When you’re trying to sell your product or services to other businesses, the key is to find your ideal customer. The process usually starts by finding your B2B leads, evaluating them, contacting them with your offer, and turning them into paying customers.
However, not all leads are actual customers. Especially in B2B sales, your leads need to check several parameters, including the business niche your lead operates in, their revenue, size, and more. If all these parameters align with your product or service, the lead can gain an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) status.
Your sales team needs to find ways to turn leads into sales, which can be a time-consuming process. They could prospect leads manually. Then, they have to take their time to email or call the leads. Top all that with the relevant tasks needed to determine whether a lead makes sense in the meantime, and it’s no wonder your sales team is underperforming.
Instead, you should provide your sales team with a sales prospecting tool. It’ll save them hours of searching, mailing, and calling. The right sales prospecting tool will streamline and automate these processes, making your team more effective.
So, let’s discuss how to choose the best sales prospecting tools for your team.
How To Choose the Best Sales Prospecting Tool?
Not all sales prospecting tools are the same. The process of turning a lead into a customer is a long one, and some tools offer support in one stage, while others can support better in another.
Whenever you find yourself choosing the best tool for your sales team, you should take stock of the current situation first. Evaluate your team’s current needs, workflow, and time spent on each task.
The best way to achieve this is to communicate clearly and openly with your sales team. After all, they’re handling these tasks daily and will be able to provide you with great insight on what can be improved, and where they need assistance.
Look for how long your team spends on prospecting, if any processes could be improved, or whether your team can strategically spend time with targeted leads.
Once you understand the current situation, it’s important to set up goals for your sales prospecting. Look for specific objectives within each stage of the sales cycle, and what you want to achieve. This will help narrow down the list of potential tools you can rely on, as you get to be more objective about which features you actually need.
Next, be realistic about your budget. Depending on the amount of leads you’d like to cover with your new sales prospecting tool, the price can turn very expensive very quickly. You can avoid this by shopping around and finding the best price.
Also, take advantage of any demos or free trials these sales prospecting tools offer. The best way to evaluate whether a tool will work with your workflow is to try it in action. Free tiers typically allow you to test all features, so assign a platform or two to your team. They can test and use different tools and provide you with feedback.
Lastly, these tools help with specific aspects of sales prospecting and only a handful can help you throughout the process. To achieve a smooth transition between tools, make sure your new tool integrates seamlessly with the rest of your tool stack.
For example, if you already have exported your contacts from LinkedIn, look for a tool that will allow you to import them to your prospecting tool easily. It should also integrate with a CRM so that you can create strong relationships with your clients.
7 Best Sales Prospecting Tools
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Uplead
Uplead is one of the most popular sales outreach tools that you can rely on to help your sales team with prospecting. While a bit on the pricier side, this tool can help you navigate each step of the sales outreach process: from finding leads, through prospecting, to contacting the leads.
Features:
Uplead is one of the most feature-rich tools on our list. It includes an excellent database you can rely on to find leads and its proprietary email finder. It also offers solid verification features and great features for data enrichment.
Pricing:
- Free ($0 per user per month)
You can test Uplead for free. But, you can only test a limited set of features. With a free plan, you get five credits you can use to verify emails, phone numbers, or mobile dials. Each credit equals one contact.
- Essentials ($99 per user per month)
Essentials might be a better way to test Uplead’s prospecting features, as it offers 170 credits per month. It also unlocks integrations with tools like Zapier and provides you with company news so you can estimate buyer intent better.
- Plus ($199 per user per month)
Plus tier comes with the prospecting platform, and it’s probably the best plan for those looking to improve their sales. It offers 400 credits per month, includes everything from essentials, and adds features such as technographic and data enrichment.
- Professional (Custom pricing)
Uplead’s professional tier unlocks all the great features Uplead has to offer. Unfortunately, you’ll have to book a demo with their sales team to understand how much you’ll be paying for its services.
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Pipedrive
Pipedrive is another great tool you can rely on to help you with sales prospecting and your sales processes overall. It is also on the cheaper side, so it’s a good choice for smaller teams looking to build and improve their sales processes.
Features:
Pipedrive’s features start with managing leads and deals. These features allow you to manage leads by helping you clean up your database. It also allows leads inbox, customizable pipelines and so much more.
Furthermore, also helps you keep your team organized and focused. It allows email and meeting scheduling, people and organization management features, activity notifications, customizable email templates, and signatures.
Pipedrive will also allow your team to automate most of their work, rely on smart contact data, and use webhooks. It also provides you with a sales assistant that will give you recommendations on what to improve in your sales process.
Pricing:
1. Essential ($12 per month per user)
Essential tier is useful for getting started with your lead management. It will allow you to import all the data you might already have, and integrate Pipedrive with more than 400 other tools.
2. Advanced ($24 per month per user)
The Advanced plan unlocks features that will be beneficial for the next steps in the sales process. It allows automation and email sequences, syncing your emails with templates, and group emailing. Plus, it will also help your team schedule meetings, emails, and video calls.
3. Professional ($49 per month per user)
The Professional tier includes everything in Advanced, and tops it off with lead routing and document and contract management. It also unlocks better reporting features, so you can work and improve on your sales processes with ease.
4. Power ($59 per month per user)
This tier is perfect for larger teams, as it allows project planning, streamlines busy pipelines, and allows for phone support.
5. Enterprise ($79 per month per user)
The enterprise plan offers complete access to all features and allows unlimited reports and customizations.
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Saleshandy
Saleshandy is another tool you can rely on to help you with sales prospecting. This tool has great features for sales prospecting while keeping the platform easy to use.
Features:
You can rely on Saleshandy for lead discovery. It can assist you with finding emails on Linkedin, and you can also count on its proprietary Lead Finder feature to find new leads.
Saleshandy can also assist with warming up your email, and providing sender rotation so that your emails don’t land in spam. It can also help you with sequencing and tracking sent emails. You can also use its reporting to optimize campaigns.
Plus, it can automate a great deal of work for your sales team. It offers a sequence score feature, can automate follow-up, and has a unified inbox that will help your sales team stay on track.
Pricing:
1. Outreach starter ($36 per user per month)
The Starter plan offers 2,000 prospects and sends 6,000 emails each month. This tier also offers unified inbox and sender rotation.
2. Outreach pro ($99 per user per month)
This tier includes everything from Starter, plus 30,000 prospects and 100,000 emails per month. It also allows integrations with Zapier, Zoho, and Hubspot. It can support you throughout your sales processes.
3. Outreach Scale ($199 per user per month)
The Outreach scale lifts the number of prospects to 60,000 per month. It also offers 50 warm-up accounts and 200,000 emails per month.
4. Outreach Scale Plus ($299 per user per month)
The Outreach Scale Plus allows you to customize the number of prospects and emails per month. The cheapest Scale Plus plan starts at $299 per user per month and includes 100,000 prospects. 500,000 prospects will cost you $1499 per month.
Their sales team can also support you with a custom tier if you need more than 500,000 prospects. Make sure to contact their sales team for custom pricing information.
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Mixmax
Mixmax is another great tool for sales prospecting, but it is geared more toward smaller teams with its streamlined set of features. Plus, it also comes with a reasonable price tag, so it’s a good choice for teams that are just starting on their sales prospecting journey.
Features:
It offers all the features your sales team might need to get started. It has powerful sequencing and automation features which your sales team will find very time-saving. Plus, the opportunity to track metrics through tracking engagement will help you build better campaigns.
Another way in which Mixmax can help you get the most out of your sales prospecting is through its excellent reporting. You’ll be able to see what works and what doesn’t and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Furthermore, Mixmax is a prospecting tool that offers multichannel support. If you are looking to reach out through emails, calls, and social media, Mixmax is a good choice.
