AI Indexes
GTM AI Index
September 2026 Edition, published September 15, 2026 · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since. The current standing is on the category page →
Index › Sales › Sales engagement › Enterprise › September 2026 Edition

Sales engagement platforms for enterprise buyers

Asked as “sales engagement platform”, and as “sales engagement tool”, on behalf of an enterprise B2B company. 56 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
57%
Clear leader
57Outreach25Salesloft11Salesforce Sales Engagement07others

57% of first choices, clear leader.

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.

The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for an enterprise B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Outreach57%18%73endorsed leader
02Salesloft25%18%72accepted challenger
03Salesforce Sales Engagement11%10%30accepted challenger
04HubSpot Sales Hub4%11%27accepted challenger
Show the four products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
08Apollo.io0%49%37criticized challenger
06Groove0%27%26criticized challenger
07ZoomInfo Engage0%26%19criticized challenger
05Gong Engage0%17%18accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.
All fifteen head-to-head pages: the top six products, each against each

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative70%
Key
01Outreach57%
02Salesloft25%
03Salesforce Sales Engagement11%
04HubSpot Sales Hub4%
05Gong Engage0%
06Groove0%
07ZoomInfo Engage0%
08Apollo.io0%

What they warned about

Eight of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Gemini 3.5 Flash, Grok 4.20, Mistral Small and DeepSeek V4 Flash changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Apollo.io
49%
18 of 37 labels negative · 13 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“For large enterprises, these tools may lack the scalability, security, and integration capabilities required at scale.” Mistral Small, negative prompt
Outreach
18%
13 of 73 labels negative · 11 of 12 models
“Per-seat + consumption | ~$120-180+/user/month ... These platforms typically don't publish pricing and require sales calls, making budgeting difficult.” Kimi K2, budget prompt
Salesloft
18%
13 of 72 labels negative · 11 of 12 models
“Enterprise adoption of Outreach or Salesloft requires dedicated RevOps resources to manage configuration, governance, and integration complexity.” Claude Haiku 4.5, negative prompt
Instantly
67%
6 of 9 labels negative · 6 of 12 models · 5 hard negative
“SMB-First and "Cold-Email-First" Platforms (Avoid Entirely)* **Examples:** Instantly, Lemlist, Woodpecker, Mailshake, Salesforge, Mixmax.” Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt

What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: fourteen of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

80 of 84 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 14 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 1143 links across 250 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

vendor site · ZoomInfo47 answers · 90 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Rework35 answers · 43 citations · 11 models
vendor site · HubSpot33 answers · 37 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Kixie29 answers · 29 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Salesforge25 answers · 25 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Artisan24 answers · 27 citations · 8 models
22 answers · 38 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Cleverly21 answers · 21 citations · 8 models
19 answers · 21 citations · 7 models
vendor site · Avoma18 answers · 21 citations · 8 models
vendor site · CloudTalk18 answers · 18 citations · 8 models
vendor site · SmartReach.io18 answers · 18 citations · 8 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

Search against answers

Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “best sales engagement platform”, “sales engagement platform”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Company and productsShareOwn site citedName searches, GoogleAI search demand, est.Organic visitsPaid search a month, est.Google ads, last 30 daysBest Google position
Outreach outreach.ai
Outreach 57%, Outreach.ai 0%
57%28733,1009,28227,855$14351
Salesloft salesloft.com25%28418,10044552,058$4,229745
Salesforce parent site
Salesforce Sales Engagement 11%, Salesforce Sales Cloud 2%
12%275550,00060,632
HubSpot parent site
HubSpot Sales Hub 4%
4%693368,0009,776
Saleshandy saleshandy.com2%422,40020193,5532
Gong gong.io
Gong Engage 0%
0%3074,00013,36152,787 company$1,556120
Clari clari.com
Groove 0%
0%4260,50027,676444,225 company
ZoomInfo parent site
ZoomInfo Engage 0%, ZoomInfo GTM Workspace 0%, ZoomInfo SalesOS 0%
0%36135,0001,810
Microsoft parent site
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Accelerator 0%, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales 0%
0%1442,240,000403,136
Kixie kixie.com0%94,40020322,92667

Google's top ten for the two searches hold 11 sites; 3 of them are among the sites the models cited here (kixie.com, learn.g2.com, pipeline.zoominfo.com). The first result for “best sales engagement platform” is forecastio.ai.

