The Best Sales Prospecting Tools To Use For Your Business

The Best Sales Prospecting Tools To Use For Your Business

Sales prospecting can be a great way to get a new business off the ground.

Today we are going to take a look at the best sales prospecting tools that can help you to:

  • Find prospects.
  • Conduct reserach.
  • Reach out to prospects.
  • Schedule a discovery call.
  • Manage leads.

Ready to take sales prospecting to the next level?

Continue reading…

Find Prospects

Sales prospecting starts with:

  1. Clearly defining the criteria that qualify someone as a sales prospect.
  2. Developing a system for efficiently identifying sales prospects.
  3. Making a list of sales prospects to contact.

The apps listed below can help you with the second step of this process by providing you with the tools that you need to become more efficient at finding sales prospects.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Find Prospects, LinkedIn Sales Navigator website homepage

LinkedIn is the #1 professional social network in the world.

This makes it the best place to look for sales prospects, especially if you are in the B2B space.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator allows you to tap into the company’s 500M+ user base with advanced lead and company search features.

Moreover, you can also use this tool to:

  • Understand the prospects’ needs.
  • Engage them with personalized outreach.
  • Improve your sales strategy with sales analytics.

Pricing:

  • Free 1-month trial 
  • Starting from €79.99/month after that.

Ratings:

Capterra: 4.5/5

G2: 4.2/5

LeadFuze

Find Prospects, LeadFuze website homepage.

LeadFuze is a search engine for company info, emails, phone numbers, social profiles, and more. Its database includes 10M+ companies and 500M+ profiles.

You can use this app to run hyper-targeted searches based on your sales prospect criteria.

The company provides this example of such a search:

“Is a CEO anywhere in the world within the Computer Software vertical with 11+ employees that also spends $1k/mo on Adwords who is hiring for marketing help and who just recently announced an integration partnership.”

Here are more examples of potential searches:

  • A specific person.
  • All HR leaders of a specific list of 100 companies.
  • Anyone in marketing at Hubspot.
  • Everyone who has worked in engineering at Amazon.

Pretty impressive, right?

There are also helpful automation features that allow you to save time by automating repetitive tasks.

Also, the founder of the Leadfuze, Justin McGill, used his own software to grow his startup from zero to $30k in monthly recurring revenue via cold email outreach in 12 months. Just an interesting bit of trivia!

Pricing:

  • Free trial with 25 free lead credits.
  • Starter plan: Starting at $132.30/month.
  • Scaling plan: Starting at $447.30/month.
  • Custom plan.

Reviews:

Clutch

Find Prospects, Clutch website homepage.

Clutch is a digital agency review platform that includes 150,000+ agencies in 500+ categories.

Its purpose is to help businesses find the right agency that they can outsource a specific set of tasks to (e.g. content marketing, web development, IT, etc.).

However, if you are targeting digital agencies, then you can use Clutch to find sales prospects.

Pricing:

  • Free

Reviews:

LeadFeeder

Find Prospects, LeadFeeder website homepage.

Leadfeeder allows you to see:

  • Which companies are visiting your websites.
  • How they found you.
  • What they are interested in.

This enables you to notice when a company that is in your target audience checks out your product and jump on the opportunity by reaching out to them immediately.

Pricing:

  • Lite plan: Free.
  • Premium plan: 14-day trial.
  • Premium plan: $63/month.

Reviews:

Conduct Research

Once you have your list of sales prospects, you should conduct extensive research on them in order to make your sales pitch as persuasive as possible.

Here’s what you want to know about your sales prospects:

  • What is the #1 goal of their organization?
  • What is their #1 professional goal?
  • What challenges is their organization struggling with?
  • What solutions is the organization currently using to address those challenges?
  • What challenges they are struggling with?
  • What solutions are they currently using to address those challenges?
  • What are the most important recent events relating to their organization (e.g. an acquisition, raising venture capital, an IPO, etc.)?
  • What are the most important recent events relating to them as individuals (e.g. a job change, a promotion, a book release, etc.)?

You can then use all that information to:

  1. Get the sales prospect’s attention.
  2. Connect with the sales prospect on a deeper level.
  3. Present your offer in a compelling way.

