5+ Best Prospecting Tools: From List Building to Engagement in 2023
- Last Updated September 8, 2022
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Prospecting is what fuels your sales pipeline.
In other words, the growth of your business and the ability to make sales depends on how easily you can convert leads into prospects.
But manual prospecting isn’t only error-prone but also super tedious.
In fact, among the many processes salespeople engage in, it’s right there at the top of the most difficult.
And you can’t neglect it either.
However, leveraging technology makes things a lot easier.
With the best sales prospecting tools, you can build lists, get contact details, qualify prospects, set meetings, and drive engagement.
The problem is there are tons and tons of prospecting tools out there. How do you recognize the most effective software for each task?
Below, I’d be guiding you through the best prospecting tools you’ll ever need.
Here we go.
| Tool | Pricing (starts from) | Free plan/trial? | Main Service | Extra Services |
|---|---|---|---|---|
LinkedIn Sales Navigator | $79.99/month | ✅ | List Building | Qualification Contacts Sourcing Engagement |
Voila Norbert | $39/month | ✅ | Contacts Sourcing | Prospects Engagement |
ZoomInfo | ➖ | ❌ | Prospects Qualification | List Building Contacts Sourcing Engagement |
Calendly | $8/month | ✅ | Meeting Setup | Engagement Qualification |
Outreach | $100/month | ❌ | Prospects Engagement | List Building Engagement |
1. Build List with LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Since LinkedIn is the world-leading professional social network, it makes sense to offer an effective prospecting tool. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a part of LinkedIn’s Sales Solutions, an excellent repository of B2B data.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator supplies organizations and their sales teams with a wide range of solutions for identifying and reaching out to the right audience. This sales engagement platform offers advanced filters, detailed prospect information, and much more.
Through the powerful search function, you can locate the contact details of your prospects with filters that let you specify a lot of details, from personal info to education and work. LinkedIn also matches you automatically with valuable suggestions.
To eliminate the difficulty of working with several prospects, LinkedIn Sales Navigator lets you add relevant tags and notes.
Other notable features
- Helpful CRM integrations. Say goodbye to manual data entry with LinkedIn’s integrations. It lets you share data among dashboards and do more from a single place.
- Real-time analytics and updates. Whether a new lead is available or an old one is switching companies, this prospecting tool lets you get real-time updates on leads. There’re also insights for more background information.
Reach more audiences with InMail Messages. This is a user-friendly tool for reaching more than 500 million LinkedIn profiles.
Pricing
LinkedIn Sales Navigator pricing is divided into three. The Core Plan is the lowest at $79.99/month for individuals, while the Advanced plan is the better option if you run a sales team. Bigger organizations can get all they want from the Advanced Plus plan.
Similar tools
- LeadFeeder
- Lusha
- BuiltWith
💬 The bottom line
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a wonderful tool that eases the prospecting process for you and your team. It has numerous features, each one solving a crucial sales prospecting pain point. You also stand to get from its massive database and industry knowledge.
2. Find Contact Details with Voila Norbert
Voila Norbert’s interactive user interface is one of my favorites, but it doesn’t take anything away from its impressive services. This tool offers a number of services, with emphasis on helping you get contact details, and that’s a job it does wonderfully well.
While being one of the best outreach marketing tools, Voila Norbert is pretty straightforward to use. You can get quick results using a name and company URL. It continually refreshes its database to update the list.
That’s not all. It also verifies each email address to make sure your message gets to the right prospect. In case you have a list of emails you’d like to verify, this service is available through the Enrich feature.
Other notable features
- Search more details faster. With the bulk search function, you can upload CSV files to search for millions of data lines asynchronously.
- Get contact details from tools you already use. Through the power of extensions and integrations, Voila Norbert can do its job from other tools already in your tech stack. That means it can get prospects from Salesforce, Chrome, Zapier, HubSpot, Pipedrive, and many others.
- Get more power with APIs. Voila Nobert helps you get from email and engagement through flexible APIs. They work with PHP, Python, Node.js, and Ruby.
Pricing
Voila Norbert is available in four pricing plans, starting from $39/month for the Valet plan. The Butler plan gives you 5,000 leads for $79/month, Advisor allows up to 15,000 at $199/month, and Counselor gives a massive 50,000 leads for $399/month.
Similar tools
- FindThatLead
- Hunter
- Prospect
💬 The bottom line
Despite the many B2B prospecting tools I’ve come across, Voila Norbert struck me with its ability to retrieve millions of contact details without sacrificing ease. When using this tool, you’re getting a lot of quality data in very little time.
3. Qualify Prospects with ZoomInfo
Now for a tool that does a little bit of everything — ZoomInfo. Founded in 2007 by Henry Schuck, ZoomInfo is a prospecting tool that assists marketing, recruitment, and sales teams with meeting their targets.
ZoomInfo is an excellent software for finding quality leads and for qualifying them as prospects. It does all these thanks to its powerful multi-platform system. This sales productivity tool has a huge database with in-depth information about companies and their employees.
It is also renowned for its ease of use, as a result of its distinct systems for sales, marketing, etc. You can do more with faster and more accurate results that align with your ICP (ideal customer profile), engage seamlessly with AI, or integrate into your CRM tool.
Other notable features
- Numerous integrations no matter where you work. ZoomInfo integrates into marketing and engagement platforms like Salesforce, Zoho, and HubSpot, to give you more freedom to prospect leads.
- Qualify faster with AI and bulk services. Track, optimize, and engage leads in real time with powerful conversational marketing tools. The ZoomInfo platform also allows you to import and save bulk data.
Know what works with analytics and notifications. ZoomInfo gives you analytics and reports to evaluate performance. There’re also details about viewers, so you know who’s doing what.
Pricing
ZoomInfo offers custom pricing which you can get by submitting your business email on the pricing page.
Similar tools
- Datanyze
- LeadFeeder
💬 The bottom line
ZoomInfo is an all-in-one prospecting tool that is great for qualifying leads for all forms and sizes of businesses. It features seamless processes and artificial intelligence so you can convert more leads into repeat customers.
4. Setup Meetings with Calendly
Meeting scheduling is an aspect of prospecting that can either make or mar the entire prospecting process. Going back and forth with emails and the inability to agree on a perfect time for all parties is a recurrent challenge.
Introducing Calendly — the world-leading scheduling platform for individuals and businesses. This tool lets you schedule meetings with prospects, phone calls, and demos. And all these are done seamlessly so you can concentrate on what matters.
In case you’re wondering how seamless, you only need to set your availability and preferences on Calendly. Then, share the link with prospects, and they can book a meeting without hassle.
Calendly has a smart technology that recognizes time zones, so you don’t have to calculate them yourself.
Other notable features
- Google Calendar and other apps syncing. Calendly lets you set schedules according to your availability or that of your team and prospects. It also syncs with many Google apps, Zoom, Salesforce, Zapier, etc., helping you set meetings easily and always stay ahead.
- Workflow management and automation. With Calendly, you can put your scheduling on autopilot. This tool will send confirmations, notifications, and even thank-you notes.
- Prioritize meetings with Routing Forms. This Calendly feature lets you create a form for qualifying prospects. Thus, you can give the high-priority meetings the attention they deserve.
Pricing
In addition to Calendly’s free Basic plan you also have the option to choose the Essentials at $8/month, Professional at $12/month, and Teams at $16/month.
Similar tools
- Clara Labs
💬 The bottom line
Calendly has solved all the challenges that come with scheduling meetings, and it continues to add even more solutions. Use this tool to qualify and set schedules smartly, and attend meetings.
5. Engage Prospects with Outreach
Outreach was founded in 2014 out of the personal needs of three friends. It has since grown into a huge platform and has garnered recognition from organizations like Inc., Deloitte, Seattle Business, etc.
Making sales is one of the most important parts of any business, and it’s what Outreach wants to help you achieve. Outreach is a prospecting tool dedicated to helping businesses close the gap between current and potential revenue through automation.
Outreach has been the go-to tool for automating engagement through calls, SMS, email, or social media to make sales. Its platform lets you automate processes so your sales rep can focus on other important tasks.
However, Outreach Commit is one of my favorites. It’s a sophisticated feature that brings analytics and helps with forecasting future revenue. This helps you enjoy the present while being aware of what is to come.
Other notable features
Cover more grounds with artificial intelligence. With Outreach Guide, you can record, transcribe, and summarize proceedings, saving your sales team the stress of going over again.
- Large integration library. The Outreach integration library is one of the biggest, allowing you to grow while you continue using your favorite tools.
- Help sales reps do more. Outreach also has a number of minor features that eases the sales process for teams. For instance, management can assign profiles and tasks or import an existing one from CRM software.
Pricing
Outreach is available starting at around $100/month. If you’d love to find out more, you should contact the sales reps to request a demo through the pricing page.
💬 The bottom line
Outreach is a powerful sales prospecting tool for automating engagement with your leads. It leverages artificial intelligence to help you and your team do more, even in your absence.
Conclusion
Sales prospecting is quite wide with several steps in-between. You need to carefully identify prospects, build a list, find contact details, and continue to engage them through outreach marketing or other means.
This has created many challenges for sales reps, but with these prospecting tools, you can relax and watch as the heavy lifting gets done. LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an excellent all-in-one software you can rely on for most of the entire sales prospecting process.
However, there’s probably no better tool than Vola Norbert for getting contact details and Calendly for scheduling meetings. In-between, you have a wonderful engagement tool in Outreach, while Zoominfo is perfect for qualifying prospects.
In case you’re not getting a complete hold of it all, reach out to me, and I’ll gladly help you grow.
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Hi, I’m Jessica 👋 — I work with SaaS companies to implement effective Content Marketing strategies to drive organic blog growth and conversions.
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