Using AI for Cold Calling—Benefits, Tips, and Tools

Author
Authors
Clay Team
&
Date
Nov 5, 2024

Cold calling gets a bad rap among prospects and SDRs alike. LinkedIn’s research shows that 63% of sales pros consider it the “worst part of their job,” which doesn’t come as a surprise—it’s a numbers game, and getting the numbers to work for you can be tough.

Using AI for cold calling can be an excellent way to make this task more enjoyable for SDRs while minimizing negative responses from prospects. The right AI solution can help you uncover abundant data you can use to personalize interactions for better results and save a considerable amount of time.

Take our workflow as an example—we've used AI to fully automate a four-step campaign for our outbound sequences, which made the outreach process far smoother. 

There are several ways to leverage AI in cold calls, which we’ll cover in this guide alongside the tips for getting the most out of it. We’ll then show you a few tools worth checking out to help you find the best one for your needs. 🙌

What Is AI Cold Calling?

AI cold calling relies on AI-enabled tools to automate various tasks related to your inbound and outbound calls. Such tools leverage technologies like machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and speech synthesis to take over different activities and free up more time for your SDRs.

Depending on the specific features, AI cold calling software can have numerous use cases, most notably:

  • Sales call simulation and roleplay
  • Call recording, transcription, and analysis
  • Pre-call preparation and data enrichment
  • Script personalization

That being said, some aspects of cold calling are easier to automate than others. For example, streamlining data enrichment and call analysis is much easier than automating the actual calls. While you can find an AI sales call bot, the technology can’t fully replace your SDR—and it shouldn’t. The whole purpose of AI is to support your team so that they can hit targets faster and with less effort.

One of the key ways this happens is through robust data collection that allows for more personalized sales calls. AI tools for cold calling can analyze comprehensive data, including buying signals, to help you tailor your messaging to the prospect’s behavioral and other data and make calls more effective.

Still, this is far from the only benefit of AI cold calling. Even though the technology is still relatively new, it can support your sales process in many ways.

Why You Should Use AI for Sales Calls

Supporting your sales calls with AI offers various benefits, such as:

  • 🤔 Data-driven decisions—AI cold calling tools remove the guesswork from your lead generation and outreach processes so that your SDRs don’t call prospects randomly and without understanding what drives their purchase decisions. Whether you need to qualify leads or finetune your call script, you can do so based on cold data instead of biased decisions
  • ❗ Easy prospect prioritization—Pushing through countless rejections and unanswered calls to find an interested prospect can be tedious. With AI, you can identify such leads in no time to help your SDRs prioritize them and get quick wins without wasting time and energy
  • 💪 Enhanced efficiency—AI tools can take over numerous mundane tasks that precede and follow cold calls, from prospect qualification to call analysis. Your SDRs will have more time to focus on impactful work instead of getting bogged down in menial tasks
  • 🏅 Higher campaign effectiveness—Thanks to their data enrichment and personalization capabilities, AI tools can increase the effectiveness of your sales calls

To enjoy these benefits fully, it’s not enough to pick any random tool and build your workflow around it—you need a methodical approach to supplementing cold calling with AI.

How To Use AI for Cold Calling

To get the most out of AI cold calling, follow these tips:

  1. Choose your platform wisely
  2. Create a smooth transition
  3. Make sure your SDRs are in charge
  4. Monitor and refine your strategy
  5. Think beyond cold calling

Choose Your Platform Wisely

Your AI cold-calling workflow will entirely depend on your selected solution, so you should weigh your options carefully to find the right one. To narrow down your choices, you first need to evaluate your current workflow and determine what specific areas you want AI to handle.

For example, you may want to automate your pre-calling workflow, in which case you need a platform with the following features:

  • Lead enrichment
  • Buyer intent analysis
  • Lead qualification
  • Generative capabilities (e.g., for script writing)

Similarly, if you want to analyze and improve the effectiveness of your calls, you can prioritize features like conversational intelligence and real-time assistance.

