Best Sales Forecasting Software Shortlist
Here’s the shortlist of the best tools that I’ll cover in this article.
- Pipedrive - Best for identifying bottlenecks in sales pipelines
- Salesmate - Best for motivating your top sales performer
- Vainu - Best for identifying ideal B2B customers
- Pipeliner - Best for accelerating sales opportunities
- MadKudu - Best for using data and science to enhance sales activities
- EspoCRM - Best for evaluating all customer relationships
- Maroon.ai - Best for predictive intelligence using machine learning
- LeadLander - Best for tracking website visitors
- EngageBay - Best for generating engaging reports
- Spiro - Best for proactive AI recommendations
Sales forecasting software is a vital part of any data-driven business strategy. Accurate future sales estimates will help your teams make informed decisions and increase the efficiency of your entire sales process.
You can take advantage of forecasting by applying proven sales techniques to your existing data in the quickest, easiest, and most cost-efficient way imaginable. It’s crucial to use the best sales forecasting software instead of spending a significant amount of time on manual analysis.
In this article, I've compiled a list of the best sales forecasting software on the market today, to help you find the right tool for your team. Let's dive in.
What is Sales Forecasting Software?
Sales forecasting software allows companies to estimate future sales and allocate resources accordingly. It also uses tools to analyze historical data and trends to generate a sales forecast report.
Sales forecasting software helps teams set realistically achievable quotas, track current and historical sales data, and make better predictions for the future. These cloud-based solutions have the ability to automate tasks for efficiency, monitor sales team performance, identify bottlenecks in the sales process, and nurture leads.
Overviews of the 10 Best Sales Forecasting Software
Here’s a brief description of each sales forecasting platform to showcase each tool’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the user interface.
1. Pipedrive – Best for identifying bottlenecks in sales pipelines
Pipedrive provides a visual sales pipeline, reports, and insights to help businesses take action.
Why I Chose Pipedrive: Pipedrive enables users to identify the areas that require more attention and improvement to maximize efficiency and productivity. The live staff dashboard shows real-time transactions and performance indicators. These features allow businesses to track progress toward their goals with Pipedrive’s precise insights.
Pipedrive is an advanced CRM solution for all types of businesses. Using the platform, you can monitor your performance, forecast revenue, and prioritize your deals. The tools Pipedrive provides to users can help enterprises to further ROI objectives.
Pipedrive Standout Features and Integrations
Features include file sharing, forecasting, file transfer, data import and export, CRM integrations, dashboard, and task scheduling and tracking.
Integrations include Dropbox, Google Drive, Highrise, Zapier, Microsoft Teams, Dealbot for Slack, and Hubspot.
Price: Pipedrive costs from $19.90/user/month when billed monthly. Or $14.90/user/month when billed annually.
Trial: Pipedrive offers a 14-day free trial for new users.
Pros
- Customizable dashboards
- Easy set-up
- Easily accessible from the mobile app
Cons
- Sales forecasting features are only available on the higher tier plan
- Customer support could be better
2. Salesmate – Best for motivating your top sales performer
Salesmate is a CRM tool that helps users stay in touch with and nurture leads in their sales pipeline.
Why I Chose Salesmate: Salesmate provides sales managers with a forecast summary they can use to identify who their lead sales rep is and monitor their team’s strength. From the dashboard, you can set higher team targets to motivate your reps and best performers and develop a strategy to meet them. You can use Salesmate to identify any sales pipeline shortages and implement improvement methods to help increase your revenue.
Salesmate provides a solution that helps start-ups, as well as small, medium, and large businesses, simplify complex sales processes. The platform helps sales managers split forecasts by reps, teams, pipeline, and periods. This information can help companies to identify bottlenecks and enhance their sales teams’ performance.
Salesmate Standout Features and Integrations
Features include lead scoring, notifications, sales motivator, softphone, call tracking, task scheduling and tracking, and pipeline management.
Integrations include Zapier, Slack, Zendesk Suite, Quickbooks Online, WordPress, ActiveCampaign, Docusign, Mailchimp, and Microsoft Outlook.
Price: Salesmate costs from $15/user/month when paid monthly or $12/user/month when billed annually.
Trial: Salesmate provides new users with a 15-day free trial.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Fast user onboarding
- Excellent security
Cons
- No free subscription level
- Customer support could use some improvement
3. Vainu – Best for identifying ideal B2B customers
Vainu is a sales intelligence and prospecting platform with a database of over 108,000,000 companies that are enriched with public, open, and predictive information.
Why I Chose Vainu: Vainu helps businesses of all sizes transform haphazard company data into insightful leads for their sales campaigns. This data also helps them locate actionable account insights, identify prospecting signals, and determine their valuable prospects. According to website analysis, the information includes technographics, firmographics, buying signals, and the platform’s proprietary data, such as industry classifications.
Vainu helps salespeople and marketers who focus on B2B sales move through real-time company data. The platform compiles raw data from millions of public and private sources. It transforms it into information you can trust. Your sales teams can find and analyze your best leads and understand when the best time is to reach them.
Vainu Standout Features and Integrations
Features include audience targeting, data visualization, customer management, data import and export, CRM integration, and lead scoring.
Integrations include Salesforce, Pipedrive, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Zapier. They also provide an API that helps you connect their platform to your current systems.
Price: Vainu costs from 6,600€/year along with a one-time onboarding fee of 750€.
Trial: Vainu offers a free trial for a short period.
Pros
- Top-quality business leads
- Easy to use
- Good customer support
Cons
- If you don’t pay attention, you can end up with unhelpful information
- It can be challenging to configure triggers
4. Pipeliner – Best for accelerating sales opportunities
Pipeliner helps businesses enhance user engagement by focusing on core competencies.
Why I Chose Pipeliner: Pipeliner provides a more-visual approach when presenting an overview of a company’s pipeline. This helps sales and marketing teams get an updated view of the business’s current activities. These features can help your business monitor sales opportunities and see the status of any ongoing deals, allowing you to predict your future sales.
Pipeliner’s platform is for small and medium businesses that are looking for a solution to track, monitor, and follow sales workflows. Your teams can use the platform to discover valuable information that can help your business increase repeat purchases and increase sales. They can do this by using Pipeliner’s pipeline view, which instantly displays your opportunities and the stage in which one is. You can also create as many pipelines as you want to get a deeper insight into what you can expect in the future.
Pipeliner Standout Features and Integrations
Features include lead management, relationship mapping, contact management, data import and export, file sharing, and project management.
Integrations include Quickbooks, Zendesk, Slack, Intercom, Asana, Salesforce, and Constant Contact.
Price: Pipeliner costs from $75/user/month when paying month-to-month or $65/user/month when billed annually.
Trial: Pipeliner offers a 14-day free trial for new users.
Pros
- Users can work offline
- Excellent graphics and visuals
- Great onboarding support
Cons
- Extra features require an added fee
- Limited custom reports
5. MadKudu – Best for using data and science to enhance sales activities
MadKudu is a platform that helps SaaS enterprises analyze opportunities to increase revenue.
Why I Chose MadKudu: MadKudu leverages sales analytics to help businesses enhance sales functions, such as lead scoring and accumulation. Companies can use this data to optimize marketing efforts to generate more leads. The platform also helps teams identify their best leads by analyzing behavioral and demographic data, enabling them to narrow the leads down to who’s ready to buy.
MadKudu helps sales managers and reps in large businesses who focus on B2B sales share high-quality leads with teammates. It provides direction on which leads your business should prioritize, giving you an insight into what your revenue can look like in the future.
MadKudu Standout Features and Integrations
Features include customer management, lead scoring, forecasting, data visualization, audience targeting, and data import.
Integrations include Zapier, Salesforce, Segment, Kissmetrics, Intercom, Hubspot, Marketo, and Amplitude.
Price: MadKudu costs from $1,999/month for up to 2,000 leads per month.
Trial: MadKudu doesn’t have a free trial, but they do offer a free subscription to users who sign-up through Hubspot’s app marketplace. This free plan allows users to score up to 100 new contacts each month.
Pros
- Enhanced lead scoring
- Helpful sales visuals
- Excellent customer service
Cons
- Expensive
- The interface can be complex
6. EspoCRM – Best for evaluating all customer relationships
EspoCRM is a cloud-based, open-source sales forecasting software that lets businesses analyze their customers’ behavior and actions.
Why I Chose EspoCRM: EspoCRM provides data that helps businesses drive growth by giving them an overview of their stakeholder relationships. This information can help you modify your marketing approach, identify future revenue opportunities, and increase your sales. The platform’s reporting tools also transform your relationship data into beneficial insights via a range of indicators, so your team can follow their success through various stages.
EspoCRM helps businesses of any size identify all types of opportunities, clients, and connections through its interface. You can modify the dashboard and interface to match your unique requirements and expectations. The platform also provides information that can help you optimize your products and services.
EspoCRM Standout Features and Integrations
Features include audience targeting, e-mail integration, data visualization, contact management, lead management, lead scoring, task scheduling and tracking, forecasting, inventory tracking, and sales automation.
Integrations include Google Calendar, Mailchimp, Microsoft Azure, Google Contacts, and VoIP providers.
Price: EspoCRM is free to use, but there’s a fee to use integrations with the platform. These extensions cost from $190/month, which includes a year of upgrades.
Trial: EspoCRM offers a one-month free trial of the extension pack you choose.
Pros
- Flexible
- Customizable
- Easy learning curve
Cons
- No combined, single dashboard
- Slow customer support
7. Maroon.ai – Best for predictive intelligence using machine learning
Maroon.ai helps businesses discover high-propensity prospects and develop winning engagement strategies.
Why I Chose Maroon.ai: Maroon.ai provides a plug-and-play system that integrates with your current marketing automation and CRM platforms. It uses machine learning and predictive intelligence to help users determine their business’s most profound context and predict sales. The information from this context can enhance your sales funnel’s quality, whether it’s inbound or outbound.
Maroon.ai helps enterprises prioritize leads by showing a correct valuation estimation and assigning the information to proper workflows. The platform also allows users to assign the right leads to the right sales managers to close them. It uses the data you currently have with your systems to give you insights and manager assignment features.
Maroon.ai Standout Features and Integrations
Features include keyword tracking, data import, conversion tracking, audience targeting, A/B testing, analytics, and marketing automation.
Integrations include Salesforce, Hubspot, and Marketo.
Price: Maroon.ai offers custom pricing upon request.
Pros
- Predictive scoring
- Leads come with correct decision-maker information
- Identifies powerful intent triggers for leads
Cons
- Limited targeting-related features
- Complex onboarding process
8. LeadLander – Best for tracking website visitors
LeadLander empowers your sales and business development teams by providing the data to send targeted messages to your leads.
Why I Chose LeadLander: LeadLander helps businesses identify their website visitors and understand their activities on their websites. The platform derives data regarding your visitors’ behavior from search engines, e-mail, Google Adwords, and contact forms. These companies can use this information to improve lead generation and make accurate predictions regarding revenue.
LeadLander helps B2B businesses of all sizes get an understanding of their marketing campaigns and measure the effectiveness of these efforts. They can identify visitor characteristics, such as company information, and generate activity reports and monitor historical user data. This information can be valuable to your sales teams when attempting to turn these visitors into customers.
LeadLander Standout Features and Integrations
Features include analytics, data visualization, data export, referral tracking, lead scoring, sales motivator, and notifications.
Integrations include Salesforce, Zapier, and Google Analytics.
Price: LeadLander offers custom pricing upon request.
Trial: LeadLander has a 14-day free trial for new users.
Pros
- Excellent user interface
- Great customer support
- Easy onboarding process
Cons
- Some information might not be complete due to private geo locations
- Lack of integrations
9. EngageBay – Best for generating engaging reports
EngageBay is an all-in-one marketing, sales forecasting software, and customer support software.
Why I Chose EngageBay: EngageBay provides businesses with sales forecasting features, such as customer profiles, deal pipelines, sales automation, account-based marketing, and sales gamification. The platform’s custom reporting provides users with the flexibility to set KPIs according to their requirements. This helps you get detailed forecasts on a precise level using your sales data. You can also update these reports in real-time.
EngageBay helps start-ups and small businesses acquire, engage, and convert customers to grow their operations. Your marketing and sales teams can use the platform to guide leads and contacts through your sales pipelines in a synchronous platform. They can also get visibility into your pipelines and track each lead’s status.
EngageBay Standout Features and Integrations
Features include customer management, data import, conversion tracking, e-mail integration, data visualization, calendar management, sales proposals, pipeline management, and sales motivator.
Integrations include Xero, Zapier, Mailgun, SendGrid, Hubspot, Gravity Forms, Zendesk, Twilio, Stripe, Intercom, and Mandrill.
Price: EngageBay starts from $14.99/user/month when paying month to month or $13.79/user/month when paying annually.
Trial: EngageBay offers a free tier for up to 250 contacts.
Pros
- The free plan works for start-ups
- Significant value for features
- Easy-to-use form and e-mail editors
Cons
- Limited e-mail editing widgets
- Some outdated e-mail templates
10. Spiro – Best for proactive AI recommendations
Spiro is a sales forecasting software and relationship management platform that makes automatic prioritizations for users.
Why I Chose Spiro: Spiro provides users with Artificial Intelligence (AI) that helps them increase revenues by making proactive business recommendations. The platform can recognize pipeline anomalies and recommend the best steps to take. It can give sales managers top insights into their team’s activities and help them focus on the right opportunities.
