11 Best Lead Management Software in 2024
- March 7, 2022
Sales pros are always swamped at work. But guess what? They’re not always selling.
According to Pipedrive’s 2020-2021 State of Sales Report, only 53% of salespeople reportedly spend most of their day selling which means 47% are not.
What are they doing instead? Pipedrive’s report found that 36% spend most of their time generating leads while 46% are busy prospecting leads.
All that to chase a 3.2-3.5% conversion rate?
And here’s the thing: The conversion rate doesn’t factor in the revenue. So sales teams may be barking up the wrong tree while high-value customers slip through the cracks.
If you were on the fence about lead management software when you started reading this, now you know why it’s of paramount importance.
Whether you’re running a one-person show or managing a massive team, lead management software can help you eliminate busy work, stop wasting time on unqualified prospects, and allow you to get back to what’s most important—selling.
What Is Lead Management Software?
Lead management software helps you manage all your leads in a centralized database, track and score leads, view lead details, segment and nurture them and streamline outreach.
Basic lead management software takes care of generating, organizing, and tracking leads, while more sophisticated versions help you grow your database and tailor your strategy for each lead.
So if you were to ask, “Which is the best lead management software?”, the answer is that it depends. The best lead management software often boils down to your individual needs and budget.
What Are the Best Lead Management Software Providers in 2024?
- Salesforce Sales Cloud
- Apptivo CRM
- Nutshell
- FreeAgent CRM
- Monday.com
- Pipedrive
- Zendesk
- Keap
- HubSpot Sales
- LeadSquared
- Zoho CRM
5 Benefits of Lead Management Software
Aside from the obvious benefits of saving time and resources (and potentially your sanity), lead management software helps you manage leads effectively.
1. Leave no lead behind
If you have been managing leads manually on a Google Sheet or Excel, you’re bound to slip up and lose out on some potential customers. Manual processes always leave room for human error. But to err is to lose revenue, and you don’t want that to happen, especially in this competitive landscape.
From in-person events to people who DM you on social media, lead management software helps you capture all leads.
2. Learn who’s ready to buy
“50% of your prospects are just not a good fit for what you sell” – Sales Insight Lab, 2021. That might be disappointing to read, but you know what’s worse than chasing a deal that fell through at the last minute?
A prospect that was never going to convert.
Lead management software allows you to qualify prospects by filtering bad-quality leads and scoring them, so you only deal with potential customers.
3. Nurture leads on the fence
If a lead isn’t ready to pull the trigger today, it doesn’t mean they never will. Instead of neglecting them, lead management tools allow you to meticulously nurture those relationships and track them as they make their way through the funnel.
Eventually, when they are in the market for a product or service like yours, you’re bound to be the top choice.
4. Say goodbye to low-quality leads
According to HubSpot, generating leads is the top priority for marketers. But that can have some negative repercussions.
With leads as their north star metric, marketers may also be collecting low-quality, non-SQL leads and passing them on to the sales team. Factor in the spend to collect these low-quality leads, and you’ll see why lead management software comes in handy.
You can filter and score leads throughout the sales process with the best tools and dump leads that will never convert.
5. Gather data for optimization
Lead management software captures a ton of data. You can use it to power your business decisions and improve your marketing and sales strategy.
For instance, you notice leads in the education sector take a lot longer to close and need more resources to be convinced. You can work with the marketing team to create tailored sales enablement content, build case studies, and retarget them with ads containing testimonials.
6 Features of Lead Management Software
While you may be in the market for a lead management software that solves your specific pain points, here are six features all tools should ideally have:
1. Capture leads automatically
Leads can come from numerous sources—website, events, social media, prospect lists, and ads. Lead management tools can dynamically capture these leads across all mediums.
If you have existing lists, the software helps you import these rapidly and removes duplicate names to help you automatically clean up your list.
2. Intelligently route leads to reps
Reps are assigned leads based on different criteria. Perhaps you want to assign a lead based on geography or the rep’s expertise in an industry or product. Lead management software allows you to do all that intelligently.
New opportunities show up in a rep’s inbox based on the rules you set, helping you distribute leads instantly to the right rep.
3. Schedule and track lead activity
Keeping track of multiple leads manually is almost impossible. But with lead management software, the process is seamless.
It helps reps monitor all previous communication like meetings, phone calls, and emails and schedule emails or remind reps to follow up.
4. Analyze sales metrics
Acquisition rates, conversion, close ratios, and sales cycles—you can track all these metrics and more with lead management tools. This helps identify the right channels to source leads, the quality of leads, and measure performance.
Some software also allow you to uncover trends and patterns that can improve sales and marketing processes.
5. Secure your data
Prospect data is highly confidential. You don’t want it to end up in the wrong hands or even expose it to internal teams to avoid data breaches. The best lead management software tools secure your data and limit user access for enhanced security.
6. Integrate with other apps
No one likes siloed solutions, and your lead management software should definitely not become a bottleneck. You should be able to connect your lead management tool to other apps you already use either through native and supported integrations or APIs.
11 Best Lead Management Software in 2024
Here are the 11 best intranet lead management software vendors for businesses based on feature sets, user reviews & ratings and pricing.
1. Salesforce Sales Cloud
- Pricing: $25-$300 per user/month
- G2 Review Rating: 4.2/5
- Capterra Rating: 4.4/5
Sales Cloud is a lead management software by Salesforce that helps not only nurture leads and automate the sales process but also track marketing ROI resulting in a full pipeline and higher close rates.
The lead tracking software helps reps save time, acquire lead data, nurture leads, and assign tasks to the right people. Sales Cloud is more than a lead management software. You can use sales, marketing, and contact management tools to help your business.
Main Features:
- Rich Activity Timeline – view and access updated contact information
- Sales Path – understand best practices and relevant documents using Sales Path
- Lead tracking – see where a lead came from, get actionable insights and send emails from the CRM
- Automatic lead scoring – helps you score leads intelligently
- Automatic routing – ensure leads get assigned to the right reps
- Track marketing campaigns – learn the impact of marketing activities and make smarter decisions
Product Details:
- Integrates with: Outlook, Google apps, Lightning sync, Web Services API
- App Available: Android & iOS.
- Training: Personalized help available through Success Services
- Secure: Org security, user security, and programmatic security.
- Free Trial: 30-day free trial
Price:
- Essentials – $25 per user/month
- Professional – $75 per user/month
- Enterprise – $150 per user/month
- Unlimited – $300 per user/month
Notable brands that use Sales Cloud
Honeywell, McAfee, and PayPal.
2. Apptivo CRM
- Pricing: Free-$20 per user/month. Contact for enterprise pricing
- G2 Review Rating: 4.3/5
- Capterra Rating: 4.4/5
Apptivo CRM helps you effectively track and manage leads in a centralized database. The platform helps you source leads, capture web leads, and schedule follow-ups with them.
Like Sales Cloud, Apptivo is not just a lead management software. But it isn’t limited to marketing and sales tools. It includes a contact center, invoicing software, distribution management, and a lot of other software that businesses can use.
Main Features:
- Lead scoring – assign a rank or score to prospects
- Lead conversions – identify leads and convert them into a contact, customer, or opportunity
- Customizable views – use custom filters and sortable lead views or save your filters to create your views.
- Unlimited custom fields – add any number of custom fields to your lead details helps you score leads intelligently
- Generate instant reports – extract data and create instant reports to share with other employees
Product Details:
- Integrates with: Google Suite, API Calls, Office 365, Slack, and more
- App Available: Android, iOS, and macOS.
- Training: Available in the Lite plan and above
- Secure: Field-based security, role-based security, territory management, and data set access.
- Free Trial: 30-day free trial
Price:
- Starter – Free forever
- Lite – $8 per user/month
- Premium – $12 per user/month
- Ultimate – $20 per user/month
- Enterprise – Contact for pricing
Notable brands that use Apptivo
Sodexo, Audi, and Sephora.
3. Nutshell
- Pricing: $20-$42 per user/month for Nutshell Sales. Nutshell Marketing is available as an add-on
- G2 Review Rating: 4.2/5
- Capterra Rating: 4.2/5
Nutshell is an all-in-one sales and marketing tool designed for B2B sales teams. Use the platform to automate your sales process, create performance reports, automate emails, collect leads, and manage your pipeline.
Designed to be easy to set up and use, Nutshell is also one of the most affordable lead management tools on the list and integrates with a ton of third-party apps seamlessly.
Main Features:
- Sales automation – design and execute a time-saving sales process
- Reporting – get customizable reports to measure performance and track progress
- Email – use email templates, automated sequences, and marketing software integration
- Forms – collect leads from your website with embeddable forms
- Contact management – store contact details, call details, and emails in one place
- Pipeline management – view and manage your pipeline, save views and share them with your team
Product Details:
- Integrates with: Google Workspace, Office 365, Ring Central, Slack, Constant Contact, Unbounce, and more
- App Available: Android and iOS
- Training: Chat and phone support for all customers, including trial users
- Secure: Bank-grade, 256-bit TLS 1.2 encryption, network security, operational security
- Free Trial: 14-day free trial
Price:
- Starter – $20 per user/month
- Pro – $42 per user/month
Notable brands that use Nutshell
Bloomerang, NEW, and Genoskin.