Besides your platform’s features and applications, you should consider the following factors:

Factor Explanation
Cost Look for flexible, affordable pricing that isn’t tied to your team size so that you can scale without increased expenses
Integrations Find a platform that integrates with your CRM, sales engagement tools, and other relevant software in your tech stack to ensure cohesiveness
Ease of use The main purpose of AI is to simplify your workflow, so you need a solution that doesn’t expose you to additional bottlenecks through a complex interface

Create a Smooth Transition

Transitioning from traditional to AI-powered cold calling is a considerable endeavor, which might overwhelm your SDRs if you don’t take a methodical approach. 😮‍💨

To avoid workflow disruptions, create the necessary sales enablement documentation before switching to an AI tool. You should also conduct detailed sales training covering all the relevant aspects of your new cold-calling workflows.

As soon as you pick an AI tool, start developing the necessary resources and training materials. If you choose a robust platform that overhauls the cold-calling process, introduce it gradually to avoid overwhelming your team and impacting their productivity.

Make Sure Your SDRs Are in Charge

As powerful as AI cold-calling tools may be, they lack some essential skills, such as:

  • Critical thinking
  • Emotional intelligence
  • Motivation

AI tools can’t be held accountable for any decisions, so it’s best to leave the crucial ones to your team members. Over-reliance on AI at any point of your outreach process can backfire, so use your chosen tool for its main purpose—supporting your SDRs and helping them close more efficiently.

For example, while an AI tool can help qualify leads, your SDRs should call the final shots when prioritizing them. Similarly, it’s best to leave the actual call to a human while AI assists them through feedback and guidance.

Monitor and Refine Your Strategy

Successful AI implementation doesn’t happen overnight, so you’ll need to set up a tracking system to monitor progress and adjust your strategy as needed. 🔍

The first step is to identify the KPIs you should track, which can include the following:

  • Call duration
  • Call abandonment rate
  • Conversion rate

You likely already track various relevant metrics, so you can compare them before and after AI implementation to quantify the impact of your solution on the sales process.

As you oversee your AI-enabled workflow, look for areas of opportunity and new tasks you can automate. Use these insights to further finetune your automation strategy and minimize mundane work.

Think Beyond Cold Calling

Some AI tools can automate specific aspects of cold calling while streamlining other sales activities. For example, platforms oriented toward pre-call automation help you collect abundant user data, which you can also use in email campaigns.

When selecting a platform, see if you can apply its features to other processes in your sales cycle to get the most value. Generative AI tools can be particularly helpful here as they can produce content beyond call scripts, such as:

Best AI Cold Calling Software To Check Out

Seeing as AI cold calling is a comprehensive concept, we selected a few tools that automate different aspects of it to help you find the most fitting one. 

To create our list, we reviewed popular platforms to zero in on the most effective options and gathered feedback from our extensive community of sales pros and industry experts. We also checked out the reviews of different solutions to asses their real-life performance.

Our research resulted in four tools worth considering:

  1. Clay
  2. Dialpad
  3. Aircall
  4. Gong

Clay

Clay is a robust sales automation tool that comes with several AI features that can streamline your cold calls. The first one is Claygent—a capable AI researcher and assistant that helps you uncover plenty of prospect data you can leverage in your calls.

You can ask Claygent virtually anything about people and companies, such as:

  • “Is this company SOC 2 compliant?”
  • “What was the last podcast this prospect appeared on?”
  • “What are this company’s main competitors?”

Once you uncover the data you need, you can use Clay’s OpenAI integration to create effective call scripts that include all the information necessary to foster strong relationships from the get-go. You can harness the power of ChatGPT to create and edit text, complete prompts, and use AI to perform various other tasks that can simplify sales calls.

Clay’s integration goes beyond cold calling to help you streamline other outreach activities. For example, you can analyze and generate images for your outreach emails. 

