We Tested 13 AI Sales Tools: Here’s What You Need to Know About Them

AI sales tools can boost prospecting, outreach, and pipeline—but only if they fit your process. We hands-on tested 13 options.

We’re not here to challenge your opinion. What we will do is share our own insights after testing 13 of today’s top AI sales tools for pipeline management, sales prospecting, and customer interactions.

Curious about how machine learning and artificial intelligence work, and how they can help sales professionals make data-driven decisions? If so, enjoy the ride.

Should You Use AI Sales Tools? (When They Help—And When They Don’t)

The answer to this question is yes and no. Helpful, right? 😉

But seriously, if you're thinking about investing in AI sales software, you should be purposeful about it. 

Why? Because it's easy to fall into the trap of the AI craze. Let’s be honest—you don’t need all these shiny new tools that do similar things. What you need is to sit down and decide which tools fit your team and your process and how much you should outsource to them. (We talked about this in our article about the future of AI in sales.)

Our CEO, Steli, says this: 

At the same time, Nick Persico, our Director of Sales at Close, shared his perspective:

Here’s how using AI sales tools can help your team: 

• Save time by automating tasks: If you can save five hours a month thanks to AI, you can devote those hours to communicating with your customers. Outsource repetitive tasks, and your team becomes more productive and focused.
• Better manage and prioritize leads: Being focused in sales is critical, and going through long lead lists is definitely a time-consuming task. Streamline that lead data entry and analysis by using AI tools. Chase the most promising leads and improve sales productivity all at once.
• Improve outreach and prospecting: If an AI tool can help you personalize your emails based on your prospect's profile, do lead scoring, and assess whether they may succeed, go for it. Thanks to using AI-powered tools in your sales cycle, you can reach out to more people while keeping it relevant and timely.

There’s plenty you can do with machine learning and artificial intelligence. But it’s up to you to decide how you’ll use these tools, and to what extent. 

Ready to see your options? Let’s explore the top 13 AI sales tools on the market today. 

1. Cold Email Generator

This Cold Email Generator is a free tool from Close. It’ll help you save time, ensure consistency, and scale your sales outreach. Ship first drafts in seconds, then layer in your positioning, ICP language, and voice of customer.

How does this free tool work? The idea behind Cold Email Generator is straightforward. You just build your prompt based on the following:

• Your company or a product you want to sell
• Your company description
• Desired email outcome (you have a couple of options to choose from)

Thanks to the AI, you’ll get a personalized email that you can further customize and enrich with your internal know-how, for example, based on:

• Your company's or product’s positioning
• Audience research and your ICP
• Feedback from your most valuable customers

Key features:

• AI-powered templates that you can adjust to your needs
• Personalization based on your company description
• Choice of desired email outcome

Best for:

This simple tool is useful for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) looking to boost their outbound efforts. Instead of spending loads of time coming up with the ugly first draft, you’ll get a nice email that can be optimized further with internal insights. 

Why we love this cold email generator: 

Well, because it’s ours, right? But jokes aside, this simple tool speeds up the creation of your email campaigns. And you know that time in sales activities is precious. 

2. Email Subject Line Generator

Sales is a game of seconds. If you catch a prospect's attention with a great subject line, you have a couple of extra seconds to persuade them to take action. And that’s why you should use our Subject Line Generator. You choose what topic you want to cover, the tone and length, and that’s it. You get 10 different subject lines to choose from.

Why we love this subject line generator:

It’s a great way to get your creative juices flowing, and it’s freakin’ simple to use. (Plus, you can combine it with our cold email generator to get started creating your first cold email sequences.)

3. ChatGPT Plus

This tool doesn't need much intro, right? It’s just super impressive how much time and effort it can save your sales team. The possibilities are endless, from generating follow-up emails through fighting writer's block to summarizing your meeting notes. And so on.

And we have even more cool news. Close has a ChatGPT plugin, which means you can integrate Close and ChatGPT to:

• Create personalized emails
• Share valuable prospect information
• Analyze data using all the details stored in Close

Sounds pretty awesome, right? It’s like having a personal AI sales assistant at your disposal, 24/7.

