Unleashing the Power of Prospecting: Best Prospecting Sales Tools in 2023
Business owners understand the importance of sales to the success of their companies. Having a business is not only about doing business, but it is also about having a successful sales department.
To help that, they require both offline and online support. In the world today, we have great sales prospecting tools that help to grow sales and close more deals.
B2B Sales prospecting tools help to grow faster, gain a better understanding of the market and secure better contracts.
Taking this into consideration, I have compiled a detailed list of the most useful sales prospecting tools, including outbound sales tools, that will complement your efforts in order to increase your sales.
B2B Sales Prospecting: What Is It and How Is It Done?
What is B2B Sales prospecting? B2B sales prospecting is the process of identifying, researching, and qualifying potential business customers (also known as leads) for a company’s products or services. This process is a critical step in the sales cycle, as it helps companies to identify and engage with businesses that may be in need of their products or services.
B2B Prospecting is a simple concept, but it is challenging to execute effectively. Research suggests 50% of sales time is spent on inefficient B2B prospecting. Imagine how much more you could sell if you didn’t waste so much time prospecting.
So, during market research, a company may identify potential industries or companies that would be a good fit for their products or services. Lead generation involves finding and capturing contact information for potential customers, while lead qualification involves determining which leads are most likely to become paying customers.
How is it done? B2B sales prospecting is done through a variety of methods, such as email, phone, and in-person meetings. It is a continuous process that helps to build a pipeline of potential customers and helps to ensure a steady flow of new business for a company.
Some essential tools for the B2B sales prospecting process include a CRM (customer relationship management) system and email marketing software.
- CRM System allows you to manage and track your interactions with potential clients and leads, including contact information, communication history, and sales pipeline progress. This can help you stay organized and prioritize your sales efforts and sales meetings.
- Email Marketing Software enables you to send mass emails to potential clients, keeping them informed about your products or services and nurturing relationships.
These tools (sales prospecting techniques) are important for B2B sales prospecting because they help you efficiently and effectively reach and engage with potential clients, track your progress, and prioritize your efforts.
They also help you to nurture relationships and stay top-of-mind with potential clients.
Lead and Prospect: What is the Difference (Sales Prospecting Tools)?
First, let’s discuss a common misconception. Leads and prospects are two different things, but most people use them interchangeably.
The term “lead” refers to any person who is interested in your offer intent data, regardless of whether they are the right fit for you or not. An example is a potential buyer who expresses interest in your property but is unable to afford it. This could be considered an unqualified lead.
In contrast, a prospect, on the other hand, is someone that would benefit greatly from your product or service.
Even though leads and prospects are different, they’re essential parts of your sales funnel. Using the right sales prospecting tools (sales engagement tools) can help you generate, nurture and convert leads into prospects and customers, so let’s take a closer look at how they can lead to new customers.
What Makes Sales Prospecting Tools better?
Using a personal and human approach in sales is the best way to close deals, but automation of sales workflow with the right sales prospecting tools can help your team to scale their efforts. The prospecting process can be a time-consuming and frustrating stage in the sales cycle, but using the right tools can make it more efficient and effective. Some benefits of using these tools include:
- Less Time Consuming
Sales reps often spend too much time on administrative tasks such as creating – emails templates, machine learning, sales automation, sales deals, and verifying contact data, and editing contracts instead of focusing on activities that close deals like engaging with prospects and closing deals.
By using these tools, sales reps can have more time to focus on personalizing their engagements, which will result in closing more high-quality deals in a shorter period.
- Enhances Customer Service
Using the right sales prospecting tools can help your company create a streamlined sales plan and reduces friction with customers.
Good prospecting software can integrate with other lead prospecting tools like CRM, account-based marketing, and email platforms, which enables a smooth transition of prospects to paying customers. This can include onboarding, sending welcome emails, and potential follow-up with marketing messages in the future.
- Detect More Qualified Leads From Promising Prospects
In the past, sales reps had to make many cold calls to a large list of leads to find a few that were interested and able to buy. This was time-consuming and often annoying for customers.
However, modern sales prospecting tools (like CRM softwares and sales analytics softwares), now allow sales reps to assess a prospect’s “fit” for their offer and provide more customer data to identify their intent before engaging with them directly. With these powerful tools, sales reps can avoid wasting time on leads that are unlikely to be a good fit.
Integrating the best sales prospecting tools into your company’s workflow can help create a customer-centric plan that reduces the risk of unqualified leads entering your client database.
