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6 Best Sales Prospecting Tools That Move the Needle

Learn about the top sales prospecting software that helps you overcome your competition and bring sales results that drive revenue and get you promoted.

Skirmantas Venckus

Skirmantas Venckus

6 minute read

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Short answer

What are the 5 best sales prospecting tools?

  1. Sender: Lead Nurturing Software With Email and SMS Marketing Automation

  2. HubSpot: Sales Lead Nurturing Platform

  3. Keap: Lead Nurturing Tool for Online Sales

  4. BigContacts: Sales Acceleration Software With CRM and Contact Management Features

  5. EngageBay: Sales Acceleration Tool To Manage Your Sales Pipeline With Powerful Automation Capabilities

  6. Storydoc - Prospecting content creation and management software with CRM integrations

The right prospecting tools increase sales velocity - the wrong ones slow you down

A sales rep's job is to find qualified leads and work with the marketing team to convert these prospects into loyal customers.

To identify and engage with potential customers, sales teams need advanced tools and strategies that streamline the prospecting process.

That's why most businesses use sales prospecting tools that target the right prospects, enhance customer engagement, and drive more revenue.

In fact, 59% of sales reps say that prospecting tools help them identify leads not currently in their network.

In this guide, we'll cover the best sales prospecting tools to help you collect customer data, engage prospects, and close more deals.

What Is sales prospecting software?

Sales prospecting software is a tool that automates, optimizes, and simplifies workflows in the sales prospecting process. As a result, sales teams can close more deals and boost business revenue.

Sales prospecting tools will empower you to do the following:

  • Find high-quality leads;
  • Qualify the leads;
  • Engage with your prospects;
  • Find accurate contact information for your customers.

For example, a tool like LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides an advanced search option to help you find new prospects on LinkedIn and suggest relevant prospects for your business.

This enables you to build solid customer relationships and focus on helping them move through the sales funnel.

What Are the Main Types of Sales Prospecting Software?

The main types of sales prospecting software include lead capturing and nurturing tools and sales acceleration tools.

These platforms help you automate each step of the prospecting process to increase sales and grow your business.

Sales tools vary significantly in their price and features. As a result, you need to consider your business needs and budget to select the right sales prospecting tools for your company.

For example, if you have a small or medium business with a limited budget, you can start with free sales prospecting tools like Sender, which also offer powerful features to grow your business.

However, if you run an enterprise, you can select lead prospecting tools like Keap that offer more advanced features to engage qualified leads and drive more sales.

Best sales prospecting tools - snapshot

Tool

Description

Benefits

Downsides

Sender

Lead nurturing software with email and SMS marketing automation

- High-converting popups and signup forms

- Email and SMS marketing automation

- Smart segmentation and personalization

- Drag-and-drop design builder - Free library of newsletter templates

- Real-time reporting and analytics

- Sender’s branding on the Free Forever plan

- The free plan doesn’t have SMS 

HubSpot

Sales lead nurturing platform

- Marketing automation

- Custom views

- Real-time lead tracking and automated prospect list building

- Automated email sequences

- Limited features in its free version

- Payment for additional technical support

Keap

Lead nurturing tool for online sales

- Lead nurturing funnel

- Sales pipeline management

- Sales and marketing automation

- Reports and analytics with native integrations

- Some reports can’t combine with custom fields

- Detailed logic campaign building is challenging for new users

BigContacts

Sales acceleration software with CRM and contact management features

- Visual sales pipeline

- Detailed calendar view, automated alerts, and to-do lists

- In-depth reporting and analytics 

- Automated follow-ups and tasks

- Doesn’t integrate with some tools like financial planning software

- The mobile version has a poor user interface

EngageBay

Sales acceleration tool to manage your sales pipeline with powerful automation capabilities

- Lead scoring 

- Social media integration

- Automated routine tasks

- Filtering options and intent data

- Limited landing page templates

- No option to build your own templates

Storydoc

Interactive sales presentation creator with CRM integrations and personalization automation.

- Improved prospect engagement

- Content analytics
Personalization at scale

- Pricy for freelancers

- Requires a bit of learning how to use

- No free plan

Lead capturing and nurturing tools

Let’s look at three lead-nurturing solutions that help your sales professionals monitor leads, cultivate brand interest, and nurture relationships with prospects.

1. Sender — lead nurturing software with email and SMS marketing automation

sender sales prospecting tool

Sender is one of the best and most affordable lead nurturing tools that helps you keep in touch with your leads and customers and grow your brand.

The platform lets you easily create high-converting automated workflows that engage prospects and increase sales.

On top of that, Sender provides a drag-and-drop design builder that lets you create professional-looking popups, forms, and emails to grow and engage your audience.

You can also choose from its library of premade email templates and save hours of designing one.

The software also helps you increase revenue with automated abandoned cart emails and segment subscribers so you can send them relevant and personalized offers.

Key features:

  • High-converting popups (exit-intent, spin-the-wheel, etc.) and signup forms to attract prospects;

  • Email and SMS marketing automation to nurture leads into customers on autopilot;

  • Smart segmentation and personalization to send relevant messages to prospects and customers;

  • Drag-and-drop design builder and free library of newsletter templates to quickly design your email campaigns;

  • Real-time reporting and analytics with heatmaps to monitor your marketing campaigns.

Pricing:

  • Free Forever plan.

  • Paid plans start at $8 per month for 2,500 subscribers.

2. HubSpot — Sales Lead Nurturing Platform

hubspot sales prospecting tool

HubSpot is a B2B sales prospecting tool that offers automated list building and prospect tracking in real time.

This lets your sales team see which businesses visit your website and what they do while on it. As a result, your sales reps can follow up with the most engaged leads rather than chase down cold prospects.

The custom views feature allows you to sort and prioritize leads using filtering criteria. You can group users by number of page views, number of visits, company size, and location.

You can also create automated notifications to inform the sales teams when high-quality leads engage with your website so they can reach out with relevant emails.

HubSpot pricing is designed to be flexible, catering to businesses of various sizes and needs.

Key features:

  • Marketing automation to ensure timely prospect engagement;

  • Custom views to sort and prioritize leads using filtering criteria;

  • Real-time lead tracking and automated prospect list building;

  • Automated email sequences.

Pricing:

  • Free version available with limited features.

  • Premium plans start at $20 per month for up to 1,000 marketing contacts.

3. Keap — lead nurturing tool for online sales

keap - lead nurturing tool for online sales

Keap is one of the best sales engagement tools designed to help your small business grow.

The platform offers lead generation, lets you organize your customers' contact details, and seamlessly moves prospects through the sales process.

The sales prospecting tool also offers easy and advanced automation features to help sales representatives use highly personalized and automated follow-ups to convert leads and close more deals.

Keap also integrates with other software using Zapier. As a result, you can use third-party apps to trigger more effective sales and marketing automation.

Key features:

  • Create your own lead nurturing funnel;

  • Sales pipeline management;

  • Sales and marketing automation;

  • Reports and analytics with native integrations.

Pricing:

  • 14-day free trial.

  • Premium plans start at $199 per month for 1500 contacts and two users.

Sales acceleration tools

Let's now look at some sales acceleration tools that help you move leads through the sales pipeline more efficiently.

4. BigContacts — sales acceleration tool with CRM and contact management features

BigContacts — sales acceleration tool

BigContacts is a sales acceleration tool that offers email and contact management and a simple CRM to help you manage customer relationships.

The platform allows you to build a custom sales pipeline and send personalized emails based on where your sales leads are on the sales cycle.

You can adjust your email campaigns automatically based on contact data and key events, like when a prospect enters a new sales stage.

In addition, Keap provides a library of ready-to-use reports that offer insights into your marketing, sales, or contacts.

You can use these reports to implement better sales prospecting techniques to improve your marketing performance and grow your business.

Key features:

  • Visual sales pipeline to track sales opportunities;

  • Detailed calendar view, automated alerts, and to-do lists;

  • In-depth reporting and analytics to monitor your sales operations;

  • Automated follow-ups and tasks to boost overall productivity.

Pricing:

  • 15-day free trial.

  • Premium plans start at $10 per user per month.

5. EngageBay — sales acceleration tool with automation capabilities

2. EngageBay — sales acceleration tool

EngageBay is one of the many sales prospecting tools that help you automate your customer service workflows, marketing and sales tasks, and lead generation and nurturing processes.

The platform offers CRM software that helps you store unlimited contacts in one place and build solid customer relationships.

EngageBay's free landing page builder also lets you build landing pages that attract potential prospects you can engage and convert into customers.

Key features:

  • Lead scoring to find high-value prospects and engage with them effectively;

  • Drive more personalized engagement with social media integration;

  • Automated routine tasks, such as call logging and lead distribution to close deals faster;

  • Filtering options and intent data to reach potential customers at the right time.

Pricing:

  • Free plan available.

  • Premium plans start at $14.99 per user per month.

Buyer enablement tools

Buyer enablement tools are technologies that support potential customers in their purchasing journey, simplifying decision-making and transaction processes.

They're essential for enhancing customer experience, accelerating sales cycles, and increasing conversion rates.

6. Storydoc - content creation and management software with CRM integrations

Storydoc is critical in order for you to stand out in modern competitive prospecting. It allows you to remove friction from the prospecting process and keep the conversation going with highly engaging personalized content.

This tool lets sales teams intuitively create interactive storytelling content that buyers love reading and leaves lasting impressions.

Storydoc content is guided by AI which leads your creation process based on extensive real-world performance data.

Storydoc gives you the power to automate and personalize your sales collateral at scale by pulling contact information from your CRM and into your sales content using dynamic variables.

Best of all, Storydoc has built-in analytics that provides you with performance data on how prospects are interacting with your collateral, including reading time, scroll depth, clicks, conversions, and more.

This information is also made available for you in your contact view within your CRM.

Key features:

  • Personalization automation of sales collateral using data from your CRM database

  • Drag and drop sales and marketing collateral creator interface

  • Built-in sale content analytics dashboard

  • Content embeds for any tool in your sales stack, from Calendly to Vidyard

  • Dedicated storytelling capabilities based on neuroscience

Pricing:

Paid plans start at $30 per month.

Skirmantas Venckus

Skirmantas Venckus is a writer by day and reader by night. He hates talking about himself in third person. He is the growth hacker at Sender.net – the email marketing provider that is focused on user-friendliness, affordability, and utility.

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