How many different sales prospecting tools do sales reps use at your organization? Don’t be surprised if you find that the number is up to (or even surpasses) 10 distinct tools.

After all, software hoarding in sales is a known phenomenon. When an organization test-drives a platform only to find out later that it doesn’t have all the needed features, reps will often still use it, even as the company introduces other prospecting tools for sales to replace it. 

According to a survey from Smart Selling Tools, reps use an average of 9 tools to get the job done. The question is, why is an all-in-one B2B prospecting tool, like LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator, not good enough? 

 

Many all-in-one software tools are ironically missing features that sales teams need to work efficiently, and are being outcompeted by niche software options that address hyper-specific sales needs. With the explosion of software that focus on only one or a few sales prospecting tasks and do them exceptionally well, sales teams are finding that using a few tools together beats trying to find the “perfect” all-in-one solution. 

You’d think it’s counterproductive to use several kinds of software and potentially slow down your workflow, but every sales rep knows that some of the best prospecting tools are missing key, time-saving features that make it difficult to grow and create sustainable prospecting processes.

In the future, we’ll see sales organizations continue to implement and prefer best-in-niche software that has a shorter learning curve, solves hyper-specific prospecting problems, and doesn’t overwhelm their reps with features. Let’s discuss what sparked the move towards specialized software, and then we’ll highlight the ten best sales prospecting tools to help you make prospecting more sustainable. 

What is a B2B Sales Prospecting Tool?

A B2B sales prospecting tool is software that salespeople use to research, identify, qualify, and make the first contact with a potential customer. Prospecting tools solve a major pain point for salespeople: the lack of information that could help sellers to connect with decision-makers and make a pitch. Information like company size, revenue, industry, job roles, work life, personality, and more. Without the right tools on deck, it’s nearly impossible for salespeople to get in touch with the right decision-makers fast and make intelligent prospecting decisions when qualifying leads.

Before prospecting software, sales reps had to rely on in-person networking, referrals, and trade shows to get to know their prospects. It wasn’t until LinkedIn came along in 2002 that sales reps finally had a chance to connect with decision-makers during outbound sales in a new way. Salespeople could interact with potential customers anywhere in the world, at any time, and build stronger relationships with an entire company through content engagement. This was the birth of social selling as we know it today.

When Sales Navigator was introduced in 2014, it took LinkedIn prospecting to a whole new level. Sales organizations could tap into millions of profiles with advanced search filters, targeting features, real-time alerts, insights, InMail and other sales tools to find qualified leads. It became a goldmine. Most importantly, teams gained a way to increase the ROI from their LinkedIn prospecting efforts by seeing who the best potential leads were and prioritizing them.

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The Problem with All-in-One Software Solutions like Sales Navigator

The problem with all-in-one software solutions like Sales Navigator

Now let’s get to the meat and potatoes. When it comes to a colossal B2B prospecting tool like Sales Navigator, you’d think they’d have everything you need, right? Not always. Contrary to popular belief, “all-in-one” doesn’t mean a software will have every solution; it’ll just cover most of your basic needs. 

Here are few missing features that slow down the prospecting process:

  • Sales Navigator doesn’t integrate with every major CRM like FreshWorks, which means some reps miss out on CRM syncing and automation features
  • It doesn’t allow you to export an account or lead information directly into a CSV or XLS file. You download a list and then export, which adds unnecessary steps. 
  • There’s no data verification, meaning you could be pitching with inaccurate information.

Another problem with all-in-one tools is that they don’t always work well for larger companies. Larger departments work differently. The inbound sales team works one way and the outbound sales team works another. Teams need software that caters to the various levels within the organization to scale and grow their efforts–without it, you’re holding salespeople back. 

Best-of-breed B2B prospecting tools have only grown in popularity as reps find that they help their growth strategy and save them time, money, and effort long term.

The Importance of Sustainable Prospecting

Specialized tools make your prospecting process and LinkedIn lead generation more sustainable. Sustainable prospecting is a strategy to keep your sales performance at a steady level while increasing it over a long period of time using the right skill set, training, resources, and technology. 