This helps minimize friction and enhance the sales experience by focusing on high-quality customers. If any issues arise later on, the support team can easily address them as the customer’s data is easily accessible.
B2B Best Sales Prospecting Tools in 2023
There are many sales prospecting tools available in the market within multiple channels. A few tools according to the sales prospects are explained below:
Best Sales Prospecting Tools
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Pricing/Rating: Paid – $99 monthly subscription / 4.3 rating on G2
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a sales prospecting tool sales offered by LinkedIn, the largest professional social network, that is specifically designed for salespeople to help them find and research prospects.
The LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides advanced search filters, detailed information about each prospect, the ability to save and recommend leads, and offers InMail credit (with the help of contact details). It is a great way for salespeople to quickly and easily find potential customers and build a pipeline of leads on the platform.
- Quora
Pricing: Free
Quora is an online question-and-answer forum that can be used as a sales B2B sales prospecting tool. Its moderation policy leads to high-quality questions and answers on a wide range of topics. Sales leaders can create inbound marketing opportunities by providing insightful answers to questions related to their industry and highlighting their expertise.
Additionally, they can also find potential prospects by looking through the followers of specific questions or topics and reach out to them through Quora’s internal messaging platform or find out their contact details through their public bios or linked social media target accounts.
This can be a valuable way to connect with potential leads/new leads who have shown interest in your industry or specific topics.
- AngelList
Pricing: Free
AngelList is a platform that was originally created for startups, venture capitalists (VCs), and angel investors to find more investment opportunities and research other companies.
But for salespeople, it can be used as a directory of different companies that can be filtered by organization type, the number of employees, and even their funding stage.
Salespeople can use this information to target potential leads that match their ideal customer profile and reach out to them through the platform or through other means of contact. This allows them to efficiently identify potential customers and prioritize their sales efforts.
- Capterra
Pricing/Rating: Free
Capterra is a software comparison platform that can be a valuable B2B sales prospecting tool for sales, depending on the industry or niche. It features millions of listings of different digital products and businesses, which can be filtered by topic and category type, including ratings.
This makes it easy for salespeople to find potential leads in their industry and research their products or services, and maintain the sales pipeline. They can also compare different software and find out which one is best suited for their potential leads. This can be a great way to identify potential customers and prioritize their sales efforts.
- Product Hunt
Pricing: Free
Product Hunt is a platform that features a directory of new and upcoming businesses and products. It allows users to search for products using keywords and filters and also includes an “Ask” platform for users to ask and answer questions from the community.
It also has a “Collections” feature that groups businesses by specific topics, making it an ideal place to locate and sort B2B leads, making it one of the best B2B sales prospecting tool software.
- FollowerWonk
Pricing/Rating: Paid – $29 monthly subscription / 4.3 rating on G2
FollowerWonk is a sales prospecting tool that makes it easier for salespeople to find and research prospects on Twitter. The key features of FollowerWonk include: it allows you to dive deeper into Twitter’s analytics or company data to search for specific keywords in people’s bios like “Graphic Designer.”
FollowerWonk will then create a list of users who identify as graphic designers, along with detailed information like location, what topics they tweet about, and who they follow.
This is useful for sales leaders in identifying potential leads and gaining insights into their interests, location, and demographics. Salespeople can then reach out to them directly via tweet or find their contact information using other tools.
- BuiltWith
Pricing/Rating: $295 monthly subscription (Free Google Chrome Extension)
BuiltWith is a tool that allows salespeople to find businesses that use specific software or tools. This can be particularly helpful when looking for competitors in their space or for tools that integrate with their own products. Salespeople can search for sites using tools such as Google Analytics or Shopify and get access to contact details, average tech spend, and company size.
The sales prospecting tools sales have a starting price point of $295 a month, but there is also a free Google Chrome extension that provides some basic insight into the tools a website is built with. This can help salespeople to identify potential leads and gain insights into the customer’s needs and preferences.
- MatterMark
Pricing: $49 monthly subscription
Mattermark is one of the best sales prospecting tools, which is a directory of businesses that are built specifically for salespeople. It allows you to easily search their directory of businesses and sort by criteria such as geography, company size, industry, niche, business model, B2B/B2C, and funding level.
It also integrates directly into Salesforce, which allows you to save businesses into specific lists and automate prospecting by creating saved searches with over 80 different data fields, complete with company and news alerts.
This helps salespeople easily find and research potential leads and to stay updated on the latest news and developments about their target companies. It can be a powerful tool for identifying potential customers, segmenting them, and tracking their progress.
