30+ Best Lead Generation Tools (by Type)

And How to Build a B2B Sales Lead Generator Machine

Are you looking for lead generation tools and how to use them to get your own B2B sales lead generator system going?

Then you're in exactly the right place! 😄

We won’t just present you with a bland list. We will actually help you make sense of that list, so you can clearly see how the different software tools relate to each other. 💡

As experts in the B2B lead generation space, we’ve only listed tools we can personally vouch for. All of the tools below have actually been used or thoroughly tested by our team.

And all these tools can be integrated with our very own B2B sales CRM software with built-in lead gen features, Salesflare. ✨

But, before we dive in deep, let’s take a look at the big picture first: what types of lead generation tools exist?

Types of lead generation software tools

Roughly speaking, there are three ways to generate leads:

1. Outbound: reach out to potential leads
2. Inbound: convert existing traffic into identified leads
3. Nurturing: convert a cold but already identified audience into sales-ready leads

That’s exactly how this list of lead generation tools is organized, with different subtypes per main type.

Here’s a quick overview of the structure (feel free to click through to a specific section 🖱️):

1. Outbound lead generation tools
2. Inbound lead generation tools
3. Lead nurturing tools
4. Bonus: How to build a B2B sales lead generator machine

If you see Salesflare pop up more than once in the list, that is normal: Salesflare comes with many lead gen tools built in, so you don’t have to juggle your sales leads between a series of different systems. Fret not, however: we’ll present you in each section with a worthy alternative.

Now let’s explore these lead gen tools! 👇

Outbound lead generation tools 📣

Despite what some self proclaimed thought leaders may tell you, most lead generation still starts with outbound efforts. No, your customers will not magically find you. 😏

There are essentially two parts to outbound lead generation:

1. Finding new qualified leads & their respective contact details
2. Reaching out to these leads

Here are the tools that can help you. 👀

Find new leads & their contact details

Finding quality sales leads is essential. To make your lead generation process work effectively, you’ll need well targeted leads with well verified contact details.

B2B lead data finders

Adapt.io

Want to target 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 find on LinkedIn, for a list of leads (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.

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.

Reach out to your leads

Got your lead data together? Then let’s get in touch with them using emails, LinkedIn connections requests/messages, calls or personalized videos.

Email outreach/sequence tools

Salesflare

Salesflare pops up again? 😮 Yes, it can also power your outreach to sales leads. With Salesflare, you can effortlessly send personalized email sequences at scale. You can send the emails from the CRM and have everything be 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 lead gen tool 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 leads 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 leads or customers, you can use Bonjoro. The handy thing about Bonjoro 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.

Inbound lead generation tools 🧲

Want to build an inbound stream of leads as well? Then let’s explore what tools exist for this.

There are essentially two jobs (link up to headings in StoryChief later):

1. Getting you more website visitors
2. Converting more of these visitors to leads

As there are many ways to go about these things, there are as many different types of inbound lead generation tools available. 😅

Get website visitors

Inbound lead generation can only work if you have website visitors, so let’s get these first; you can get some of that traffic from search engines (you’ll need to work on your SEO), from ads, or from automated social promotion.

SEO tools

Ahrefs

Whether you’re looking for the right keywords to focus on, want to track how you’re ranking, examine where your competitors get their traffic, or audit the technical SEO of your site - Ahrefs can do it all and its backlink data seems unrivaled (by Semrush and Moz).

Advertisement management platforms

AdEspresso

You can organize your ad campaigns from one place using AdEspresso. Unlike the Facebook Ads and Google Ads platforms, it’s also super easy to use. And it allows you to create variations of your ads in bulk and test them. It’s a great tool for anyone who wants to get into online ads without instantly getting a lot of gray hair. 🧓

Social promotion platforms

Quuu Promote

If you’re creating a lot of great content which could use some sharing on social media, we have good news for you: on the other end of the game there are many people who want to share great content around a certain topic, but don’t have the time to find it. Quuu connects the two. With Quuu Promote you can add your content to their social timelines. Obviously, it’s paid on your end. And, to everyone’s benefit, there is moderation in place. 😌

Convert your website visitors to identified leads

B2B website visitor tracking & identification

Leadfeeder

If you’re selling larger deals to companies and many of those come to your website to check out your product without necessarily reaching out to you, then you can use a tool like Leadfeeder to reach out to them instead. It allows you to see which companies came to your site (including all details about all visits they paid you) and who would be the right person at each company to get in touch with.

Lead popup tools & quizzes

Poptin

Our tool of choice for lead generation using pop-ups is Poptin. It’s not just super easy to use and affordable; it also has all the nifty options built in that you can imagine. On some pages, Poptin allows us to convert 8% of our visitors into leads. While it takes some experimentation to get things right, Poptin allows you to run this kind of A-B testing easily as well. Plus, they have a free plan you can start off with.

OptinMonster

It’s a monster eating opt-ins! And they have this cute little monster as their mascot (did I forget to say that Poptin has a fancy parrot?). Jokes aside, OptinMonster is solid software for pop-ups, which we’d probably use if we weren’t using Poptin instead. They don’t have a free plan, but their basic plan is quite affordable too.

Landing page builder software

Unbounce

If you want to build landing pages, but don’t have web developers at your disposal (or don’t have the budget for them), then Unbounce is a godsend. You can use it to design and create a landing page as if you were making a slide in PowerPoint… and then push it live in seconds. Its forms nicely integrate with any other tools through Zapier, so you can for instance get your leads from your landing pages automatically pushed into your CRM or email marketing software. (Their co-founder also got interviewed on our podcast.)

Blogging software

StoryChief

If you know the pain of writing an article, styling it in your blogging platform(s), promoting it on social media with nice previews, getting your SEO fully right, … then you’ll love StoryChief. This tool allows you to focus on writing the content and takes care of the rest for you. This very article was made, published and promoted using StoryChief. We love it and we’re not shy about it! And its forms integrate natively with Salesflare.

Website form tools

WPForms

If you have a Wordpress site, then WPForms may be the easiest way to get a form up and running. You can just install the plugin to get going. And then build your form with their drag-and-drop builder. It doesn’t only integrate well into your site, but also offers decent integration capabilities with a lot of other software.

Cognito Forms

… and if you don’t have a Wordpress site, then have a look at Cognito Forms! You can easily build a form in minutes and then embed it into your site. And we listed this website form tool here for the same reason (instead of any of the others): great integration capabilities.

Click-to-call widgets

CallPage

If your customers are likely to call you when they’re on your site, but they need an extra proverbial kick in the butt, then CallPage may provide the perfect solution. It adds a little call widget to your site and if people click it they are presented with the option to receive a free callback. How could they say no?

CrankWheel

Want that, but miss the ability to share screens? 🖥️ Then CrankWheel can help. Noone wants to guess what their lead is looking at. With CrankWheel, you can virtually look over their shoulder and explore things together. Super easy.

Lead nurturing tools 🔃

Got relatively cold leads who are not sales ready yet?

That’s where good lead nurturing comes in, because most of them will only consider buying from you after enjoying being in touch with you for a while. And, after that, you’ll finally follow up these leads from lead to deal.

Here we go! 👇

Nurture cold leads to make them sales ready

Email drip campaign tools

Salesflare

Yup, Salesflare can do this too! 😁 It can send automated emails from your mailbox (no one can see 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 software, but it’s definitely fancy stuff.

Ad retargeting tools

AdRoll

While you can drip emails to your leads 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 lead (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.

Follow up sales leads from lead to 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 lead generation… while it actually started off as an easy-to-use and automated CRM for small businesses. The CRM automatically tracks all interactions with your leads and all information about your leads 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 lead gen 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 it’s 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 tracking tools. 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 leads 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.

Document tracking software

DocSend

While it seems a little weird to have people 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 worth 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!)

Bonus: how to build a working B2B sales lead generator machine ⚙️

As you can see, there is an amazing set of lead gen tools out there to help you out.

But how can you actually build a solid lead generating sales machine? 🤔

In the below recording of our webinar with Matteo and Giacomo of ResultConsulting, they will explain you how their proven lead machine works, including:

• How to consistently generate B2B sales leads from LinkedIn
• How to nurture these leads 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 leads - we promise their free lead gen advice is 100% worth it! 🤩

If you’re short on time, here are five takeaways from this video:

1. You can generate tens of new customers per year with just 1 hour of lead gen per day.
2. When first reaching out to new leads, avoid trying to sell them anything at all costs (even avoid all hints that you may be about to sell something).
3. When people decide to connect with you, focus on providing them a lot of value with case studies, webinars, …
4. Keep nurturing your leads: most sales only happen after being in touch consistently with people for a while.
5. Build a repeatable 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. ☝️

Lots of luck generating sales leads! 👊

If you have any more questions about the topic, don’t hesitate to send us a message using the chat widget on our homepage. We’re here to help!

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