The top software for every step of the process
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Looking for sales prospecting software to help fill your pipeline?
The amount of available tools out there can be truly mind-boggling. 🤯
That's why we've listed the absolute best B2B sales prospecting tools you can use for every respective step of the process:
- Find good prospects
- Reach out effectively
- Nurture lukewarm prospects
- Follow up & close prospects
- Bonus: Integrate it all
Looking for any of the above in specific? Just click the link to go to the right section. 👆
If you see Salesflare pop up more than once in the list, it’s normal: Salesflare comes with many sales prospecting tools built in, so you don’t have to juggle your prospects between a lot of different software. Fret not, however: we’ll present you in each section with a worthy alternative. That’s a promise! 😘
Now, let’s explore these top tools. 👇
1. Tools to find good prospects
Finding quality sales leads is essential. To make your sales prospecting process work effectively, you’ll need well targeted leads with well verified contact details. Here are some dedicated sales prospecting software you can use.
B2B lead data finders
Adapt.io
Want to prospect people who work in a specific industry, geography, company size, and role or department (and maybe use a specific technology on their website)? Adapt.io can help you find these people with their respective email address and often also their phone number. It’s one of the best B2B lead data finder tools we’ve tried. And its pricing starts at $39 per month.
UpLead
UpLead is a worthy alternative to Adapt.io (just above) and it comes very highly recommended by reviewers on G2.com as well. Even though its lowest plan is slightly more expensive than Adapt.io’s, it becomes significantly less expensive as you scale.
Email address finders
Salesflare
Want to find an email address for someone you see on LinkedIn, for a list of prospects (like in Excel or in a csv), or for any contact in your CRM? Then Salesflare will find you a quality email address in over 70% of the time. The best part: this email finder is built into your CRM (with an integrated email sequence tool and LinkedIn sidebar) and all CRM plans come with free email finder credits included. 🆓
VoilaNorbert
Dead set on your email sequence tool and CRM? Then you can use VoilaNorbert instead of Salesflare. Its accuracy is pretty similar (good quality!), its pricing is not exorbitant, and its search is quite quick. Tip: when you say “VoilaNorbert”, try to use your best French accent. 🥐
FindThatLead
A third great option: FindThatLead. Like Salesflare and VoilaNorbert, FindThatLead also comes with a handy LinkedIn sidebar. All in all, the functionality is relatively similar and it comes at a slightly lower price. Our only gripe: the email finder can take a long while to work through a list.
For a deeper comparison of these three tools, check this detailed email finder comparison.
Email list verifiers
MyEmailVerifier
With tens of email list verifiers on the market (even VoilaNorbert and FindThatLead have their own version) it’s hard to find which is the best one. MyEmailVerifier is the best one we’ve found so far at a (very) affordable price. Works great for B2B prospecting.
LinkedIn email finders
Salesflare
We’ve covered email finders, but what if you’re looking at someone’s LinkedIn profile and you’d like to find their email address straight from there? With Salesflare’s email finder extension for LinkedIn it’s just a click away. And best of all: you can add the person straight into the CRM and enter them in an email sequence. Could life be any easier? 😍
Snov.io
We tested a whole series of email finder extensions for LinkedIn and most are slow or ugly. In that sense, the plugin that Snov.io offers is a breath of fresh air. It looks good, quickly offers results, and adds them to a list so you can easily use them in the next step. Installing it can be a little complex for novice Chrome users, as you need to sideload the extension; if you know how to do it, don’t let it hold you back.
2. Tools to reach out to prospects
Got your sales prospect data together? Then let’s get in touch with them using emails, LinkedIn connections requests/messages, calls or personalized videos. The below prospecting tools can help.
Email outreach/sequence tools
Salesflare
Salesflare pops up again? 😮 Yes, it can also power your outreach to sales prospects. With Salesflare, you can effortlessly send personalized email sequences at scale. You can send the emails from the CRM and have everything recorded back in the CRM automatically: email opens, clicks, replies, bounces, unsubscribes, … Salesflare even detects and parses the email signatures in these replies to update the contact details. And it helps you follow up and close the deals.
Reply.io
While we previously used to recommend Mailshake because it was more affordable, they upped their price and now only offer annual billing. Reply.io is a great, premium alternative with monthly billing. It’s pleasing to the eyes and does what you expect it to do, i.e. send email sequences reliably.
LinkedIn outreach automation tools
Dux-Soup
Our tool of choice for many years now when automating outreach on LinkedIn, like connection requests, messages and endorsements: Dux-Soup. This sales prospecting software is very reliable, adapts quickly to new LinkedIn updates, and consistently manages to stay off their radar. It also has the necessary safety mechanisms built in to make sure that you don’t get your LinkedIn account suspended. (Check out the interview with their founder on our Founder Coffee podcast when you have a chance!)
Calling software
RingCentral
Want strong VOIP (Voice over IP) software to place calls to sales prospects straight from your computer? Then RingCentral is what we usually recommend. It doesn’t only work well; it also offers great integration options with any other software using Zapier.
Sales video tools
Bonjoro
To say “bonjour” in a warmer way to your sales prospects, you can use Bonjoro. The handy thing about Bonjour is that you can get notified on your phone automatically when there are new people to send a video to and then immediately record and send it from your phone. That way it easily fits in your normal workflow. Want to send a “group video” to a list? That’s super easy too.
3. Tools to nurture prospects
When you’re reaching out to sales prospects, you often find that they’re interested in what you’re offering, but it’s just not the right time or there is no burning need right now that calls them to action. As this happens so often, good nurturing of your sales prospects can make a huge difference in your sales performance.
Email drip campaign tools
Salesflare
Yup, Salesflare can do this too! 😁 It can send automated emails from your mailbox (no one can tell it wasn’t you sending the email manually!) based on triggers, like when an opportunity moves to a certain stage, a tag is added, the last interaction is more than x days in the past, or any other combination of the tens of filters available. If you want to get some good inspiration on how you can use these powers effectively, make sure to watch the video at the bottom of this article. 👇 (or just watch it here!)
Customer.io
If you want to go beyond drip emails and build more complex messaging workflows, with complex filtering and with other channels like SMS and push notifications, then have a look at Customer.io. It’s not the cheapest sales prospecting software, but it’s definitely fancy stuff.
Ad retargeting tools
AdRoll
While you can drip emails to your prospects to entice them, you can also approach them through other channels in parallel, like ads. AdRoll allows you to “retarget” your tools across multiple media with ads, like through Facebook, Google and many other sites. You’ll be everywhere.
Webinar software
Zoom
One of the best ways to nurture a prospect (it’s all about providing them value!) is inviting them to an interesting webinar. While there’s a lot of good webinar software out there, Zoom offers one of the simplest, most stable and most familiar experiences out there. Plus, it’s very affordable.
4. Tools to follow up & close prospects
Got some warm prospects? Then you can’t afford to let them slip. The sales prospecting tools below will help you follow up flawlessly and eventually close that deal.
Sales CRM software
Salesflare
With Salesflare already appearing a bunch of times in this list, you probably got the impression that Salesflare is all about sales prospecting… while it actually started off as an intelligent CRM for small businesses that helps you follow up much better. The CRM automatically tracks all interactions with your sales prospects and all information about your prospects by plugging into the systems you already use. Salesflare integrates very closely with Google Workspace, Microsoft Office 365 and LinkedIn. And of course it has all these neat sales prospecting tools built in. Don’t hesitate to give it a try! (it’s free for up to 30 days)
Pipedrive
When people are looking for a good sales CRM, they usually compare Salesflare with Pipedrive, so it’s only fair that we include them in this listing. We like how its basic platform is easy to use and really helps you keep a good view on your sales pipeline… Although we must of course stress that Pipedrive is not nearly as automated as Salesflare, doesn’t offer an email finder, no email sequences, no Chrome extension for LinkedIn, only a limited set of features in their mobile app… oh sorry, I got a little carried away here. 😬
Looking for more sales CRMs? Then check out our sales CRM comparison… or our list of lead management software. If you need a CRM for another purpose, check out these example CRM use cases. And if you’re not ready for a real one yet, check our CRM templates for Excel and Google Sheets.
Email tracking tools
Salesflare
Did we already mention that Salesflare can track email opens and clicks? The tracking works in Salesflare, Gmail, Outlook, and of course in email sequences. Your own opens and clicks are automatically excluded. What’s more: Salesflare also offers website tracking that links up with the email click tracking and follows your prospects across your site, showing you what pages they look at and for how long. 👀
Right Inbox
If you simply want to track emails in Gmail, then Right Inbox can help. The Chrome extension integrates email tracking in all emails you send from Gmail with the sidebar enabled and it also shows you all the tracking straight in Gmail. We admit that the plugin looks a little dated, but it still works really great. It’s free for up to 5 tracked emails per month.
Want to check out more email trackers like these? We’ve compiled a detailed email tracker comparison.
Document tracking software
DocSend
While it seems a little weird to have prospects read your document through an online link in their browser (and you should only do this if you can get away with it), it can have one big advantage: you can see when and how long they read your document, down to the page. If you’re sending over long sales decks or proposals, this can be a gold mine.
Sales proposal software
Better Proposals
If you’re still making sales proposals in PowerPoint or Word and want to upgrade to something more pretty and modern (and that looks good on small phone screens), then check out Better Proposals. This software has nailed proposal design. And it has some neat extra functionality too, like document tracking (yup!), electronic signatures and even built-in payments. (Here’s an interview with BP’s co-founder Adam on our podcast!)
5. Tools to integrate it all
Want to tie it all neatly together? You can either use an all-in-one sales prospecting platform like Salesflare, or you can use an integration platform to integrate different prospecting tools. And if you go really advanced, you may even need both!
Integration platforms
Zapier
Want to integrate different tools super easily? Zapier is the absolute easiest integration platform we know of and it also integrates with 5000+ different tools (including all the above!). You can check out some of the integration possibilities with Salesflare and a series of handy templates on this dedicated page. It has however become a little expensive lately and it isn’t the most advanced in the market, which is why we also present you to…
Make
A worthy Zapier alternative for the power user. It allows you to build slightly more advanced workflows AND it’s significantly cheaper. The cons are that it connects to less apps (1500+ at the time of writing) and is less easy to use. If you’re not afraid of discovering software however, give it a try!
Now, how to build a working B2B sales prospecting machine? ⚙️
As you can see, there is an amazing set of B2B sales prospecting tools out there to help you out.
But how can you actually build a solid sales prospecting machine? 🤔
In the below recording of our webinar with Matteo and Giacomo of ResultConsulting, they will explain you how their proven sales prospecting machine works, including:
- How to consistently generate B2B sales prospects from LinkedIn
- How to nurture these prospects to convert more of them in the long run
- How to follow them up effectively and close deals
- And how to double your sales conversion by tracking your sales metrics
The video takes about an hour, but – if you want to generate more prospects – we promise their free sales prospecting advice is 100% worth it! 🤩
If you’re short on time, here are five takeaways from this video:
- You can generate tens of new customers per year with just 1 hour of sales prospecting per day.
- When first reaching out to new prospects, avoid trying to sell them anything at all costs (even avoid all hints that you may be about to sell something).
- When prospects decide to connect with you, focus on providing them a lot of value with case studies, webinars, …
- Keep nurturing your prospects: most sales only happen after being in touch consistently with people for a while.
- Build a repeatable prospecting process and then massively improve it by tracking your sales metrics on your CRM’s sales dashboards.
But, again, for the concrete examples and proof behind these takeaways, just watch the video. ☝️
Frequently asked questions
What is a sales prospecting tool?
A sales prospecting tool is a tool, usually software, that helps someone to organize and automate their sales prospecting. It can provide help in any part of the sales prospecting process: finding prospects, reaching out to them, nurturing prospects, following them up, and closing sales deals.
What is the best tool for prospecting?
As always, what the best tool is depends on your specific needs. If you want an all-in-one sales prospecting tool, have a look at Salesflare. It offers an email finder, LinkedIn integration, email sequences, email templates, email tracking, … inside its easy-to-use sales CRM.
What are the 5 P's of prospecting?
The 5 P’s of prospecting according to Jim Brodo are Purpose, Preparation, Personalization, Perseverance, and Practice. These principles represent a prescribed approach towards sales prospecting. It is a reference to the 5 P’s of marketing Product, Price, Place, Promotion, and People as proposed by Jerome McCarthy and popularized by Philip Kotler. They were originally 4 P’s and the last one (People) was added in later.
What is a B2B prospecting tool?
A B2B prospecting tool is a tool, usually software, that helps someone who sells to other businesses (hence business-to-business or B2B) to organize and automate their sales prospecting efforts. It can provide help in any part of the sales prospecting process: finding prospects, reaching out to them, nurturing prospects, following them up, and closing sales deals.
How do I find prospects for B2B sales?
If you’re looking for B2B sales prospects, the best place to start is your own personal network. As soon as you have figured out what specific target market responds best to your prospecting, you can use a B2B lead data tool like Adapt.io or UpLead to create a larger list of prospects. To reach out and successfully follow up and close these leads you can use a tool like Salesflare.
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