Pricing:
- Free tier ($0 per user per month)
Mixmax allows you to test its features for free through its first tier. Through this tier, you’ll be able to test the essentials, including email templates, polls and surveys, and email tracking.
- SMB ($29 per user per month)
The SMB tier unlocks a couple of features on top of the ones you’ve tested in its free plan. It will allow your team to collaborate easily as it supports up to 5 people. Plus, it also unlocks automated email sequences and side chat, so your team can collaborate without leaving the inbox.
- Growth ($49 per user per month)
The Growth plan adds AI to the mix. It will unlock AI Compose and AI Smart Send features, to help speed up the outreach process. You can also rely on some better analytics and reporting with this tier.
- Growth + Salesforce ($69 per month per user)
The tier’s name is fairly self-explanatory, as this tier tops off the regular Growth tier with Salesforce integration.
- Enterprise tier (Custom pricing)
The last tier with Mixmax includes everything listed in other tiers plus it offers multichannel outreach capabilities. However, you’ll need to contact the team at Mixmax to find out the pricing.
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Hunter.io
Possibly the most prospecting-oriented tool on this list is Hunter.io. This tool will provide valuable support in finding your perfect customer. Plus, it also offers excellent tools for contacting them and starting your outreach campaign.
Features:
Hunter.io offers an excellent email finder and verifier. You don’t have to look elsewhere to find leads, as you can rely on its Search feature to find who to contact. Its newest feature, Signals, looks into intent signals to help you find your next customer.
From there, you can rely on its excellent verifier which can help you ensure your email will be delivered. It will check the email deliverability status, and show you a confidence score. You can also do this in bulk, which can be helpful if you have a database of emails you’ve exported from LinkedIn connections, for example.
You can also count on Hunter.io to help you optimize your campaigns through excellent reporting. The reports will give you the important metrics on the performance of your campaigns, so you can easily see what works and what doesn’t.
Pricing:
- Free (0€ per user per month)
You can try Hunter.io’s features for free through its monthly plan. It will give you 25 monthly searches and 50 verifications. You can also include just one email with the free plan.
- Starter (49€ per month per user)
You’ll be able to test Hunter.io more accurately with the Starter plan, as it allows 500 searches and 1,000 verifications for less than 50€ a month. You can connect up to three email accounts, and try all of its features except for the custom tracking domain.
- Growth (149€ per month per user)
The growth plan offers 5,000 searches and up to 10,000 verifications. It allows you to connect up to ten emails. Plus, this tier also unlocks all the features Hunter.io has to offer.
- Business (Custom pricing)
If you need more than 5,000 searches, you might decide to go with the Business plan. It includes 50,000 searches and 100.000 validations. Plus, with the business plan, you can connect up to 20 email accounts.
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Symbo
Symbo is another excellent sales outreach platform you can rely on to turn your prospects into sales. It’s optimized for multichannel outreach and has excellent tiers for both large and small sales teams.
Features:
Symbo offers a very streamlined set of features, each custom-tailored to engage your prospects and help your business grow. It integrates seamlessly with CRMs, offers multichannel outreach, and excellent reporting and analytics tools.
Pricing:
- The Basics ($40 per month per user)
The basic tier is perfect for smaller teams. It includes email automation and unlimited sequences, as well as calendar scheduler and CRM integrations.
- The Essentials ($60 per month per user)
The Essentials plan includes everything from Basic, but also takes it a bit further. It allows for a multi-channel approach to outreach with its integrated dialer and call recording.
- For Pros ($100 per month per user)
For Pros tier offers everything from the essentials and tops it off with excellent suggestions on how to improve your processes. It offers call insights, next-best actions, and a local presence dialing feature.
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Overloop
Overloop, formerly known as Prospect.io, is a well-known name in sales software. Overloop is a sales engagement platform, that can help you take the next steps with those leads.
