Top 7 Tips on Sales Prospecting and 17 Decent Tools to Try

Sales Prospecting
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Effective sales prospecting is about personalized, valuable, non-pushy, and timely offers.

But why do we only get a few engaging emails and calls? And way too many boring, irrelevant, and annoying pitches that land in our inboxes to never be opened?

Let’s look on the bright side together and make your prospects happy to see your cold emails.

How to Offer Your Products Effectively: 7 Tips on Sales Outreach

Prospecting is finding and contacting potential customers and motivating them to buy from you. Your sales team probably uses several outreach channels (calls, emails, social media interaction). And, in the end, revenues directly depend on how effective these guys are. But the main trick is to show your offer to the right person: a prospect (not a lead). But why?

Leads are unqualified contacts that you get in exchange for freebies or through subscriptions. “Unqualified” means not assessed towards your ideal customer profile like a freelance copywriter who downloads your guide about SEO strategy but isn’t ready to buy your online course yet.

And prospects match most of the customer’s parameters like a startup founder who downloaded the same guide. But he did it because he was looking for a decent SEO course for his content marketing team and considered yours an option. That’s why the first tip is crucial read on.

1. Research your potential buyer

Before reaching out to a prospect, try to find out all about the contact person and the company behind him. You need to understand what the brand cares about and what its values are. “About Us” section on the website, social media posts, their regularity, and blog topics will tell you what makes the business alive and how your product can help it. Finding touchpoints through the whole customer journey (and after) is crucial for personalized communication.

2. Rate your prospects

To maximize the chances of closed deals, rate your prospects before reaching out to them. Assess them against your ideal customer profile, accessibility of their decision-makers, and interest in your brand. This way, your sales teams will focus their efforts on the most promising cases.

3. Find a reason and moment to reach out

The era of cold mass outreach is gone. No one ever reads emails with trivial or ad-looking subject lines. We all want to get help and not be used, don’t we? So, compose your message keeping in mind trigger events (company’s birthday or hiring a new team lead), mutual connections (when you both have similar interests), or website pages that your lead visited. And try to sound natural. Subscribe to your prospects’ accounts in LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram to stay aware of the latest events and use them to compose a pitch.

4. Create a personalized message

You’ll never have a second chance to make a first impression. So craft your message in a friendly, helpful way and gently refer to the pain point. Also, choose the right channel to reach prospects and offer solutions to their problems instead of selling right away. Asking personal questions and making personal wishes can be an excellent way to establish a connection, but don’t overdo it.

5. Mix communication channels

Every salesperson prefers their own way of communication someone likes to send emails, while others prefer calling or leaving voicemails. However, combining them works even better. Still, whichever mix of channels you choose, create trustful relationships and explicitly state call-to-action (CAT). For example, invite a potential buyer for a quick call or send him a calendar appointment with a note.

6. Consider value and objections

After the first call is made and the next one is scheduled, take a closer look at two things. The first is the prospect’s business pains that your product can resolve a look from your perspective. The other factor is the reasons your potential buyer might reject your offer the other party’s objections. It sounds obvious, but find answers to these questions and take the final step persuade prospects to buy! And remember to be persistent, not pushy.

7. Learn from mistakes

Negative results (lost deals) can teach you a lot. And you should use the chance to learn why your offer was rejected and strengthen the sales approach. A brief follow-up email asking for some feedback would prove that you value customers and tend to improve your business.

Though these steps are simple to understand, it’s hard to put them into effect because they require tons of effort and time. Until you do it manually, of course. So here is a list of 17 instruments that can help you close more deals.

Top Prospecting Tools to Try in 2024

1. Signum.AI

This tool monitors client activities like social media engagement and keyword mentions to pinpoint potential buyers ready to make a purchase, maximizing profits by targeting them effectively.

Pricing: the price starts at $159/mo.

2. Scrapp

This web extension works off your LinkedIn account and delivers trusted emails to your potential customers. To launch your outreach campaign, you need only to know a company’s website and name.

Pricing: free option is available.

3. Mention

Mention monitors 1 billion web resources: social media posts, articles, blogs, and forums to inform you about essential references. Moreover, it automates creating, scheduling, and publishing blog posts from the most popular platforms.

Pricing: starts at $49/mo.

4. Zoominfo

This platform lets you see when and which companies research information relevant to your business. And Zoominfo’s AI-powered algorithms estimate how prospective the contact is and move it up on the list. In addition, you see prioritized tasks that need to be completed soon.

Pricing: is available upon request; however, a free trial version is accessible.

5. LeadIQ

This is another extension that works together with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, capturing information about each contact. And those records are regularly updated and re-organized, while duplications are eliminated. Moreover, you get access to thousands of verified contact profiles created by other users.

Pricing: free version is available.

6. Owler

Owler has access to 14 million business accounts, offering you information on a quantity of employees, financial reports, raised funds, and main competitors of a target company. The Advanced Search and 15 event alerts allow you to benefit from real-time updates about industry leaders.

Pricing: the basic plan is free.

7. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

This one is a must-have tool for any business because it delivers the most relevant leads and recommends accounts similar to your target audience. This tool is compatible with many CRMs; that’s why your team will get the maximum result with minimal effort.

Pricing: starts at $79.99/mo. A 1-month free trial and demo are available.

8. SalesHandy

SalesHandy is all you need for email outreach through Gmail and Outlook. It can help you generate personalized messages and send them when their chances to be read are maximal. The follow-up feature helps to boost open and reply rates. This tool can increase the productivity of sales and marketing teams, HRs, realtors, bloggers, and freelancers.

Pricing: starts at $25.

9. Datanyze

This is another decent browser extension that accumulates recent data about a contact. Through Google Chrome, Datanyze collects phones and emails from LinkedIn profiles and visualizes information about your prospects on a comprehensive dashboard.

Pricing: free trial version is available.

10. Octoparse

This advanced web crawler needs only the URL of a website and requires no coding skills from you. Scrap any web resources at the scheduled time and save results in a cloud platform in Excel, API, or CSV format.

Pricing: a free plan is available.

11. RocketReach

RocketReach boasts access to 17 million businesses and 450 million private ones with real-time updated contact data. This Chrome extension offers many criteria to specify your search and find the prospects’ emails, social media accounts, and phones. Then you can reach out to them having the right information at hand.

Pricing: starts at €36/mo. A free trial is available.

12. Spotio

Spotio offers automated entry of lead notes, sales assignments, and appointments to keep your team organized and task-focused. Thus, your sales will not spend time on completing administrative tasks and prospecting unqualified leads. Since all promoting activities are synchronized, sales reps work consistently and effectively.

Pricing: needs to be requested. A demo can be scheduled through the contact form.

13. Snov.io

Spending less time on lead research and decreasing costs per prospect is what Snov.io offers. Its 7-tier verification process and lead nurturing, scheduled campaigns, automated follow-ups, and engagement analysis are essential tools for successful prospecting. And knowing all available data about companies, including their tech stack, can boost your conversion rates.

Pricing: starts at $30/mo, free trial is available.

14. SharpSpring

This platform is an all-in-one solution for growing your revenue. SharpSpring is the comprehensive environment where tools and data work together to generate and nurture leads with quality communication. It can easily be linked to any CRM or CMS system to optimize your sales team efforts and move potential customers through the sales funnel.

Pricing: needs to be requested.

15. OnePageCRM

This CRM software is a perfect solution for IT companies, agencies, Real Estate businesses, and many more. Its Next Action visualized process helps you walk through the action plan quickly and sell effectively. From sending a cold email to signing a contract OnePageCRM clearly highlights and records each step your sales team needs to take.

Pricing: starts at 8.95/mo. A 21-day free trial is available.

16. Nimble

Nimble accumulates and unifies contact data from 160 apps and makes them accessible from your favorite instrument: Gmail, Excel, or mobile apps. The platform visualizes your sales tasks in a table of activities and links each item to the business contact record. So, each day Nimble users save about one hour and a half on marketing tasks.

Pricing: $29.90/mo, a free trial is available.

17. Voila Norbert

Voila Norbert is not simply an email finder; it supplies qualified leads and brings you closer to decision-makers. This tool also helps to establish rapport with your audience through emails and segmented lists of prospects.

Pricing: starts at $49/mo.

 

These are 117 of hundreds of prospecting tools that automate sales tasks. We hope they will give you more space for a personal touch to potential buyers and their effective conversion into customers.

Good luck!


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