4. FreeAgent CRM
- Pricing: $100 per user/month
- G2 Review Rating: 4.2/5
- Capterra Rating: 4.6/5
FreeAgent is a CRM and work management tool rolled into one. Designed to be used by the entire company, FreeAgent is versatile like other tools on the list but the lead management solution is available only in its B2B Full Sales Funnel plan.
The platform allows you to capture and track leads as well as collaborate with them to generate and qualify leads.
Main Features:
- Integrated lead capture – capture leads from multiple channels via integrations
- Robust reporting – customize your views and build data-rich dashboards
- Funnel automation – use rules to reduce conversion times
Product Details:
- Integrates with: Zapier, Zoom, Mailchimp, Office 365, and Gmail
- App Available: Android and iOS
- Training: You can subscribe to Success-as-a-service for additional support.
- Secure: SSO, email privacy, email blacklisting, and access control
- Free Trial: Available post demo
Price:
- B2B Full Sales Funnel – $100 per user/month
Notable brands that use FreeAgent
University of Maryland, Global PPE, and The New Primal.
5. Monday.com
- Pricing: Free-$16 per user/month
- G2 Review Rating: 4.7/5
- Capterra Rating: 4.6/5
Monday is a CRM platform that lets you handle everything from pre-sales to post-sales in a single platform. Designed to be used by the entire company, FreeAgent is versatile like other tools on the list, but the lead management solution is available only in its B2B Full Sales Funnel plan.
The platform allows you to capture and track leads as well as collaborate with them to generate and qualify leads.
Main Features:
- Activity management – log lead details to keep track of lead communication
- Sales forecasting – set the deal value and probability of closing and use reports to forecast your revenue
- Lead capturing – integrate with existing tools, upload data, or add a form to collect leads
Product Details:
- Integrates with: Zapier, Zoom, Mailchimp, Office 365, Salesforce, HubSpot and Gmail
- App Available: Android and iOS
- Training: Live and on-demand webinars.
- Secure: App security, infrastructure security, data encryption, physical security, and access control
- Free Trial: 14-day free trial
Price:
- Free – for 2 seats
- Basic – $8 per user/month
- Standard – $10 per user/month
- Pro – $16 per user/month
- Enterprise – contact for pricing
Notable brands that use Monday
Uber, Hulu, and Adobe.
6. Pipedrive
- Pricing: $12.50-$99 per user/month
- G2 Review Rating: 4.2/5
- Capterra Rating: 4.5/5
Pipedrive’s CRM and lead management software helps you increase the number of deals in your pipeline, the average value of the deals, and reduce the time it takes to close a deal.
Along with essential features, Pipedrive also offers a chatbot that you can configure and collect leads from, the option to create a product catalog, and the option to create custom filters you can share with the team.
Main Features:
- Pipeline management – create and customize as many visual pipelines needed
- Leads inbox – declutter your CRM and improve your pre-sales communication
- Chat – use a chatbot or live chat to collect and pre-qualify leads from the site
- Web forms – create highly customizable forms to embed on the site or share with a link
- Smart contact data – import information about a lead from the web with a single click
Product Details:
- Integrates with: Zapier, Zoom, Mailchimp, Office 365, Gmail, and more
- App Available: Android and iOS
- Training: Pipedrive Academy
- Secure: Separate databases fully encrypted
- Free Trial: 14-day free trial
Price:
- Essential – $12.50 per user/month
- Advanced – $24.90 per user/month
- Professional – $49.90 per user/month
- Enterprise – $99 per user/month
Add-ons are also available.
Notable brands that use Pipedrive
Amazon, Vimeo, and RE/Max
7. Zendesk
- Pricing: $19-$199 per user/month
- G2 Review Rating: 4.3/5
- Capterra Rating: 4.4/5
Zendesk Sell is a user-friendly CRM that takes care of your lead management needs. In-built features like Pipeline Conversion Report lets you watch out for bottlenecks, and funnel tracking helps you understand how your activities translate into revenue.
You can also search for prospects in the customizable Lead Smart List so you can access information easily. Plus, Zendesk automatically logs all your calls and emails so nothing slips through the cracks.
