11 Best Tools for Sales Prospecting to Find New Leads

Sales prospecting is the lifeblood of any successful business, but finding the right leads and nurturing them into customers can be a daunting task. Sales prospecting tools can streamline your sales process, uncover valuable insights about your target audience, and ultimately boost your conversion rates. Still, with so many options on the market, it can be challenging to know which tools are worth investing in. Here are 11 of the best sales prospecting tools available today, each with its own unique features and benefits. Whether you're a small startup or a large enterprise, there's sure to be a tool on this list that can help take your sales game to the next level. Let's dive in and explore these significant solutions for sales prospecting success!

What Are Sales Prospecting Tools?

Sales professionals rely on sales prospecting tools to identify, research, and connect with potential customers. These tools streamline the process of finding and qualifying leads, enabling sales teams to focus on the most promising opportunities. Sales prospecting tools use data, automation, and intelligence features to significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the sales process.

The primary goal of sales prospecting tools is to assist in building a pipeline of qualified leads. They provide a range of features such as lead generation, contact information discovery, email verification, social media integration, and data enrichment. Some tools specialize in specific aspects of prospecting, such as email finding or meeting scheduling, while others offer a more comprehensive suite of features.

Sales prospecting tools often integrate with customer relationship management (CRM) systems, allowing seamless data synchronization and workflow automation. This integration ensures that all prospect information is centralized and easily accessible to the entire sales team. Many tools also offer reporting and analytics capabilities, enabling sales managers to track performance metrics and optimize their prospecting strategies.

The benefits of using sales prospecting tools are numerous. They help sales teams:

• Save time by automating repetitive tasks and streamlining the prospecting process
• Increase productivity by focusing on high-quality leads and minimizing manual data entry
• Improve accuracy by providing up-to-date and verified contact information
• Gain valuable insights through data enrichment and social media integration
• Enhance personalization by leveraging prospect information for targeted outreach
• Scale their efforts by efficiently managing a larger volume of leads

Businesses that use sales prospecting tools can significantly improve their sales outcomes, accelerate pipeline generation, and drive revenue growth.

Best Tools for Sales Prospecting

Sales prospecting is crucial for keeping your pipeline full of qualified leads, but it can be a time-consuming and challenging process. Fortunately, there are a number of powerful tools available that can streamline your prospecting efforts and help you connect with more of your ideal customers. From all-in-one CRM and sales engagement platforms to specialized tools for finding verified email addresses, these are 11 of the best tools for supercharging your sales prospecting in 2023. Whether you're a small business or an enterprise sales team, leveraging the right combination of these prospecting tools can help you build more targeted lead lists, scale your outreach, and ultimately close more deals.

1. Copy.ai

Copy.ai is an innovative AI-powered platform designed to streamline and supercharge go-to-market efforts for sales, marketing, and operations teams. By unifying AI capabilities, data sources, and GTM best practices into a single platform, Copy.ai helps businesses eliminate inefficiencies, break through content bottlenecks, and accelerate their overall GTM velocity.

Copy.ai offers a compelling solution to go-to-market teams struggling with disconnected tools, content bottlenecks, and inefficient processes. With AI within a unified platform, businesses can produce better content faster, standardize best practices, and gain the insights and efficiency to achieve significant go-to-market success. Teams looking to adopt AI and accelerate their GTM efforts should give Copy.ai serious consideration.

Standout Features

• GTM AI Platform to unify tools and optimize the entire GTM process
• AI-powered workflows to automate key GTM tasks
• 90+ AI templates to rapidly generate high-quality content
• Infobase to ensure AI-generated content is accurate and on-brand
• Specialized AI chat to assist sales and marketing teams

Pricing

• Free Plan: $0/mo - 1 seat, 2K words, basic features
• Starter Plan: $49/mo - 1 seat, unlimited words, more features
• Advanced Plan: $249/mo - Up to 5 seats, 2K workflow credits, advanced features
• Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing - Guided onboarding, API access, unlimited workflows

TL;DR: Who's This For?

Copy.ai is ideal for small to medium-sized go-to-market teams looking to enhance their content creation, improve efficiency, and maintain brand consistency.