Sales Prospecting Tools: Qualifying Prospects in 2023
- Datanyze Insider
Pricing/Rating: $29 monthly subscription / 4.2 rating on G2
Datanyze is a sales tool that helps salespeople find B2B contact information, including email, direct phone numbers, and cell phone numbers, directly from LinkedIn. The tool also provides “ice breakers,” which are topics related to the prospect’s location and social media activity.
This can help salespeople not only find the right people to contact but also have a relevant conversation starter, making it more likely that the prospect will engage with them. This way, it improves the chances of reaching out to the right contact and increases the chances of a successful conversation.
- Zoominfo
Pricing: Unknown (Free Trial)
ZoomInfo is a large database that provides a wide range of information that can be used to qualify leads. It allows users to find general information about a company, as well as the contact details for specific employees, create tailored prospect lists, and view the department organization chart.
This wealth of data can help salespeople to reach the right person and know what to say during outreach. ZoomInfo is considered to be the top resource for salespeople who want to use lead lists as a sales prospecting tool.
- CrystalKnows
Pricing: Unknown
CrystalKnows is a tool that analyzes public data to create a personality profile of a person based on the DISC profile. It helps you understand how a prospect prefers to communicate and make decisions, so you can adapt your pitch and communication style accordingly.
It also has a Gmail plugin that provides real-time suggestions about the recipient’s personality and communication style as you compose an email.
- Mention
Pricing: $49 monthly subscription
Mention is a media-monitoring tool that tracks any time a specific brand or keyword is mentioned online. It allows users to easily learn what their prospects have been saying online and what others are saying about them as well.
For most salespeople, the free version of the tool is likely enough, but if a marketing team is already using Mention to monitor brand mentions, the sales team can leverage that information to qualify leads. This way, it provides an easy way to keep an eye on the brand’s reputation and the possible leads who are talking about the brand.
- Owler
Pricing/Rating: $35 monthly subscription / 4.3 rating on G2
Owler is a tool that provides company information such as its top competitors, recent acquisitions, revenue, company size, and other details like social media accounts and the number of employees.
It is built on a community database, meaning the data is provided by a community of users. It can be used to research companies, find potential partners, and acquire insights into industry trends.
- Vainu
Pricing: 7117.44 yearly subscription / 4.2 rating on G2
Vainu is a sales intelligence platform that helps teams provide customers with a tailored sales experience. It provides a real-time company database that allows teams to search for best-fit prospects using over 100 filters.
The platform is powerful but comes at a higher cost. It has features like the ability to follow prospect lists and instantly react when a new company matches the criteria set by the user or when a prospect appears to be interested in the company. This way, it helps the sales team to have a better understanding of their potential leads and improve their sales process.
- Detective
Pricing/Rating: $35 monthly subscription / 4.6 rating on G2
Detective is a sales prospecting tool that helps sales representatives by providing them with powerful data to improve their outreach, personalize contact, and increase conversion rates.
It scours the internet for mentions of a prospect and their company and provides notifications of their initiatives and competitors. It can also be integrated with Salesforce to find out if deals have been closed with similar clients.
- Demodesk
Pricing: $42 monthly subscription
Demodesk is a web-based screen-sharing and video conferencing tool that allows users to set up a 100% web-based virtual display for meetings. One of the main advantages of Demodesk is that it doesn’t require a browser extension or a download and can be accessed on any device simply by clicking a link.
It offers features such as the ability for participants to preload content, create meeting templates, and add notes, as well as automated meeting scheduling, pre-built presentation flows, calendar integration, and CRM integration.
Sales Prospecting Tools: To Find Contact Details
- Hunter
Pricing/Rating: $53 monthly subscription / 4.3 rating on G2
Hunter (formerly known as Email Hunter) is a website and Google Chrome extension that helps salespeople to find email addresses of any given domain. It also provides a score ranking on how likely it is to be an active address.
Even if the specific prospect’s email address is not available, Hunter provides the format domain email addresses use, so you can guess what your target’s contact details would be.
This tool can be useful for salespeople who want to reach out to potential leads via email campaigns, and it can improve the chances of success and increase the response rate. The tool is easy to use, and it can be a great addition to your sales tool stack.
- Voila Norbert
Pricing: $49 monthly subscription
Voila Norbert is an email lookup tool that allows users to find an email address by simply entering a person’s name and the company they work for. It uses this information to automatically pull up the email address of that person.
Voila Norbert also has a Gmail plugin that enables users to schedule cold emails, send automatic follow-up messages, and set notes or reminders, helping users to streamline their cold-emailing process.
- FindThatLead
Pricing: $52 monthly subscription (20% discount if paid annually)
FindThatLead is an email lookup tool similar to Hunter. It allows users to find email addresses associated with a specific domain name by typing them into the tool. The tool then pulls up a list of email addresses associated with that domain.
Additionally, FindThatLead also has a Google Chrome extension that enables users to search for email addresses directly from their browsers, making it an easy and convenient way to find email addresses.
- Overloop
Pricing: $99 monthly subscription
Overloop is an email lookup tool that stands out from others by offering the ability to integrate with major CRM platforms like Salesforce and Hubspot Sales. This integration allows users to easily transfer the email addresses they find into their CRM system.
Moreover, Overloop also offers powerful reporting and forecasting features, which can help with forecasting sales and better understanding customer behavior.
To get started with Overloop, users can install a Google Chrome extension. They also offer additional features such as outbound email automation, tasks, and notes, but these features are available for a fee.
- MailTester
Pricing: $19 monthly for 5,000 emails
MailTester is a mail validation service that can handle a large volume of emails and return accurate results.
The tool helps users to check all the emails before sending an email campaign by providing features such as removing duplicates, avoiding spam traps, validating domains, and tracking bouncing.
This can help to improve the deliverability and effectiveness of an email campaign by identifying and removing invalid or non-existent email addresses, thus preventing bounced emails and improving the chances of your emails reaching the intended recipients.
- Skrapp
Pricing: $52 monthly subscription
Skrapp is one of the best sales prospecting tools, which is a sales tool that differentiates itself from other email lookup tools by allowing users to find email addresses associated with a LinkedIn account. This is accomplished by using Skrapp’s Google Chrome extension, which allows users to go to a person’s LinkedIn profile and find the email address they used to sign up.
This feature can help users to reach out to potential leads who may not have shared their email addresses publicly. Another unique feature of Skrapp is the ability to save leads directly into lists, which can save time when organizing and managing leads.
Sales Prospecting Tools: For Sales
- Hubspot Sales Hub
Pricing/Rating: $44 monthly subscription / 4.4 rating on G2
HubSpot Sales Hub is a popular email management and tracking tool that is a division of the HubSpot CRM platform. It offers a range of features designed to help sales teams increase productivity and improve the effectiveness of their outreach efforts.
The ability to set up custom email sequences allows users to create a series of automated emails that are sent to leads or contacts at specific intervals, to move them closer to a sale. Users can also create email templates that can be easily customized and reused, saving time and ensuring consistency in messaging.
Another vital feature of HubSpot Sales Hub is tracking email open and click-through rates. This allows users to see how their emails are performing and make adjustments as needed. In addition, call tracking helps to identify the best leads and track their progress, while automating routine sales tasks, like rotating leads, can increase efficiency and reduce workload.
- Close
Pricing: $29 monthly subscription
Close is a powerful CRM platform that also provides some great tools for cold calling. The Power Dialer and Predictive Dialing features allow users to make more outbound calls, which makes it easier to reach a larger audience. Users can also track outbound calls in Close to see how their efforts are performing.
It makes note-taking easy, so users can track individual prospects. This allows sales teams to keep detailed records of their interactions with each lead, including notes on the topics discussed, the status of the sale, and any follow-up tasks that need to be completed.
Another benefit of Close is that it can be integrated with Zapier, which allows users to pull website visitor information directly into Close. This can be especially useful for users of Leadfeeder as it can provide more context about website visitors, allowing sales teams to personalize their outreach efforts.
- Dialpad
Pricing/Rating: $23 monthly subscription / 4.3 rating on G2
Dialpad is an AI-assisted video meeting software and messaging tool designed for enterprises and businesses. It offers a wide range of features to help teams communicate and collaborate more effectively, including video meetings, contact center management, and an outbound sales dialer.
It also provides unlimited calls, which include both audio and video calls, and other calling features such as recording, sending SMS, MMS, and more. It allows for more flexible communication with clients and team members, voicemail transcription, and voicemail greetings, which can save time and increase efficiency.
- Vidyard
Pricing/Rating: $29 monthly subscription / 4.5 rating on G2
Vidyard is a video platform that allows sales reps to easily record, share, and track videos as part of their sales outreach. By adding video to sales emails, sales reps can personalize their outreach and improve response rates.
