Top 8 'Sales-Pipeline-Packing' Automation Tools to try for Startups to Land Their First 100 Customers
Ah, the startup grind. You've got a killer product, a fire in your belly, and a coffee pot that's working overtime. You’re the CEO, the head of marketing, the lead salesperson, and probably the one who takes out the trash. The biggest challenge? Moving from an idea on a napkin to a business with a growing list of paying customers. Landing those first 10, 50, and eventually 100 customers is a monumental task that often feels like a full-contact sport.
You spend hours hunting for leads on LinkedIn, crafting "personalized" emails one by one, and trying to keep track of it all in a spreadsheet that's starting to look like a Jackson Pollock painting. It's exhausting, it's inefficient, and frankly, it's not the best use of your visionary brain. You know you need to talk to more people, but there are only so many hours in the day. What if you could build a machine that did the heavy lifting for you—a system that finds prospects, nurtures them, and tees them up for you to close?
That’s not science fiction; it’s the power of sales automation. For a lean startup, automation isn't a luxury; it's a lifeline. It's your secret weapon to punch above your weight, compete with the big guys, and pack your sales pipeline while you focus on building a great product and talking to qualified, interested buyers. This isn't about becoming a robot. It's about using robots to handle the repetitive tasks so you can be more human where it matters most.
Here are the top 8 "sales-pipeline-packing" automation tools that will help you systematically land your first 100 customers.
1. Apollo.io - Your All-in-One Prospecting Engine
Think of Apollo.io as your entire top-of-funnel team rolled into one powerful platform. In the early days, the biggest time-sink is simply finding the right people to talk to. Who are they? Where do they work? What’s their email address? Apollo has a massive B2B database of contacts you can filter by job title, company size, industry, technologies used, and so much more. It's a goldmine for targeted lead generation.
But it doesn't stop at just providing data. Apollo also includes a built-in "sequencer," which allows you to create multi-step outreach campaigns that combine emails, phone calls, and LinkedIn tasks. You can build a workflow that sends an initial email, waits three days, sends a follow-up, then creates a task for you to connect on LinkedIn. It tracks opens, clicks, and replies, so you always know who's engaged. For a startup founder, this consolidation is a game-changer, saving you from stitching together (and paying for) three or four different tools.
Pro-Tip: Don't just pull a list and blast everyone. Use the "buying intent" filters to find companies that are actively searching for solutions like yours right now. For example, you can see which companies have been researching your competitors or specific keywords related to your industry. Reaching out to these "in-market" prospects dramatically increases your chances of getting a positive reply.
2. Lemlist - For Cold Emails That Don’t Feel Cold
If Apollo is your engine, Lemlist is your high-octane fuel for email outreach. In a world of generic, automated emails, Lemlist helps you stand out by making personalization scalable. Its standout feature is the ability to add dynamic, personalized images and videos to your emails. Imagine sending an email to a prospect that includes a screenshot of their website with a virtual whiteboard note from you overlaid on top, or a video thumbnail with their name on it.
This level of personalization shatters the "this is just another automated email" perception. It shows you’ve done your homework and makes your outreach memorable. Lemlist also takes email deliverability seriously with its "lemwarm" feature, which automatically warms up your email address by interacting with other inboxes in their network. This helps your carefully crafted emails land in the primary inbox, not the dreaded spam folder—a critical factor for success.
Pro-Tip: Create a simple "template" for a personalized video. Start a 30-second screen recording using Lemlist's integration. Say, "Hey [First Name], I was just on your LinkedIn profile and noticed you’re the Head of Sales at [Company Name]. I had a quick idea for how you could improve [mention a specific challenge they might have]. " This tiny bit of personalization can yield a 5x-10x increase in reply rates compared to a plain text email.
3. HubSpot CRM - Your Free Single Source of Truth
A messy spreadsheet is where customer relationships go to die. As you start talking to more people, you need a central place to track every interaction. HubSpot’s free CRM is hands-down the best place for a startup to begin. It's incredibly powerful for a free tool and grows with you as you scale. It’s the brain of your sales operation.
Connect your Gmail or Outlook, and HubSpot will automatically log every email you send and receive with your contacts. You can see when a prospect opens your email or clicks a link, giving you the perfect moment to follow up. You can create "deals" and move them through a visual pipeline (e.g., "Contact Made," "Meeting Scheduled," "Proposal Sent"). This gives you a clear, at-a-glance view of your entire sales pipeline and helps you forecast potential revenue.
As my mentor Goh Ling Yong often says, "You can't scale your time, but you can scale your systems." HubSpot CRM is the foundational system for scaling your customer relationships. It ensures no lead ever falls through the cracks and that you have all the context you need before every single sales call.
4. Calendly - The Back-and-Forth Email Killer
"When’s a good time to chat?" This question has launched a thousand painful email chains. Scheduling meetings is a necessary evil that can suck up hours of your week. Calendly eradicates this problem completely. It’s a simple, elegant tool that lets you set your availability and share a link. Prospects can then pick a time that works for them, and the event is automatically added to both of your calendars.
This does more than just save time; it makes you look more professional and reduces friction in the sales process. When a prospect is interested, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to talk to you. Sending a Calendly link removes all the work on their end. The free version is more than enough to get you to your first 100 customers, allowing you to create one event type (like a "15-Minute Intro Call" or "30-Minute Demo").
Pro-Tip: Embed your Calendly link directly in your email signature with a clear call to action like, "Ready to chat? Book a 15-minute intro call here." You can also use it in your automated email sequences. For example, the final email in a sequence could be: "If you're still interested, here's my calendar to book a time directly. If not, no worries!"