Want to see Clay’s OpenAI integration in action? Check out this video:

Speaking of emails, you can use Clay’s AI message writer to create an engaging, personalized email in seconds. It pulls the data Clay collects to create hyper-personalized messages, whether follow-ups or cold emails. 📨

You can use Clay’s AI features for free thanks to the robust free plan. If you wish to upgrade, you can choose between four paid tiers:

  1. Starter—$149/month
  2. Explorer—$349/month
  3. Pro—$800/month
  4. Enterprise—Custom
Pros User Reviews

✔️ AI-powered pre-call research

✔️ Automated script generation

✔️ AI message writer

✔️ Free plan

Unmatched AI and seamless data integration

Extremely powerful prospecting tool

Powerful and intuitive

The best outbound GTM product

Dialpad

Source: Dialpad

Dialpad is a comprehensive solution that weaves AI into sales engagement and customer outreach. It comes with a few useful AI tools, such as:

  • AI Call Purpose—Instantly provides notifications with a caller’s intent to help your team members finetune their approach accordingly
  • AI Scorecards—Grades sales conversations and customer experience to provide useful analytics
  • Coaching Hub—Identifies coaching opportunities in real time to help your SDRs hone their skills based on robust data

A particularly useful feature is AI Playbooks, which helps SDRs identify and implement the most effective scripts with high conversion potential. The platform also offers real-time Assist Cards to help with objection handling as the sales call happens, reducing the risk of missed opportunities. 💯

Dialpad doesn’t offer a free plan, though you get a 14-day free trial of your chosen plan to see its capabilities first-hand. The AI Sales suite offers three monthly plans to choose from:

  1. Essentials—$70/user/month
  2. Advanced—$110/user/month
  3. Premium—$170/user/month

You can get a discount with annual billing, which ranges between 11% and 14% depending on your selected tier.

Pros User Reviews

✔️ Real-time sales assistance

✔️ Comprehensive sales analytics

✔️ AI sales coaching

Great tool for small businesses

Consistent performance and user-friendliness

Useful and feature-rich solution

Aircall

Source: Aircall

Similar to Dialpad, Aircall is an AI-enabled dialer for inbound and outbound calls. As for the outreach aspect, it’s equipped with several functionalities that streamline sales call workflows.

Aircall lets you either upload a list of contacts or use its AI to find it directly on a prospect’s website. You can use the so-called Power Dialer to compile a list of numbers and call them in a single click to streamline the workflow and avoid interruptions.

Other notable AI-powered features of Aircall include the following:

  • AI-generated summaries of past calls for additional context and personalization
  • Streamlined call reviewing through transcription, text search, and automated sentiment analysis
  • Keyword highlights from calls that help SDRs understand prospects’ priorities

Aircall offers three plans you can choose from:

  1. Essentials—$40/license/month
  2. Professional—$70/license/month
  3. Custom—Quote-based pricing

Keep in mind that if you want to use the AI features, you’ll need to buy them as add-ons for an additional $9 per license. Advanced analytics are also excluded from the plans, so you need to buy them for $15 per license.

Pros User Reviews

✔️ Automated phone number discovery and dialing

✔️ AI summaries of previous sales conversations

✔️ Advanced call reviews and analytics

Easy-to-use web dialer

Customizable and easy to integrate

Customer tracking and marketing clarity in one

Gong

Source: Gong

Gong is a solid solution if your main goal is to support cold calling with robust analytics. It leverages AI throughout the cold-calling process to help with various tasks, most notably:

  • Forecasting—Gong analyzes over 300 signals to help you predict the outcomes of your outreach efforts
  • Script adjustments—The platform analyzes calls to share insights and suggestions on improving your SDRs’ scripts
  • Workflow structuring—Gong offers context-based suggestions for prioritizing specific tasks to create a more efficient workflow

The platform also provides auto-dialing and AI-generated call summaries, removing a considerable amount of manual work from your calls. You also get a comprehensive dashboard with performance analytics to stay on top of the team’s progress in real time. 📈

Much like Clay, Gong offers personalized email generation to help expand your outreach efforts beyond calls. You can use it for a multi-channel strategy to boost your conversion rates.

Unfortunately, the platform doesn’t make pricing information publicly available, so there’s no way of knowing how much these features will cost unless you get a quote. You need to provide your team size and preferred use cases, and Gong’s team will reach out with details.

There’s also no information about a free trial, though you can book a live demo or take a product tour to see Gong in action.

Pros User Reviews

✔️ AI-powered sales forecasting

✔️ Call analysis for script recommendations

✔️ Personalized email generation

Crucial for customer meeting reviews

More than a meeting recording tool

Exceptional for conversation intelligence

Common Issues With Cold-Calling AI Software

When choosing an AI cold-calling solution, you should be mindful of the pitfalls that many solutions come with. You may stumble upon solutions with one or more of the following issues:

  • Rigid pricing—Annual contracts expose you to the risk of vendor lock-in. You might pay a significant amount of money in advance, only to realize the solution doesn’t work as intended
  • Narrow feature scope—Many AI cold-calling platforms focus too heavily on specific use cases, forcing you to invest in several solutions to automate all the necessary processes
  • Lack of sufficient data—Without solid data, AI-powered cold-calling platforms might only simplify your workflow without making a considerable impact on your campaigns’ effectiveness

As you browse different options, you’ll see there’s typically a trade-off between sufficient features, flexible and justifiable pricing, and additional functionalities that automate your sales workflow. If you need a well-rounded solution that supports you throughout the sales cycle, Clay might be your best bet.

What Makes Clay the Right Solution

As you saw, Clay covers various tasks related to cold calls, such as:

  • Prospect research
  • Automated script creation
  • Sales enablement and training material creation

It’s particularly useful if you’re looking for pre-call automation as it removes many manual tasks from the process and frees up more time for your SDRs to convert prospects.

At the same time, Clay comes with flexible pricing without long-term commitments, so you won’t overspend on process automation. Thanks to various credit options, you can tailor Clay to your needs to get the most out of every single dollar you invest. 💲

All of this already makes Clay a highly appealing solution—but it’s far from the platform’s only benefit.

Improve the Effectiveness of Sales Calls With Next-Level Data Enrichment

Besides AI-powered features, Clay excels at one of the most important outreach tasks—data enrichment. It integrates with over 50 data providers to help you uncover all the prospect data you need, such as:

  • Contact information
  • Professional history
  • Likes and interest
  • Social media updates
  • Company data (employee count, funding, and much more)

Armed with this data, you can execute more effective sales calls and build rapport with prospects from the get-go. The best part is that all this data is accessible directly from Clay without the need to create separate accounts and juggle multiple contracts.

This is thanks to waterfall enrichment—an advanced approach to data collection that gets you the data you need in three steps:

  1. Select the data you need
  2. Choose the providers you want to browse
  3. Let Clay examine the chosen providers one by one until it finds your data

Don’t have a lead list yet? No problem—Clay lets you build one from scratch by finding people and companies, after which you can score leads to prioritize those with the highest conversion potential. 🦾

You can also use the Clay Chrome extension for a more hands-on approach to enrichment. Open a page, fire up the extension, and you can pull data automatically or map it manually for more flexibility.

All of these features have made many users fall in love with Clay. Here’s what one of them had to say:

Source: Clay Wall of Love

Create Your Free Clay Account

If you want to uplevel your cold calling, email outreach, and various other sales workflows, you can get started with Clay in three steps:

  1. Visit the signup page
  2. Enter your name, email, and password
  3. Explore Clay’s many features

For more information about Clay’s features and useful tutorials, feel free to explore Clay University. You can also join the platform’s Slack community of sales pros and other experts to see the results others are getting. If you want to get regular product updates and outreach tips for tightening your campaigns, sign up for Clay’s newsletter.

💡 Keep reading: Want to learn more about automating your sales process with AI? Check out these articles:

Cold calling gets a bad rap among prospects and SDRs alike. LinkedIn’s research shows that 63% of sales pros consider it the “worst part of their job,” which doesn’t come as a surprise—it’s a numbers game, and getting the numbers to work for you can be tough.

Using AI for cold calling can be an excellent way to make this task more enjoyable for SDRs while minimizing negative responses from prospects. The right AI solution can help you uncover abundant data you can use to personalize interactions for better results and save a considerable amount of time.

Take our workflow as an example—we've used AI to fully automate a four-step campaign for our outbound sequences, which made the outreach process far smoother. 

There are several ways to leverage AI in cold calls, which we’ll cover in this guide alongside the tips for getting the most out of it. We’ll then show you a few tools worth checking out to help you find the best one for your needs. 🙌

What Is AI Cold Calling?

AI cold calling relies on AI-enabled tools to automate various tasks related to your inbound and outbound calls. Such tools leverage technologies like machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and speech synthesis to take over different activities and free up more time for your SDRs.

Depending on the specific features, AI cold calling software can have numerous use cases, most notably:

  • Sales call simulation and roleplay
  • Call recording, transcription, and analysis
  • Pre-call preparation and data enrichment
  • Script personalization

That being said, some aspects of cold calling are easier to automate than others. For example, streamlining data enrichment and call analysis is much easier than automating the actual calls. While you can find an AI sales call bot, the technology can’t fully replace your SDR—and it shouldn’t. The whole purpose of AI is to support your team so that they can hit targets faster and with less effort.

One of the key ways this happens is through robust data collection that allows for more personalized sales calls. AI tools for cold calling can analyze comprehensive data, including buying signals, to help you tailor your messaging to the prospect’s behavioral and other data and make calls more effective.

Still, this is far from the only benefit of AI cold calling. Even though the technology is still relatively new, it can support your sales process in many ways.

Why You Should Use AI for Sales Calls

Supporting your sales calls with AI offers various benefits, such as:

  • 🤔 Data-driven decisions—AI cold calling tools remove the guesswork from your lead generation and outreach processes so that your SDRs don’t call prospects randomly and without understanding what drives their purchase decisions. Whether you need to qualify leads or finetune your call script, you can do so based on cold data instead of biased decisions
  • ❗ Easy prospect prioritization—Pushing through countless rejections and unanswered calls to find an interested prospect can be tedious. With AI, you can identify such leads in no time to help your SDRs prioritize them and get quick wins without wasting time and energy
  • 💪 Enhanced efficiency—AI tools can take over numerous mundane tasks that precede and follow cold calls, from prospect qualification to call analysis. Your SDRs will have more time to focus on impactful work instead of getting bogged down in menial tasks
  • 🏅 Higher campaign effectiveness—Thanks to their data enrichment and personalization capabilities, AI tools can increase the effectiveness of your sales calls

To enjoy these benefits fully, it’s not enough to pick any random tool and build your workflow around it—you need a methodical approach to supplementing cold calling with AI.

How To Use AI for Cold Calling

To get the most out of AI cold calling, follow these tips:

  1. Choose your platform wisely
  2. Create a smooth transition
  3. Make sure your SDRs are in charge
  4. Monitor and refine your strategy
  5. Think beyond cold calling

Choose Your Platform Wisely

Your AI cold-calling workflow will entirely depend on your selected solution, so you should weigh your options carefully to find the right one. To narrow down your choices, you first need to evaluate your current workflow and determine what specific areas you want AI to handle.

For example, you may want to automate your pre-calling workflow, in which case you need a platform with the following features:

  • Lead enrichment
  • Buyer intent analysis
  • Lead qualification
  • Generative capabilities (e.g., for script writing)

Similarly, if you want to analyze and improve the effectiveness of your calls, you can prioritize features like conversational intelligence and real-time assistance.

Besides your platform’s features and applications, you should consider the following factors:

Factor Explanation
Cost Look for flexible, affordable pricing that isn’t tied to your team size so that you can scale without increased expenses
Integrations Find a platform that integrates with your CRM, sales engagement tools, and other relevant software in your tech stack to ensure cohesiveness
Ease of use The main purpose of AI is to simplify your workflow, so you need a solution that doesn’t expose you to additional bottlenecks through a complex interface

Create a Smooth Transition

Transitioning from traditional to AI-powered cold calling is a considerable endeavor, which might overwhelm your SDRs if you don’t take a methodical approach. 😮‍💨

To avoid workflow disruptions, create the necessary sales enablement documentation before switching to an AI tool. You should also conduct detailed sales training covering all the relevant aspects of your new cold-calling workflows.

As soon as you pick an AI tool, start developing the necessary resources and training materials. If you choose a robust platform that overhauls the cold-calling process, introduce it gradually to avoid overwhelming your team and impacting their productivity.

Make Sure Your SDRs Are in Charge

As powerful as AI cold-calling tools may be, they lack some essential skills, such as:

  • Critical thinking
  • Emotional intelligence
  • Motivation

AI tools can’t be held accountable for any decisions, so it’s best to leave the crucial ones to your team members. Over-reliance on AI at any point of your outreach process can backfire, so use your chosen tool for its main purpose—supporting your SDRs and helping them close more efficiently.

For example, while an AI tool can help qualify leads, your SDRs should call the final shots when prioritizing them. Similarly, it’s best to leave the actual call to a human while AI assists them through feedback and guidance.

Monitor and Refine Your Strategy

Successful AI implementation doesn’t happen overnight, so you’ll need to set up a tracking system to monitor progress and adjust your strategy as needed. 🔍

The first step is to identify the KPIs you should track, which can include the following:

  • Call duration
  • Call abandonment rate
  • Conversion rate

You likely already track various relevant metrics, so you can compare them before and after AI implementation to quantify the impact of your solution on the sales process.

As you oversee your AI-enabled workflow, look for areas of opportunity and new tasks you can automate. Use these insights to further finetune your automation strategy and minimize mundane work.

Think Beyond Cold Calling

Some AI tools can automate specific aspects of cold calling while streamlining other sales activities. For example, platforms oriented toward pre-call automation help you collect abundant user data, which you can also use in email campaigns.

When selecting a platform, see if you can apply its features to other processes in your sales cycle to get the most value. Generative AI tools can be particularly helpful here as they can produce content beyond call scripts, such as:

Best AI Cold Calling Software To Check Out

Seeing as AI cold calling is a comprehensive concept, we selected a few tools that automate different aspects of it to help you find the most fitting one. 

To create our list, we reviewed popular platforms to zero in on the most effective options and gathered feedback from our extensive community of sales pros and industry experts. We also checked out the reviews of different solutions to asses their real-life performance.

Our research resulted in four tools worth considering:

  1. Clay
  2. Dialpad
  3. Aircall
  4. Gong

Clay

Clay is a robust sales automation tool that comes with several AI features that can streamline your cold calls. The first one is Claygent—a capable AI researcher and assistant that helps you uncover plenty of prospect data you can leverage in your calls.

You can ask Claygent virtually anything about people and companies, such as:

  • “Is this company SOC 2 compliant?”
  • “What was the last podcast this prospect appeared on?”
  • “What are this company’s main competitors?”

Once you uncover the data you need, you can use Clay’s OpenAI integration to create effective call scripts that include all the information necessary to foster strong relationships from the get-go. You can harness the power of ChatGPT to create and edit text, complete prompts, and use AI to perform various other tasks that can simplify sales calls.

Clay’s integration goes beyond cold calling to help you streamline other outreach activities. For example, you can analyze and generate images for your outreach emails. 

Want to see Clay’s OpenAI integration in action? Check out this video:

Speaking of emails, you can use Clay’s AI message writer to create an engaging, personalized email in seconds. It pulls the data Clay collects to create hyper-personalized messages, whether follow-ups or cold emails. 📨

You can use Clay’s AI features for free thanks to the robust free plan. If you wish to upgrade, you can choose between four paid tiers:

  1. Starter—$149/month
  2. Explorer—$349/month
  3. Pro—$800/month
  4. Enterprise—Custom
Pros User Reviews

✔️ AI-powered pre-call research

✔️ Automated script generation

✔️ AI message writer

✔️ Free plan

Unmatched AI and seamless data integration

Extremely powerful prospecting tool

Powerful and intuitive

The best outbound GTM product

Dialpad

Source: Dialpad

Dialpad is a comprehensive solution that weaves AI into sales engagement and customer outreach. It comes with a few useful AI tools, such as:

  • AI Call Purpose—Instantly provides notifications with a caller’s intent to help your team members finetune their approach accordingly
  • AI Scorecards—Grades sales conversations and customer experience to provide useful analytics
  • Coaching Hub—Identifies coaching opportunities in real time to help your SDRs hone their skills based on robust data

A particularly useful feature is AI Playbooks, which helps SDRs identify and implement the most effective scripts with high conversion potential. The platform also offers real-time Assist Cards to help with objection handling as the sales call happens, reducing the risk of missed opportunities. 💯

Dialpad doesn’t offer a free plan, though you get a 14-day free trial of your chosen plan to see its capabilities first-hand. The AI Sales suite offers three monthly plans to choose from:

  1. Essentials—$70/user/month
  2. Advanced—$110/user/month
  3. Premium—$170/user/month

You can get a discount with annual billing, which ranges between 11% and 14% depending on your selected tier.

Pros User Reviews

✔️ Real-time sales assistance

✔️ Comprehensive sales analytics

✔️ AI sales coaching

Great tool for small businesses

Consistent performance and user-friendliness

Useful and feature-rich solution

Aircall

Source: Aircall

Similar to Dialpad, Aircall is an AI-enabled dialer for inbound and outbound calls. As for the outreach aspect, it’s equipped with several functionalities that streamline sales call workflows.

Aircall lets you either upload a list of contacts or use its AI to find it directly on a prospect’s website. You can use the so-called Power Dialer to compile a list of numbers and call them in a single click to streamline the workflow and avoid interruptions.

Other notable AI-powered features of Aircall include the following:

  • AI-generated summaries of past calls for additional context and personalization
  • Streamlined call reviewing through transcription, text search, and automated sentiment analysis
  • Keyword highlights from calls that help SDRs understand prospects’ priorities

Aircall offers three plans you can choose from:

  1. Essentials—$40/license/month
  2. Professional—$70/license/month
  3. Custom—Quote-based pricing

Keep in mind that if you want to use the AI features, you’ll need to buy them as add-ons for an additional $9 per license. Advanced analytics are also excluded from the plans, so you need to buy them for $15 per license.

Pros User Reviews

✔️ Automated phone number discovery and dialing

✔️ AI summaries of previous sales conversations

✔️ Advanced call reviews and analytics

Easy-to-use web dialer

Customizable and easy to integrate

Customer tracking and marketing clarity in one

Gong

Source: Gong

Gong is a solid solution if your main goal is to support cold calling with robust analytics. It leverages AI throughout the cold-calling process to help with various tasks, most notably:

  • Forecasting—Gong analyzes over 300 signals to help you predict the outcomes of your outreach efforts
  • Script adjustments—The platform analyzes calls to share insights and suggestions on improving your SDRs’ scripts
  • Workflow structuring—Gong offers context-based suggestions for prioritizing specific tasks to create a more efficient workflow

The platform also provides auto-dialing and AI-generated call summaries, removing a considerable amount of manual work from your calls. You also get a comprehensive dashboard with performance analytics to stay on top of the team’s progress in real time. 📈

Much like Clay, Gong offers personalized email generation to help expand your outreach efforts beyond calls. You can use it for a multi-channel strategy to boost your conversion rates.