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2. Salesforce

Salesforce is the world's leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform that enables companies of all sizes to deliver exceptional customer experiences. It provides a unified suite of cloud-based applications for sales, service, marketing, commerce, and more—all on one integrated platform powered by AI. With Salesforce, you can gain a 360-degree view of your customers, personalize interactions across every touchpoint, automate processes, and unlock valuable insights to drive smarter decisions.

Salesforce is customizable to your specific go-to-market needs. Its different cloud solutions like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud can be seamlessly integrated to create a powerful CRM ecosystem. Automation tools boost team productivity while robust analytics help you turn data into actionable insights. If driving customer success is a priority, Salesforce provides the essential tools to build lasting, profitable relationships.

Standout Features

• Unified 360-degree customer view
• AI-powered insights and automation with Einstein
• Customizable cloud solutions for sales, service, marketing, and more
• Workflow automation and productivity tools
• Robust analytics and reporting with Tableau integration
• Mobile app for on-the-go access

Pricing

• Essentials plan starts at $25/user/month
• Professional plan starts at $75/user/month
• Enterprise plan starts at $150/user/month
• Pricing varies for specific cloud solutions and add-ons

TL;DR: Who's This For?

Salesforce is ideal for medium to large enterprises with complex CRM needs that have the resources to implement and customize a robust solution.

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3. HubSpot

HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM platform designed to help businesses grow by connecting their marketing, sales, customer service, content management, and operations. With a suite of AI-powered tools, HubSpot empowers companies to attract, engage, and delight customers at every stage of their journey.

HubSpot is an excellent choice for startups and small to medium businesses that want a comprehensive, user-friendly platform to manage customer relationships and drive growth. Its user-friendly interface, comprehensive features, and scalable pricing make it an attractive choice for teams wanting to unify customer data, automate tasks, and drive growth.

Standout Features

• Breeze AI tools for social media, prospecting, customer service, and content
• Robust marketing automation to nurture leads and personalize engagement
• Deal pipeline management to accelerate sales
• Omni-channel customer service with unified interaction history
• Scalable CMS for lead-generating websites
• Programmable automation and data sync for data quality

Pricing

• Free for up to 2 users with basic features
• Starter plan from $15/month/user
• Professional plan from $1,170/month for 5 users
• Enterprise plan from $4,300/month for 7 users

TL;DR: Who's This For?

HubSpot is an excellent choice for startups and small to medium businesses that want a comprehensive, user-friendly platform to manage customer relationships and drive growth.

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4. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful prospecting and sales tool designed to help sales professionals and teams find, engage, and build relationships with potential customers on LinkedIn. By leveraging the platform's vast network and data, Sales Navigator provides advanced search capabilities, lead recommendations, and valuable insights to streamline the modern sales process.

Sales Navigator helps businesses of all sizes target the right people and companies. For B2B sales teams looking to identify key decision-makers, gain competitive intelligence, and scale personalized outreach, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a game-changer. Its integration with popular CRM systems ensures that vital data stays synced, providing a comprehensive view of the sales pipeline.

Standout Features

• Advanced lead and company search with powerful filtering options
• Lead recommendations based on your preferences and sales activity
• Real-time alerts on prospect and account activity
• CRM integrations to streamline workflow
• TeamLink to uncover warm introduction paths through your extended team's network

Pricing

• Core plan: $79.99/month (annual) or $99.99/month (monthly)
• Advanced plan: $125/month (annual) or $159.99/month (monthly)
• Advanced Plus plan: custom pricing for enterprises

TL;DR: Who's This For?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is best suited for B2B sales professionals and teams focused on building relationships and driving revenue growth through social selling on LinkedIn.

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5. Salesloft

Salesloft is a powerful Revenue Orchestration Platform designed to help B2B sales teams drive more revenue and improve sales efficiency. Salesloft unifies all revenue-generating activities into one AI-powered platform, solving many of the biggest challenges facing modern sales organizations.

The platform is ideal for sales leaders, account executives, sales development reps, customer success teams, and marketing professionals who need to build pipeline, engage customers, manage deals, and accurately forecast revenue. Salesloft eliminates the complexity and uncertainty in sales by surfacing buyer signals and guiding sellers to take the right actions at precisely the right moments.

Standout Features

• Cadence for building and nurturing sales pipelines
• Conversations for gaining insights from sales calls and coaching reps
• Deals for managing opportunities and pipelines
• Forecast for predicting revenue outcomes
• Rhythm, an AI engine that guides reps to the next best action
• Drift integration for engaging buyers early

Pricing

• Advanced Plan for converting deals and winning customers
• Premier Plan for generating predictable revenue (includes Advanced features plus forecasting & revenue management)
• Specific pricing not disclosed; contact sales for a quote

TL;DR: Who's This For?

Salesloft is best for growth-oriented B2B companies, especially mid-market and enterprise organizations with complex sales processes, that are committed to investing in their sales technology stack and empowering their revenue teams to succeed.

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6. ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is a powerful B2B intelligence platform that provides sales, marketing, and recruiting teams with comprehensive data and tools to identify, engage, and convert their ideal customers more effectively. Combining an extensive database of accurate business contact information with advanced prospecting, engagement, and workflow capabilities, ZoomInfo streamlines the entire go-to-market process.

ZoomInfo is best suited for mid-market to enterprise B2B organizations with dedicated go-to-market teams looking to gain a competitive edge. The platform's robust features and integrations can significantly enhance productivity, drive higher quality leads, and accelerate revenue growth for companies with the resources to fully leverage its capabilities.

Standout Features

• Extensive database of accurate B2B contact and company data
• Advanced search and targeting based on detailed criteria
• Intent data to identify companies showing buying signals
• Integrated engagement tools for email and phone outreach
• Competitive intelligence features to track market trends
• Data enrichment to maintain CRM data accuracy

Pricing

• Pricing details not publicly disclosed
• Flexible packages based on features, users, and credits
• Contact ZoomInfo sales for custom pricing

TL;DR: Who's This For?

ZoomInfo is an ideal solution for mid-sized to large B2B companies with dedicated sales, marketing, and recruiting teams that have the budget and resources to fully utilize the platform's extensive data and intelligent tools to accelerate growth.

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7. Outreach

Outreach is a powerful sales execution platform designed to help B2B sales teams boost productivity, streamline workflows, and drive predictable revenue growth. Leveraging AI-powered insights and automation, Outreach enables reps to prospect more effectively, manage deals efficiently, and ultimately close more business. It's an ideal solution for medium to large sales organizations looking to optimize their sales process end-to-end.

With features spanning sales engagement, pipeline management, conversation intelligence, and revenue forecasting, Outreach provides a comprehensive suite of tools to empower sales teams. The platform is intuitive for reps to use while still being robust enough to handle complex enterprise sales motions. Outreach is a leading option for businesses prioritizing growth through sales excellence.

Standout Features

• AI-powered real-time guidance and insights for sales reps
• Robust sales engagement tools including email sequencing
• Complete pipeline visibility and proactive opportunity management
• Conversation intelligence with call recording, transcription, and AI analysis
• Advanced revenue forecasting and analytics

Pricing

• Customized per-user pricing model
• Engage: Core sales engagement features
• Call: Integrated dialer and AI-powered call summaries
• Meet: Conversation intelligence and post-meeting insights
• Deal: AI-deal assistance and health scoring
• Forecast: Automated forecasting and pipeline dashboards

TL;DR: Who's This For?

Outreach is ideal for medium-large B2B sales teams looking to drive productivity and revenue growth through sales process excellence.

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8. Hunter

Hunter is a powerful email finding and outreach platform designed for professionals in sales, marketing, and recruiting who need to connect with leads and prospects at scale. It solves the challenge of building targeted contact lists by providing tools to discover, verify, and reach out to professional email addresses.

Hunter makes it easy to quickly identify the right people to contact at target companies using tools like Domain Search and Email Finder. The Email Verifier ensures your lists stay clean and improve deliverability. The Campaigns feature allows you to send personalized cold email sequences, track performance, and optimize your outreach efforts. Hunter's flexible pricing plans and integrations make it accessible and adaptable for teams of all sizes.

