Revenue Operations

Top 5 People.ai Alternatives for B2B Sales Teams in 2023 [Ranked]

Michaela Mendes
Head of Content & Strategy
Table of contents:

If you don’t know what’s going on in your deals, you can’t: 

  • Establish a data-driven sales process that’s proven to work. 
  • See which salespeople need more coaching and support. 
  • Figure out what’s working to drive revenue – and how to replicate it. 

Without accurate sales data – you’re flying blind. 

People.ai aims to to help companies “uncover the fastest path to revenue.” Let’s look at why people choose People.ai or its alternatives.

Why do companies choose People.ai? 

Companies often choose to purchase People.ai if they want:

  • Activity capture: People.ai pulls sales activity capture data from your team’s emails, calendars, and other GTM tools. 
  • Relationship maps: They establish relationship maps between different stakeholders at a target company and assign engagement scores to each person.
  • Playbooks: They provide general playbooks and close plans based on the above. 

When should you consider People.ai alternatives?

3 reasons to consider People.ai alternatives

The top reason companies consider alternatives to People.ai is because they want a custom configuration. When companies begin to prioritize not just standard data capture, but data accuracy, completeness, and data privacy, they may decide to go with a People.ai competitor. 

The second reason for considering a People.ai alternative is when it becomes a priority to coach reps and track sales performance over time. Some of the alternate solutions on the list below have focused on this space. 

Finally, when companies prioritize forecasting and tracking deals, they often select from one of these People.ai alternatives. 

Top 5 People.ai competitors

Here are five alternative software solutions to consider as an alternative to People.ai. 

  • SetSail 
  • Clari
  • Gong
  • Outreach
  • Revenue Grid 

#1: SetSail 

SetSail is a sales data platform that helps B2B sales teams unstick stuck deals. It delivers sales activity tracking accuracy (by integrating with the entire revenue tech stack), and puts that data exactly where sales teams need it – in their data lake or CRM. 

Then, you get instant access to the insights to help you dive into individual deals or evaluate the sales process as a whole. SetSail AI lets you ask questions about your sales data and get instant answers. 

Top features

  • SetSail is transparent and highly configurable. SetSail allows companies to configure how their sales data is captured and written back to their source of truth. Customers choose the exact data they want captured, how it’s structured, and where it should live. Also, SetSail offers standout customer service and a high-touch approach to working with customers. 
  • SetSail shows you what “good” looks like and enables smart rep coaching. SetSail Discover reveals the exact success signals that matter for your specific organization and how you sell. In addition, SetSail’s Targets will help you track rep progress towards those success signals. People.ai’s level of customizability means both of these options in their platform are insufficient for some users. 
  • SetSail captures data across the go-to-market tech stack. People.ai focuses on email and calendar data capture. Other data they capture appears to come directly from the CRM, which is often questionable when it comes to consistency. 

Bottom line 

Companies that want rich, reliable data often go with SetSail. Its metrics go deep with signals that are tailored to individual companies’ business needs. In addition, SetSail’s highly customizable approach allows you to have a complete and accurate CRM, configured to your specific downstream reporting needs. 

#2: Clari

Clari is primarily a forecasting tool that aims to improve efficiency, predictability, and growth across the entire revenue process. Their “revenue platform” tracks deals and gives revenue leaders the ability to more accurately predict sales results.

Top features 

Clari has three key features users enjoy: 

  • Waterfall reports: this feature reveals the evolution of your pipeline over time, highlighting the key drivers of these changes. By pinpointing the factors responsible for change, it enables you to gain a rapid and comprehensive understanding of your current position and the journey that led you here. Additionally, you have the flexibility to focus on pipeline changes by either forecast category or stage.
  • Funnel analytics: this feature provides insight into conversion rates at different forecast stages, allowing you to pinpoint where deals are falling through the cracks and spot opportunities for coaching and enhancements.
  • Forecasting dashboards: Clari is a good fit for revenue operations teams that want to spend less time on forecasting, as they provide out-of-the-box dashboards to give leaders a view into the pipeline based on historical data as well as CRM data. 

