Salesforce Sales Cloud vs Apollo.io: Which is a better fit?

Angel J.: My name is Angel, and I'm the HMIS Operations Manager for a company that is now 60 plus employees large, and I rate Salesforce Sales Cloud five out of five. Prior to Salesforce Sales Cloud, we used a multitude of different softwares, including softwares like Trello. We used Google Office, we used Microsoft Office, Microsoft 365. We used Zendesk. We used a lot of different softwares and tried to use them in a way that was collaborative, but it often left us with too many things to manage in different spaces. We chose Salesforce Sales Cloud because it is one of the top leaders in the industry. We knew that it had its own reputation, and it also brought to it a lot of tools already in-house. One of our top needs is for security and safety of our data. So Salesforce was able to handle some of the HIPAA requirements that we have for our data. We also wanted to make sure that it was a platform that all 60 plus of us could interact with inside of one system instead of having multiple softwares to handle our daily needs. And then we also wanted to use some of its intuition, such as the Einstein, where it helps us to make better decisions, helps us to understand what our activities are, keeps track of what we do in the system, and helps us to grow in using the system. This is one of the reasons why we chose Salesforce Sales Cloud. Getting started with Salesforce Sales Cloud, I would say was not the easiest route. You will definitely need someone that has the knowledge of Salesforce. At the very least, knowledge of database technology. We did have to source out some of the needs to Salesforce consultants, which were very easy to find. Salesforce did help us get these consultants, but it was not a one-stop, set up, everything works automatically. And we do not use it just for sales. We use it for customer management more so than sales. So the bit that we had to have customized was something that was not already in the box. So it wasn't the easiest, but it also wasn't the hardest. The advice that I have for anyone considering using Salesforce Sales Cloud for their business is to make sure that you document all the things that you need from Salesforce. Figure out the reason why you believe that Salesforce is going to serve you, so that you can aim at those specific products and add-ons that Salesforce already has in their system. They are very good at understanding some of the things that their system can do with what you have, but making that documentation and going through that with the employees, going through that with your organization prior to coming to Salesforce is probably going to be key. It does get costly if you don't understand what you're doing with Salesforce and you have to have multiple consultants try to figure it out for you. So if you can get organized and document what your needs are before you come to Salesforce, it'll help you pick the best products that Salesforce has to offer.

Steve: My name is Steve, I'm the owner of Ellis Taylor Marketing, and I gave Apollo four stars. Really I mainly used Sales Navigator. I tried everything from Snov.io, FindThatLead. I think Scrap was one of them, like LinkedIn scrapers essentially, and stuff like that. But Sales Navigator was the primary one that I used, and that was bringing in the best leads that I could find. They also had some of the best search tools in terms of prospecting and filters for finding new leads and stuff like that. Really, the two big things that drew me to Apollo were the much more detailed targeting, or I guess it's filtering, for the lead, the prospecting. Then also, the campaigns, the sequences that you could build, and how you could AB test different sequences, the metrics that they gave you on those sequences. But really, to date, the thing that's been the best has been the prospecting tools and just how much you can filter searches out and the different options that they provide for those searches. It was pretty easy to set up and get started with, but there was definitely a big learning curve when it came to learning the platform. I wouldn't say it was really that intuitive because there's such a big platform, it's, I think, hard to make this kind of platform intuitive. It's taken months really to get used to the platform and get used to all the features that it has and really understand it. And honestly, I'm still learning it, and I've been using it for over a year now I believe. So, that's been the biggest thing, is just learning the platform itself. But in terms of getting it up and running, I'd say it was relatively easy. I would definitely say check it out. I think, for me, Apollo has been very useful in prospecting. I haven't had a tool, at least for the price that comes anywhere near it. Everything else seems to be a lot more expensive from my experience at least. When it comes to the other tools they offer, like the actual sending of the emails, the campaigns and stuff like that, I've noticed that for whatever reason, the open rates have just dropped significantly. And since I switched to a different platform for sending my emails, the exact same list and everything else, my open rates shop back up. So, I think there's still a lot of bugs to work out within Apollo. I think that's something to consider if somebody's considering Apollo. But in terms of a prospecting tool, I haven't been able to find anything that beats it, and I've been looking a lot for something to beat it, and I haven't been able to find anything beat to beat it. So, I think for the price, in terms of the prospecting, you can't beat Apollo. But when it comes to the other features, maybe look little more closely into it I would say.