What is the Best Lead Prospecting Tool Out There?

If you're a handyman, you need a top toolbelt at your side.

The same is true for sales, especially SaaS sales.

To find the best potential customers, you need the top tech stack and tools out there at your disposal.

Just like a handyman, with the right tools, your salespeople can make magic happen.

We've written about sales enablement tools in the past, but which is the best lead prospecting tool, and which sales prospecting tools should you invest in?

Read on to find out.

Trying to work in B2B sales without a good lead prospecting tool is like fishing without a line.

You won't get much out of it no matter how much you try.

If you want to be truly effective in your prospecting efforts, like in fishing, you need a line.

The hook and the bait can come after and be part of your sales cadence, but to start off you need to be organized and have a methodical approach to prospecting.

And a tool is a great way to be a step ahead in your outbound prospecting. Without one, you do not know what steps you need to take, what you've done before, lack organization, and lack the ability to make the most of your outreach by doing things like creating an email sequence and setting it to run.

You also have all the information you need in one place, whether it is a customer profile or all of your prospects and leads. And they are organized.

In this article, we will cover some of our favorite sales prospecting tools here at SalesPipe.

Amplemarket is one of our most-used tools. It allows users to build prospect lists within it, import lists from CSV files or Sales Navigator, and set up sales cadences. These can be just email sequences, email sequences with social media touches, or even phone calls.

Amplemarket allows you to maximize your prospecting efforts by mining through their database and working with LinkedIn or uploaded lists to add that information.

It can also enrich the information of any contact you add, adding for instance their LinkedIn, verifying their email, and adding a phone number.

And it sets up reminders when it's time to complete your social media or cold call cadence tasks. Not to mention, the possibility of voice messages on LinkedIn to help you stand out from the crowd when you DM someone.

It further has smart actions which allow you to set up responses to common issues like an "Out Of Office" or a "Not Interested" response from a prospect.

And, when enough time has passed, and you want to follow-up previous leads, you can search through contacts, and it will show you who has opened your emails the most. This allows you to then prioritize who you want to reach out to again and how to decide who is worth it versus who has already communicated they are uninterested.

Amplemarket also keeps track of your open, bounce, and reply rates, which gives you an idea of what is working and what is not. It is extremely helpful to try different strategies for sales prospecting and know what you are doing right or wrong.

In the past, we've covered how important it is to prospecting on LinkedIn, and Sales Navigator is a huge part of this. LinkedIn is the premier social media space for business professionals, and for B2B selling. Social selling has proven to be the new frontier for B2B sales, and one that all salespeople should be making use of.

And Sales Navigator can be a huge help here.

The option to create lead and account lists directly on the platform to segment your prospects from the get-go is incredibly useful. But the true strength of it is the saved search option.

If you are looking into Property Managers in certain areas or VPs of Asset Management, these are positions that can switch a lot over time. With a saved search of the exact parameters you need, you can have your list continually updated without having to get out there and find new people yourself.

Your saved search will self-update, and you can set it up to exclude anyone already on a lead list so that you do not double up on your prospects.

It is an incredibly useful tool for anyone prospecting and relying on LinkedIn.

Need a reminder to reach out to someone? Cloze has your back.

It will use your apps to set up prompts and reminders to reach out to prospects. And it will do so by providing you with all their relevant information - contact details and your history with them. You don't have to do the work, Cloze does it for you.

By relying on AI, the app is able to figure out which prospect should be a priority and next on your to-do list. It will even remind you about relationships you might have left to fade unintentionally.

We know it usually takes some time after the first contact for salespeople to get a response, so perfecting the follow-up at the right time with this tool is very useful.

Need some help writing your cold email?

Mailshake's AI system will have ready-to-go, AI-generated options at your fingertips anytime. The tool will create tailored emails for your campaign by answering a few simple questions.

You can, of course, also write your own, personalize the ones about to leave, and schedule your follow-ups to create the best mix to increase your B2B sales.

Mailshake, like Amplemarket, also keeps track of your open rates, and its AI then responds to this by creating different potential email templates for you to use.

Lavender is for those who are trying to get better at writing cold prospecting emails.

Touted as the #1 Sales Email Assistant, the AI analyzes your email copy and gives you a grade based on comparisons with emails that have resulted in high reply rates.

It will coach you through getting better at cold email copy by pointing out mistakes and what you've done well, similar to a report card. It also helps you personalize your email further by providing information on your prospect in an easily digestible card format and giving you daily insight into them.

And, because humans are competitive and like to improve, it lets you know when you do, which helps you feel accomplished.

As an SDR, who usually either gets a no or no response, the feeling of accomplishment the tool provides and makes you better at your job can be a great feeling.

Video prospecting is the future of sales, and for that, we heartily recommend Loom. We use it a lot as a team and also to connect with prospects.

By sending a video message on Loom, whether in an email or social media DM, you are already showing your prospect personalization because you can't make that video for anyone else.

If you truly want to take it the whole way, dress the part according to who you are reaching out to for a bit of fun. You never know what someone's sense of humor may be like and click with you.

Loom also allows you to video yourself with the prospects page or your own page in the foreground. This means you can concentrate on the pain points you see, and then direct them to where on your page you could help them out.

You're not just sending them a video, but a well-constructed, highly personalized pitch.

Maybe you don't have time for this?

No problem at all, here's where a professional can come in.

By outsourcing your sales development, outsourced SDRs tries a variety of sales channels when it comes to outreach you and your team cannot invest in. Specialized companies, like SalesPipe, will use all the sales prospecting tools and tricks at their disposal to increase your sales pipeline to new heights.

And yes, our SDRs have spent time filming themselves in fun ways to get in touch with prospects ;)

ContactOut is a goldmine for those who are data-driven and want to find the perfect lead or prospect.

Considered the leading data platform for B2B sales, ContactOut provides a treasure trove of information on decision-makers at your target companies. This information can include contact details, work history, and even social media profiles.

With ContactOut, you can build super targeted lead lists in minutes. You can filter by industry, title, location, and a whole lot more. Once you've built your list, you can then export it to your CRM or email marketing tool.

ContactOut integrates with many of the sales tools you already use, so you can seamlessly add new contacts and enrich your existing data.

If you're looking for a data-driven way to find the perfect leads, ContactOut is a great option. Its Chrome extension makes it even easier to find contact information on the go. You can simply install the extension and start finding contacts with a single click.

Is there one best lead prospecting tool out there?

It highly depends on the needs of you and your company.

Sometimes, SDRs are able to get by with just Sales Navigator and social selling. Other times, a more specific tool like Lavender may come in and save the day. Or everyday use tools like Amplemarket can offer some guidance for your team as a starting point before each one decides on their own.

Here at SalesPipe, we have our favorites but are always willing to work with clients and discover what else is out there.

Want to know more about us?

Get in touch with us to see how we can help you make the most of your lead prospecting tools in the hands of our skilled SDRs.