Main Features:
- CRM – integrated sales tool to keep track of your leads and improve visibility
- Email intelligence – track emails, receive notifications, and automate sequences
- Native dialer – record calls, receive call analytics, and use scripts and notes
- Prospecting – discover new opportunities, build lists, and increase conversion
- Reporting & analytics – get benchmarks, export data, and forecast growth
Product Details:
- Integrates with: Slack, Dialpad, PandaDoc, Box for Sell, and more
- App Available: Android and iOS
- Training: Free online courses.
- Secure: Physical security, vendor security, data security, network security, app security, encryption
- Free Trial: 14-day free trial
Price:
- Sell Team – $19 per user/month
- Sell Professional – $49 per user/month
- Sell Enterprise – $99 per user/month
- Sell Elite – $199 per user/month
- Zendesk Suite – $49 per user/month
- Reach – $27 per user/month
Notable brands that use Zendesk
Staples, Tile, and Wavy.
8. Keap
- Pricing: $40-$100 per user/month. Enterprise pricing is available upon request.
- G2 Review Rating: 4.2/5
- Capterra Rating: 4.1/5
Keap is an all-in-one CRM, sales, and marketing automation software for businesses of all sizes and across verticals. Access lead information on various devices, use dashboards to track progress, send quotes and invoices, and automate your communication.
From generating leads to closing them, Keap has a ton of features like client management, email marketing, and reporting & insights to help you convert more deals.
Main Features:
- Messages – get alerted when clients text, email or call so you can respond quickly
- Appointments – get help setting up your calendar, meetings and manage appointments
- Marketing automation – send texts and emails to leads to nurture and guide them
- Quotes – send leads a personalized quote detailing your services and costs
- Invoices & payments – send invoices and receive payments via payment platforms
- Reporting & insights – visualize data, traffic, and conversions on the dashboard
Product Details:
- Integrates with: Excel, Shopify, Zapier, Gmail, and more
- App Available: Android and iOS
- Training: Support, on-demand webinars, and mandatory growth coaching for $499
- Secure: Physical security, technical security, admin security
- Free Trial: 14-day free trial
Price:
- Lite – $40/month
- Pro – $85/month
- Max – $100/month
- Max Classic (formerly Infusionsoft) – Contact for pricing
The price is only for the first 3 months, 500 users and 1 user. Additional users cost $30 each.
Notable brands that use Keap
Virtudesk, Wall Street Oasis, and Kopf Consulting.
9. HubSpot Sales
- Pricing: Free-$1200/month for 10 users
- G2 Review Rating: 4.4/5
- Capterra Rating: 4.5/5
HubSpot’s lead management and tracking software lets you manage all your leads in a centralized database, track and score leads, create segmented lists, and streamline outreach.
Apart from the essential features, HubSpot also offers email tracking, company insights, and Facebook and Instagram lead ads.
Main Features:
- Contact & lead management – add records and keep them up to date easily
- Pipeline management – add deals, assign tasks, and track progress
- Contact & company insights – pull details from HubSpot’s database
- Email tracking – know when a prospect read your email or clicked a link
- Contact activity – see detailed interactions between your contact and website
- Conversations inbox – universal inbox for sales, marketing, and customer service
- Live chats & bots – use bots to automate and scale your communication
Product Details:
- Integrates with: Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho CRM, Keap, and more
- App Available: Android and iOS
- Training: Chat, phone, and email support. Plus, access to HubSpot Community, Academy, and Knowledge Base.
- Secure: App protection, infrastructure security, data security, org security.
- Free Trial: N/A – but you can try HubSpot’s tools for free with some limitations
Price:
- Free tools – Get started for free
- Starter – $45/month for 2 users. $23/month per additional user
- Professional – $450/month for 5 users. $90/month per additional user
- Enterprise – $1,200/month for 10 paid users. $120/month per additional user
Notable brands that use HubSpot
Ceros, Momentive, and ClassPass.
10. LeadSquared
- Pricing: $25-$100 per user/month. Enterprise pricing is available upon request.
- G2 Review Rating: 4.5/5
- Capterra Rating: 4.2/5
LeadSquared is a robust lead management CRM that enables you to control the entire customer journey. It prevents lead leakage, has a built-in email and landing page builder, and marketing automation tools.
The platform’s intelligent automation increases the speed of converting contacts into leads and leads into qualified prospects and finally paying customers.
