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A Full Guide to Sales Pipeline Automation & Tools You Need
March 21, 2025
By
Irina Maltseva
Sales teams work hard, squeezing 61 minutes out of every hour.
But how much of that effort actually drives sales?
Probably less than you think. Repetitive tasks and busywork drain productivity. And reps spend a lot of time on busywork.
That’s where pipeline automation tools come to the rescue. They handle everything from prospecting to follow-up.
The result? More time to focus on what’s valuable—cultivating all-important human connections.
Your sales pipeline is essentially your system of organizing leads. Though many people use the terms interchangeably, a company’s pipeline isn’t the same as its sales funnel, which is primarily a marketing term for charting potential customers’ awareness of a problem and product.
The sales pipeline focuses on sales teams' interactions with leads. It illustrates where each lead sits on the sales process. And it’s often represented visually as a bar or, you guessed it, pipe.
A sales pipeline is made up of six parts:
After a team member completes an action, that part of the pipeline “fills in” like a checklist. Sent an outreach message to a qualified lead? You’re onto the next step. Walked the client through a demo? That’s another section complete. The end goal is, of course, a purchase.
Without a clear pipeline, you get stuck activating poor-quality leads or repeating the same mistakes.
Automation tools add structure. They track where leads are in the pipeline so sales reps know the next step and can initiate it quickly.
Even better, platforms streamline repetitive tasks that slow down sales reps, allowing them to focus on human moments like meetings and calls.
You gain an aerial view and quickly spot bottlenecks, which helps you remove suboptimal tactics and repeat effective ones. You also learn leads’ proximity to purchasing.
But tools don’t just automate and simplify sales processes. They also enrich them.
Moving leads through the pipeline requires deep knowledge from the first step. Trish Bertuzzi, author of The Sales Development Playbook, explains it concisely: "Prospects are making their purchase decision based on whether they think you understand their problems and you have the knowledge, resources, and commitment to solving them."
Automation tools have features for every stage of the sales pipeline, from lead nurturing to reporting.
Let’s look at these core features in depth.
Lead management is about understanding where a lead sits in the pipeline. It’s an internal management task. Nurturing describes building trust and rapport with leads.
Both management and targeted nurturing require accurate data. That’s why many tools provide verified databases that are regularly updated and enriched.
Tools capture data from multiple sources:
With advanced filters, you can search through these vast databases to find leads who match your ideal customer profile (ICP).
Tools also perform lead qualification and score leads with firmographic, demographic, and behavioral data. Predictive AI assessments are also being used more often.
From there, you can create lists and segment leads for personalization. 86% of B2B buyers admit they’re more likely to purchase from a seller who understands their objectives. Yet 59% say most sales reps fail to invest time in understanding them. Targeting prospects with personalization makes your nurturing more effective.
It generally takes 29 touchpoints on average to inspire a purchase. That’s a lot of work to convert one lead.
Automation tools reduce that load by doing the following:
Additionally, few people want to buy at the moment you initiate contact. Tools reactivate dead leads after a set interval. This keeps you top of mind when they’re ready to act.
Pipeline tools also predict leads’ next moves and forecast the likelihood of a sale, so you’re always prepared with the right collateral. A tool like HubSpot, for example, consolidates lead data so you can easily view their history.
Tracking lead activity and sales performance across the whole pipeline is difficult.
Automation systems collect and interpret data from multiple sources. They then provide reps and team leaders with actionable insights for slashing inefficiencies, engaging lukewarm leads, and improving conversions.
Platforms provide the following metrics and reports:
Reporting and optimization tools for startups are particularly important. They help avoid unnecessary hires and allow even small teams to drive significant growth.
Let’s look at six of the best sales pipeline automation tools currently on the market. They offer an array of features for reaching, nurturing, and converting leads.
Artisan automates all of the early and middle stages of the outbound sales pipeline. Its distinctive feature is AI business development representative (BDR) Ava.
While many platforms offer little more than AI add-on features, Ava is the driving force behind Artisan. She manages personalized outreach, lead management, and nurturing right up until your account executive takes over to close the deal.
Ava gathers prospects from a database of hundreds of millions of B2B, ecommerce, and local leads. And Artisan’s scraping feature, called Data Miner, regularly enriches and cleans lead data.
Users also have multiple campaign playbooks to pick from. And Ava runs campaign optimization and A/B testing in the background.
One third of sales teams think they lack training for AI tools. But Artisan offers white glove onboarding, working closely with your team to ensure full proficiency.
Artisan customizes pricing, so contact the sales team for a tailored quote.
Leadfeeder uses IP data to identify the companies behind your site visitors. You can then reach out to these companies to pitch your product. As employee website visits are a strong intent signal, this account-based sales approach can be very effective.
However, Leadfeeder offers more than simple identification. It enriches data and tracks leads’ behavior to rate buying intent.
For example, a prospect who completes a form receives a higher lead score than someone who only visited the landing page.
Leadfeeder offers custom search and segmentation via over 50 behavioral and firmographic filters, including location, industry, and web activity. This means you can send qualified leads directly to your customer relationship management (CRM) software.
Leadfeeder offers a limited free plan. The paid plan is $165 per month.
HubSpot is a well-known brand, and for good reason. The easy-to-use platform allows you to identify, track, and close prospects.
HubSpot analyzes and scores lead data using AI. Behavioral data the platform works with includes engagements like email interactions and website activity.
HubSpot is an accessible solution that visualizes the whole sales pipeline. It supports nurturing tasks and informs sales reps which tasks are due or overdue. Approval workflows and visual progress bars show how close leads are to purchase at a glance.
Reply.io is a multichannel outreach and lead management platform. That said, there’s a definite focus on email over other channels. AI, lead database, and chat features are available as add-ons.
Reply.io supports outreach across email, LinkedIn, SMS, and WhatsApp. Users also have access to a call dialer. Automated email domain warmup is included in all plans.
The platform’s AI sales development representative (SDR) is called Jason, and he can compose and respond to messages and book meetings.
One downside is the pricing model. There are multiple tiers, and a lot of features are only available as add-ons. If you’re worried about cost, take a look at Reply.io alternatives.
PandaDoc streamlines the proposal and completion stages of the sales cycle. These typically involve multiple complex documents.
As a contract management platform, PandaDoc makes it easy to create E-SIGN, UETA, and HIPAA-compliant contracts. It also offers proposal templates, contract workflows, and secure document storage.
In addition, PandaDoc allows reps to compile professional contracts in just a few clicks. Legal and finance departments can store pre-approved clauses, pricing tables, deliverables, contract terms, and more.
Another standout feature is the document collaboration tool, which allows sales reps and clients to redline clauses and add comments. This eliminates the endless back-and-forth involved in finalizing contracts and makes it easier to find compromises and field objections.
A custom enterprise plan is available.
Reaching a deal can take a long time, sometimes several months. You must ask the right questions and overcome concerns, ultimately convincing key stakeholders that you’re able to solve their problems.
There are lots of tactics available to reps in the deal stage, including creating urgency, acting like it’s a done deal, summarizing benefits, or taking a direct approach. But it’s hard to identify the right one to use.
Close helps you hone your formula. You can save proven workflows as multi-channel templates that work across email, calls, and SMS.
Smart Views, for example, tell you which leads to prioritize, and Call Assistant transcribes and summarizes calls.
Close primarily is geared toward small businesses and startups. It is user-friendly and offers clear pipeline views to help the team stay on track.
Teams with more than 10 sales reps require customer pricing.
Setting up a pipeline automation workflow might look like an easy task on paper. But speak to anybody who’s managed an implementation, and odds are you’ll hear another story.
There are lots of moving parts, and it’s important to account for all of them.
While basic tools use an if-then framework for automation, a growing number of AI tools employ complex algorithms for tracking and interpreting data.
AIl-in-one pipeline tools like Artisan, for example, automate all stages of the early and mid sales cycle with the following features:
Once you’ve invested in the right apps, you need to get them up and running.
The setup for different platforms varies, of course. But they tend to share the same high-level stages.
Here’s how to set up your automation flow:
A Formula 1 car is only as good as its driver. The same is true for automation software and its users.
Team leaders often overlook training. But it can make a world of difference when it comes to efficiency.
Team training falls into three categories:
Pipeline automation is about more than setting up a few if-then rules. It’s about cutting busywork at all stages of the sales process. Reps that take this 360-degree view will see the biggest wins.
And then, of course, there’s the trend on everybody’s lips: AI.
AI SDRs and BDRs can complete many tasks, from lead prospecting to outreach personalization, as well as human reps. Crucially, they can do this at a scale that was simply impossible in the past.
If you’d like to see a next-gen AI platform in action, get in touch with the Artisan team to book a demo.
Let AI handle prospecting, outreach, and follow-ups so you can focus on closing deals.
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Irina is a Founder at ONSAAS, Growth Lead at Aura, and a SaaS marketing consultant. She helps companies to grow their revenue with SEO and inbound marketing. In her spare time, Irina entertains her cat Persie and collects airline miles.
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