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SMB owners say increasing search visibility is the top website improvement they want to make over the next year, according to recent research from Duda.
The report was based on data from a survey of 300 owners of small and midsize businesses (firms with between 1-99 employees) in Europe and the United States.
Respondents say their biggest website priorities over the next year are improving visibility on search engines (31% cite that as a Top 3 improvement they want to make) and boosting lead generation (30%).
Effective sales prospecting is a multistep process that requires systematic prospect discovery, qualification, and outreach. In this post, you’ll learn the 19 best sales prospecting tools to help you engage with your ideal prospects.
From software that leverages your partner ecosystem to prospect databases, every tool on this list can help you fill your sales pipeline. But first, we’ll dive into the benefits sales prospecting tools have for your organization.
A sales prospecting tool is software designed to simplify, optimize, and automate one or more steps in the sales prospecting process. Sales prospecting software includes niche tools designed for a single step in the process and comprehensive solutions.
Whatever you’re looking for, a sales prospecting tool will help you do one or more of the following:
While sales prospecting can be conducted manually, sales prospecting tools provide unique advantages. See common benefits below.
In 2022, 29% of salespeople reported that improving sales process efficiency was their top goal, according to HubSpot research.
To create a more efficient sales process, teams need to focus on all stages of the sales lifecycle. That includes how prospects are identified.
Unlike manual prospecting, sales prospecting software allows you to quickly identify potential customers. You can automate parts of the search process to save time and resources.
HubSpot’s 2022 Sales Strategy Survey found that 18% of salespeople cite a lack of high-quality leads as their top challenge. Your team may also struggle to find high-caliber prospects, which results in low-quality leads.
Even in instances where salespeople can identify interested customers, 19% of salespeople struggle with getting in direct contact with decision-makers.
Sales prospecting software solves both of these problems by helping salespeople find, qualify, and prioritize leads. Additionally, these solutions help teams find accurate contact data and manage outreach.
Meeting sales quotas is a top challenge for 20% of salespeople. In fact, 26% of salespeople only get between 1 to 10 new leads a week.
For most salespeople, exceeding this number is nearly impossible with manual prospecting.
When each stage of the prospecting process is automated (whether in part or fully), your tea can speed up the discovery, qualification, and outreach process. Many sales prospecting tools also provide access to prospect databases, which can be filtered and sorted based on your ideal customer profile.
Looking for a sales prospecting solution, but not sure where to start? Our team gathered 26 of the best sales prospecting tools on the market in 2024. Review key features and find out which will work best for you.
If you’re looking for a robust sales solution, consider HubSpot’s Sales Hub. Here you can both find prospects and leverage additional features to move them along the buyer’s journey.
Core features include:
What we love: Aside from its powerful core prospecting features, HubSpot’s sales lead platform offers a comprehensive sales solution.
Pricing: A limited version is free as part of Hubspot’s Sales Hub. For more advanced functionality, HubSpot offers premium features in the Starter, Professional, and Enterprise versions of Sales Hub. Prices start at $45 per month, $450 per month, and $1,200 per month, respectively.
“The platform is easy to use and has an incredibly good customer service team to accompany it. I spend around two hours a day using the sequencing tool to prospect and have never had any issues. We also use it as our CRM, which does exactly what we need it to. Recommend to any size organization,” Sam H. for G2.
LinkedIn has a huge global user base of 875 million members. Of this user base, many are high-income earners that are currently “in the market” to buy products. Additionally, nearly 16 million of these people hold ownership or senior C-suite positions within their organizations.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a sales tool that’s designed to help you engage with prospects on this powerful platform.
Core features include:
What we love: LinkedIn Sales Navigator has the ability to tap the most important social media platform for B2B businesses. Here you can find prospects with precision and ease.
Pricing: Available upon request.
“What I like the most about LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the amount of information that you can find about any person or company’s profile without number limitations, including different filters to select the information that you want and what is relevant for you,”Nicolas G. for G2.
If you’re looking to leverage your ecosystem, PartnerTap may be the solution for you. This enterprise solution enables “co-selling, co-marketing, and lead-sharing” among business partners.
