Key Takeaways
- Current Crystal Knows users are unhappy because of issues like expensive plans, rigid pricing, unsatisfactory customer service, inefficient plugin, and limited personality analysis. These concerns are leading to users searching for alternatives.
- Happysales emerges as a powerful alternative to Crystal Knows, given its additional coaching features, initial contact icebreakers, pitch guidance, and deeper prospect intelligence. Other Crystal Knows alternatives include Humantic, Humanlinker, SalesLoft, Regie, Persist iQ, and ZoomInfo SalesOS.
- To convince leaders to adopt new software, create a detailed proposal presentation. Highlight its benefits and ROI, conduct a cost analysis, present case studies, and outline a clear transition plan while addressing potential objections.
Crystal Knows has made a name for itself in the market of personality analysis and buyer intelligence tools. As a leading platform, it uses AI to decipher customer personalities, preferences, and communication styles. Many businesses have found it useful for improved conversions and buyer-focused interactions.
Despite its pros, some users find themselves seeking alternatives to Crystal Knows due to limitations like its unsatisfactory customer service, rigid pricing, or simply they want to explore other options. If you're in this position, you're likely wondering:
- What features should I prioritize when considering other platforms?
- How do other solutions compare in terms of accuracy, pricing, and AI capabilities?
- Which alternative might be the best fit for my specific needs?
- Which prospecting tasks can be automated using different alternatives?
In this article, we'll address these questions and more. We carefully research and analyze seven top alternatives to Crystal Knows, examining their features, pros, cons, and pricing structures.
Why are Crystal Knows users unhappy?
If you’re already using Crystal, then at least one of these problems we’ve listed below would’ve plagued you.
And, if you’re one of our readers who is comparing Crystal Knows, then this section will explain to you why Crystal Knows users are not entirely satisfied with the product.
1.Expensive and rigid pricing
Users have expressed frustration with Crystal Knows' confusing pricing structure as they lack credit-based pricing plans. Typically, users of products like Crystal Knows find a pay-as-per-usage pricing plan, giving them more value for money than committing to large, expensive plans.
This is because intelligence-mining tools like Crystal Knows are not used on a day-day-basis, but rather during specific moments - before demo calls, cold outreach or calling, etc. These aspects form a little (albeit significant) part of a sales reps, BDRs or AEs day-to-day activities.
These plans are seen financially draining, especially for smaller companies. Plus, the plans are expensive compared to other tools in the market.
2.Unsatisfactory customer service
Some users have highlighted ongoing issues with the platform’s customer service such as delays in response times and a lack of flexibility in accommodating user needs. Dismayed customers report that the company could be more responsible with its customer support service and offer greater flexibility in managing their accounts.
3.Inefficient plugin
The automatic LinkedIn personality research via the Chrome extension has been a significant pain point for users. Even if the user lands on the wrong profile or an error page appears, the tool automatically analyzes the page/profile and uses up the credits. This often leads to credits being wasted on irrelevant or incorrect profiles.
Providing a manual option or the ability to disable automatic LinkedIn research could help with this issue. The automated approach of this feature reduces the platform’s efficiency.
4.Personality analysis limited to LinkedIn data
Crystal Knows primarily relies on LinkedIn data for its personality assessments. This can be problematic as online personas often do not accurately reflect an individual’s true personality. It cannot currently extract data from any other platform.
With an understanding of these issues, you can now better evaluate the Crystal Knows alternatives. Let’s begin.
A quick rundown of the top 7 Crystal Knows alternatives
Below are the key findings from our research of the top seven Crystal Knows alternatives.
7 Crystal alternatives for better buyer-seller intelligence and selling
Let’s examine the Crystal Knows alternatives in detail while looking at what each alternative brings to the table.
1.Happysales
Happysales is one of the best alternatives to Crystal Knows. It uses Generative AI to enhance your sales workflows, eliminating manual prospecting tasks like prospect analysis and writing outreach messages.
