So, you’re looking for a prospecting tool to help you find new customers. But what is a B2B tool? What does it do? And why is it important to your business? This article will answer all of those questions and more, so you can make an informed decision about whether or not a prospecting tool is right for you.
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B2B Prospecting Tools
A B2B prospecting tool is a software solution that helps you to manage your contacts, get in touch & follow up with potential customers and identify new leads. It helps sales reps to stay on top of their game by allowing them to easily organize all the prospects they meet and follow up with them at the right time.
The tool will also help you get more insight into your prospects by letting you know more about their company, their goals, what they want to achieve and how they want to achieve it. This will help you align your product with their needs and increase your chances at making a sale. The software usually has an API (application programming interface) that allows you to integrate the tool into your existing CRM (customer relationship management) system. It also allows you to customize the emails or LinkedIn messages you send out, so they’re more personalized and relevant.
Usually, a B2B prospecting tool is equipped with a handy analytics dashboard that helps you sort out what works best for you in terms of audiences, texts, etc.(what has the biggest impact and drives in the biggest number of leads).
Generalist vs Specialized
However, when it comes to finding the right prospecting tools, many companies seek the path of least resistance. Surely it’s better to have 1, all-in-one tool to streamline efficiency rather than learn how to use a multitude of tools, right?
Well, yes and no.
While you will save time on the front end in learning how to use your new B2B tool, even the most encompassing tools (we’re looking at you, Sales Navigator) can fall short in necessary areas like:
- An inability to export account information into a CSV or XLS file
- A lack of data verification
- Missed CRM and automation features due to a lack of CRM integration ability
- Lack of software comprehension to distinguish outbound and inbound sales rep needs
These drawbacks may not affect your company and sales at all. Maybe you don’t ever verify your information anyway, and to you, I say good luck.
As tempting as it is to have the most encompassing tools possible, do you need the 90 different available options to work through at a skin-deep level? It would be much more beneficial to use a software tool that does exactly what you need at the level and depth you need it to, instead of “making it work” because “that’s what the software can handle”, right?
Enter specialized prospecting tools. These are tools to be added to your current tech repertoire to improve your sales efficiency and ease of access. Below are seven best-in-class examples of specialized tools that can help you and your business in its niche needs:
Leed Feeder
LeadFeeder is a website-tracking prospecting tool showing how potential sales found your business and what products they may be interested in. This insight helps sales reps adapt their pitches to customers at different points in the purchasing process. This tool is key in streamlining the process of finding your potential customers’ email, phone number, and company data. With these collective forces in your corner, your ability to find your customers and deliver a custom process to work with them increases dramatically.
Closely
Closely is best for LinkedIn prospecting automation. It offers an advanced functionality to connect with and engage LinkedIn leads completely on autopilot. You just have to upload the audience source (which in many cases will be a LinkedIn link), write a message sequence (a series of messages that are sent to follow-up with your potential customers), and start running your campaign. The tool will grow the network for you. It will report how your campaigns are doing so you can understand where you should tweak your campaigns.
Closely also has a built-in B2B contact database of 143+ million records. Go there to find emails, FB and LI profiles of your prospects, telephone numbers, company insights. Closely’s pricing starts with $50/ month, which includes access to all the main automation features, Lead Finder credits and lots of add-ons: Inbox and Network management, LinkedIn data scraping, etc.
Sales Intel
SalesIntel is a B2B prospecting tool centred on the American markets. This tool shines in data verification, testing email addresses and phone numbers for posterity every 90 days to ensure your potential client is still accessible. Additionally, SalesIntel boasts the largest dial numbers in the game and backs that claim up with human-verified calls.
Humanic AI
The Humanic AI prospecting tool is designed to help you and your sales team identify and engage with the best prospects for your business. It does this by helping you create a list of people most likely to be interested in your product or service. This list can then be used to send personalized messages based on their specific needs and interests.
The tool helps you create these lists using a series of questions, which are answered by the user, who then receives an email with the results. These results include a list of potential customers along with information about them—information such as their location and job title, as well as what they’re interested in buying. The tool also allows users to manually enter customer details into a database, which makes it easier for third parties who want access to this information (such as advertisers).
Mattermark
Mattermark is a data platform that helps you get your arms around all the information you need to make informed business decisions. At its core, Mattermark provides you with a way to understand how your company stacks up against others in your industry, in real time. You can use their resources to identify new opportunities and companies within your industry, or even find similar business models that may be working well for other companies in your space.
Mattermark provides over 80 advanced data points per company, and including growth signals like a change in company size or an increase in web traffic. Such information can be used to prioritize and source the best clients to pitch.
Outreach
Outreach is designed to close remote deals faster by operating as your personal virtual assistant. This tool transcribes full conversations in real time and then summarizes your meeting so you can move on to the next task without having to synthesize your meetings after another thorough review of your conversation. This summary helps sales teams identify the pan points and therefore ask the right questions.
This tool removes the need for a note raker and an audio recorder, leaving the leg work for focusing on the client, rather than the information the client already knows about.
Demodesk
Demodesk is a tool that allows you to automate your schedule and meetings. It does this by providing an intuitive interface for managing your entire team’s schedule, from one person to an entire department. You can easily create new meetings or schedule changes, as well as modify existing ones. Demodesk 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.
Demodesk offers invaluable insights on how much time is spent listening to prospects compared to speaking with them, how many demos are scheduled from a single meeting, and close rates so sales leaders can quickly identify best practices.
Let’s wrap up
Now, what does this all mean? Should we avoid generalist B2B prospecting tools because they’re too broad and shallow? Obviously, this article isn’t meant to bash generalist prospecting tools (there’s a reason Sales Navigator is so successful) but it is meant to shine some light on some of the drawbacks you may face when using them. Adopting a more specialized approach as per your specific business model will yield much better results in the long run. And these specialized approaches can be best achieved using tools designed for such specialization. Happy prospecting!