Unfortunately, the platform doesn’t make pricing information publicly available, so there’s no way of knowing how much these features will cost unless you get a quote. You need to provide your team size and preferred use cases, and Gong’s team will reach out with details.

There’s also no information about a free trial, though you can book a live demo or take a product tour to see Gong in action.

Pros User Reviews

✔️ AI-powered sales forecasting

✔️ Call analysis for script recommendations

✔️ Personalized email generation

Crucial for customer meeting reviews

More than a meeting recording tool

Exceptional for conversation intelligence

Common Issues With Cold-Calling AI Software

When choosing an AI cold-calling solution, you should be mindful of the pitfalls that many solutions come with. You may stumble upon solutions with one or more of the following issues:

  • Rigid pricing—Annual contracts expose you to the risk of vendor lock-in. You might pay a significant amount of money in advance, only to realize the solution doesn’t work as intended
  • Narrow feature scope—Many AI cold-calling platforms focus too heavily on specific use cases, forcing you to invest in several solutions to automate all the necessary processes
  • Lack of sufficient data—Without solid data, AI-powered cold-calling platforms might only simplify your workflow without making a considerable impact on your campaigns’ effectiveness

As you browse different options, you’ll see there’s typically a trade-off between sufficient features, flexible and justifiable pricing, and additional functionalities that automate your sales workflow. If you need a well-rounded solution that supports you throughout the sales cycle, Clay might be your best bet.

What Makes Clay the Right Solution

As you saw, Clay covers various tasks related to cold calls, such as:

  • Prospect research
  • Automated script creation
  • Sales enablement and training material creation

It’s particularly useful if you’re looking for pre-call automation as it removes many manual tasks from the process and frees up more time for your SDRs to convert prospects.

At the same time, Clay comes with flexible pricing without long-term commitments, so you won’t overspend on process automation. Thanks to various credit options, you can tailor Clay to your needs to get the most out of every single dollar you invest. 💲

All of this already makes Clay a highly appealing solution—but it’s far from the platform’s only benefit.

Improve the Effectiveness of Sales Calls With Next-Level Data Enrichment

Besides AI-powered features, Clay excels at one of the most important outreach tasks—data enrichment. It integrates with over 50 data providers to help you uncover all the prospect data you need, such as:

  • Contact information
  • Professional history
  • Likes and interest
  • Social media updates
  • Company data (employee count, funding, and much more)

Armed with this data, you can execute more effective sales calls and build rapport with prospects from the get-go. The best part is that all this data is accessible directly from Clay without the need to create separate accounts and juggle multiple contracts.

This is thanks to waterfall enrichment—an advanced approach to data collection that gets you the data you need in three steps:

  1. Select the data you need
  2. Choose the providers you want to browse
  3. Let Clay examine the chosen providers one by one until it finds your data

Don’t have a lead list yet? No problem—Clay lets you build one from scratch by finding people and companies, after which you can score leads to prioritize those with the highest conversion potential. 🦾

You can also use the Clay Chrome extension for a more hands-on approach to enrichment. Open a page, fire up the extension, and you can pull data automatically or map it manually for more flexibility.

All of these features have made many users fall in love with Clay. Here’s what one of them had to say:

Source: Clay Wall of Love

Create Your Free Clay Account

If you want to uplevel your cold calling, email outreach, and various other sales workflows, you can get started with Clay in three steps:

  1. Visit the signup page
  2. Enter your name, email, and password
  3. Explore Clay’s many features

For more information about Clay’s features and useful tutorials, feel free to explore Clay University. You can also join the platform’s Slack community of sales pros and other experts to see the results others are getting. If you want to get regular product updates and outreach tips for tightening your campaigns, sign up for Clay’s newsletter.

💡 Keep reading: Want to learn more about automating your sales process with AI? Check out these articles:

More Articles