Instead of dwelling on the fact that your primary B2B prospecting tool doesn’t have every feature you need, think of adding more specialized software to complement your current tech stack. Below are some best-of-breed tools that bring something new to the table.

The 10 Best B2B Prospecting Tools of the Future

From prospecting platforms to automation tools, there are a whole host of tools you can use to make the process of prospecting easier and more scaleable.

1. Lusha

Lusha is a sales intelligence and B2B lead enrichment tool that shortens the process of finding your potential customers’ email, phone number, and company data. This software delivers up to 37 firmographic data points about your prospect, and helps you build qualified, laser-targeted prospecting lists fast. This B2B prospecting software solution helps eliminate the chances of prospecting without the right contact info and paying for the wrong information.

Additional FYIs:

  • Established: 2016
  • Best for: B2B salespeople, lead generation marketers, sales operations, recruiters
  • Main features: B2B prospecting company contacts and business leads
  • Integrations: 11 integrations including Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho
  • Pricing: Basic plan starting at $29 per user per month, also have a free plan
  • Browser extension: Chrome browser extension that works with LinkedIn, company websites, and all over the web

2. ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is a sales intelligence platform with a large database that’s used for lead generation and marketing research. Through ZoomInfo, you can conduct research on specific companies or people, or provide it with search parameters to get lists of products. ZoomInfo contains multiple solutions and groups all of its products under the name “RevOS” which includes functions that cover applications for sales, marketing, operations, and recruitment. 

ZoomInfo home page

Additional FYIs:

  • Established: 2007
  • Best for: Sales and marketing professionals, recruiters 
  • Main features: Contact and company search engine
  • Integrations: Numerous integrations including Salesforce, HubSpot, Gainsight, and Zapier
  • Pricing: Available upon request, provides a free trial
  • Browser extension: Chrome

3. Apollo

Apollo.io is a B2B contact database with email addresses and phone numbers for sales, marketing, and recruiting. Apollo also offers a sales automation tool that sends emails, arranges appointments, and transcribes data to a CRM.

Apollo home page

Additional FYIs:

  • Established: 2015
  • Best for: Sales, business development, and marketing professionals
  • Main features: Contact and company search, sales engine
  • Integrations: Seven integrations including LinkedIn, Gmail, Salesforce, HubSpot, Outreach, Salesloft, Zapier
  • Pricing: Starts at $49 per month, offers a free trial
  • Browser extension: Chrome, Firefox 

4. Cognism

Cognism is a sales intelligence platform for lead generation and prospecting. Their data includes firmographics (company details), technographics (technology details), and intent data alongside contact information.

Cognism home page

Additional FYIs:

  • Established: 2015
  • Best for: Sales and marketing professionals
  • Main features: Sales prospecting tools
  • Integrations: Seven integrations including Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, and Zapier
  • Pricing: Available upon request, provides a free trial
  • Browser extension: Chrome

5. RocketReach

RocketReach is another platform for finding contacts that is often used by sales and recruitment teams. Multiple phone numbers and emails are given for each contact on the platform. The platform also offers users the capability to send emails to prospects directly through the platform.

RocketReach home page

Additional FYIs:

  • Established: 2015
  • Best for: Sales and marketing professionals, recruiters, and fundraisers
  • Main features: Contact research for lead generation
  • Integrations: Five integrations including Salesforce, HubSpot, Salesloft, Outreach, and Zapier
  • Pricing: Starts at $36 per month, free trial available
  • Browser extension: Chrome and Edge

6. Clearbit

Clearbit’s business intelligence tools help sellers find information about prospects and generate leads. The company provides data including firmographics, technographics, and the position and role of employees. Their platform can also track and identify visitors to their clients’ websites.

Clearbit home page

Additional FYIs:

  • Established: 2015
  • Best for: B2B sales and marketing professionals 
  • Main features: Tools for prospecting and enrichment
  • Integrations: Nine integrations including Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, and Zapier
  • Pricing: Available upon request, provides a free trial
  • Browser extension: Chrome 

7. Humantic AI

Humantic AI is a predictive personality insight B2B prospecting tool that helps salespeople understand their customers within 15 seconds. It analyzes social media profiles and creates a personality report for you that includes how your prospect makes buying decisions, whether they’re introverted or extroverted, things you should or shouldn’t bring up in a conversation, and more. With this information, you can write emotional, creative, and personalized sales pitches and cold call scripts consistently. Also, if you’ve been keeping track of the B2B vs. B2C sales process discussion, these insights can help you optimize the customer journey and make it more self-serving like the B2C model.

Humantic.ai home page

Additional FYIs:

  • Established: 2021 
  • Best for: Product owners, developers, salespeople, recruiters
  • Main features: “buyer intelligence” that translates LinkedIn pages into personality profiles
  • Integrations: Include Salesforce, Hubspot, Outreach, and Salesloft
  • Pricing: Individual plan for $16 per month; basic company plan of $180 per month; free trial
  • Browser extension: Chrome 

8.  Mattermark

Mattermark is a business and investor directory that’ll keep you up to date about which companies in your industry are growing fast and who their investors are. They provide over 80 data points per company, and you’ll receive growth signals like a change in company size or an increase in web traffic. This information helps to prioritize which companies to reach out to first and source the best deals. This is one of the best prospecting tools for gaining insight into a company’s growth, what’s happening across their social media channels in real time, and more. 

Additional FYIs:

  • Established: 2012
  • Best for: Sales, business development, investors, professional services companies
  • Main features: Automated data searches to enable lead generation, prospecting, and enrichment 
  • Integrations: Salesforce, MS Excel, Google Sheets
  • Pricing: Starts at $49 per month; free trial
  • Browser extension: Chrome 

9.  Demodesk

Demodesk is a web-based customer meeting platform that automates scheduling and leading meetings; creates sales playbooks for remote teams; and runs download-free, professional-level video meetings. It also handles non-selling tasks like lead assignment, routing, objection handling, note taking, and recording calls so every meeting is automatically updated in your CRM for you. It aims to cut down your ramp-up time by 50%. Lastly, it offers invaluable analytics that tell you how much time is spent listening to prospects vs. talking, how many demos are scheduled from a single meeting, and close rates so sales leaders can quickly identify best practices. 

Additional FYIs:

  • Established: 2018
  • Best for: Account executives, SDRs, customer success managers, revenue managers 
  • Main features: Video meeting platform, automated scheduling, and sales coaching
  • Integrations: 13 integrations including Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Office, and Google Suite
  • Pricing: Starts at $31 per month; free trial 
  • Browser extension: Chrome

10.  Outreach

Outreach is a sales execution platform that helps market-facing teams create and close deals. It supports activities including prospecting, deal management, and sales projections. Through automation and artificial intelligence, Outreach provides sales engagement, revenue intelligence, and revenue operation functions all through the same platform. The goal of Outreach is to enable sales leaders to understand what is happening at every stage of the sales cycle and to help them improve strategies and improve performance.

Outreach home page

Additional FYIs:

  • Established: 2014
  • Best for: Sales and operations managers 
  • Main features: Sales execution support through data analysis 
  • Integrations: More than 14 integrations including AWS, Slack, and Microsoft Teams
  • Pricing: Available upon request, no free trial
  • Browser extension: Chrome 

Become More Sustainable 

Every great B2B sales prospecting tool will have its drawbacks, so you might not be completely satisfied by one solution. Prospecting encompasses several steps; it’s nearly impossible for one tool to give everyone what they want. 

Luckily, there’s best-of-breed software to fill in  what you’re missing in an intuitive and easy-to-incorporate way. 

Sustainable prospecting is all about being efficient. That means eliminating hoarding and getting to the meat of what you truly need your tools to do. Finding the right B2B prospecting software to supplement what you have will allow you to maintain and grow your strategy over time. When you do so, you’ll end the cycle of looking for the perfect all-in-one tool and get the best out of what you already have.

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    This information should not be mistaken for legal advice. Please ensure that you are prospecting and selling in compliance with all applicable laws.

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