Lead Management Software in 2024: Features & Use Cases

Few sounds bring more joy to a sales professional's ears than the satisfying (if metaphorical) 'ka-ching' of a successful closed deal.

To ensure these moments of triumph happen frequently, proper lead management is a must.

Implementing an efficient lead management process can increase sales and conversion rates and improve customer retention. So, as a sales professional, you must take lead management seriously and constantly be on the lookout to optimize the process.

Below, I share the best customer relationship management (CRM) tools to use and how to leverage AI for this purpose. 

The Pre-AI Era of Lead Management

Before the rise of AI-powered platform like Copy.ai, managing leads was an extremely manual and disjointed process for most businesses. Sales teams relied heavily on spreadsheets and standalone tools to track leads at various stages. This made getting a unified, 360-degree view of all leads and opportunities difficult.

The lead management process typically involved sales reps manually entering prospect details into spreadsheets or forms. Reps carried out follow-ups through individual outreach and reminders without any automation. Identifying the most promising leads or adapting messaging for different personas was challenging.

Information lived in silos, spread across sales spreadsheets, marketing databases, and customer service systems. Piecing together insights required extensive manual effort. Due to these communication gaps, sales, marketing, and customer retention teams lacked alignment.

With no central system, salespeople struggled to identify connections and patterns in lead behavior. They lost important context, such as lead source, earlier interactions, and progress made. This made it hard to segment and nurture leads effectively.

The lack of holistics sales insights also made forecasting and pipeline reporting less accurate. Businesses could not easily surface actionable analytics to refine their lead generation and management strategies over time.

Now? AI sales teams use AI across different stages of the lead lifecycle. McKinsey shared the estimated impact of use cases of Generative AI, and the top 5 cover different aspects of lead management:

Estimated impact of Generative AI use cases in sales

Before we get into how to use AI for lead management, let’s look at the top tools that sales managers use.

10 Best Lead Management Software to Track Leads in 2024

When choosing a lead management system, here are the criteria to consider:

• Ability to gather leads from multiple sources like forms, chatbots, landing pages, etc. It needs lead and activity capture tools to record interactions across channels.
• Ability to qualify leads based on demographics, interaction history, and buying readiness. This helps prioritize and focus sales efforts on hot leads.
• Lead nurturing capabilities like automatic follow-ups and behavioral-based campaigns are essential.
• Ability to automate workflows to save time and increase productivity.
• Seamless integration with CRM, email marketing, and other systems to provide a holistic view of sales leads. 
• Robust reporting, which provides visibility and helps continuously improve lead management efforts.
• Enterprise-grade security to protect lead data and user access via encryption, permissions, and authentication protocols.

With these in mind, here are the top 10 lead management systems in 2024 based on useful features, benefits, and ideal use cases.‍

1. Zendesk Sell

Zendesk Sell Homepage

A product of Zendesk, a customer service solution, Zendesk Sell is a robust CRM software that provides lead management, email integration, sales tracking, and reporting functionalities. It improves the sales process and empowers sales teams to manage leads and deals effectively, fostering customer relationship management and sales growth.

Features

• Lead Management: Zendesk Sell simplifies adding and managing contacts, allowing users to import contacts from various sources and benefit from duplicate detection.
• Pipeline software: Users can customize their sales pipeline stages, organize and view prospect data through filtering options, and optimize sales engagement.
• Report and Analytics: Zendesk Sell provides valuable insights through sales reports, pipeline conversion reports, sales funnel reports, and activity reports.
• Zendesk Marketplace, where you can integrate with your favorite apps, find partners, or choose from 160 themes available.

Pricing

Zendesk offers a 14-day free trial, allowing users to experience its features before committing. Paid plans cost $19/month, $55/month, $115/month, and $169/month.

Pros

• It is a unified platform, providing everything you need to generate, manage, and close qualified leads in one place. No need to use a host of other tools.
• User-friendly mobile app for on-the-go sales management.

Cons

• Some users experience a learning curve with Zendesk Sell.
• Advanced features are locked in the higher-priced plans.

Ideal use case

You can use Zendesk Sell to optimize your sales process and effectively manage leads through customizable pipelines and insightful reporting.‍

2. LeadSquared

LeadSquared Homepage

LeadSquared is a comprehensive lead management and marketing automation system designed to streamline lead capture, management, and marketing efforts. It is a valuable tool for small to midsize businesses aiming to enhance their lead and sales management processes.

Features

• Lead Capture and Allocation: Automated lead capture from all sources and allocation with alerts for seamless lead management.
• Auto lead scoring: Automatic qualification based on pre-defined criteria to prioritize prospects.
• Flexible API Integration: Extensive flexibility in terms of open APIs, enabling interconnectivity with other systems.

Pricing

LeadSquared costs $25/user/month, $50/user/month, and $100/user/month. Contact them to get a quote for the ultimate package.

Pros

• Leadsquared offers industry-specific solutions for marketplaces, financial services, education (ed-tech, higher ed, and career schools), health tech, real estate, etc. 

Cons

• Many users complain about bugs and integration fails.

Ideal use case

You can use LeadSquared to manage your leads and save time.

3. Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM Homepage

Zoho CRM is a customer relationship management software that offers a unified sales and marketing automation platform. It is ideal for integrated lead and process management.

Features

• 360-Degree Customer View: It provides a comprehensive view of client information and sales/marketing communication within a unified interface. 
• Process Management: Enables the automation of marketing and sales processes, including lead generation, nurturing, and custom lead follow-up workflows.
• Advanced analytics tool: Provides insights into your operations to help with decision-making. 
• Integration: Integrates with over 800 apps like Google Workspace, Slack, LinkedIn, and Zoom.

Pricing 

Zoho CRM has a free trial and a freemium version. Pricing for paid plans is $12/user/month, $20/user/month, $35/user/month, and $45/user/month.

Pros

• It increases the productivity of sales teams by automating workflows and processes.
• Zoho CRM is flexible and can be tailored to your operational needs.

Cons

• Customer support is not great.
• The mobile app is not user-friendly.

Ideal use case

You can use it for pipeline management and to reduce lead-to-prospect time.  

4. HubSpot Sales Hub 

HubSpot Homepage

HubSpot's Sales Hub is a powerful and user-friendly sales software created to drive productivity, facilitate customer connections, and support the growth of sales organizations.

Features

• Lead Management and Prospecting: Automatically move leads through the pipeline as reps engage with them. 
• Email Tracking: Track email engagement to follow up with leads effectively and close deals faster with personalized messages
• Deal Pipelines: Enter your deals, assign tasks to your sales team, and monitor your high-value leads in one central hub to ensure a consistent deal flow.
• Sales Analytics and Reporting: Monitor your team's progress and sales performance using readily available and precise data insights. 

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Pricing 

Hubspot Sales Hub has a free tier. Paid tier starts at $18/month, $450/month and $1,500/month.

Pros

• It provides a centralized hub for all revenue and customer success department activities. 
• The HubSpot ecosystem is large, and you can integrate with over 1,500 third-party apps.

Cons

• Long learning process.
• The difference between starter and other plans is huge, making it too expensive for small businesses.

Ideal use case

You can use it to manage your sales operations, from prospecting to nurturing to closed deals.

5. Pipedrive

Pipedrive Homepage

Pipedrive CRM is a sales software that helps reduce redundant sales tasks so reps can sell more. It caters to businesses of all sizes.

Features

• Sales Pipeline Visualization: Provides a clear view of the buyer's journey through the sales process so you can see areas of drop-off and improvement.
• Website Chatbots: Interact with website visitors all day to maximize lead generation. 
• Lead Qualification and Scoring: Identifies high-intent leads based on preset criteria and attributes, routing them to the right sales rep.
• Communication Tracking: Allows users to view all client engagement from one dashboard, including emails and meetings.

Pricing

Offers a 14-day free trial and costs $9.90/user/month, $19.90/user/month, $39.90/user/month, $49.90/user/month, and $59.90/user/month.

Pros

• Pipedrive helps you automate growth and find promising deals.
• It is affordable.

Cons

• No freemium version, unlike HubSpot and Zoho CRM.
• Has limited customization.

Ideal use case

You can use Pipedrive to track and visualize your sales pipelines.

6. Insightly

Insightly Homepage

Insightly is a powerful CRM for small and mid-size businesses. It integrates project management and helps sales reps track projects, contacts, and post-sale activities.

Features

• Project Management: It offers built-in project management tools with visual Kanban boards and customizable pipelines.
• Contact and Lead Management: Provides a comprehensive view of contact data, real-time lead tracking, and automatic social media enrichment.
• Sales Automation: Offers sales automation and email marketing tools, allowing for efficient follow-up and lead generation.

Pricing

Freemium plan for two users. For paid plans, it costs $29/user/month, $49/user/month, or $99/user/month, billed annually.

Pros

• Easy to get started with, making it suitable for both CRM newbies and veterans.
• Its project management functions are useful for tracking projects and collaborating with team members.

Cons

• More suitable for small and mid-size companies than larger ones.

Ideal use case

Use Insightly to keep customer and prospect contact and communication in one place and track ongoing progress.

7. Nutshell

Nutshell Homepage

Founded in 2009, Nutshell is an award-winning CRM platform that facilitates collaboration between B2B marketing and sales teams to increase deal closures.

Features

• Sales Automation: Nutshell automates activities like email replies and moving prospects through the pipeline.
• Web Form Builder: Customizable forms that capture in-depth information from leads. These forms are also trackable.
• Meeting Scheduler: Book calls inside Nutshell instead of using another tool for this.

Pricing

Has a 14-day free trial, after which you have to pay $16/user/month, $42/user/month, billed annually, $52/user/month, billed annually, or $67/user/month.

Pros

• Nutshell can help you automate lead generation and support processes for a large number of paying customers while also providing easy ways to measure the success of your campaigns.
• Has unlimited storage.

Cons

• There are often integration issues with other tools.

Ideal use case

You can use Nutshell to keep track of outreach and leads.

8. Nimble

Nimble Homepage

Nimble enhances contact management, streamlines communication history, and integrates social media data into the CRM. It aims to grow businesses and maintain relationships.

Features

• Smart Contacts app for easy addition of contacts from across the web.
• Email signature capture tool for quick contact creation and updates.
• Social media integration to keep customer profiles up to date.
• Automation tools for streamlining workflows and lead generation.

Pricing

14-day free trial, then $24.90/seat/month, billed annually.

Pros

Focuses on building relationships and networks. 

Great for individual sales reps and teams

Cons

Limited storage of 2 GB/month, after which you pay $10 for an extra 10GB.

Ideal use case

Use Nimble to track customer interaction cycles and add tags for more context on a prospect.

9. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign Homepage

ActiveCampaign is a versatile sales and marketing automation software used by over 180,000 small businesses. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools with advanced features such as split testing and predictive content.

Features

• All-in-One Sales and Marketing Platform: Combines sales and marketing features in a single platform, allowing for a holistic view of sales and marketing efforts.
• Powerful Automation: Offers a robust automation builder with 135+ triggers and actions and 500+ pre-built automation recipes.
• Thorough Reporting: Provides detailed reporting on click-maps, geo-tracking, and purchase tracking on higher plans.
• Integrations: Integrates with 900+ third-party apps, including native integrations with popular CRM and eCommerce platforms.

Pricing

For Sales CRM & Engagement, plans are $19/user/month, $49/user/month, or $99/user/monthly.

Pros

• ActiveCampaign has great email deliverability rates.
• Free migrations from other email marketing software.

Cons

• Overwhelming for those seeking basic email marketing features
• There is a learning curve to the tool.

Ideal use case

You can use ActiveCampaign to automate and schedule email campaigns and segment your list based on user behaviors.

10. Engagebay

Engagebay Homepage

EngageBay is a business management software that integrates marketing, CRM, sales, and service into a single platform, offering a cost-effective and comprehensive solution for companies.

Features

• All-in-One Business Solution: Integration of marketing, CRM, sales, and service functionalities into a single platform.
• Web Engagement Tools: Capabilities to engage and convert visitors through smart pop-ups and intuitive live chat.
• Marketing Automation: Advanced email marketing, SMS campaigns, and multichannel marketing for lead nurturing and engagement.
• CRM and Sales Tools: Clear customer view, lead prioritization, and features like predictive scoring and proposal management for efficient sales processes.

Pricing

For the all-in-one solution, the price is $13.79/user/month, $59.79/user/month, and $110.39/user/month. While the CRM and sales bay solution costs $11.95/user/month, $45.99/user/month, and $73.59/user/month.

Pros

• It combines marketing, sales, and service features in one platform, eliminating the need for multiple tools and integrations.
• Free plan available, suitable for solopreneurs and small teams.

Cons

• It’s not always easy to navigate.
• Detailed reporting features and analytics may not be as extensive as some businesses require.

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Ideal use case

Use it to manage contacts, add tags to them, and run email campaigns for selected users.

The Role of AI in Enhancing Lead Tracking Tools

While these lead management software solutions are great, the introduction of AI brings a new level of sophistication to sales automation by analyzing customer data, predicting behaviors, and optimizing outreach strategies. 

According to this HBR article by reputable sales leaders, generative AI is so good with sales because “Selling is interaction and transaction intensive, producing large volumes of data, including text from email chains, audio of phone conversations, and video of personal interactions. These are exactly the types of unstructured data the [generative AI] models are designed to work with.

The creative and organic nature of selling creates immense opportunities for generative AI to interpret, learn, link, and customize.”

One great example of AI-powered lead tracking software is Copy.ai Workflows. 

For context, Copy.ai is an advanced AI platform that uses large language models to generate human-like text, automate content creation, and assist with various tasks across different domains. Its workflows optimize the lead-tracking process, automate repetitive tasks, and provide actionable insights that would be impossible to detect manually across so much data. Let’s see how.

Using Copy.ai Workflows for Streamlined Lead Management

Copy.ai workflows take lead management into a new era of efficiency and intelligence by:

Automating the Lead Lifecycle

The typical lead lifecycle is: Awareness → Interest → Consideration → Intent → Purchase → Retention.

For a salesperson, this includes lead generation, qualification, nurturing, etc. Traditionally, managing this lifecycle involved repetitive and time-consuming manual processes. However, Copy.ai workflows can automate these stages to save time and increase efficiency.

You can set up a workflow to find potential customers for outreach purposes (lead generation), automatically score each lead based on attributes like industry, company size, etc. (lead qualification), and then send customized content and outreach based on the prospect's needs (lead nurturing).

Here’s an example:

Enhancing Lead Management

Another way of using Copy.ai workflows is to create custom workflows tailored to your specific lead management needs. For instance, you can develop a workflow that sends personalized follow-up emails to leads based on certain actions. Such a workflow will look like this:

Seamlessly Integrating With CRM

Copy.ai integrates with thousands of other tech tools, but if your existing CRM system isn’t on the list, you can use CopyAI Workflows API to connect to it. The setup process is easy and straightforward. Just follow the instructions here.

This connection enables real-time syncing of data between the two systems, eliminating manual processes and ensuring everyone has access to up-to-date information.

By handling repetitive tasks and enabling data-driven personalization, Copy.ai workflows let sales teams focus their time on building meaningful relationships with the right leads. The end result is more new leads generated, qualified faster, and nurtured more effectively throughout the entire lifecycle.

Transform Your Overall Sales Process with Copy.ai Workflows

Lead management software has come a long way from manual processes and siloed systems. Now, advanced solutions like Copy.ai Workflows are transforming it into a more streamlined, automated, and integrated process.  

Ultimately, these innovations add up to more effective lead management so sales teams can focus on high-value activities like building relationships instead of manual data entry.