The Best B2B Prospecting Tools to Implement in Your Sales Strategy

As anyone in B2B sales knows, prospecting is an essential and often challenging part of the sales process. From finding the right people to reaching out to them to closing a sale, it takes a lot of time and effort. Thankfully, there are plenty of B2B prospecting tools that can help you out. But where to start? We take a look at some of the best tools out there for a variety of different functions. 

The benefits of using B2B prospecting tools

Let’s start by looking at some of the reasons why you might choose a B2B prospecting tool in the first place. There are a few main benefits that come with choosing a sales tool (providing you choose the right one!). Here are just a few to mention:

• You can discover more leads. Prospecting tools are often far more effective than manual efforts. Not only will you have accurate data on qualified leads, but you’ll also be able to access it at the touch of a button. 
• You can boost your team’s efficiency. Many of the tools we cover here are designed to be smart and intuitive. As such, you can ensure that they will be effective for whoever is using them. You’ll have more time to focus on other tasks along the sales funnel. 
• You can build a better pipeline. Speaking of the sales funnel, by using efficient tools that provide qualified leads, you can ensure your sales pipeline is as effective as possible. 

Types of B2B prospecting tools

So, let’s start to look at some of the best B2B tools for prospecting. We’ve broken these down into categories for the sake of ease: 

Sales cadence tools

First, let’s take a look at sales cadence tools and why they’re an important part of your sales arsenal. 

What Is Sales Cadence?

Sales cadence refers to the set of actions you take when you’re trying to close a sale with a prospect. It’s the sequence of sales activities that can convert a potential client to a customer. It includes things like the calls, email campaigns, and social media interactions that you go through when trying to secure new business. 

Why should you improve your sales cadence?

Although it’s often part of the routine of your salespeople, working to improve your sales cadence can bring many benefits. As well as highlighting areas that work and don’t work, it can also help you quantify your efforts and identify where improvements are needed. You can also figure out what tactics work on which clients. 

How to improve your sales cadence

There are several ways you can make your sales cadence more effective. First, you need to identify your customer profiles and personas. This helps you target your approach more effectively. You also need to work out a formula for how and when to contact certain customers, as well as how long to leave between each attempt. 

Best sales cadence tools

• Bant can help with things like email and social outreach, helping you manage these areas of your sales cadence. 
• Milkshake lets you build sales outreach cadences with email, phone and social. 

Dialling tools

Next, let’s look at dialer software and how it can be used to improve your prospecting process.

What are dialling tools?

Dialling tools are designed to help with your cold calling. There are several types available, allowing you to automate some or all of the process. 

Types of dialers

There are two main types of dialling tools you might consider. The first is call automation. Essentially, this automatically dials the next person on your list when you hang-up a call. 

The second type is multi-dialling services. These automate things further and make the process faster. Here, you can dial multiple people at once, and only connect with those that pick up the call.  

Why should you use them?

As you might expect, either of these types of dialer can help you speed up this part of the prospecting process. They can save you time throughout the process, allowing you to speak to as many potential leads as possible. 

Best dialling tools

• FrontSpin. One of the top call automation tools out there. 
• Connect and Sell. A multi-dialing service that is one of the biggest names in the industry. 

Contact guessers

Third on our list of the best B2B prospecting tools is email guessers. Let’s take a look at what they are and why they’re so effective. 

What are contact guessers?

Essentially, these help you make sure that your contact information is correct and up-to-date. They use algorithms and the partial data you have to try and guess the correct details. 

Benefits of using contact guessers

As you can imagine, having the right contact details for your prospects is essential to getting in touch with them. With a contact guesser, you can have a more accurate database of potential leads, helping you with your efforts. Of course, there is usually some validation needed still, but it can take out a lot of manual work. 

Best contact guessers

• DiscoverOrg. Find B2B contact information on a variety of contacts. 
• Seamless. A real-time search engine that can give your B2B contact info and verify those you have. 

Contact database

Last on our list of the best B2B prospecting tools are those that help you manage your contact database. Again, let’s look at what they are and why they’re so useful. 

What is a contact database?

A contact database is, as you might expect, a collection of your prospecting contacts. It often forms the central hub of who you’re going to contact and when. Ideally, you’ll want to be able to search your prospects using various filters and tags, such as who they work for, the industry they’re in, and more. You can even determine what kind of lead they are. 

How to build an effective contact database

Part of managing your contact database is knowing how to build an effective one in the first place. To start with, you’ll need to capture all of the essential data about your prospects, such as their name, address, job role, phone number and email address. 

From there, you can start thinking about some other details to add some context to the prospect. Here, you can add things like the type of contact they are, details of any recent encounters you’ve had with them, and their social media accounts. 

Best contact database tools

• Bant can help you build a database of qualified leads through their data-driven approach. 
• Fundz.  A real-time database that gives info on new startups. 

Tips to improve your B2B prospecting

Whether or not you opt for all or some of these tools, there are still some things you can do to improve your prospecting efforts. Below, we’ve picked out some top tips to make sure you’re as effective as possible: 

1. Add value. Ultimately, your prospecting efforts should be able to help someone solve a problem. By taking the time to plan for your prospecting efforts, you can provide a valuable service and build trust. 
2. Add warmth. Whether you’re automating your outreach or not, you should still add a level of personalisation where possible. These touches can make your prospecting seem less cold. 
3. Collect data. Some of your efforts will work well, while others will not. By collecting and analysing data, you’ll be able to spot the opportunities and challenges in your prospecting process. 
4. Don’t be salesly. Prospects don’t like to be sold to. Instead, you should use your efforts to determine how you can help the people you’re connecting with. 

Final thoughts 

So, there we have it, a list of some of the best B2B prospecting tools out there. Many of these can help you with your efforts, no matter what stage of the process you’re at. Add in some prospecting know-how, and you can make your efforts as effective as possible.