Features:
Even though it focuses on sales engagement, Overloop offers an excellent set of features for prospecting. It offers a string Chrome extension for Linkedin and Salesforce, a proprietary email finder, and a LinkedIn Enrichment tool.
It also offers multi-channel campaigns, workflows, and automation. Unfortunately, reporting is not its strongest suit. However, it’s good to know that Overloop doesn’t lock your features based on the pricing tier. Even with the cheapest tier, you get access to all of its great customer-engaging features!
Pricing:
- Startup ($49 per user per month)
The startup tier unlocks all features. It offers 100 credits for email finder, and up to three active multichannel campaigns.
- Growth ($82 per user per month)
Growth allows for more searches through its email finder, giving you 250 credits per user per month. It also allows you to run up to 25 campaigns simultaneously.
- Enterprise ($125 per user per month)
Enterprise lifts the limit to 500 credits per user per month. It also offers unlimited multichannel campaigns.
Effective Sales Prospecting Strategies
Sales prospecting strategies that actually bring results are those that focus on identifying potential leads, engaging them adequately, and nurturing relationships with them to turn them into buyers.
Some of the effective sales prospecting strategies you can rely on are:
Define your ideal customer
The best way to sell your product or service is knowing who you should be selling to. Not all your leads are prospects. The rule of thumb is that only 20% of your leads may turn into customers.
To identify these 20%, you need to know who your ideal customers are. You should start your sales prospecting journey by creating this persona, keeping in mind the business’ pain points, industry, size, and other important factors.
This information will help you establish much of your sales processes. It will help your team find leads more efficiently or you can use it to create outbound sales call scripts that convert, for example. With cold outreach, proper personalization can make or break the deal.
Trust your Sales Prospecting tool
Relying on sales prospecting tools can be invaluable when searching for your customer base. Not only do these tools come with excellent B2B databases, but they can also help enrich your database with relevant information, ease reaching out to them, and help you nurture them once you’ve established contact.
Network effectively
While B2B databases are great for reaching out to potential customers, possibly the best way to get leads and prospects is through networking. It could be social media networking, or in-person networking by visiting conferences and meetups.
The latter may work better for your company as people like the personal approach and getting to know you before they buy from you. Plus, it is also a great way to ask for referrals, introductions, and invitations to other events where you may find leaders interested in your product or services.
FAQs:
A sales prospecting tool is a piece of software that allows your sales team to speed up, simplify, or even automate some of the aspects of sales prospecting and lead qualification.
80-20 rule, also known as Pareto Principle, is a well-known rule in business that states that 80% of your company’s revenue will come from just 20% of your customer base. In terms of sales prospecting, only 20% of all your leads will lead to sales.
This is why it is important to find your ideal customer, and custom tailor your approach to target only them. It will help you put those 20% into focus, and save you time chasing the remaining 80% that will bring you no revenue.
Your sales team can typically approach finding prospects in several ways. The most common way to do so is to find prospects manually on social media such as LinkedIn, for example. You may also opt to purchase a B2B database filled with leads. Lastly, you can also rely on one of the Sales Outreach Tools, which can also help you find useful leads.
To track your sales prospecting, you need to set metrics that align with your sales prospecting strategy. Some of the key metrics commonly used for sales prospecting are the number of leads and contacts you make or the number of people contacted. You can also look at sales prospecting through your completed sales, and use metrics such as “sales made” or “average deal size” to track the success of your sales prospecting.
Conclusion
Just like any other step of your sales strategy, sales prospecting doesn’t have to be a tedious manual process if you choose the right toolset. You can test individual prospecting tools to find the right one for your business and your sales team.
To be able to choose the right one, take stock of the current situation in your sales processes. Talk to your team about what takes the most of their time, what can be improved, and where they see the bottlenecks you could avoid with the right tools.
Also, be realistic about your budget, and look for the sales prospecting tool that offers the most features for the price tag. Once you know what kind of features you’re looking for, and have a budget to guide you, choosing the right sales prospecting tool will be an easy decision!