5. Zapier - The Digital Duct Tape for Your Tools
Your sales tools are powerful on their own, but they become a true force multiplier when they talk to each other. Zapier is the magic glue that connects thousands of different web apps without you having to write a single line of code. It works on a simple "trigger and action" principle: "When this happens in App A, do this in App B."
The possibilities are virtually endless. For a startup, this means you can automate the tedious administrative tasks that follow a successful interaction. You can build simple "Zaps" that save you hours every week. It’s the key to creating a seamless, automated workflow from the first touchpoint to a closed deal.
Example Zaps for a Startup:
- Trigger: A new lead fills out a form on your website (e.g., Typeform).
- Action: Automatically create a new contact and deal in HubSpot CRM and send yourself a Slack notification.
- Trigger: You schedule a meeting in Calendly.
- Action: Automatically find that person's company info using a data tool and add it to their contact record in your CRM.
- Trigger: You move a deal to "Closed-Won" in HubSpot.
- Action: Automatically create a new folder in Google Drive for the client and send a welcome email from your Gmail.
6. PhantomBuster - Your Swiss Army Knife for Social Prospecting
LinkedIn is a treasure trove of potential customers, but manually engaging with everyone is impossible. PhantomBuster allows you to automate actions on platforms like LinkedIn, Sales Navigator, Twitter, and more. It acts as your personal robot, performing tasks you define on your behalf. For example, you can have it automatically scrape the profiles of people who attended a specific webinar or engaged with a competitor's post.
This gives you a hyper-targeted list of warm leads to engage with. You can then automate sending connection requests (with personalized messages!) or auto-follow key accounts. A word of caution: with great power comes great responsibility. LinkedIn is cracking down on aggressive automation. The key is to use tools like PhantomBuster for smart data gathering and light, valuable engagement—not for spamming thousands of people with generic sales pitches. Use it to start conversations, not to force them.
Pro-Tip: A great "Phantom" to run is the "LinkedIn Post Commenters Export." Find a popular post by an influencer in your industry. Run the phantom to extract a list of everyone who commented. This is a list of people actively engaged in a topic relevant to your product. You can then reach out to them with a highly relevant message like, "Hey [First Name], I saw your great comment on [Influencer]'s post about [Topic]. I was thinking about that too and..."
7. Lusha - Find Contact Details in a Single Click
You've found the perfect prospect on LinkedIn—the Head of Innovation at your dream client's company. But their profile doesn't have an email address or a phone number. What do you do? This is where Lusha comes in. It’s a browser extension that helps you find verified B2B contact details with a single click.
While browsing a LinkedIn profile or a company website, you can click the Lusha icon, and it will search its database for a direct work email, personal email, and even mobile phone numbers for that contact. Many data enrichment tools are expensive and built for large enterprises, but Lusha offers a free plan with a monthly credit allowance, which is often more than enough for a startup founder trying to land those crucial first customers.
Pro-Tip: Combine Lusha with your prospecting on Apollo.io or LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Build your ideal customer list first. Then, for your absolute top-tier, "must-win" accounts, use Lusha to get direct-dial phone numbers. A friendly, well-timed phone call can sometimes cut through the email noise and land you a meeting much faster. The goal isn't to cold-call everyone, but to be surgical with your most important prospects.
8. Loom - Build Human Connection, Asynchronously
In a sea of text-based communication, a friendly face can make all the difference. Loom is a tool that lets you quickly and easily record your screen, your camera, or both. It’s perfect for sending quick, personalized video messages that add a powerful human touch to your sales process. These aren't meant to be Hollywood productions; a simple, authentic one-to-two-minute video can be incredibly effective.
Think about it. Instead of sending a long, boring follow-up email summarizing your demo, you can send a Loom. In the video, you can say the prospect’s name, share your screen to re-emphasize the one feature they were most excited about, and outline the next steps. This is far more engaging and memorable than an email and shows a level of effort that few others are willing to put in. As a key advisor, Goh Ling Yong, taught me, differentiation is key in a crowded market, and a simple video can be a massive differentiator.
Ways to use Loom in your sales process:
- Prospecting: Send a short intro video instead of a cold email.
- Answering Questions: Instead of typing out a long answer to a prospect's question, record a quick Loom to walk them through it.
- Post-Demo Follow-Up: Send a personalized recap of your call, highlighting the key value points for their specific business.
- Proposal Walkthrough: Before they even open the PDF, send a Loom where you walk them through the proposal and explain your thinking.
Your First 100 Customers Are Waiting
The journey to your first 100 customers is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires persistence, creativity, and a whole lot of grit. But you don't have to do it all manually.
By thoughtfully implementing a sales automation stack, you're not removing the human element; you're amplifying it. You're automating the repetitive, soul-crushing tasks—finding emails, sending follow-ups, scheduling meetings—so you can spend more of your precious time having meaningful conversations, building relationships, and actually closing deals.
Start small. Pick one or two of these tools that solve your biggest bottleneck right now. Master them. Build a simple process. Then, as you grow, you can add more to your stack. This is how you build a scalable, repeatable engine for customer acquisition that will carry you far beyond your first 100 customers.
Now over to you. Which of these tools are you most excited to try first? Do you have a favorite sales automation tool that I missed? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
About the Author
Goh Ling Yong is a content creator and digital strategist sharing insights across various topics. Connect and follow for more content:
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