Prospecting tools are an essential element of the sales process. Prospecting is considered the most difficult aspect of the sales process by more than 40% of salespeople.
Sales prospecting software enables sales representatives to conduct focused searches for prospects with real-time data points. Firmographics, technographics, and direct dials, and all useful for fast and accurate prospecting.
Sales tools inform salespeople on who they should contact, what they should talk about, and when they should contact them. Once they connect, they have all the pertinent facts in front of them.
In short, sales prospecting solutions assist salespeople by automating the formerly laborious discovery process, so sales can launch right into conversations.
This article will help you learn about:
- Why should you not spend more time prospecting?
- What sales prospecting tools can do for your team?
- What type of tool your business may need?
- Four sales prospecting tools you should use to boost your sales going into 2023
Why Shouldn’t Sales Reps Spend More Time Prospecting?
The purpose of your automated email campaigns is to break the ice and pique the attention of the potential buyer. Prospecting is readily automated and should not be left to your salespeople.
You recruited your sales representatives because they possess the intellect and imagination required to engage your clients. You give them a good salary and expect them to provide excellent outcomes that add to your revenue funnel.
They should be engaging directly with leads to persuade them of your unique value offer. However, they should be communicating with qualified leads and not just random contacts. Sales prospecting tools will help them do that.
Primary Reasons for Using Sales Prospecting Tools
The reasons for using a sales prospecting tool are varied and different for each company.
1. Sales Cycle Management
These technologies make it much easier to complete difficult or lengthy sales cycles. Given the several stages required by these techniques, this software is also ideal for consultative sales teams.
2. Better Time Management
A sales prospecting tool allows the sales reps to solve time management issues. Given that prospecting is a major challenge for sales professionals, automating sales prospecting can save hours of research.
3. Overall Sales Management
As sales prospecting tools can help you with easy access to a prospect database, sales management helps maintain the big picture, full-funnel, and overall team success.
4. Focused Targeting
You don’t want to invest weeks or even months emailing a lead just to discover that this person isn’t a good fit for your product, or worse, be labeled as spam. Sales prospecting tools help you identify the prospects that fit your ideal customer profile.
Two Primary Types of Prospecting Tools You Should Focus On
Before investing in a prospecting tool, you must have a clear understanding of what problem you want the tool to solve. Here are the two primary objectives of investing in a prospecting tool.
1. Sales Engagement Platform (SEP)
Sales engagement tools drive and measure engagement with your leads and prospects. There are a few top-tier sales engagement platforms in the market. However, the most essential features to look for in your sales engagement platform are those that assist your staff to be more productive and sell smarter.
A SEP isn’t simply for automating your emails. It should consolidate all of your email, phone calls, and social interactions into a single location while also providing intelligence on what’s working well.
The right SEP will save you time by centralizing all of your prospect interactions and tasks, and it will help you hit your sales targets by driving stronger results from the data it collects across email, calls, and social.
2. Contact Database & Lead Enrichment Tool
Nine in 10 companies use two or more lead enrichment tools to learn more about prospects.
Access to a complete contact database is the most effective approach to obtaining reliable B2B buyer data. When looking for your ideal database, keep contact accuracy, intent data, and lead/data enrichment capabilities in mind.
Contact accuracy will assist you in compiling a list of prospects inside your ICP, including emails, direct calls, and cell phone numbers.
Data enrichment is also critical for streamlining your sales funnel.
Marketing forms can only hold so much information, and the shorter the form, the better for conversation rates. A data enrichment tool makes the buying process easier and faster for the buyer and then enriches or expands on that information for the seller by connecting the prospect’s email domain to company information like size, revenue, technology, etc.
The second benefit is that it keeps your data clean. According to Salesforce, 70% of CRM data “goes bad” every year. Billions of dollars are lost as a result of out-of-date data.
4 Useful Sales Prospecting Tools to Boost Your Sales In 2023
Sales prospecting tools can give contact information as well as additional details about prospects. It also assists sales professionals in monitoring and tracking information about prospects’ businesses.
Here are four useful sales prospecting tool options to help you boost sales in 2023:
LinkedIn has 740 million users, but perhaps more amazing is that LinkedIn generates 80% of B2B leads.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator lets you create lists, search for contacts, and add them to your CRM or SEP. One of the most useful filters on this platform is “Posted in the last 30 Days,” or you can enter one of your current lead lists and sort by lead news and lead shares to see who has posted that day or week.
Use the search to narrow down and engage with your prospects who are most active on LinkedIn. Most of your prospects will not have many likes or comments, so you can be confident you will stand out.
2. RevDriver Chrome Extension
If you’re still battling with LinkedIn or seeking an alternative, Rev Driver is a freemium Chrome plugin with 10 free contacts per month. SalesIntel offers 10 credits per month for free RevDriver users with the ability to add more based on your needs. You can get correct human-verified contact information when reading a LinkedIn profile.
Also, when you travel the web while using RevDriver, you immediately obtain trustworthy company and contact information. As you prospect, you may easily collect data about persons and organizations from RevDriver while browsing:
- LinkedIn profiles
- Social profiles like Twitter and Facebook
- Company contact and account pages
- Crunchbase profiles
- Product review pages
- And anywhere else on the web that you go to research people or companies
RevDriver analyzes the websites you’re looking at and intelligently recognizes the company and contact information. The extension then shares data relevant to the website straight from SalesIntel’s human-verified database. You also receive access to direct-dial phone numbers, business technographic and firmographic data, buyer intent data, and more, in addition to your prospects’ email addresses.
3. SalesIntel
SalesIntel provides 95% accurate human-verified contacts, including millions of mobile numbers, and you get access to the complete database with your subscription.
But emails and phone numbers aren’t the only things SalesIntel offers. Intent data and data enrichment are also critical.
Intent data can help you filter the enormous list of contacts to those with the proper buying intent signals, allowing you to focus your efforts on prospects who are more likely to buy. Fundraising, events, and an interest in certain subjects and material online are all examples of intent signals. You can further modify your message based on the signals you see.
Depending on your product, you can also find tech usage data beneficial. For example, you can target companies you know will need tools similar to yours after acquiring software you integrate with.
4. Mattermark
Mattermark is designed solely with salespeople in mind. You simply search their list of companies by region, company size, industry, business model, and even the amount of cash they are raising.
You get actionable information by synchronizing over 80 useful variables to assist warm prospects and power discussions from first contact to deal closing.
Like SalesIntel, MatterMark connects directly with Salesforce, allowing you to save businesses into particular lists. Creating stored searches with over 80 distinct data fields, along with business and news notifications, also assists salespeople in automating their prospecting.
Start Right to Close Right
Prospecting is the starting point of your sales process. Now that you have all the crucial information about choosing the right prospecting tool, you can start testing them
Get Started with SalesIntel today: