We analyzed the transaction data of 60+ companies with 21-100 employees to understand what tools a scale-up sales team pays for in Australia and New Zealand.
The sales SaaS stack is the collection of tools to generate leads, store customer data, create proposals, sign documents and review customer communication.
Salespeople's time is precious, and they should dedicate their time to high-value tasks such as building relationships and closing new business. Having access to the right software tools to automate daily tasks (prospecting, quote creation, etc.) means more time to acquire new business and increase ROI. To understand the significance of each element of the sales SaaS stack, we broke it down into the following categories:
Your CRM is your source of truth. It's where you store all your customer contact details, conversations, sales activities and visualize your pipeline.
1. Hubspot
Hubspot is one of the most popular CRMs for managing your sales, marketing, and operations efforts in a central place.
Popularity:
Like our report on the start-up Sales SaaS stack (twenty employees or less), Hubspot is the CRM of choice.
Cost: Sales Hub Professional starts at $450/m, and Enterprise is ~$1,200/m.
Hubspot discounts and credits: Hubspot offers discounts when you purchase through their sales team. Based on our data, we've seen companies achieve generous discounts of up to 10-50% when committing to a multi-year plan or materially increasing spending with the next renewal. Access our pricing insights on Hubspot and other CRMs insights.
Alternatives: Salesforce (24%), Pipedrive (15%), Close (1%), and Copper (1%).
Lead generation and prospecting tools play two key roles: they help you find prospective buyers based on selected criteria and extract their contact details.
2. Lusha
Lusha is a sales prospecting tool that helps you find email addresses and enrich your CRM. Companies use Lusha to automate their prospecting process.
Popularity:
Cost: You will need to pay for the premium plan to access their integration feature so you can automatically sync contact details to your CRM. This plan starts from $69/m per user.
Lusha discounts and credits: Lusha offers volume discounts through their sales team. You will need to purchase more than five licenses to liaise with sales. You can request access if you are looking for pricing intelligence on Lusha.
Alternatives: Hunter.io (8%), Rocketreach (7%) and ZoomInfo (7%)
3. ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo gives you access B2B data to connect with and close your most valuable buyers. It's best for companies who are investing and scaling their outbound sales strategy. For early-stage companies, you can get by with cheaper and self-serve alternatives.
Popularity:
Cost: Based on our data, scale-ups who adopt ZoomInfo are spending ~$15k/y in their first year. This cost will increase depending on the number of contact records you want to access.
ZoomInfo discounts and credits: No public start-up credits are available for ZoomInfo, but you can negotiate a discount. You can read more on our pricing intelligence on ZoomInfo.
Alternatives: Lusha (16%), Hunter.io (8%), and Rocketreach (7%)
4. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn is one of the best free tools for B2B companies to prospect and engage with potential customers. When scaling sales, upgrading from Teams to Advanced Plus is a relatively small investment, especially if you're looking at saving time updating your records automatically in popular CRMs like Hubspot or Salesforce.
Popularity:
Cost: Teams is ~$959/year and Enterprise ~$1,600/year per license.
LinkedIn discounts and credits: We've seen companies negotiate up to 45% off Sales Navigator Team and Enterprise plans. You can read more here if you're looking for pricing intelligence on LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Alternatives: ZoomInfo (7%)
Sales intelligence provides sales managers and reps with data to help them sell more and personalize their prospecting efforts. Rather than hope, you can leverage data in your sales and marketing flows to double down on what works.
5. Gong
Gong empowers customer-facing teams to take advantage of their most valuable assets – customer interactions, which are automatically captured and analyzed. Based on our data from the start-up sales SaaS stack, no companies with less than twenty employees are paying for Gong. This tool might be best-fitted for larger companies with a medium/large sales team.
Popularity:
Cost: Gong Professional starts at $1,600/year per license.
Gong discounts and credits: We've seen companies receive up to 50% off the retail price on Gong licenses. When purchasing Gong, you will need to liaise with their sales team. They don't currently have a self-serve way to purchase. You can read more here if you're looking for pricing intelligence on Gong.
Alternatives: Outreach (10%)
6. Clearbit
Clearbit Enrichment instantly appends 100+ data points on a company, its technology, and its employees to every record you own — so you can turn leads into customers sooner.