Main Features:
- Lead capture – capture leads from online, offline, and third-party sites
- Built-in dialer – track and record conversations to ensure productivity
- Engagement scoring – score lead’s engagement based on their activity in real-time
- Lead distribution – distribute leads based on requirements or dynamic criteria
- Quality score – qualify marketing leads before passing them to sales
- Core systems integration – integrate with your existing systems via APIs
Product Details:
- Integrates with: Facebook, Twitter, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Office 365, Gmail, and more
- App Available: Android and iOS
- Training: Video training
- Secure: Physical security, app security, data security, network security, and more
- Free Trial: 15-day free trial
Price:
- Lite – $25 per user/month
- Pro – $50 per user/month
- Super – $100 per user/month
- Ultimate – Contact for pricing
Notable brands that use LeadSquared
Olx, Kotak Securities, and Practo.
11. Zoho CRM
- Pricing: Free–$52 per user/month
- G2 Review Rating: 4/5
- Capterra Rating: 4.3/5
Zoho CRM’s lead management software helps you nudge leads along the sales pipeline from generation to scoring to conversion.
Built to be used across verticals and business sizes, Zoho CRM has everything you need and some pretty interesting features like scanning business cards, seeing tweets from prospects, and using Facebook ads to generate leads.
Main Features:
- Smart web forms – capture leads from your website
- Data enrichment by Zia – Zia looks for more information about your lead to enrich your nurturing
- Pre-defined workflows – to assign leads to reps based on geography, product or department
- Omnichannel communication – use social media, live chat, phone or webinars to connect with leads
- Analyze Google Ads campaigns – get information about your spending and ROI
- Built-in analytics – measure the number of leads, best-performing rep, and conversion rates for different channels
Product Details:
- Integrates with: Zapier, Zoom, Mailchimp, Office 365, PayPal, Google Analytics, and more
- App Available: Android and iOS
- Training: Virtual training
- Secure: AES encryption, audit logs, IP restrictions, 2FA, and more
- Free Trial: 15-day free trial
Price:
- Free – for 3 users
- Standard – $14 per user/month
- Professional – $23 per user/month
- Enterprise – $40 per user/month
- Unlimited – $52 per user/month
Notable brands that use Zoho
Amazon India, Chai Point, and FundsIndia.
3 Current Lead Management Software Trends
As marketing and sales evolve to become more customer-centric, lead management software solutions are changing too. Here are three software trends to look out for:
1. Buyer intent data
Instead of dumping leads that don’t convert instantly, track their activity on the site to understand what they’re looking for so you can personalize your outreach in the future.
2. Videos on landing pages and forms
Video content helps you engage with leads better than written text. You can test adding videos to landing pages and forms to see if it improves conversions.
3. AI chatbots
Even with a large sales team, you cannot stay on top of every conversation and respond instantly. AI-powered chatbots can help you pre-qualify leads before you hand them off to a human rep.
Lead Management Software vs. CRM: What’s the Difference?
While most tools on the list double up as a CRM or offer lead management as a feature in their platform, CRM and lead management software are not the same. These terms are often used interchangeably since there’s a lot of overlap during the customer life cycle.
Lead management software tracks all your leads in a centralized database and keeps tabs on their activities and interests helping you close deals and nurture prospects that aren’t ready yet.
CRMs or Customer Relationship Management systems can do all that and more. You can use it to manage the entire customer lifecycle—way beyond acquisition and focus on retention instead.
So do you need lead management software or a CRM?
It depends on the stage your business is in and what are your pain points. For instance, small businesses may not be ready for a CRM but lead management software may be a huge priority.
How to Choose the Best Lead Management Software
You know what to look for in a lead management software – but how do you know if it’s the right solution for your business?
Here’s what to look for:
- Ease of use – Is the platform user-friendly or are the processes complicated?
- Ease of setup – Does it take days or months to onboard or is it intuitive?
- Support & training – Does the company offer support and free (or paid) training?
- Automation – Does it help you save time on repetitive tasks?
- Integrations – Will it integrate with all the other apps you already use?
- Scalable – Can it scale with your company’s growth?
- Customizable – Can you create custom filters, views, and dashboards?
When you shop around for the perfect lead management software, make sure you test their customer service and use their free trial to understand if it’s the right fit for your business.
Even with the best training, support, and communication, user adoption can take a lot of time – which is understandable.
Sales pros have a lot on their plate. Learning how to use new software is probably not at the top of that list especially when it means slowing down on revenue growth.
So what can you do instead?
Choose a digital adoption platform like Whatfix to support your implementation efforts. With Whatfix, sales teams get access to in-app training so they never have to leave the platform and support when they need it through walkthroughs, product tours, tooltips, and task lists.
Connect your lead management software or sales CRM with business apps you use through an in-app embedded wiki to offer support when it’s needed.
Request a demo to see how Whatfix empowers organizations to improve end-user adoption and provide on-demand customer support
Thank you for subscribing!