Salesforce Sales Cloud vs Salesloft

• January 16, 2024

Reading Time: 6 minutes

In the ever-evolving world of sales, choosing the right platform to boost sales efficiency and customer engagement is crucial for businesses. Two of the leading solutions in this arena are Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesloft. Each offers unique tools and functionalities, making them go-to choices for various organizations. In this blog post, we’ll dive into a comprehensive comparison between Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesloft, examining their features, integration capabilities, user experience, and overall impact on the sales process. This comparison aims to provide insights to help you determine which platform aligns best with your business objectives and sales strategies.

What is Salesforce Sales Cloud?

Salesforce Sales Cloud stands out as an all-encompassing CRM solution (as a part of the Salesforce family), aimed at bolstering sales, marketing, and customer support efforts. Excelling in both B2B and B2C frameworks, Sales Cloud offers a high level of customizability, bringing together all aspects of customer interactions into a single, integrated platform. This integration spans across marketing, lead nurturing, sales processes, customer service, and business analytics. Furthermore, it provides access to an extensive array of applications via the AppExchange, enhancing its utility across diverse business requirements.

Available as a SaaS model, Sales Cloud is easily accessible through web browsers or its mobile application. A standout feature is its real-time social feed for collaborative efforts, enabling users to exchange information and queries within the community.

Core Features of Salesforce Sales Cloud

Sales Cloud’s functionality revolves around three primary pillars:

• Efficiency: This pillar covers essential elements like sales force automation, channel sales, sales bots, CPQ functionality, and billing automation. It streamlines sales activities, allowing sales teams to interact with prospects virtually and maintain a comprehensive log of these interactions within the CRM system.
  
• Analytics and AI: This includes advanced features such as sales forecasting, pipeline inspection, revenue intelligence, Sales Cloud Einstein, and Einstein Conversation Insights. These tools delve deep into sales analytics, aiding in data-driven decision-making.
  
• Automation: Encompassing features like sales engagement automation, seller enablement, sales planning, subscription management, and integration with Slack, this pillar focuses on reducing manual workload and optimizing sales tasks.

In addition to these pillars, Sales Cloud boasts an array of capabilities like robust lead management, account and opportunity management, forecast management, pipeline oversight, and a variety of reporting tools. This extensive suite of functionalities is tailored to assist businesses in connecting with clients, tracking deals, creating precise forecasts, managing sales pipelines effectively, and automating intricate sales operations.

What is Salesloft?

Salesloft is a cloud-based sales engagement platform that has become a significant player in the Sales Engagement platforms market since its founding in 2011. The platform is designed to automate workflows for sales teams and enhance their ability to connect with prospects, thereby accelerating sales cycles and driving increased revenue. Originally focused on sales development, Salesloft has expanded to offer functionalities for the entire sales organization, including Conversation Intelligence and Revenue Intelligence.

The platform is particularly useful for:

• Prospecting: Sales teams can manage their schedules, calls, and emails efficiently.
  
• Sales Coaching: Managers and representatives can collaborate to track, transcribe, analyze, and coach each other.
  
• Opportunity Insights: Provides detailed insights for pipeline health and revenue forecasting.
  
• Optimizing Sales Workflow: Enhances the sales process to use time and resources effectively.
  

Salesloft is an ideal solution for a range of sales roles within an organization, including Sales Development Representatives (SDRs)/Business Development Representatives (BDRs), Sales Leaders, Marketing Leaders, and Account Executives. These roles utilize Salesloft for various purposes, such as prospecting for new leads, managing relationships with customers, understanding the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, and optimizing the sales team’s workflow.

Key Features of Salesloft

• Call Repository: This feature aids in onboarding new representatives by building libraries of recorded calls and virtual meetings, which can be invaluable for training and quality assurance purposes.
  
• CRM Updation: Salesloft syncs activities back to CRM contact and account records automatically, eliminating the need for manual data entry and ensuring that customer interaction data is always up-to-date.
  
• Cadences: The platform automates the routing of leads, assigns them to representatives, and adds them to recommended communication workflows, helping to maximize conversion rates.
  
• Real-time Notification: Salesloft notifies users in real-time when prospects are engaging, allowing sales teams to prioritize activities based on lead scoring or activity type.
  
• Real Time Coaching: This feature offers coaching during calls and virtual meetings, and allows for real-time responses to requests for assistance.
  
• Reports and Analytics: Salesloft’s robust analytics measure the effectiveness of the sales process, providing insights that can be used to refine strategies and improve outcomes.
  
• Salesloft Mobile: The mobile application allows for managing contacts and tracking opportunity engagement from mobile devices, offering flexibility and accessibility.
  
• Rhythm: This AI-driven feature builds prioritized workflows for users, including cadence steps and tasks, enhancing productivity and efficiency.
  
• Advanced Email Sequence Capabilities: With the help of generative AI, Salesloft delivers advanced capabilities for email sequencing, including personalization at scale and A/B testing to optimize email campaigns.

Pricing: Salesforce Sales Cloud vs Salesloft

Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesloft offer a variety of pricing plans tailored to different business needs. Below is a detailed comparison of their pricing structures:

Salesforce Sales Cloud Pricing

1. Starter:
   Cost: $25 USD/user/month
   Features: Basic CRM features, sales, service, and email outreach tools, geared towards small businesses.
2. Professional:
   Cost: $80 USD/user/month
   Features: A complete CRM solution suitable for any size team.
3. Enterprise:
   Cost: $165 USD/user/month
   Features: Offers a deeply customizable sales CRM.
4. Unlimited:
   Cost: $330 USD/user/month
   Features: Provides unlimited CRM power and support, the most comprehensive plan.
   

Additional Add-ons for Salesforce:

• CPQ & Billing: Starting at $75 USD/user/month, for configuring, pricing, and quoting complex solutions.
  
• Sales Cloud Einstein: At $50 USD/user/month, this adds intelligence and automation to increase sales productivity and effectiveness.

Salesloft Pricing Breakdown

Salesloft offers a range of pricing packages designed to cater to different business needs.

Note: The pricing details are not publicly listed.

Prospect: This package is designed for teams focused on generating leads.

Sell: Aimed at teams focused on managing opportunities to close.

Engage: This package is for teams focused on engaging and growing customer relationships.

Enterprise: This package is for teams working across every stage of the revenue lifecycle. It includes opportunity management, cadence, conversation intelligence, dialer (unlimited talk and text), live call studio, email calendaring, analytics, mobile app access, and CRM sync.

Essentials: This package is designed to grow pipeline and gain insight.

Salesforce Sales Cloud vs Salesloft: An In-Depth Feature Comparison

When choosing a CRM platform, the decision between Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesloft can be challenging. Both platforms are renowned in the sales engagement and CRM space, but they have distinct features that may sway your choice depending on your business needs.

1. User Ratings and General Perception
   • Salesforce Sales Cloud: With a higher rating of 4.39/5 stars, Salesforce Sales Cloud is lauded for its robust CRM capabilities and a comprehensive set of features, making it a top contender in the market.
     
   • Salesloft: Rated at 4.33/5 stars, it shines with its browser integration, user-friendly interface, and integrated dialer.
     
2. Ease of Use
   • Salesforce Sales Cloud offers extensive features but may have a steeper learning curve.
     
   • Salesloft is noted for its ease of use, setup, and administration, with a particularly user-friendly and intuitive interface.
     
3. Customer Support and Product Direction
   • While Salesforce has some issues with customer support and double authentication, Salesloft is praised for its responsive and helpful customer support team.
     
   • Users prefer Salesloft’s product direction, noting its commitment to innovation and regular feature updates.
     
4. CRM Integration and Features
   • Both platforms boast robust CRM integration, but Salesforce Sales Cloud is particularly commended for its extensive integration capabilities.
     
   • Salesloft also provides seamless integration with various CRM platforms, offering versatility.
     
5. Email Tracking and Automation
   • Both platforms offer solid email tracking and automation features, but Salesloft’s capabilities in this area are slightly more favored by users.
     
6. Call Features
   • Both platforms offer call recording features, but Salesloft’s feature is rated slightly higher. However, users have reported occasional issues with Salesloft’s VOIP calling and downtime.
     
7. Deployment Options and Support
   • Both Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesloft offer cloud, SaaS, web-based, and mobile versions, catering to a wide range of deployment preferences.
     They also provide varied training methods to support their users effectively.

While both Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesloft are highly effective platforms, your choice may hinge on specific business needs such as ease of use, customer support quality, and certain feature preferences.

Final Thoughts

Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesloft stand out as two of the most prominent players, each offering a unique set of features and capabilities that cater to diverse business requirements. Salesforce Sales Cloud, with its comprehensive CRM functionalities, extensive integration capabilities, and robust analytics, is an excellent choice for businesses seeking a deeply customizable and all-encompassing solution. On the other hand, Salesloft, with its user-friendly interface, advanced call and email features, and responsive customer support, appeals to organizations prioritizing ease of use and seamless sales engagement processes.

The choice between these two platforms ultimately boils down to aligning their features with your business’s specific needs. Whether it’s the depth and breadth of CRM functionalities offered by Salesforce Sales Cloud or the focused sales engagement and automation capabilities of Salesloft, each platform has its strengths. Therefore, businesses should carefully assess their sales strategies, team dynamics, and long-term objectives when making this decision.
Both Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesloft offer compelling benefits, and the decision to choose one over the other should be informed by a thorough understanding of what each platform brings to the table. By doing so, businesses can ensure they select a solution that not only enhances their sales processes but also drives meaningful customer engagement and ultimately, contributes to their growth and success in the dynamic world of sales.