How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ShowHide
ModelDirect“What is the best sales engagement platform for an enterprise B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which sales engagement tool would you recommend to a large B2B company with thousands of employees?”Comparative“What are the top enterprise-grade sales engagement platforms and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best sales engagement platform for a large company that needs predictable total cost across thousands of users?”Scale-constrained“We are a 5,000 person company with SSO, SOC 2 and procurement review requirements evaluating a sales engagement platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which sales engagement platforms should a large enterprise avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Outreach, Salesloft
Four alternativesApollo.io, Groove, HubSpot Sales Hub, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales
Outreach, SalesloftHeldOutreach, Salesloft
Two alternativesSalesforce Sales Cloud, ZoomInfo GTM Workspace
Outreach, Salesloft
One alternativeReply.io
no first choiceagainst: Apollo.io, Drift, HubSpot Sales Hub, Mixmax, Outreach, Salesloft
GPT-5.4 miniOutreach
One alternativeSalesloft
OutreachHeld
One alternativeSalesloft
Outreach, Salesloft
Three alternativesApollo.io, Groove, HubSpot Sales Hub
HubSpot Sales Hub
Two alternativesOutreach, Salesloft
no first choiceagainst: Apollo.io, Salesforce Sales Cloud
Gemini 3.5 FlashOutreach, Salesloft
Three alternativesAmplemarket, Gong Engage, Salesforce Sales Engagement
SalesloftChanged
Three alternativesGong Engage, Outreach, Salesforce Sales Engagement
Outreach, Salesloft
Three alternativesApollo.io, Gong Engage, Salesforce Sales Engagement
Salesforce Sales Engagement
Four alternativesGroove, HubSpot Sales Hub, Outreach.ai, Salesloft
no first choiceagainst: Apollo.io, Instantly, Lemlist, Mailshake, Mixmax, Outreach, Outsales, Regie.ai, Salesforge, Salesloft, Woodpecker, ZoomInfo Engage
Perplexity SonarOutreach
Two alternativesSalesloft, ZoomInfo Engage
OutreachHeld
Two alternativesSalesforce Sales Engagement, Salesloft
Outreach, Salesloft
Four alternativesApollo.io, HubSpot Sales Hub, Salesforce Sales Engagement, ZoomInfo Engage
Salesforce Sales Engagementagainst: Outreach, Rework Sales Ops, Salesloftno first choiceagainst: Apollo.io, Bigin by Zoho, Lemlist, Mailshake, Mixmax, Outplay, Reply.io, SmartReach.io
Grok 4.20Outreach
Two alternativesGroove, Salesloft
against: Apollo.io
Outreach, SalesloftChanged
One alternativeGroove
Outreach
Four alternativesGong Engage, Salesforce Sales Engagement, Salesloft, ZoomInfo Engage
Outreach
Two alternativesGroove, Salesloft
against: Apollo.io, HubSpot Sales Hub
no first choiceagainst: Apollo.io, Groove, Instantly, Lemlist, Outreach, Reply.io, SalesStack, Salesloft, VanillaSoft
Mistral SmallOutreach, Salesloft
Three alternativesHubSpot Sales Hub, Revenue Grid, ZoomInfo Engage
OutreachChanged
Two alternativesSalesforce Sales Engagement, Salesloft
against: HubSpot Sales Hub
Outreach
Two alternativesApollo.io, Salesloft
against: Gong Engage, Groove, Salesforce Sales Engagement
Outreach, Salesloft
One alternativeZoomInfo Engage
no first choiceagainst: Apollo.io, Instantly, Outreach, Salesloft, ZoomInfo Engage
DeepSeek V4 FlashOutreach, Salesloft
Three alternativesApollo.io, Salesforce Sales Cloud, ZoomInfo Engage
OutreachChanged
One alternativeSalesloft
Outreach, Salesloft
Three alternativesGong Engage, Groove, Salesforce Sales Engagement
Salesloft
Two alternativesApollo.io, Salesforce Sales Engagement
against: Outreach
Outreach, Salesloft
One alternativeGroove
against: Apollo.io
against: Apollo.io, Instantly, Klenty, Lemlist, Outreach, Reply.io, Salesloft, Smartlead
Llama 4 MaverickOutreach
Three alternativesKixie, Salesloft, ZoomInfo Engage
OutreachHeldOutreach, SalesloftSalesloft
One alternativeOutreach
Saleshandy
Two alternativesOutreach, Seismic
against: Apollo.io, Close, Outreach, Salesloft
Qwen 3.7 FlashOutreach
Four alternativesGong Engage, Groove, HubSpot Sales Hub, Salesloft
OutreachHeld
One alternativeSalesloft
Outreach, Salesloft
One alternativeSalesforce Sales Engagement
Outreach, Salesloft
One alternativeHubSpot Sales Hub
no first choiceagainst: Groove, Outreach.ai, Yesware
Kimi K2Outreach
Two alternativesGong Engage, Salesloft
OutreachHeld
Two alternativesSalesforce Sales Cloud with Sales Engagement, Salesloft
Outreach, Salesloft
Three alternativesApollo.io, Gong Engage, HubSpot Sales Hub
against: Salesforce Sales Cloud
Salesforce Sales Engagement
Three alternativesApollo.io, HubSpot Sales Hub, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Accelerator
against: Gong Engage, Groove, Outreach, Salesloft
Outreach
One alternativeGong Engage
against: Apollo.io, Salesloft
against: Apollo.io, Gong Engage, Instantly, Lemlist, Outreach, Reply.io, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Service Cloud
GLM 4.7 FlashXOutreach
One alternativeSalesloft
against: Apollo.io
OutreachHeld
One alternativeSalesloft
Outreach
Four alternativesApollo.io, Gong Engage, Groove, Salesloft
HubSpot Sales Hub
Two alternativesInstantly, Klenty
against: Outreach, Salesloft
no first choiceagainst: Apollo.io, Salesforce Sales Engagement
MiniMax M2.5Outreach
One alternativeSalesloft
OutreachHeld
Three alternativesHubSpot Sales Hub, Salesloft, ZoomInfo Engage
Outreach
Four alternativesApollo.io, HubSpot Sales Hub, Salesloft, ZoomInfo Engage
Salesforce Sales Engagement
Three alternativesKlenty, Outreach, Salesloft