Note that we have separated the organization the sales prospect represents and the sales prospect as an individual.

That’s because, in the B2B space, the ideal customer is an organization, but you need to pitch your product to an individual decision-maker.

That individual decision-maker isn’t an incarnation of the organization in question, they are a real person with their own incentives, their own motivations, their own goals… Which aren’t necessarily 100% aligned with those of the organization as a whole!

When you are pitching a B2B prospect, you need to address the needs of both the individual you are talking to and the organization itself, which is why you should do research on both.

Now let’s take a look at tools that can help you with that…

Owler

Conduct Research, Owler website homepage.

Owler is sales and competitive intelligence app that gives you access to information on 14M+ public and private businesses.

You can use it to find companies that meet your sales prospect criteria, track them so that you would always be up to date, and keep up with the industry news.

Pricing:

  • Basic plan: Free.
  • Plus plan: $99/year.
  • Pro plan: $420/year.
  • Teams plan: custom.

Reviews:

G2 Stack (FKA Siftery)

Conduct Research, G2 Stack (FKA Siftery) website homepage.

G2 Stack, formerly known as Siftery, can help you find out what technology stacks companies are using. 

This is especially helpful for B2B SaaS businesses because knowing what competing product the sales prospect is using at the moment allows you to tailor your sales pitch accordingly.

Pricing:

  • Custom

Capterra

Conduct Research, Capterra website homepage.

Capterra is a software review platform that was designed to help entrepreneurs find the right software for their businesses.

However, if you are selling a B2B SaaS product, you can:

  1. Use G2 Stack to find out which competing product the sales prospect is using at the moment.
  2. Use Capterra to learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of that product so that you would know what to emphasize in your sales pitch. 

Pricing:

  • Free

G2

Conduct Research, G2 website homepage.

G2 is another popular software review platform that you can use to learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of competing products.

It makes sense to check out both Capterra and G2 reviews if you want to get a better understanding of what people think about competing solutions.

Price:

  • Free

Mention

Conduct Research, Mention website homepage.

Mention is a web monitoring app that you can use to keep an eye on your sales prospects:

  • What are their customers saying about them?
  • What is the media saying about them?
  • What is happening right now (e.g. they just raised venture capital)?

All that can help you make your sales pitch more persuasive by making it more relevant and more timely.

Pricing:

  • Free plan.
  • Solo plan: €29/month.
  • Pro plan: €99/month.
  • ProPlus plan: €199/month.
  • Company plan: Custom.

Reviews:

Crystal

Conduct Research, Crystal website homepage.

Crystal is an app that uses publicly available information to create a personality profile for a specific person.

It uses the DISC behavioral framework that is based on four traits:

  • Dominance.
  • Influence.
  • Steadiness.
  • Conscientiousness.

Having a DISC personality profile of the prospect can help you understand how to best communicate with that person.

Pricing:

  • You can get started for free.
  • We assume that the pricing is custom.

Reviews:

Reach Out to Prospects

Once you have done your homework, it’s time to start reaching out to your sales prospects.

Of course, that can be easier said than done, since decision-makers tend to be busy people who don’t always share their contact information publicly.

So how can you get in touch with them when that’s the case?

Here are some tools that can help you contact sales prospects.

LinkedIn Messaging

Reach Out to Prospects, LinkedIn Messaging website homepage.

LinkedIn is arguably the best platform for cold social media outreach.

After all, it is a social media network designed for professional use, so people are much more receptive to cold outreach there than they are anywhere else.

Moreover, if you have mutual connections with the sales prospect, that can serve as social proof that you are legit and not some scammer.

Note that while you can create a profile for free, you will need to upgrade to a Premium plan if you want to send messages to people that you are not directly connected to.

Pricing:

  • Free 1-Month trial.
  • LinkedIn Premium Career plan: $29.99/month.
  • LinkedIn Premium Business plan: $59.99/month.

Hunter

Reach Out to Prospects, Hunter website homepage.

Hunter is one of the most popular search engines for email addresses.

You can use it to:

  • Find the email addresses of a company based on its domain name.
  • Find the email address of a particular individual.
  • Find the email address of the author of a specific article.
  • Verify any email address.

Hunter can be especially helpful when you can’t find the email address of the individual you want to contact but know what company they work at.

You can use the app to find out the email address template of that company, then make an educated guess as to what the email address of the person you want to reach might be.

For example:

Can’t find the email address for John Doe, the founder of John Doe Company?

You can use Hunter to learn that the email address template at that company is name.lastname@johndoecompany.com.

You can then send a cold email to john.doe@johndoecompany.com because that is likely to be his email address.

Pricing:

  • Free plan
  • Starter plan: $49/month.
  • Growth plan: $99/month.
  • Pro plan: $199/month.
  • Enterprise plan: $399/month.

Reviews:

Lemlist

Reach Out to Prospects, Lemlist website homepage.

Lemlist is a cold email outreach automation app that allows you to:

  • Personalize each email at scale.
  • Send automated follow-up emails.
  • Keep track of all the email conversations.

It also has analytics that shows the key cold email outreach metrics such as open rate, click-through rate, and reply rate.

Lemlist automation features can save you a ton of time, so if you intend to primarily reach out to sales prospects via cold email, you should definitely check out this app.

Pricing:

  • Email Warm-Up plan: $29/month.
  • Email Outreach plan: $59/per user/per month.
  • Sales Engagement plan: $99/per user/per month

Reviews:

Schedule a Discovery Call

The purpose of sales prospecting isn’t to close a sale, it’s to get the prospect to agree to take the next step in your sales funnel, which typically is a discovery call.

However, if you have ever tried to schedule an online meeting, you know that it can be a nightmare due to all the back-and-forth emails.

And the problem is that with each of these emails the sales prospect becomes more likely to back out of the discovery call. They might even stop responding to you altogether.

That’s why you want to make it as easy as possible to schedule that discovery call.

Here are two apps that can help you do that:

Doodle

Schedule a Discovery Call, Doodle website homepage.

Doodle is an appointment scheduling app that can help you schedule a discovery call in just two quick steps:

  1. You send the prospect a link to a calendar that shows the times when you are available.
  2. The prospect selects one of those times.

No endless email back-and-forth!

Pricing:

  • 14-day Free Trial.
  • Pro plan: 6.95/month (paid annually).
  • Team plan: $8.95/per user/per month (paid annually).
  • Enterprise plan: custom.

Reviews:

ScheduleOnce

ScheduleOnce is another scheduling app that you can use to reduce the amount of back-and-forth email required to set up a discovery call.

Just like with Doodle, you can create a calendar that shows your availability, then share the link with the prospect so that they could choose the time that is convenient for them.

There’s an option to send them automatic calendar invitations and secure video links for popular video conferencing apps such as Zoom and Google Meet.

Pricing:

  • Starter: Free for 25 user licenses.
  • Growth: Free trial then $10/per user license/per month. 
  • Enterprise: Custom.

Reviews:

Manage Leads

Okay, so you have managed to convert a sales prospect into a lead by getting them to agree to a discovery call. Well done!

But now it’s important to be organized. You don’t want leads to slip through the cracks due to the feebleness of human memory. So how can you avoid that?

That’s where customer relationship management (CRM) software comes in.

It allows you to visualize your sales pipeline, see all your leads in one place, and send both them and yourself automatic reminders to make sure that no one forgets to show up.

Here are three popular CRM apps that you might want to consider:

Streak

Manage Leads, Streak website homepage.

Streak is CRM software that was designed specifically for Gmail.

It allows you to manage leads, buyers, and even job candidates straight from your inbox.

Not only you can track everything, but the app also gives you context about each person so that you would always know who exactly you are talking to.

So if Gmail is the email client of your choice, you should definitely consider this customer relationship management solution.

Pricing:

  • Free plan.
  • Solo plan: $19/month.
  • Pro plan: $59/month.
  • Enterprise plan: $159/month.

Reviews:

Copper CRM

Manage Leads, Copper website homepage.

Copper CRM is a popular CRM app that was designed to look and feel like Google Workspace.

In fact, it’s the only Google-recommended Workspace CRM.

This software allows you to:

  • Organize and manage contacts.
  • Keep track of leads.
  • Automate repetitive tasks.

Interestingly, it comes equipped with project management functionality, which is rather unusual in the CRM industry but makes total sense.

So if you are using Google Workspace to run your business, then you should probably look into Copper CRM.

Pricing:

  • Free 14-day trial.
  • Basic plan: $25/per user/per month (billed annually).
  • Professional plan: $59/per user/per month (billed annually).
  • Business plan: $119/per user/per month (billed annually).

Reviews:

Read our full review:

“Copper Review – Everything You Need To Know”

Keap 

Manage Leads, Keap website homepage.

Keap, formerly known as Infusionsoft, is one of the most popular CRM apps out there.

It can help you to:

  • Save time by automating repetitive tasks.
  • Keep a detailed record of all interactions with prospects, leads, and customers.
  • Visualize your entire sales pipeline by seeing everything in one dashboard.

It’s worth noting that the company has been expanding their software beyond the initial customer relationship management functionality so they now offer various other features as well.

Pricing:

  • Lite plan: Starting from $79/month for up to 500 contacts.
  • Pro plan: Starting from $159/month for up to 500 contacts.
  • Max plan: Starting from $199/month for up to 500 contacts.

Reviews:

Read our full review:

“Keap Review For 2021 – Features, Pricing & More”

Is Sales Prospecting Outdated?

As we have mentioned in the introduction, sales prospecting can be a great way to get a new business off the ground.

However…

The problem with sales prospecting is that it isn’t scalable.

Think about it:

There are only 24 hours in a day.

But you:

  • Need to sleep, eat, and exercise to stay healthy.
  • Need to do chores, run errands, go to dentist’s appointments, etc.
  • Need to fulfill your other responsibilities such as familiar obligations to your spouse, children, and relatives.

Not to mention, a work-life balance is important if you want to avoid burnout, so you should probably also schedule time for pursuing hobbies, having a social life, or maybe even just simply lying on the beach.

All this doesn’t leave that much time for sales prospecting, does it?

And sure, you could scale your business by hiring a sales team…

But salespeople are subject to the same human limitations as you are. There’s only so much they can do on any given day.

Fortunately, there’s a better way to go about growing your business…

Scale Your Business With the Value Ladder Sales Funnel

Our co-founder, Russel Brunson, took ClickFunnels from zero to $10 million in annual revenue in just one year (it’s now over $100 million). How did he do it?

He used a sales funnel model called the Value Ladder.

Here’s how it looks like:

Scale Your Business With the Value Ladder Sales Funnel, graphic.

It has four stages:

  • Bait. You offer the potential customer a lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
  • Frontend. You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product.
  • Middle. You offer the customer a more expensive and more valuable product.
  • Backend. You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product.

Ideally, you should also sell a subscription of some sort, since that will provide recurring revenue.

The reason the Value Ladder sales funnel works so well is that it allows you to:

  1. Start the relationship with the potential customer by providing free value.
  2. Nurture that relationship by continuing to provide free value.
  3. Build trust by providing progressively more paid value at each stage. 

Here’s how Russel explains it:

And the beauty of it is that it enables you to scale your business faster than you ever thought possible.

The Value Ladder sales funnel is fully automated and therefore not subject to the aforementioned human limitations:

  • You’re asleep? Your sales funnel is generating revenue.
  • You’re working out? Your sales funnel is generating revenue.
  • You’re sunbathing on a beach? Your sales funnel is generating revenue.

…etc. 

So while you can certainly use sales prospecting to grow your business gradually, you need a Value Ladder sales funnel if you want to grow it explosively.

Want Russel To Show You How To Build Your First Sales Funnel?

We understand that building a sales funnel from scratch can seem like a daunting task.

That’s why we created our 5 Day Challenge where Russel walks you through it step-by-step.

You will learn how to:

  • Generate unlimited leads.
  • Create your first lead magnet.
  • Build your first sales funnel.
  • Create a simple 6-email follow-up sequence.
  • And launch your funnel!

…in just five days.

So don’t hesitate.

Join our 5 Day Challenge. It’s completely free!

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