The 10 Best AI Tools for Reaching Your Sales Goals

With hundreds of AI sales tools in the market, picking the right ones for your tech stack can be confusing and daunting.

To help you out, we’ve handpicked the top 10 AI tools for sales teams. We’ve also listed the top use cases of AI sales tools, along with a few best practices to help you get the most out of them.

Table of Contents

• How Sales Teams Use AI
• 10 Best AI Sales Tools to Help You Reach Your Goals
• Best Practices for Using AI in Sales

How Sales Teams Use AI

As part of our State of AI Report, we surveyed over 1,350 professionals across different business departments to understand how they’ve incorporated AI into their workflows. Of all the sales professionals surveyed, we found out that:

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• 35% use AI for automating manual tasks.
• 34% use AI to offer data-driven insights.
• 31% use AI for writing sales content or prospect outreach messages.

Of sales professionals using generative AI tools for writing messages to prospects, 86% have reported that it is very effective.

Let’s dive a bit deeper into each of these use cases.

1. Automating manual tasks.

Of sales professionals, 35% reported using AI tools to automate manual tasks, helping them save about 2 hours and 15 minutes each day on average. Some of these tasks include data entry, note-taking, and scheduling.

For instance, sales reps can connect ChatSpot with their HubSpot CRM to automate tasks like email data capture, accurately importing contact and company information from a spreadsheet to CRM, enriching contact information, and getting rid of duplicate or redundant data.

They can also use ChatSpot or Gong to automatically capture and transcribe sales calls. These reps then have the much-needed context to close deals faster while saving them time they’d have otherwise spent taking notes.

2. Offering data-driven insights.

Of sales reps, 34% are using AI to get their hands on data-driven insights like sales forecasting, lead scoring, and pipeline analysis.

Let’s talk about sales forecasting first.

Did you know that 57% of sales reps forecast their pipeline inaccurately? That’s where AI sales forecasting tools like HubSpot Forecasting Software can help. Sales teams can use these tools to accurately forecast future revenue and monitor their pipeline.

Additionally, sales reps can use AI lead scoring tools like HubSpot’s Predictive Lead Scoring to identify the highest quality leads in their pipelines. These tools take thousands of data points and custom scoring criteria set by sales teams as input.

3. Generating content.

Using AI tools to write sales content or prospect outreach messages is the third most popular use case. Of sales reps, 31% use generative AI tools like HubSpot’s content assistant, ChatGPT, Wordtune, and many other tools for this very purpose. Of all the salespeople using these tools for generating content, 86% have claimed them to be very effective.

Some of the most popular use cases of generative AI tools are:

• Writing messages to prospects.
• Creating sales collateral.
• Repurposing messages or emails for different audiences.
• Repurposing content so that it can be used across different platforms.
• Fixing grammatical errors and fine-tuning messages for maximum impact.

Note: Even though these tools are very effective at generating messages or emails based on your prompts, adding a human touch is very important.

That said, let’s go through our hand-picked list of AI sales tools to help you make the right pick.

10 Best AI Sales Tools to Help You Reach Your Goals

Here’s a list of the top 10 AI tools for sales teams.

1. HubSpot

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We have incorporated AI into our platform in a variety of ways. First, our Forecasting Software helps sales teams accurately forecast future revenue and monitor their pipelines. Secondly, our Predictive Lead Scoring feature helps sales reps identify the highest quality leads in their pipelines by taking thousands of data points and custom scoring criteria as input.

Since we launched our Content Assistant, our customers haven’t been able to stop talking about it.

Content Assistant, powered by OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 model, is a suite of free, AI-powered features that help people across different departments ideate, create, and share top-notch content in a flash. Sales teams can use it to create collateral, craft messages, fix grammatical errors, and repurpose content, among other things.

What’s special about our AI Content Assistant is that you can integrate it with your favorite HubSpot features, making content creation feel like a breeze. On the other hand, other AI-powered tools like ChatGPT require an awkward copy/paste process.