Popularity:
Cost: The enrichment API costs $99/m for 275 API requests or $199/m for 550 API **requests.
Clearbit discounts and credits: Clearbit offers discounts depending on the volume you’re looking to purchase through their sales team. You can request access if you are looking for pricing intelligence on Clearbit.
Alternatives: ZoomInfo (7%)
The way sales teams collaborate with prospective and existing customers is quickly evolving in 2023. While email and phone calls used to be the only vehicles to communicate with customers, now it's a mixture of video conferencing, Slack collaboration, and asynchronous video recordings that help sales teams engage and inform their stakeholders.
7. Zoom
Zoom allows you to host high-quality and secure video meetings with your customers. It has become an essential piece of tech for any sales team to host virtual meetings or webinars.
Popularity:
Cost: Zoom Pro starts from $14.99/m per user.
Zoom discounts and credits: When your licenses grow into double digits, you will be put in touch with an account manager, where you might be able to request a discount. You can request access if you are looking for pricing intelligence on Zoom.
Alternatives: Google Meet and Microsoft Teams teams have products that compete directly against Zoom.
8. Slack
Slack has become a household name for start-ups and scale-ups. It's where conversations happen internally and where you can create a central place to collaborate with your customers.
Popularity:
Cost: Slack Pro plans start from $7.25/m per user. You must be on their paid plan to bring your customers into a Slack channel.
Slack discounts and credits: Slack does not discount its Pro plan. If you upgrade to a paid plan, you can get 25% off your first year with JoinSecret. From the second year onwards, you can expect 10-30% (depending on the volume) on their Business+ or Enterprise plans. You can request access if you are looking for pricing intelligence on Slack.
Alternatives: Google Meet and Microsoft Teams teams have products that compete directly against Zoom.
9. Loom
Loom allows users to record asynchronous messages to their customers. It's great for salespeople to record demos, reply to messages or create a more personalized experience.
Popularity:
Cost: Loom costs $8/m per license if you pay annually.
Loom Discounts and credits: JoinSecret has a Loom deal where start-ups can get 25 users for free in the first year. You can request access if you are looking for pricing intelligence on Loom.
Alternatives: Our data doesn't suggest a strong alternative to Loom. We expect many companies to use alternatives such as Vidyard on their free plan.
Booking a meeting used to be burdensome. Coordinating schedules with multiple parties to schedule meetings can be done seamlessly with tools like Calendly. For a scale-up, the primary consideration is whether you want to add another tool to your stack. Established CRMs like Salesforce and Hubspot offer some of these functionalities, so you might want to check your CRM offering first.
10. Calendly
Calendly is a modern scheduling platform that allows you to share your availability with others, as well as create group meetings and take payments.
Popularity:
Cost: Calendly Professional starts at $15/m per user
Calendly discounts and credits: It’s uncommon for companies to require enterprise pricing for Calendly during the scale-up phase.
Alternatives: Meeting schedule software is available within most popular CRMs. Hubspot, Salesforce, and Pipedrive have this functionality. You may not need to pay for this separately.
eSignature software enables teams to automate the signature process, produce quotes, send reminders and build powerful workflows to store documents securely.
11. DocuSign
DocuSign helps companies connect and automate how they prepare, sign, act on, and manage agreements. DocuSign is a pioneer in the eSignature space and is the go-to solution for Enterprises. Unfortunately, it doesn't offer a free tier for start-ups. Compared to alternatives, this product is on the pricey end. If your use case is simple, you may be better off using alternatives like HelloSign, PandaDoc, or signNow.
Popularity:
Cost: DocuSign eSignature products commonly require you to pay each time you send for signature. It's common to pay $2-$4 per envelope. For a growing company, it can be difficult to determine what to pay, and many overestimate and pay for envelopes they don't require.
DocuSign discounts and credits: It's likely when buying DocuSign, you will deal with their sales team. This means you will be able to request a discount. You can read more here if you're looking for pricing intelligence on DocuSign.
Alternatives: HelloSign (16%), Pandadoc (13%), Qwilr (12%) and signNow (4%).
Are you interested in receiving SaaS intelligence on other tools in your stack? We've audited 100+ companies and identified more than $1.6M of savings with our auditing software. Sign up for a free trial to Hudled and find savings within minutes!
Please note that all currencies are in USD, and we excluded free tools from our analysis.