow to load (if the workspaces contain too many documents). The search function could also be improved if you could search a keyword and find it even in grids, lists, etc…

Notion’s pricing

I said Notion was the best free option because Notion’s free plan is comprehensive and can greatly help your sales team if your company is not too large. But you can also opt for paid plans:

• Free: With basic workspaces, 5 MB of file uploads, 7 day page history and up to 10 guests.
• Plus: $12/user/month with unlimited file uploads, 30 day page history and up to 100 guests.
• Business: $18/user/month with advanced page analytics, 90 day page history and up to 250 guests, with the possibility to add external collaborators to specific pages of your workspaces. Private teamspaces are also available.
• Enterprise: Custom

Conclusion

The main use of an inside sales software is to improve the efficiency of your sales team. And I think you’ll hardly find a tool that does it better than Claap. More than an inside sales software, it’s a revolution that will completely change your way of communicating and working with your customers. And I have good news: you can test all of Claap’s paid features for FREE for 14 days. So why not trying it out?