Last but not least, sales teams can integrate ChatSpot, a conversational AI bot, with their HubSpot CRM to unlock a wide range of possibilities. You can automatically add contacts to the CRM, conduct extensive company research, and transcribe calls, among other things.

What we like:

• Rich AI features like lead scoring and sales forecasting.
• ChatSpot’s integration with HubSpot streamlines sales processes.
• Native content assistant eases content creation.
• Ability to automate time-consuming tasks like adding contacts to CRM, transcribing sales calls, and more.

Pricing: Free with HubSpot’s CRM. Plans start at $50 monthly, depending on the team size and subscription tier.

2. Apollo AI

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Apollo is a sales intelligence platform with a massive database of over 60 million companies and 260 million contacts. Sales teams use this platform to not only get their hands on information about their potential customers but also connect with them.

In simple terms, Apollo is an end-to-end sales platform that helps sales reps find, call, email, and close their ideal customers in one place.

Recently, they launched their AI assistant called Apollo AI. It’s powered by OpenAI’s GPT model and built on Apollo’s database of 60 million companies and 260 million contacts.

With Apollo AI, sales reps can craft and send hyper-personalized emails to every prospect in their sales pipelines without having to type a single word. Additionally, Apollo AI offers AI-powered email analysis and follow-up features that help sales reps craft follow-up emails that match the sentiment of each response.

What we like:

• Extensive database of 60 million companies and 260 million contacts.
• End-to-end sales platforms for B2B companies.
• Advanced search and filtering options.
• AI-powered writing assistant that helps craft hyper-personalized emails. Apollo AI also helps craft follow-up emails that match the sentiment of past responses.

Pricing: Free plans are available. Basic plans cost $49 per user monthly, billed annually. Professional plans cost $79 per user monthly when billed annually. Organization plans cost $99 per user monthly, billed annually.

3. Drift

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Drift is an AI-powered conversational platform that helps marketing, sales, and customer service teams deliver personalized customer experiences at scale. Drift enables sales teams to jumpstart conversations and improve sales efficiency.

The platform allows users to see real-time site analytics to see which visitors to target. Drift helps you identify which accounts you should prioritize by collecting buying signals from your contacts in your tech stack and using this information to calculate an AI-powered engagement score. This way, sales reps can gain insights into which accounts they should focus on the most.

Additionally, Drift helps deliver a personalized experience by giving your team information about what interests your potential customers and what content they consume. You can also initiate conversations with prospects via chatbots and more.

Last but not least, Drift will notify your sales reps the moment your potential customers land on your website, empowering them to initiate real-time conversations with them.

What we like:

• AI-powered engagement score, helping sales teams prioritize their efforts and focus on high-potential leads.
• Real-time notifications, empowering sales reps to initiate timely and meaningful conversations.
• Wide range of integration options.

Pricing: Plans start at $2,500 monthly when billed annually.

4. Gong’s Sales Enablement Software

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Gong is a revenue intelligence platform that turns customer interactions into strategic insights, helping customer teams gain insights into market advancements. You'll have total visibility into deals and sales performance.

One of its use cases is sales (sales enablement software), as it helps sales teams achieve their revenue targets more efficiently by providing AI-powered insights.

Gong offers a variety of features to help sales teams crush their quotas:

• Flows. Automate your outreach using a predetermined series of actions to engage with prospects at scale.
• Dialer. Auto-dial contacts from Gong and get your hands on AI-generated call highlights and outcomes.
• Emails. With the help of Gong’s AI and context from customer interactions, sales reps can create and send deal-closing emails.
• Account view. Sales teams can view all account information, like AI-recommended contacts, action items, and activity timelines, in one place.
• CRM updater. The ability to view and edit CRM fields for open deals instantly without requiring sales reps to bounce between tools.
• Recommended actions. Get a list of AI-recommended tasks for moving closing deals.
• Ease of video creation, all thanks to a wide range of pre-built templates, AI-video editor, and other features.

With Gong, sales teams can get AI-backed insights and recommendations to close deals and forecast effectively.

What we like:

• AI-based insights, helping sales reps close more deals.
• Integration with the entire tech stack, streamlining sales workflows and offloading manual tasks.