Happysales’ AI agents perform autonomous prospecting, conduct LinkedIn research via Chrome extension, and generate deeply contextualized content for targeted messaging.
Response generation is another standout function that reduces the turnaround time of your reps. The AI instantly extracts and delivers accurate answers from your knowledge base to your reps.
Plus, Happysales offers rep coaching including AI role plays, and round-the-clock guidance with an AI coach that produces real-time summaries of prospects' pain points and personality insights. The platform analytics help you determine your team's sales readiness, and suggest feedback and improvements.
Features
- Automated prospect list building based on your ICP
- Email and message personalization
- Response suggestions from your company knowledge base
- Chrome extension to extract 100+ prospect intelligence triggers
- Auto-generated icebreakers and pitch
- Bulk prospecting for engaging multiple accounts at once
- AI-powered role plays
- AI coach and script guidance
Pros
- Free AI sales script and email generator
- Additional coaching features
Cons
- Limited integration capabilities
- Lack of in-meeting personality data
Pricing
The pricing plans are not published on their website. You can get started with their free plan here.
Why choose Happysales over Crystal Knows
2.Humantic.ai
Humantic, a buyer intelligence platform uses AI to enable personalized, authentic seller-buyer interactions. Its Personality AI turns LinkedIn profiles into accurate personality profiles for prospect research and communication.You can also analyze engagement data to identify potential buyers and refine your ICP and buyer personas accordingly. Humantic offers AI- powered personality insights using the DISC framework for your reps to shape their communication strategies, for email writing and selling over phone calls.
Features
- Automated CRM data enrichment
- Identification of buying signals
- AI personality analysis via Chrome extension for LinkedIn, email, CRMs, etc
- AI-powered email personalization
- DISC framework selling insights
Pros
- Intuitive and easy to use
- Gives tone and pace tips with examples
Cons
- Expensive
- Limited variety of messaging
- Fewer integration capabilities
Pricing
View full pricing details here.
3.Zoominfo SalesOS
Zoominfo SalesOS is a multi-product platform for revenue teams. It offers you access to the largest B2B contact database and gives you more than basic contact data with its AI-driven insights. This may include department org charts, decision makers’ direct dials, business emails, and curated insights about company initiatives.The solution provides real-time buyer intent signals to your team including topics and keywords searched by your prospects related to your business. This improves prospect targeting and engagement. Its integrations support data-rich workflows across different channels and platforms for you to make the most of the tool.
Features
- Automated sales workflows based on market signals
- Key account intelligence to build sales flows
- Intelligent email recommendations and metrics
- AI-driven tracker to identify competitor mentions
- Market intelligence for customer-focused roadmap
- In-depth conversation insights for relevant content
Pros
- Easy to integrate with other platforms
- Super friendly customer support
Cons
- Sometimes the information is not up-to-date
- A steep learning curve for new users
Pricing
View full pricing details here.
4.Humanlinker
Humanlinker is another good alternative to Crystal Knows, offering advanced features for prospect analysis and engagement. You can create personalized sequences with just one click– including outreach emails and LinkedIn invitations.The platform generates hyper-contextualized sales copy for email campaigns and LinkedIn outreach, including icebreakers and AI-generated comments specifically for LinkedIn. Its DISC personality and 360-degree analysis reveal important traits of your prospects, and their company details while providing instant recommendations on communication, trust-building, and negotiation.
Features
- AI-generated sequences for emails, LinkedIn
- AI multichannel engagement
- Hyper-contextualized sales copywriting
- DISC personality analysis
- 360-degree prospect analysis
Pros
- Responsive support team
- Shows tips to follow before calling or mailing
Cons
- Lots of features are in the pipeline
- Bit of a learning curve is there
Pricing
View full pricing details here.
5.Persist iQ
Persist iQ is a powerful sales engagement platform and a Crystal Knows alternative for smaller teams. Its Chrome Extension allows you to quickly build targeted prospect lists by searching on LinkedIn and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Once you find your ideal prospects, you can easily add them to your outreach campaigns, automating the entire prospecting process.You get access to the results of every message, campaign, and team member, including tasks completed, replies, reply sentiment, and meetings. Plus, you can A/B test your messages and optimize your campaigns accordingly.
Features
- Automated sequences of emails, calls, LinkedIn messages, and more
- Email analytics like real-time open, click, reply, interest rate, etc
- Call script personalization, call recordings, and reporting,
- In-built dialer for making calls
- LinkedIn extension to semi-automate LinkedIn activities
- Automatic CRM data log ins
Pros
- Built for smaller teams, keen on gathering feedback
- Responsive and adaptive support team
Cons
- Costs are high for smaller teams
- Interface can at times be buggy/laggy
Pricing
View full pricing details here.
6.Salesloft
SalesLoft is a robust AI platform for larger sales teams. Its automation capabilities eliminate repetitive tasks like data entry, saving time and reducing errors. The solution assists your reps in prioritizing the best accounts, identifying deal gaps, tracking buyer activity data, and assessing performance. For managers, SalesLoft enables tracking team progress, coaching, and modeling future strategies.
Features
- AI-prioritized workflows for every rep
- Insights to identify coachable moments and top-performer behavior
- Automated CRM sync
- AI transcription, analysis, and summaries
- Email automation, tracking, & live analytics
- Integrations with leading CRMs
Pros
- The cadence maintenance system is effective
- The Rhythm feature makes suggestions for prospects to reach out to
Cons
- The platform is comprehensive, making it complex to work with
- Automation rules can be basic for some businesses
Pricing
View full pricing details here.
7.Regie.ai
The last one on our list is Regie.ai. This platform also adds AI to your outbound prospecting workflows. It deploys AI sales agents to do prospect research and craft unique, context-specific messages for each prospect using data such as work history and recent company news.
The AI agents employ adaptive touch patterns, continuously assessing the prospect's likelihood to engage and determining the next-best action. Once a prospect shows interest, the Agent prioritizes follow-up tasks for your sales reps to execute.
Features
- Ability to store persona-based pain points and email prompts
- Power Socializer, a feature for LinkedIn prospecting
- Personalized call scripts
- Auto-identification of leads that are likely to respond positively
- AI automated email composer for relevant content
- Understanding of prospect intent signals
Pros
- You can pick your style and tone for content
- Easy-to-use and implement
Cons
- Sometimes messages sound robotic
- Some learning curve at the beginning
Pricing
View full pricing details here.
How to successfully convince leaders to adopt the new software?
We hope you’ve narrowed down a few options. The next step is to persuade leaders to adopt the new software. You must develop a detailed proposal that outlines the reasons for switching software. Include the following
- Benefits: Clearly articulate the benefits and ROI of the new software over the current solution.
- Cost analysis: Provide a cost comparison between the current software and the new solution. Highlight potential cost savings, ROI, and long-term financial benefits.
- Case studies and examples: Incorporate relevant case studies, and success stories, preferably of your team after running a pilot program.
- Transition plan: Outline a clear plan, including timelines, training requirements, data migration, and support resources.
It’s your turn to gather data, put together a presentation for stakeholders, and prepare for objections.
FAQs
Q. Are there free alternatives to Crystal Knows?
Yes, Happysales and Humanlinker offer free plans that can be particularly useful for startups and small businesses.
Q. What should I look for when choosing a Crystal Knows alternative?
When choosing an alternative, consider features that ease your load like personality analysis, automated message writing, etc. Determine its ease of use, integration capabilities with other platforms, cost, and customer support. All-in-all, the tool should fulfill your business needs and provide accurate and actionable insights.
Q. Which alternative is best for small businesses?
Happysales and Humanlinker are great options for small businesses due to their free plans and user-friendly interface. Persist iQ is also built for smaller teams, however, its pricing may not align with the budget of small businesses.