Key features: 

• Natural language processing (capability to understand and respond to customer inquiries)
• 24/7 availability: With ChatGPT Plus, you can provide round-the-clock customer support without additional human resources
• Customizable responses

Best for:

GPT-4/ChatGPT Plus is the best option for sales reps who want to optimize their workloads. And if you ask us, ChatGPT Plus is great for companies of any size, really. But knowing that small businesses have more limited resources than enterprise companies, we think it’s especially a great addition to small sales teams. 

Why we love this generative AI tool:

While we had more of a love-hate relationship with ChatGPT 3.5, the 4.0 is pure gold. It works better, gives more logical answers, and is more creative without being cheesy.

4. Fathom

Fathom is an AI-driven tool that records, transcribes, and summarizes your meetings.

It works for Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. 

What's cool about Fathom is its native integrations with popular CRMs, including Close. You can automatically sync the meeting transcription with the right contact in your system.

Psst… speaking of Close, we’d love for you to try a 14-day trial on us. 😉

Key features: 

• Automatic meeting summaries
• Access to fully transcribed call recording
• Automated call notes sync with your CRM
• Option to copy transcript to your documents

Best for: 

Fathom is free and recommended for small and mid-sized businesses or early-stage startups. It's a great puzzle piece in your sales stack if you don't want to spend much money on enterprise-class video transcription tools.

Why we love this AI video transcription tool:

As James Urie, our Sr. Partnerships Manager at Close, mentioned, "Thanks to Fathom, I've gotten in the habit of being present during meetings versus note-taking." So, Fathom can really take the quality of your sales calls to new heights. 

5. Loom

Loom AI is a video comms platform that lets you collaborate with your team and prospects in an async way. It's simple to use, and you can record, share, and interact with videos.

In 2023, Loom introduced some cool AI features that made the tool even more useful. Interestingly, their main headline on the AI-related landing page at that time was “The AI features you never knew you needed." For us, bullseye.

Key features: 

• Screen recording and cam bubble
• Unlimited transcriptions
• AI stuff: Instant title creation, instant summaries, video organized with chapters (AI add-on available in Business and Enterprise plans)

Best for: 

According to G2, Loom is mostly used by small businesses and mid-market companies. If you’re a sales representative, some use cases would include:

• Sending personalized video messages to your leads
• Doing short product demos focused only on aspects important for this particular prospect
• Addressing objections thrown your way, and giving prospects a detailed explanation

Why we love this AI video recording tool:

Loom is just this tool that made our workflow sooo much more manageable. It removes meetings from our calendars (which is already a great reason to use it!). Also, our prospects get short, personalized videos instead of emails, which helps us build better rapport.

6. Chorus

Chorus (owned by Zoominfo) is an all-in-one, AI-powered conversation intelligence platform. It analyzes all the customer interactions across phone calls, emails, and video meetings, and gives you clear insights on where the deal stands based on those touchpoints. 

The tool also gives you an overview of your team's strong areas and weaknesses. If you’re a sales manager, you can improve skills within your team and drive better outcomes.

It can also help you with sales forecasting and identifying risks associated with a deal. It sounds more like an enterprise feature where closing deals takes more time.

Key features: 

• Capturing, analyzing, and transcribing calls, meetings, and emails
• Real-time sales performance assessment and coaching
• Sales forecasting that syncs with your CRM
• Many integration capabilities with CRMs and communication platforms

Best for: 

According to G2, mid-market companies choose Chorus most of the time. These sales teams can improve their productivity and optimize processes with a tool that's quite versatile. 

It's best for salespeople who want to be better prepared for meetings without spending many hours on the actual prep. 

Why we love this AI sales intelligence tool:

Well, we love it because we strive to level up our sales team's performance. And Chorus provides exactly this. It gives us insights from sales calls that we could miss and helps us improve skills within the team. The only drawback is that it doesn't have a native integration with Close.

7. Crystal

Crystal is a personality data platform based on machine learning and AI that helps you understand prospects’ characters. 

It means you can dive deeper into a specific person's communication style and behavior. And it's pure gold as, having this knowledge, it’s easier to build chemistry with your prospects.

The tool uses DISC assessment and even sends suggestions on effectively communicating with prospects.

Key features: 

• DISC assessment  
• LinkedIn extension
• Writing Assistant for Gmail and LinkedIn

Best for: 

Crystal is designed for individuals who work in small and midsize businesses. The tool is easily accessible, with pricing starting at $49 per month for the paid plan.

Even if your team is small, it’s often the case that you deal with many leads. It also means many personalities and communication styles to deal with. Crystal can help you save time by providing tailored sales strategies for each specific personality you encounter, eliminating the need to rely on guesses to approach leads.

Why we love this AI personality data platform:

We don't like guesswork. And we hate jumping on a call only to realize our assumptions about a prospect were wrong.

So, Crystal lets us feel confident and prepared before the call by providing insights into the lead's communication style, personality, and preferences. It gives us the information we need. Nothing more and nothing less.

8. Lavender

Lavender is an AI sales email coach that gives you tips on improving emails' length, tone, complexity, and subject lines, and creating less generic emails that don't get deleted.

Thanks to the browser extension that combines AI writer assistance, social data, and inbox productivity tools, you can improve your emails, build customer relationships, and avoid being lost in the spam folder abyss. Plus, you can verify contact information and get details on your prospects in one click.

Key features: 

• The AI email coach—fixes everything that lowers your chances of getting a reply
• Personalization assistant—suggests personalized intros and shows prospect news, data, and insights quickly
• Team email intelligence to coach based on real data-backed insights
• Email copy enhancer

Best for: 

Lavender is an interesting tool for mid-sized businesses and startups to try out. It may fit well with your sales team if you want to speed up email creation while improving its quality.

Thanks to detecting things like long sentences, complexity, and interpreted tone of the email, you can write emails that have more chances for success. Just remember to check the AI outputs and adjust them if you see fit.

Why we love this AI email tool:

We absolutely love the feature that allows you to simply paste the recipient's address into your email, giving you the opportunity to gain a better understanding of their personality. For instance, we discovered that one of our potential leads is a "Thinker" type with a critical mindset. We learned that this individual prefers detailed answers to their problems and would rather not be nudged in any way. Isn't it mind-blowing? It's like having a personalized guide on how to interact with each person.

9. Copy.ai

Copy.ai is an AI tool that lets you create a copy in seconds. You can speed up email content creation efforts, get a solid base for editing this copy, and create email sequences faster.

What's cool about Copy.ai is that you can paste your brand tone of voice into the tool and set it as default. All in all, both sales folks and marketers can use the tool as it offers various formats useful for both teams.

Key features: 

• AI-powered copywriting 
• Various copywriting formats—create catchy email subject lines, follow-up emails, or even feature-advantage-benefit sales emails
• Every sales email is based on how you'll describe your product and brand

Best for: 

So, Copy.ai is a good fit for many businesses, but most reviews on G2 come from small biz. Unsurprisingly, small companies often have limited resources, so having an AI writing assistant is an excellent thing that speeds up getting shit done.

Why we love this AI writing tool:

It helps the sales and marketing team optimize email marketing activities like getting to polished final drafts faster and removing writer's block entirely—it’s just helpful!

10. Warmer.ai

Warmer.ai is a tool that helps you personalize your emails to companies you're pitching to. It's a great tool for sales who want to send warmer emails and get actual replies. 

The tool is very simple. You just have to add what company you're representing, what you help customers with and who’s the recipient of your sales pitch. Warmer.ai builds that person's profile so you can send high-quality emails mentioning information related to them in the right context.

What's cool is that you can either send this email from your email account or integrate it with Mailshake to build the whole sequence of cold emails.

Key features: 

• Highly-personalized emails based on prospect’s LinkedIn
• Integration with Mailshake
• Email score 

Best for:

It's good for sales teams of all sizes that want to create emails that resonate with the person they're contacting. This tool could be best for mid-sized companies as the Starter plan costs $59 monthly.

Why we love this AI email generator: 

Well, we like it because it's very focused on the cold email task, and the tool is straightforward. That said, we think warmer.ai could have more free credits for the start of testing purposes. In this case, Lavender's offer is better in pricing and experience so far.