Spiro offers businesses a standard CRM, telephone service, and sales enablement features. The platform analyzes your sales data and provides you with the best forecasts to help you increase revenue. It’s an excellent fit for businesses with between 100 to 1,500 employees.
Spiro Standout Features and Integrations
Features include customer management, data visualization, contact management, analytics, data import and export, contact sharing, lead management, and marketing automation.
Integrations include Microsoft Dynamics 365, Plex, SAP, Xero, Gmail, Google Docs, Office 365, Mailchimp, DocuSign, Hubspot, and Zapier.
Price: Spiro offers custom pricing upon request.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Excellent customer service
- Intelligent AI
Cons
- Data capturing isn’t always precise
- Lack of filtering can slow processes
Other Options
Here are a few more options that didn’t make the best sales forecasting software list:
- Jepto - A digital marketing intelligence and automation software that provides predictive forecasts for businesses that rely on Google and Facebook advertising.
- EverString - Sales forecasting software to leverage data signals to develop defined lead scoring to enhance your marketing outreach.
- Put It Forward Delphi AI - Check fields, remediate errors, handle exceptions, and manage audits throughout your business to develop predictive analytics and gain relevant, accurate insights.
- Limecall - Create analytic dashboards to analyze and optimize the best times to call customers and increase revenue.
- amoCRM - A multifunctional sales management platform that makes core processes, such as performance management tracking, more efficient.
- Limelight - Integrate the platform with your current systems to provide real-time forecasting by utilizing insights on key trends to identify opportunities.
- Upscale - Sales engagement software that helps B2B businesses increase revenue and sales efficiency through data-driven insights.
- Streak - CRM that integrates with your Gmail inbox and other G Suite applications.
- Kentico - Increase customer engagement to deliver content to the right audience and optimize performance to win more customers.
How I Selected the Best Sales Forecasting Software
Perhaps you're wondering how I selected the best sales forecasting software for this list? To build this top 10 list, I evaluated and compared a wide range of sales forecasting software with positive user ratings.
After determining my long list of top choices, I further honed my list by using the selection criteria below to see how each platform stacked up against the next one. I also drew on my years of RevOps experience to pinpoint the features that add a lot of value.
If you have general questions about sales forecasting software or how to pick the best sales forecasting software for your organization, take a look at our frequently asked questions section below. Or, you can skip directly to my detailed software summaries, if that's what you need the most.
Selection Criteria
Here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria I used to develop my list of the best sales forecasting solution for this article:
User Interface (UI):
The software’s user interface should be flexible enough to customize options to match your needs and scope of work. The interface should also be compatible with your current data sources, database systems, and ERP systems. If the platform doesn’t fit your processes and requirements, it’s going to become a significant liability.
Usability:
A forecasting tool’s purpose is to simplify your decision-making and estimation process. So, your chosen platform shouldn’t be too complex for your teams. If the software becomes a hassle for everyone, you’re going to go back to square one and look for another tool. Your team should be able to easily pull accurate forecasts without the need for prior or specialized experience.
Collaboration
Forecasting is a team effort, and your platform should help keep it that way. So, the sales forecasting tool should allow your teams to share data and collaborate with each other.
Software Integrations:
Manually entering large data sets isn’t efficient and makes your forecasting tool absolutely useless. The forecasts you get will only be as decent as the data your software can access. So, it would be best to use a sales forecasting tool with excellent import capabilities that allow the software systems you’re already using to integrate together to pass along the data.
Pricing:
Your budget can be a limiting factor that you should consider when looking through a software’s features to ensure they meet your requirements. There can be a trade-off between costs and features. But some software meets advanced requirements and is still quite affordable.
People Also Ask
What are the Benefits of Sales Forecasting Software?
How Can Sales Forecasting Software Can Help You Hit Your Quarterly Quota?
How to Get Started With Sales Forecasting Software?
What Are the Key Features of Sales Forecasting Software?
Find the Right Sales Forecasting Software for You
97% of companies who use forecasting techniques achieve their quotas, compared to the 55% of those who aren’t using forecasting. Therefore, effective forecasting gives you that edge over your competition, who are relying on guesswork.
Sales forecasting software is an important tool to help you achieve your quarterly quota and sales targets. It can also help you better manage your customer relationships by providing customer relationship management (CRM) features.
There are many different sales forecasting software programs available, so it is important to do your research to find the one that best suits your need.
To learn more about sales forecasting, check out these articles:
How to Use Sales Enablement to Boost Your Bottom Line
The Foolproof Sales Forecasting Formula You've Been Looking For
And to stay up to date on all the latest from industry insiders, don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter.