People.ai and Pingd both use artificial intelligence to improve sales performance, but they approach the challenge from fundamentally different angles. People.ai automates activity capture and provides data-driven insights for RevOps teams to analyze and coach from. Pingd acts as an AI teammate for individual reps, proactively recommending actions based on real-time buying signals.
Understanding this distinction is crucial: one platform focuses on capturing and analyzing what happened, while the other focuses on guiding what should happen next.
What Is People.ai?
People.ai is a revenue operations and intelligence platform that automatically captures sales activities — emails, calls, meetings, and document interactions — and maps them to the appropriate accounts and opportunities in your CRM. Founded in 2016, it became a leading solution for organizations struggling with incomplete or inaccurate CRM data.
People.ai's core value proposition is eliminating manual data entry while providing RevOps teams with comprehensive, accurate data to analyze engagement patterns, benchmark performance, and identify coaching opportunities. It's designed for organizations where data quality and analytics are the primary challenges.
People.ai's core strengths:
- Automatic activity capture and CRM enrichment: Eliminates manual logging by automatically detecting and recording all sales activities
- Account and opportunity engagement scoring: Provides data-driven scores for how thoroughly accounts and deals are being worked
- Sales activity benchmarking: Compares individual and team performance against benchmarks and best practices
- Data-driven coaching recommendations: Identifies coaching opportunities based on activity patterns and engagement levels
- RevOps-focused analytics: Provides comprehensive dashboards and reports for revenue operations teams
- Comprehensive integrations: Captures data from email, calendar, phone systems, and documents across multiple platforms
People.ai is primarily used by RevOps teams, sales managers, and executives who need accurate data and analytics to understand sales performance and identify improvement opportunities.
What Is Pingd?
Pingd is an AI-powered sales advisor designed to serve as a real-time, intelligent teammate for individual sales reps. Rather than focusing on capturing and analyzing historical activities, Pingd proactively detects buying signals and recommends specific actions that reps should take right now to advance their deals.
Pingd's approach is prescriptive rather than descriptive — instead of showing reps what they've done or what their peers have done, it tells them exactly what to do next based on current prospect behavior and buying intent.
Pingd's core strengths:
- Real-time buying signal detection: Monitors prospect behavior across multiple channels to identify moments of increased engagement
- Prescriptive next-best-action guidance: Provides specific, actionable recommendations rather than just data to interpret
- AI-powered deal coaching for individual reps: Offers personalized guidance on deal progression and objection handling
- Pipeline prioritization based on signal strength: Helps reps focus their time on opportunities showing the strongest buying intent
- Lightweight CRM integration: Works with existing systems without requiring extensive setup or data migration
- Context-rich engagement recommendations: Suggests specific talking points based on prospect behavior and interests
Pingd is primarily used by account executives, sales managers, and individual contributors who want AI-powered guidance to improve their daily selling effectiveness.
Key Differences
The fundamental difference between these platforms is their focus: People.ai optimizes for data accuracy and analytical insights, while Pingd optimizes for real-time guidance and execution improvement.
| Feature | Pingd | People.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Primary user | Sales reps | RevOps teams & sales managers |
| Core function | Proactive deal guidance | Activity data capture & analysis |
| AI approach | Prescriptive actions ("do this") | Descriptive analytics ("this happened") |
| Data philosophy | Signal-in, action-out | Activity-in, insight-out |
| CRM relationship | Reads signals, recommends actions | Writes comprehensive activity data back |
| Rep daily experience | AI teammate providing guidance | Background data capture with minimal interaction |
| Value delivery | Immediate action recommendations | Historical analysis and benchmarking |
| Success metrics | Win rates, deal velocity, quota attainment | Data completeness, activity accuracy, engagement scores |
| Implementation complexity | Lightweight integration | Comprehensive data mapping and enrichment |
When to Choose Pingd
Pingd is the better choice if your team needs:
Action-oriented guidance over analytics: If your reps know how to analyze data but need help knowing what to do with it, Pingd's prescriptive recommendations eliminate the interpretation step and provide direct guidance.
Real-time deal coaching: If you want to improve rep effectiveness through immediate, contextual guidance rather than periodic coaching based on historical performance analysis, Pingd provides in-the-moment support.
Focus on execution improvement: If your primary challenge is helping reps execute more effectively on existing opportunities rather than capturing better data about their activities, Pingd optimizes specifically for rep productivity and win rates.
Immediate value without complex implementation: Teams that want to start improving their sales effectiveness quickly, without extensive data mapping projects or RevOps involvement, can deploy Pingd and see results within days.
Signal-based selling methodology: If you want to move beyond activity-based selling to signal-based selling — where actions are triggered by prospect behavior rather than calendar schedules — Pingd provides the intelligence foundation for this approach.
When to Choose People.ai
People.ai may be the better fit if your team needs:
Comprehensive activity capture: If your biggest pain point is incomplete or inaccurate CRM data due to reps not logging their activities properly, People.ai's automatic capture eliminates this problem entirely.
RevOps analytics and benchmarking: Organizations with dedicated revenue operations teams that need comprehensive data and analytics to understand performance patterns, identify coaching opportunities, and make strategic decisions benefit from People.ai's analytical capabilities.
Engagement scoring and account analysis: If you need to understand which accounts and opportunities are being worked most thoroughly and identify gaps in engagement, People.ai's scoring and analysis provide detailed insights.
Cross-team performance visibility: Sales leaders who need to compare individual and team performance against benchmarks and best practices benefit from People.ai's comprehensive reporting and analytics.
Data-driven coaching methodology: Organizations that base their coaching and performance management on detailed activity analysis and engagement metrics benefit from People.ai's comprehensive data foundation.
The Verdict: Data vs Action
People.ai makes your CRM data complete and accurate. Pingd makes your reps more effective at their job. These represent two different approaches to sales improvement:
People.ai's approach: Capture everything, analyze patterns, identify insights, and provide coaching based on data-driven benchmarks and performance analysis.
Pingd's approach: Monitor signals, identify opportunities, recommend actions, and provide real-time guidance to help reps execute more effectively.
The choice often depends on where your organization's primary challenge lies:
If your bottleneck is data quality and incomplete activity records that make it impossible to understand what's really happening in your sales process, People.ai solves the foundational data problem and provides the analytics to identify improvement opportunities.
If your bottleneck is reps not knowing where to focus their time or what actions to take next to advance their deals, Pingd's AI advisor delivers immediate, prescriptive guidance that impacts performance directly.
Many sophisticated sales organizations benefit from both approaches: People.ai for comprehensive data capture and analytics, and Pingd for real-time execution guidance. But if you're choosing one platform to drive sales improvement, ask yourself:
Do you need better visibility into what's happening, or better guidance on what should happen next?
Choose People.ai if your priority is activity capture, data quality, RevOps analytics, and performance benchmarking.
Choose Pingd if your priority is rep productivity, real-time guidance, signal-based selling, and immediate execution improvement.