no first choiceagainst: Apollo.io, Salesforce Sales Engagement
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 13:35no05 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 09:06yes35 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 10:29yes1523 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 08:37yes263 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 08:13yes196 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 10:37yes825 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 12:29yes1932 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 12:18yes51 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 12:34yes929 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 11:42yes1016 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 08:34yes2584 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 12:28yes923 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 09:43yes179 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 11:07yes46 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 08:06yes2020 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 13:50yes215 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 13:41yes248 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 09:47yes59 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 14:02yes2566 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 11:21yes51 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 10:11yes1028 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 10:04yes1011 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 11:05yes1558 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 13:41yes519 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 13:44yes107 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 14:14yes37 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 09:17yes2327 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 11:24yes146 s
ComparativeGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 13:56yes238 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 11:02yes138 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 13:18yes2350 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 10:36yes52 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 11:48yes1437 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 12:26yes2039 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 12:38yes2539 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 08:58yes2237 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 10:08yes178 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 08:37yes34 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 09:55yes1230 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 11:46yes223 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 07:46yes229 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 12:43yes55 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 07:51yes2533 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 12:51yes52 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 08:15yes853 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 13:04yes2422 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 09:16yes25115 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 09:09yes1856 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 12:32yes1812 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 09:38yes412 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 07:36no019 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 13:06yes206 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 11:24yes199 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 10:33no05 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 10:02yes2450 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 11:53yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 12:22no032 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 12:29yes1425 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 09:54yes1943 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 11:40yes1521 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 07:47yes179 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 10:15yes28 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 13:00yes1126 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 10:20yes183 s
Negative framingGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 13:37yes2312 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 10:04yes55 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 10:40yes2547 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 08:22yes52 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 08:43yes2569 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 13:07yes2524 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 12:10yes1397 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 07:36yes1729 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

ShowHide
Category-scoped readings
Clari read as Groove
Gong read as Gong Engage
HubSpot read as HubSpot Sales Hub
Hubspot read as HubSpot Sales Hub
Salesforce read as Salesforce Sales Engagement
ZoomInfo read as ZoomInfo Engage
ZoomInfo (GTM Workspace) read as ZoomInfo Engage
ZoomInfo Sales read as ZoomInfo Engage
ZoomInfo Sales Engagement read as ZoomInfo Engage
Unresolved, counted raw
Outreach.ai
Outsales
Rework Sales Ops
SalesStack
Salesforce Sales Cloud with Sales Engagement
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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