11. Drift

We can say one thing about Drift—they've been around since before all this AI stuff was cool. Really, they're pioneers in the use of AI-driven chatbots for businesses. Drift is simply an AI sales tool that helps you engage with website visitors and facilitate conversations. 

The tool is designed in a way that lets your prospects have real-time interaction so they can specify their needs and get directed to appropriate sales that can take the conversation further. 

Key features: 

• Automated chatbots that can interact with visitors 24/7
• Live chat—you can have real-time conversations with your website visitors
• Intent analysis—the tool uses AI to analyze the user's intent by analyzing the language and context of the conversation
• Lead qualification—the AI bot can automatically prioritize and qualify leads in your sales pipeline based on specific criteria

Best for: 

Drift can be used both by marketers and sales teams. In the latter's case, Drift is a good fit for teams looking to improve lead generation, lead qualification, and sales engagement through an AI-based chatbot. 

Pricing-wise, Drift is rather for bigger players as the cheapest plan is still pretty pricey—it starts at $2,500 per month, billed annually.

Why we love this AI conversation chatbot:

We’re not currently using Drfit on our website, but we still think it’s a great addition for companies selling enterprise-class software. Its AI-powered chatbots and live chat functionality give these businesses an advantage by enabling personalized and real-time interactions with potential customers.

12. Lucy

Lucy is a pretty interesting concept made by a company called Curious Thing. It's a voice AI assistant designed for businesses wanting to answer every prospect's call. 

The tool has a Calendly integration, automatically allowing you to book appointments with your prospects. Your prospects can see free slots and find a suitable one for a meeting. Cool stuff, huh? 

Key features: 

• Voice-activated automation—Lucy answers every call and books appointments on the spot
• Calendly integration helps Lucy suggest available time and suggest it to prospects
• Natural language processing—Lucy uses natural language processing to understand and interpret spoken commands 

Best for: 

Lucy might be a good fit for midsize and enterprise companies. The company doesn't disclose pricing, which may indicate they're looking for bigger customers. We'd say Lucy is for sales teams that want to test out if there's really big potential in these unanswered calls.

Why we love this AI phone answering tool:

We love the idea of this tool because it just automates calling and saves valuable time for sales teams. Also, we think that from the pure customer experience perspective, this tool rocks.

13. Exceed.ai

Exceed.ai by Genesys is an AI conversational marketing tool with an AI sales assistant. In particular, sales folks can use Exceed to automatically schedule meetings, follow up inbound leads, or automate lead qualification processes.

Key features: 

• AI-powered conversations so the lead gets contextually right messages
• Meeting scheduler that helps schedule meetings with qualified leads
• AI-backed lead qualification that asks qualifying questions and hands over quality leads based on their answers
• Lead re-engagement that helps scale and find more qualified leads

Best for: 

After exploring Exceed more in-depth, it's a good choice for teams that want to scale without drastically increasing headcount. 

Exceed doesn't share the official pricing, so it's targeted at enterprise companies. Capterra shares that their pricing is $1950 per month, which might be too pricey for small businesses or early-stage startups.

Why we love this AI sales tool: 

We like Exceed for its versatility. It offers customer engagement automation, qualification, and meeting scheduling—things that save sales teams time and deliver fresh and well-qualified leads at the front door. 

We'd also say that pricing shared by Capterra can be justified as the tool acts like a virtual assistant, so it's still cheaper to get the tool rather than hire a new person.

Test Out AI Sales Tools That Sound Like a Good Fit for Your Sales Stack

That’s a wrap! After testing out these 13 tools, it's obvious that their features often overlap. So, you don't need them all; you just need the right tools.

When choosing tools to test, remember they're not a substitute for human interactions and your team's expertise. The most successful sales strategies combine the power of artificial intelligence and predictive analysis with a human touch to build genuine relationships and make customer interactions count.

Don’t forget: Close is adding more AI-infused features to your sales workflow, including a new GPT plugin, AI-generated transcripts and call summaries, and an AI-powered email Rewrite Assistant. Start using it for free today!