If you're on a go-to-market (GTM) team—think sales ops, demand gen, or revops—you're probably drowning in manual lead handoffs, janky integrations, and “automation” tools that create as many headaches as they solve. This is for the folks who actually run the machinery behind the scenes, not just the ones talking about “digital transformation” on LinkedIn.
This review digs into Tray, an automation platform that claims to knit together your stack and move leads from A to B without the dropped balls. Let’s see what’s legit, what’s just marketing fluff, and where Tray actually makes your life easier.
What Is Tray…Really?
Tray pitches itself as a “general automation platform.” That means it connects your SaaS tools (Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Slack, whatever) and lets you build flows for stuff like lead routing, data enrichment, and notifications.
It’s not a CRM, and it’s not just a simple Zapier clone. Tray is more powerful, but also more complicated. You get a drag-and-drop workflow builder, built-in integrations, and logic blocks to handle branching, lookups, and even some basic data transformation.
Who’s Tray for? If you have a sales ops or marketing ops person who can handle “low-code” (read: not quite programming, but not point-and-click easy either), and your current stack is a mess of duct-taped processes, it’s worth a look.
Core Use Cases for B2B GTM Teams
Let’s skip the hundred “automation” examples and focus on what actually matters for B2B GTM teams:
- Lead Capture and Routing: Move leads from forms or intent providers into your CRM, enrich with data, and assign to reps based on rules.
- Data Enrichment: Pull firmographic or contact info from vendors like Clearbit or ZoomInfo before you drop leads in front of reps.
- Duplicate Prevention: Check if a lead or account already exists, and merge or update as needed.
- Notifications: Send alerts to Slack, email, or wherever your reps hang out—ideally when a hot lead appears or something breaks.
- Ongoing Syncs: Keep Salesforce, Marketo, and maybe your data warehouse in sync without needing an engineer every time.
If you’ve ever cobbled together flows in Salesforce, Zapier, and a few Chrome extensions and still wound up with leads in the wrong hands, you’re the target audience.
How Tray Handles Lead Management (Step-by-Step)
Let’s walk through how Tray works in a real-world setup. Here’s what a typical lead management workflow looks like:
1. Capture the Lead
- Tray hooks into your web forms, ad platforms, or wherever leads originate.
- You can use native connectors for Salesforce, Marketo, HubSpot, or generic webhooks.
- Pro tip: Tray’s webhook connector is reliable, but you’ll need someone comfortable with API docs if you’re pulling from a weird source.
2. Clean and Enrich the Data
- Tray can pipe the raw lead data through enrichment steps—pulling in info from Clearbit, ZoomInfo, or even just cleaning up email addresses.
- You set up logic to handle missing or junk fields.
- Honest take: The enrichment connectors are solid, but you’ll need to set up API keys and manage quotas. It’s not magic; garbage in still means garbage out.
3. Route and Assign Leads
- Set up branching logic for lead routing: assign by region, company size, round robin, or any custom criteria.
- Tray’s visual builder makes it easier to see the flow, but building complex rules can get messy fast.
- If you’re used to Salesforce assignment rules, this will feel familiar, but with more flexibility.
4. Check for Duplicates
- Tray can search your CRM or MAP for existing leads/accounts and update or merge instead of creating duplicates.
- This is one of Tray’s strengths, but only as good as your data hygiene and matching logic.
- Pro tip: Think hard about your matching criteria. “Email only” is easy but brittle; multi-field fuzzy matching is possible but takes trial and error.
5. Push to CRM and Notify Reps
- Once processed, Tray can create or update records in Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.
- Fire off a Slack or email notification to the assigned rep, or even update a dashboard.
- If something fails, Tray’s error handling lets you send alerts or retries, so leads don’t just disappear.
What’s Good About Tray?
Here’s where Tray actually delivers:
- Powerful Integrations: Out-of-the-box connectors for most major sales and marketing tools.
- Flexible Logic: You can actually build what you want instead of hacking around tool limitations.
- Solid Error Handling: Tray lets you see when something breaks and (usually) why.
- Reusable Components: You can save and reuse pieces of logic across different workflows.
If you’re dealing with real sales ops headaches—like leads getting stuck, random duplicates, or reps missing hot leads—Tray will probably save you time (and a lot of Slack messages).
What’s Not So Great?
Honest truth: Tray isn’t perfect, and it’s not for everyone.
- Learning Curve: “Low-code” is still code-adjacent. If your team isn’t comfortable with logic, APIs, or troubleshooting, you’ll hit a wall.
- UI Can Get Messy: Complex workflows quickly become spaghetti diagrams. Naming your steps and documenting is a must.
- Cost: Tray isn’t cheap. Pricing isn’t public, and you’ll need to talk to sales. It’s overkill for tiny teams or simple needs.
- Maintenance: When your stack changes (new fields, new tools), you’ll need to update your Tray workflows. There’s no “set it and forget it.”
- Debugging: While the logs are decent, tracking down edge-case failures can still eat up a lot of time.
Don’t buy Tray thinking it’s a magic bullet. It’s more like a power tool—you can build great stuff, but you’ll cut yourself if you’re sloppy.
What to Ignore (or Approach with Skepticism)
- Marketing Claims About “AI-Powered” Automation: Tray throws around “AI” here and there, but the real value is in its logic and integrations, not some robo-brain making decisions for you.
- “Citizen Developer” Hype: Sure, you don’t need to be an engineer, but you do need someone who can think in logic flows and isn’t scared of error codes.
- Supposed Instant ROI: You’ll spend time building and maintaining flows. Don’t expect to just plug it in and walk away; the payback comes if you’re automating real pain points.
Pro Tips for Getting Value Fast
- Start Small: Tackle your ugliest lead flow first. Don’t try to automate everything at once.
- Document Everything: Future-you (or your replacement) will thank you.
- Test with Real Data: Use sandbox environments and sample leads before going live.
- Monitor and Iterate: Set up alerts for failures and review logs regularly. Nothing stays perfect in sales ops.
- Lean on Support: Tray’s customer support is pretty responsive—use them when you hit weird edge cases.
Should You Use Tray?
If your B2B GTM team is frustrated with handoffs, manual work, or unreliable lead routing, Tray is worth a serious look. It’s not for tiny teams, and it won’t fix bad processes by itself. But if you’ve got someone on the team who “gets” workflows and you’re ready to replace duct tape with actual automation, Tray can make your life easier—after the initial setup pain.
Keep it simple to start. Build one workflow, see what breaks, and iterate. The best automation isn’t the flashiest—it’s the one you don’t have to think about after it’s live.