This works via a simple three-step process:
Once you’ve done this, PartnerTap allows you to uncover overlapping customers, prospects, and opportunities within your ecosystem. That includes prospects that are current customers of one or more of your partners.
Plus, you (and your partners) have full control over what and how much data you share.
What we love: For many salespeople, partners are often an untapped or underutilized prospecting resource. PartnerTap provides a non-competitive, mutually beneficial system for uncovering opportunities throughout your partner ecosystem.
Pricing: Available upon request.
“Well-organized and intuitive — time is gold in sales, and sales enablement tools need to provide quick returns with limited effort … [I] have never used another sales tool that does this better,”Nick L. for G2.
Apollo is a sales intelligence and engagement platform that enables prospect discovery, outreach, and management. The platform’s engagement features (especially those that leverage automation and AI) are incredibly powerful.
Core features include:
What we love: Apollo has multiple integrations. Not only can you integrate your CRM, Apollo also has a Chrome extension that allows you to find contact details of LinkedIn connections.
Pricing: Limited versions are available for free. For more advanced functionality, paid plans start at $39 per user per month.
“The best thing I like about Apollo is being able to find almost all the emails of the decision-makers I need to contact… I also like how integration with HubSpot works so that I don’t need to do the double work by adding the leads to both systems separately (+ email tracking is great too),”Kate K. for G2.
If you’re selling to businesses (B2B) and want a complete sales prospecting solution, then Salesflare may very well be what you’re looking for.
Core features include:
What we love: Salesflare is not just a sales prospecting tool. It’s a comprehensive sales CRM software that is simple to use and easy to keep up to date, so you can turn all these leads into deals.
Pricing: Salesflare offers three pricing plans: the Growth, Pro and Enterprise plan. Prices start at $29 per user per month, $49 per user per month, and $99 per user per month, respectively.
“First time my sales team said “I love the CRM” - something I had never heard before.” Steve B. for G2.
Wiza is a sales prospecting tool for sales, marketing, and recruiting professionals. It provides a large, searchable database of B2B professionals that can be filtered by both personal and company filters like name, job title, and industry and offers real-time verified contact data like email addresses and phone numbers to power your outreach.
Core features include:
What we love: Wiza verifies all contact data in real-time, ensuring you have the most accurate contact information available for your outreach.
Pricing: Wiza offers a free version including 25 email and phone credits to start. For more advanced usage and functionality, paid plans start at $25 per month.
“Wiza is an amazing tool that offers a business solution by providing email contacts that are otherwise difficult to find. It increases my marketing productivity by offering accurate results that lead to proper sales leads.”J. Michael W. for G2
Crunchbase is a company database that collects insights on private and public companies. Here you can filter prospects based on company, investor, and funding data. Crunchbase also gathers the latest news on the companies you track.
Core features include:
What we love: With Crunchbase, you can access and monitor key financial data and insights that indicate buying power and readiness. That includes news related to funding, information about funding type, and who financial backers are.
Pricing: A limited version is available for free. For more advanced functionality, paid plans start at $29 per user a month.
“Great source of research for sales pros looking to get additional information on prospects and relevant news on your clients. It is a great tool if your account base includes startups! Information on VC’s funding and investors and recent deals can [be] very helpful in understanding your customers,”Donald B. for G2.
GO Data by CIENCE is an advanced tool for sales intelligence, housing more than 200 million records that are regularly validated and updated for precision. The platform simplifies the list-building process with its user-friendly interface and allows for virtually limitless configurations of Ideal Customer Profiles, which can be assembled within seconds using the SCIENCE Go Data builder.
As one of the world's largest outbound services companies, its extensive network usage contributes to minimizing data decay by facilitating regular use and updates. Data compliance is a priority for CIENCE, as they regularly cross-check mobile numbers with global Do Not Call lists, validate emails, and ensure all data handling aligns with B2B data best practices and country laws.
CIENCE GO Data stands as a reliable tool for sales reps, business development departments, customer data analytics, and account-based marketing (ABM) teams. With its extensive features and competitive pricing model, GO Data offers a unique, data-driven strategy for businesses of all sizes and industries.