Bottom line

Clari is helpful for sales leaders and RevOps. Finance departments also benefit.

Clari’s revenue forecasting is more accurate and comprehensive than non-dedicated solutions. It’s better for deal tracking, with more useful insights and more helpful analytics.

#3: Gong

Gong is a conversational intelligence tool that helps revenue leaders see what’s happening in sales conversations.

The patented Gong Revenue Intelligence Platform™ captures and understands every customer interaction, then delivers insights at scale, empowering revenue teams to make decisions based on data instead of opinions.

Top features 

Gong has three key features: 

  • Call recording and analysis: Gong captures your sales team's conversations during web conferences and phone calls and employs AI for analysis. This helps you discern the factors that distinguish top-performers from others and provides comprehensive insights into your team's conversations, enabling you to replicate successful strategies.
  • Accurate call transcripts: Gong’s call transcription software records and transcribes all calls and automatically updates your CRM with the activity data.
  • AI-powered meeting summaries: Gong provides a summary of each call that features the highlights of what was discussed. You can also see an outline and ask the AI questions about what happened during the call. 

Bottom line 

Gong is a great tool for coaching reps and monitoring sales calls. 

Managers can watch meetings, track call metrics, and provide targeted coaching. Reps can review their own calls for continuous self-improvement. 

#4: Outreach 

Outreach is a sales engagement tool, empowering customer-facing teams to streamline the process of generating and reliably closing pipeline opportunities. You can use Outreach for prospecting, deal management, and forecasting. 

Top features: 

Outreach has three key features users appreciate: 

  • Cadences: Outreach enables you to craft custom-tailored email sequences for sales leads, complete with automated follow-up messages. The system also gathers signals of buyer engagement and promptly alerts you when a prospect exhibits indications of nearing a purchase decision or when their interest appears to be waning.
  • Dialer: The Outreach Dialer offers users the capability to effectively oversee their calls and incorporates functions like call logging in real-time, the option to add another participant to an ongoing call, and provides notifications to keep users informed about call quality and connection-related issues.
  • Call and email metrics: Outreach provides team-wide metrics so sales managers can see which content, workflows, and sequences are having the greatest impact. 

Bottom line 

Outreach is great for automating and scaling sales outreach for outbound reps. Managers are able to track email performance and rep productivity, helping them do data-driven coaching that increase KPIs like meetings booked. Its ability to increase SDR performance and provide email metrics set it apart from People.ai.

#5: Revenue Grid

Revenue Grid is an activity capture software that automatically collects sales data, presents a visual representation of the sales pipeline, offers comprehensive sales and revenue analytics, and offers sales coaching with detailed guidance for achieving optimal outcomes.

Top features

Revenue Grid’s top three features include: 

  • Automated email logging: Automatically store all emails, including those stemming from automated sales sequences, and collect recipient information, subject lines, and attachments in a methodical manner.
  • Automated contact creation: Automate the creation of standard Salesforce objects and custom objects while saving data to these objects. It also streamlines the creation of Salesforce contacts in email platforms like Outlook or Gmail and allows for automatic attachment storage in Salesforce records, facilitating task management and sharing between Salesforce and email.
  • Salesforce data editing: Seamlessly store and synchronize data with Salesforce, whether through manual or automatic methods, utilizing your Email Sidebar. Make edits to objects directly within your inbox, eliminating the need to access Salesforce separately.

Bottom line 

Revenue Grid is useful for eliminating manual data entry. Users cite better configuration options than what People.ai provides, and additional features that People.ai lacks like sales engagement and coaching.

Ready to switch from People.ai? 

If you’re looking at alternatives to People.ai but are still weighing your options, schedule a no-strings-attached demo with our SetSail team. 

We’ll walk you through the advantages of our platform and share success stories of customers who have seen drastic improvements in sales activity tracking.