Scratchpad vs Dooly vs Laserfocus - Which one is right for your sales team?

The other day we took a look at Scratchpad (https://www.relayco.io/insights/why-your-sales-team-needs-to-start-using-scratchpad)and we came away extremely impressed with how it’s trying to revolutionize the sales experience for all Salesforce users, regardless of experience level. While Scratchpad may be the fastest growing, it’s far from the only one in this space. We’re going to take a look at Dooly, perhaps Scratchpad’s biggest competitor and Laserfocus, a rather new entrant. At their core, all three apps are trying to streamline the sometimes convoluted Salesforce space and we’ll see if they are successful in their mission.

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Scratchpad

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We already did a deep dive on Scratchpad in our last post, but essentially Scratchpad uses a Chrome extension approach to sync only the relevant data to the sales rep in a slick interface that lives outside of Salesforce. We love it’s streamlined and more importantly collaborative approach to note taking, pipeline management and task sharing. The UI is intuitive, familiar and doesn’t bog down your team with unnecessary fields or features that get in the way of the core goal — selling. While we wish there was a desktop or web component that didn’t tie itself to Chrome, there’s not much else to complain about. Scratchpad does everything it promises and more.

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Dooly

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Dooly is Scratchpad’s direct competitor in this space, and for good reason. Dooly goes feature to feature with Scratchpad, including notes, pipeline management, collaboration and templates. In addition, it includes playbooks, a robust web and Chrome app and sleek LinkedIn and Slack integration integration. But one of the standout features is what they call Deal Vitals.

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Deal Vitals give you a real time report card of every opportunity so you can see if it’s still in good health or needs a little nurturing. This a great way to make sure your opportunities are not wilting and the cleanliness of your Salesforce org is staying top of mind.

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We also love the Playbook feature that intelligently bubbles up relevant information to your entire team through the notes section.  Say a new employee is on a sales call and the customer remarks about price concerns. As soon as the new employee marks “price concerns” in the notes, it will surface the playbook of what they should say and do in this exact situation.

Dooly is packed with smart, clever features such as this but perhaps there are too many features. The beauty of Scratchpad is in its simplicity and how it hones Salesforce down into a beautiful, focused interface. Dooly’s interface is great and a joy to use, but there’s a slight learning curve that could slow down new sales reps and often it can be a little confusing to decipher what is where.

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Laserfocus

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Our last entrant into this growing space is Laserfocus. They’re the newest and perhaps the smallest of the three. Similar to Scratchpad and Dooly, Laserfocus takes the immense data that’s contained in Salesforce and filters it to a streamlined, simple interface. Though perhaps a little too simple for our tastes. While it does include tasks, notes, and pipeline management, there are no collaboration features to speak of. That means you can’t send contacts, opportunities and records in Laserfocus without having to go into Salesforce. While we love the approach to stacks, there is no intelligent notifications like in Dooly that would alert you to opportunities that are starting to wilt. With that being said, Laserfocus is still a pleasure to use and the foundation of what they are trying to build is rock solid.

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Our Choice

We’re very impressed by all the options in this space and we expect the options to keep growing as Salesforce becomes more convoluted over time. The pricing is similar across the board (all offering a free tier and then starting at $35/user/month for Dooly, $39/user/month for Scratchpad and $30/user/month for Laserfocus) Our choice is still Scratchpad as it straddles the fine line between simplicity and features that allows sales teams to spend the majority of their day in Scratchpad without having to do too much in Salesforce itself. We do love Dooly and all it’s smart features, so if you’re looking for a tool a bit more feature packed, than Dooly would be a great choice.

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Our Takeaway

To be honest, you can’t really go wrong with any of these apps if you’re looking to introduce a new tool to your sales team’s arsenal. If you want simplicity and ease of use, Scratchpad is for you you. If you’re looking for more features and an app that lives outside Chrome, then Dooly is a solid choice. Either way, get back to focusing on sales and stop struggling with Salesforce.

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