Core features include:
What we love: CIENCE GO Data empowers B2B businesses with unparalleled access to a rich, validated contact database. Here, you can locate and engage your prospects with precision and ease.
Pricing: Available upon request.
“The power of the platform is limitless. With all the data – sales, prospects, contracts and account information side by side in one place it means we can target a campaign and know exactly where to go with it, saving time and money. I am so relieved now that we have this data. It's been a Godsend!” Theresa Y. for Sourceforge.
Usergems is a sales intelligence platform that offers two powerful sales prospecting solutions: account tracking and contract tracking.
Account tracking allows you to monitor relevant job changes within target organizations. You can also access verified contact data and identify previous “touch points” within the organization.
Contact tracking focuses on job changes for prospects, users, leads, and former customers. Every time a former lead or customer moves to a new company, it provides an opportunity to pitch your product or service to that new organization through a warm introduction.
What we love: Not only does Usergems alert you when a former lead or prospect leaves their company, the platform also adds them to your CRM as a new contact (with their new information).
Pricing: Available upon request.
“It’s opened up a new customer base for us to target and prospect. It’s user-friendly and has been straightforward in receiving the leads,”Hannah H. for G2.
Leadfeeder is a B2B lead generation software that uses a tracker script to help you identify and monitor website visitors.
Using Leadfeeder you can:
Leadfeeder also provides a filterable contact database, which allows you to contact and engage with relevant leads.
What we love: Prospects that visit your website have already shown some form of interest in your product or service. This makes them more likely to engage and convert during the outreach stage. With Leaderfeeder, you can identify people who are most likely to buy.
Pricing: Limited version available for free. For access to more features, paid plans start at $79 per user a month.
“Leadfeeder gives us a great idea of which qualified enterprise prospects are checking us out so we can follow these leads,”Ben O. for G2.
Owler Max by Meltwater offers several features that are helpful for prospecting and lead generation. These features enable sales professionals to identify and qualify potential prospects more effectively.
Here are some key Owler features that support prospecting:
What we love: The software company belongs to big media intelligence player Meltwater, so customers can easily upgrade to a full-rounded suite to streamline their prospecting efforts, identify qualified leads, personalize their outreach, and stay informed about industry trends.
Pricing: Available upon request.
Mixmax is a sales engagement platform designed to streamline and optimize the sales process for SDRs, AEs, and CSMs. With its user-friendly interface and AI-driven automation, Mixmax enables multi-channel prospecting, allowing sales teams to connect with leads across different platforms, book more meetings, and close more sales.
Core features include:
What we love: Mixmax integrates with Gmail, Outlook, Salesforce, and HubSpot, making it easy for sales teams to adopt and use without needing to switch between multiple tools. The AI features for email personalization and timing are particularly valuable for boosting open and reply rates.
Pricing: Mixmax offers a range of pricing plans, starting with a free version. Paid plans with more advanced features start at $29 per user per month.
“Mixmax is my sales engagement tool of choice because it's simple enough to set up in an afternoon. But powerful enough to support your entire sales org. You won't find a tool that works more seamlessly within your email service provider and lets you do exactly what you want to do more of: make calls, send emails, and engage on LinkedIn.” — Jason Bay, Founder & CEO at Outbound Squad
Bombora Company Surge is a software platform that helps users access and monitor intent data. To do this, Bombora collects data from a consent-based data cooperative of B2B publishers. The platform then analyzes this data using machine learning and maps the data to specific businesses.
This data can then be used to:
What we love: Bombora allows you to set up “automatic surge reports” that periodically populate your CRM with prospects who have shown buying intent.
Pricing: Available upon request.
“The platform is incredibly intuitive, and the user experience is easy to use. My favorite part of the tool is the automatic surge report and net-new account to HubSpot,”Ashden K. on G2.
UpLead is a platform that offers users access to a suite of sales prospecting products. That includes three important features:
What we love: UpLead uses a pay-as-you-go system, which makes it a more affordable solution for most salespeople. Users purchase “credits” that can then be used to download or export contacts.
Pricing: A limited version is available for free. For access to more features, paid plans start at $74 per month.
“The leads on UpLead are more up-to-date; I get leads with higher quality. That’s more important to me than the largest database because I know for sure that the email will get through… It’s affordable and worth it,”Julia K. for G2.
HG Insights is a market intelligence platform. Specifically, this platform monitors the “digital infrastructure” of over 9 million companies and uses this data to produce actionable insights for sales teams.
Here are some of the things you can do with HG Insights:
What we love: HG Insights is an especially powerful tool for software companies because the platform focuses heavily on “technographic” data. Here, you’ll find out which companies have installed certain technologies. This can help you narrow your pool of prospects.
Pricing: Available upon request.
“This tool is pretty neat. With a click of the button, you’re able to find what software stack other companies are using — which is especially useful when you’re in sales looking to find target companies by systems used,”Nikko J. for G2.
Cognism is a sales intelligence platform that provides users access to a suite of products. These products include:
The way the platform pulls this data is through a partnership with Bombora — the buyer intent platform listed earlier in the post.
Why we recommend it: Cognism offers users a combination of artificial intelligence and human verification to ensure the accuracy of its data.
Pricing: Available upon request.
“I use Cognism pretty much every day for prospecting, outreach, and monitoring intent data. The biggest attraction of the platform for me is that it is the only solution that effectively covers both of our core markets (the US and the UK). I have found the quality of data in the US to have been excellent in the past 12 months, and this has helped to lift our connect-to-dial rate considerably,”Humphrey C. for G2.
TechTarget’s Priority Engine is an intent data platform that helps users engage with prospects in their technology category.
Core features include:
What we love: TechTarget highlights high-quality leads. These prospects have been triple-verified and shown significant interest in your solution by conducting relevant research with TechTarget.
Pricing: Available upon request.
“It is easy to filter on specific events like viewing our website/content, their interests, and other attributes that we look to go after for specific campaigns. The click-to-add feature is a really easy way to send contact information directly to our CRM,”Christina L. for G2
Demandbase is an account-based marketing (ABM) solution that offers a suite of intelligence solutions. The program works by taking first-party data from your data sources (CRM, website, etc.), matching this data with information from third-party sources, and then analyzing the resulting data to draw insights.
Here are some of the data and insights you can access from Demandbase:
What we love: Demandbase allows you to qualify, filter, and score prospects using intent data in various ways. For example, you can score based on what they viewed on your site or how long they spent on your site.
Pricing: Available upon request.
“What I like best about Demandbase is that it helps me identify potential customers and partners based on website visitors. It’s allowed me to target new prospects with even a tiny amount of interest that I wouldn’t have otherwise identified,”Amanda S. for G2.
Vainu is a B2B business database and sales intelligence software. Core features include:
What we love: Vainu allows easy access to data and straightforward integration with multiple platforms. One of the top reasons Vainu users love the platform, besides its functionality, is that it is incredibly easy to use.
Pricing: A limited version is available for free. For access to more features, paid plans start at €6,600 per year with a one-time onboarding fee.
“I like the company’s 360-degree view a lot. It saves us a lot of time in the prospect research phase,”Pernilla C. for G2.
Tami allows users to build prospect lists from profiles in its extensive database. This database can be filtered using multiple conditions, including geographical area, merchant size, company type, and even by which bank the prospect uses.
You can also access verified emails for decision-makers within their target organizations. And if contacts switch jobs, you can set up alerts to keep you up-to-date.
What we love: With Tami, users can skip the gatekeepers and go straight to the correct points of contact.
Pricing: Available upon request.
“You don’t have to waste your time with gatekeepers; you can find contact details of specific people to help focus your time,”Gareth D. for G2.
Hunter is a platform for accessing verified and accurate professional email addresses. Plus, results in Hunter are returned with a confidence score, which indicates the estimated level of accuracy of the email address.
Core features include:
What we love: Hunter makes finding contact information incredibly easy — even for users that have very little information to go on.