Whether you’re an inbound or outbound sales rep, Vidyard can help you create effective videos that can be used in a variety of contexts. For example, you can create product demos, explainer videos, or even personalized greetings to make your prospects feel more connected to you.
Once you’ve recorded your videos, you can easily share them via email or other channels, such as social media or your website.
Vidyard also provides tools for tracking the performance of your videos, so you can see how many people have viewed them, how long they’ve watched, and other important metrics.
- GlobalMeet
Pricing/Rating: Unknown / 4.2 rating on G2
GlobalMeet is one of the best sales prospecting tools, which is a cloud-based video conferencing tool that allows users to join meetings with just a single click. It does not require users to download any software, making it easy and convenient to use. GlobalMeet is designed for enterprises and businesses, and it includes features and integrations that cater to their needs.
This tool can be used for conducting online meetings, webinars, and other remote collaborations. With GlobalMeet, sales teams can easily connect with leads and clients, regardless of their location.
- Vengreso
Pricing: $3.95 monthly subscription
Vengreso is a tool that helps salespeople communicate faster and more effectively by providing a library of pre-saved, industry-standard sales messaging templates. These templates can be easily customized with links, images, videos, and other multimedia elements to make the messages more engaging.
This tool can help salespeople quickly create professional and effective sales messages, saving them time and helping them to close more deals.
- Bloobirds
Pricing/Rating: Unknown / 4.3 rating on G2
Bluebirds is a platform that helps Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) and Business Development Representatives (BDRs) throughout the entire prospecting process.
It provides real-time messaging assistance based on your B2B sales strategy. Instead of using mass email sequences, Bloobirds suggests each message according to the ideal buyer persona, target market, and the target account’s unique situation.
This platform also allows you to build a custom sales playbook to measure and fine-tune your strategy for optimal success. It helps the sales team to be more effective in their prospecting and messaging.
Sales Prospecting Tool: For Meetings
- Doodle Sales Prospecting Tool
Pricing/Rating: $7.95 monthly subscription / 4.4 rating on G2
Doodle is a scheduling tool that allows multiple prospects to nominate several times that work for them, and then the organizer can select the best time that works for everyone. It is particularly useful for setting up calls between multiple people.
The premium version offers additional features, such as the ability to remove Doodle branding, automate reminders and messages, and create customized polls. This tool can help salespeople, and other professionals save time and hassle in coordinating meetings and calls with multiple parties.
How To Use Sales Prospecting Tools Successfully: Best Sales Prospecting Tips
- Know Your Customer
For successful sales prospecting, it is important to understand your customers well by creating and understanding a buyer persona or ideal customer profile. This will help you identify leads that match your persona and also craft marketing messages that will resonate with them.
This will, in turn, increase the chances of conversions. However, many salespeople do not take the time to research their prospects properly and instead use a “spray and pray” approach, which is not effective.
- Give it a Personal Touch.
Personalizing your engagement with potential customers is an effective way to build trust and connect with them on a human level. This can be done by customizing your message when reaching out to leads via email or phone.
By making the customer feel special, you are targeting their subconscious decision-making, which accounts for 95% of buying behavior. People tend to make buying decisions based on emotions first and then justify them with logic, so by making them personal. You are more likely to build trust with your leads.
- Focus on the Most Qualified Leads
If you want to increase sales revenue, it is important to focus on the most qualified leads, as they have the highest chance of converting to buyers.
This is a more efficient use of time. Tools such as buy signals and intent data can be used to identify and prioritize leads based on their readiness to buy, which will result in an increase in sales over time.
- Investment Matters
For better sales prospecting, it is important to invest in developing this skill. This can be done by finding a mentor or coach, taking courses, or reading books on the subject.
Moreover, it is important to have a reliable and repeatable process for generating qualified leads, which can be achieved by implementing a prospecting system. This can be facilitated by using software tools that provide an all-in-one solution for research, outreach, and lead generation.
B2B Best Sales Prospecting Tools (Sales Teams): A way to work smarter, not harder
Prospecting efforts are an essential part of the sales process, but they often involve repetitive tasks that can take up a lot of time and resources. However, by using the right tools and techniques, sales teams can increase their efficiency, connect with more prospects in less time, and close more deals.
These tools can help to automate repetitive tasks, improve communication, and streamline the prospecting process. By using best practices in sales prospecting and empowering them with the best tools, sales teams can improve their performance and achieve better results.
If you’re looking to update your sales prospecting tools in 2023, keep in mind that it’s also important to explore creative ways to use these tools in combination with Chrome extensions to improve efficiency and simplify your workflow.