Pricing: Pricing is available upon request.

5. Hippo Video

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In the last few years, the use of videos for sales outreach has spiked, with over 60% of sales professionals using video messaging in their sales process. Hippo Video, an AI-powered platform, helps sales teams create videos at scale with added personalization.

The platform offers a wide range of pre-built templates, allowing the users to stitch personalized intros with pre-recorded videos, and more. You can also build custom flows based on your specific need. You won’t have to start from scratch every time you need a video.

You can also create customizable sales pages to make outreach even more engaging.

What we like:

Pricing: Free plans are available. Pro plans cost $20 per user monthly when billed annually. Teams pay $60 per user monthly. Enterprise plans cost $80 per user monthly annually.

6. Exceed.ai

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Exceed.ai’s sales assistant helps sales reps automate lead engagement, qualification, and meeting scheduling. You can then focus on other important activities like actually closing deals.

Exceed.ai’s sales assistant helps engage your prospects by automatically interacting with leads. Additionally, it answers questions, responds to requests, and handles objections automatically.

Exceed.ai’s sales assistant also does a great job at nurturing and following up with prospects to guide them down the funnel.

What we like:

• Automatically schedules meetings in sales reps’ calendars.
• Automatically assigns leads to salespeople.
• Integrates smoothly with a website in the form of a chatbot or email.

Pricing: Pricing is available upon request.

7. people.ai

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People.ai can be extremely powerful for your sales team, as it offers several key benefits like:

• Providing AI-driven insights to help sales teams make well-informed decisions and qualify/derisk the pipeline.
• Analyzing data from previous sales interactions to identify patterns and automatically predict what deals have the highest probability of closing.
• Automating time-consuming tasks like manual data entry in CRM, empowering sales reps to focus on important business activities.

People.ai also offers a feature called PeopleGlass, which simplifies CRM management. This tool turns allows sales reps to update pipelines, take next steps, and add notes all from a single view. This means sales teams can spend less time managing screens and more time closing deals.

What we like:

• Complete access to account information, helping sales teams get a better view of their history, touchpoints, and more.
• AI-driven CRM data entry.
• Sales forecasting.
• Helps sales reps manage their pipeline.

Pricing: Pricing is available upon request.

8. Dialpad

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Dialpad is a powerful AI-powered, cloud-based communication tool. The platform uses AI to provide real-time assistance to sales teams by connecting reps with live recommendations, scripts, and more. In addition, Dialpad provides advanced AI coaching with sentiment analysis.

Dialpad automatically generates full conversation transcription, tracks action items, and identifies keywords. This information is then sent directly to sales reps’ inboxes.

The platform is an all-in-one workspace, offering sales teams an intuitive environment for transitioning between team calls, prospect conversations, meetings, and messaging.

What we like:

• Real-time AI assistance.
• Advanced AI coaching, which includes sentiment analysis, QA scorecards, and in-call modes like barge-in, listen-in, and takeover.
• Robust analytics to provide deep insights into sales performance.

Pricing: Standard plans cost $15 per user monthly. Pro plans cost $25 per user monthly. Enterprise plans are available upon request.

9. ChatGPT

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OpenAI’s ChatGPT took the internet by storm when it rolled out to the masses in November 2022. It’s an artificial intelligence chatbot that has been trained on a diverse range of internet text to generate human-like responses based on prompts.

Sales teams can use ChatGPT to:

• Draft emails.
• Create sales proposals.
• Generate sales scripts.
• Create SOPs and sales documentation.
• Repurpose messages or emails for different audiences.

And so much more!

Almost every other AI tool today is powered by OpenAI’s GPT model, which is the brains behind ChatGPT. However, the downside of using ChatGPT is that you’ll have to copy internal information into the chatbot, as it doesn’t have the ability to access it unless provided.

HubSpot’s content assistant addresses this issue. This HubSpot-native tool can access the data within your HubSpot system without the need for manual copying and pasting.

What we like:

• Ground-breaking technology — nothing like we’ve ever seen before.
• Can be used for a wide range of tasks like creating sales proposals, video scripts, and so much more.

Pricing: Free.

10. Zoho’s Zia

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Zoho’s Zia is Zoho’s very own AI assistant within Zoho CRM. From predicting sales outcomes to automating time-consuming tasks to taking notes, Zoho’s Zia is a versatile AI assistant that helps sales reps manage CRM intelligently.

Zia can predict the outcome of sales activities, like the probability of ongoing deals, by analyzing various data points. Additionally, it can detect anomalies in sales trends and activities in real time. Zia can also automate repetitive tasks and take notes as users dictate.

Apart from this, Zia can enrich your Zoho CRM data by collecting information on contacts, accounts, and leads. Last but not least, it can analyze data and suggest pre-built workflows based on patterns in the sales process.

What we like:

• Real-time detection of anomalies in sales trends and activities.
• Note-taking capability.

Pricing: Free plans are available. Standard plans cost $14 per month when billed annually. Professional plans cost $23 per month when billed annually. Enterprise plans cost $40 per month when billed annually.

Best Practices for Using AI in Sales

Here are a few best practices for using AI in sales:

1. Choose a centralized sales platform.

The last thing you want is a disjointed sales tech stack. Imagine your sales team using ChatGPT to create sales collateral, Gong for extracting insights from calls, and HubSpot for lead scoring.

Adding too many tools to your workflow is never a good idea. Instead, it’s recommended to use a centralized sales platform like HubSpot, where your sales team can manage all their activities in one place. That should include lead scoring, content creation, or capturing and transcribing conversations.

2. Add the element of human touch.

There’s no doubt about how effective AI sales tools like ChatGPT, Gong, and HubSpot’s Content Assistant are. When provided with the right inputs, these tools can help you generate resonating sales pitches, proposals, and other content.

However, don’t make the mistake that so many sales reps do. Whether you’re using these tools to draft follow-up emails or create pitches, don’t use the text as-is. Adding a human touch to every single piece you generate is super important.

AI tools lack empathy, understanding of complex human emotions, and nuances that are inherent in human communication. Your potential customers are real people. They’ll see right through AI-generated content.

Double-check and add the element of human touch to all of your work.

3. Develop a people-first culture.

According to a report by Goldman Sachs, AI could replace nearly 300 million full-time jobs. Such numbers have got people scared. By introducing AI tools, you may encounter concerns and fear among employees regarding their job security.

It’s important to develop a people-first culture on priority. Executives or sales leaders should let their employees know that AI tools are here to assist, rather than replace people.

Otherwise, they’ll avoid these tools in the first place, resulting in missed opportunities for efficiency and growth.

4. Invest in employee training.

OpenAI revolutionized the AI industry. Since then, millions of people worldwide have got their hands on this revolutionary technology.

OpenAI revolutionized the AI industry. Since then, millions of people worldwide have got their hands on this revolutionary technology.

It’s likely some of your sales reps may already be using AI frequently. It’s also likely that some of your sales reps have not tried out any AI platform, which means they won’t know how to use these platforms in the first place.

To increase adoption, it’s important to teach your employees how to use this technology. Platforms like Gong and Apollo have streamlined customer onboarding. However, it’s important to provide comprehensive training and support to ensure adoption.

5. Be selective about the AI tools you use.

In this post, we’ve put together the 10 best AI sales tools in the market right now. However, it’s important to carefully evaluate your options. You’ll want a select number of tools that match your specific needs and objectives.

For instance, if you’re only looking for a generative AI tool, then it doesn’t make sense to invest in a tool like Apollo or Gong. If you’re looking for an AI sales assistant, ChatSpot or Zoho’s Zia are some great options.

It’s also important to consider factors like integration capabilities with your existing systems, ease of use, and pricing. Then, carefully evaluate the security measures implemented by the AI tool providers.

Getting Started

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the way we work. By leveraging AI in their workflows, sales reps can automate mundane tasks, generate high-quality content, and get their hands on data-driven insights to close more deals.