Pricing: Hunter provides a free version of the platform, which allows users to conduct up to 25 searches per month. Paid plans start at $49 per month.
“Hunter has a simple system to instantly generate contact information for leads…all I need to do is enter the domain for the company I’m searching for and the name of the contact, and it generates the email,”Jacob U. for G2.
Groove is a comprehensive sales engagement platform for Salesforce. Core features include:
What we love: Groove is an especially powerful tool for email outreach and activity tracking.
Pricing: Available upon request.
“When you think about what you need when making sales in an online environment, Groove has everything, from booking appointments to automatic responses to follow-up emails, to read status. I love this tool and can’t imagine doing my job without it,”Mariana A. for G2.
Reply.io is a sales engagement platform that helps you streamline and supercharge your sales outreach with a mix of automation and AI. No matter if you're trying to generate leads, connect with prospects, or close deals, Reply.io has the tools you need to make it all happen more efficiently.
If you’re managing multiple communication channels and need a tool that simplifies the process, Reply.io is designed for you. It’s also well-suited for agencies that handle outreach for multiple clients and require a robust, scalable solution.
What we love: Reply.io is a smart platform that helps you do more with less effort. The AI features take a lot of the manual work off your plate, and the multichannel approach ensures you’re connecting with prospects wherever they are.
Pricing: The basics start at $49/month for email automation and everything you need to start, like free warmups and unlimited mailboxes. If you need something custom, like AI SDR or agency-specific features, they’ve got options for that too.
“The multichannel sequences work perfectly, and integration with CRM (I'm using HubSpot) works well. If someone opts out, Reply immediately change the status for this lead, and stop sending emails to them. PLUS, the feature to find new leads and emails is super useful.” Viktoriia S. for G2.
Close is a comprehensive CRM for small-business sales teams. To use this platform, you’ll need to first import your prospect list into the CRM. This list can then be filtered using search tools and smart views.
Here are some of the things you can do with Close:
Aside from these features, Close also offers additional features specifically for sales leaders such as reporting and call coaching.
What we love: Close allows you to manage and automate almost all aspects of your prospect outreach and engagement without having to leverage any add-ons.
Pricing: Prices start at $29 per user a month.
“I would find that I would meet with prospects and when I couldn’t close on the first or second meeting, I would move on to the next prospect. Close has given those types of prospects new life by reminding me about not only the prospect but what the potential and eventual client and I spoke about, giving me an edge that I did not have before,”Tim M. for G2.
Lead Forensics is a powerful B2B lead generation software that provides businesses with the tools they need to turn website visitors into sales leads. Lead Forensics uses IP tracking technology to identify the companies that visit your website, even if they don't fill out a form or leave any contact information.
With Lead Forensics, you can:
What we love: Lead Forensics provides businesses with detailed information about their website visitors, including contact details for key decision-makers. This makes it easier to personalize your outreach efforts and engage with prospects who are most likely to convert into customers.
Pricing: Available upon request.
“Lead Forensics’ real-time notifications alert me when a key account or contact is active on my website. This improves my efficiency and effectiveness as a Sales Director and helps me better support customers by understanding their areas of interest and focus.”Alex Kern, Director - Sales & Marketing at Armach Robotics
GetProspect is a platform that helps B2B companies increase lead gen and sales by providing valid prospects’ emails and other data.
Core features include:
What we love: You can fully try out the platform with a free subscription before upgrading to a paid plan. No limits on available credits.
Pricing: Free subscription available with 50 valid email addresses. Paid plans start at $49 per month for unlimited users in one workspace.
“GetProspect is fantastic as it makes finding and extracting email addresses from websites easy. It has helped me streamline my lead generation process, saving me a lot of time and effort. It has a good success rate in finding email addresses, even in cases where other similar tools have failed.”Manjunath R. - Chrome Web Store
If you’re looking to improve your sales team’s efficiency, sales prospecting tools can help you get there. All you need to do is pick the right ones. The suggestions above can help you identify prospects, find their email, and keep in touch after an initial engagement.
See which part of your sales lifecycle is the slowest and most difficult. From there, you can pick the best solution to support your sales team.
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