Standout Features

• Domain Search to find email addresses associated with a company
• Email Finder to track down individual email addresses
• Email Verifier to validate addresses and maintain list hygiene
• Campaigns for sending personalized cold email sequences at scale
• Integrations with CRMs, Google Sheets, Zapier, and via API

Pricing

• Free plan with 25 searches and 50 verifications per month
• Starter plan at $49/month for 500 searches and 1,000 verifications
• Growth plan at $149/month for 5,000 searches and 10,000 verifications
• Business plan at $499/month for 50,000 searches and 100,000 verifications
• Custom Enterprise plans available

TL;DR: Who's This For?

Hunter is an ideal email finding and outreach tool for sales, marketing, and recruiting professionals who regularly need to find and connect with leads, prospects, or candidates via email.

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9. Apollo.io

Apollo is a comprehensive sales intelligence and engagement platform designed to help B2B sales teams prospect more efficiently, engage buyers more effectively, and ultimately close more deals. With access to a vast database of over 210 million contacts and 35 million companies, Apollo makes it easy to find and connect with your ideal prospects based on criteria like job title, company size, industry, and more.

The platform offers a robust suite of features to support the entire sales process, from lead generation and outreach to pipeline management and analytics. Apollo's sales engagement tools allow reps to automate personalized email sequences, track opens and replies, and follow up with prospects at scale. For sales operations teams, Apollo provides powerful data enrichment and workflow automation capabilities to maintain high-quality CRM data and optimize sales processes. Sales leaders will appreciate the detailed performance analytics and AI-powered coaching insights to help their teams consistently crush quota.

Standout Features

• Extensive database of 210M+ contacts and 35M+ companies
• Advanced search and filtering options to find targeted leads
• Email outreach with automated sequences and tracking
• Built-in dialer for efficient calling
• CRM data enrichment and cleansing
• Customizable workflows to streamline sales processes
• Detailed analytics and AI-powered coaching insights

Pricing

• Free: Limited features, 1,200 credits/year
• Basic: $49/user/month, 5,000 credits/month
• Professional: $79/user/month, 10,000 credits/month
• Organization: $119/user/month, 15,000 credits/month (min 3 users)

TL;DR: Who's This For?

Apollo is an excellent choice for B2B sales teams of all sizes that want to improve their prospecting, outreach, and pipeline management with a powerful all-in-one platform.

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10. Voila Norbert

Voila Norbert is a powerful email outreach platform that helps sales professionals, marketers, recruiters, and anyone else who relies on email to find leads and build relationships. With its accurate email finder, verification tool, sequencing capabilities, data enrichment, and Chrome extension, it provides a comprehensive suite of features to streamline your outreach efforts and get better results.

Voila Norbert makes finding contact information straightforward. It can find and verify email addresses with an impressive 98% accuracy rate. Beyond finding emails, it also offers tools to automate personalized email campaigns, A/B test, warm up your account to avoid blacklisting, and enrich your data with valuable context like job titles and social profiles. The seamless Chrome extension allows you to find emails directly from LinkedIn and websites.

Standout Features

• Accurate email finder with 98% success rate
• Bulk email verification to maintain list hygiene
• Email sequencing with personalization and A/B testing
• Data enrichment with job titles, locations, social profiles
• Chrome extension to find emails from LinkedIn and websites

Pricing

• Valet Plan: $49/month for 1,000 leads
• Butler Plan: $99/month for 5,000 leads
• Advisor Plan: $249/month for 15,000 leads
• Counselor Plan: $499/month for 50,000 leads
• Email Verification: Starts at $0.003/email
• Email Enrichment: Starts at $0.015/email

TL;DR: Who's This For?

Voila Norbert is an excellent choice for sales teams, marketers, recruiters, and anyone who needs to find and connect with leads at scale via email outreach.

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11. Chili Piper

Chili Piper is an innovative demand conversion platform that helps B2B sales teams streamline lead qualification, routing, and meeting scheduling. By automating key steps in the sales funnel, it enables businesses to convert more leads into booked meetings and closed deals.

One of Chili Piper's standout features is its ability to instantly qualify and route leads to the right sales rep based on custom criteria. Advanced scheduling capabilities like automated reminders and one-click booking further optimize the process. The platform also offers chat engagement features to connect with web visitors in real time. Comprehensive reporting provides valuable insights to identify bottlenecks and improve sales performance.

Chili Piper is best suited for medium to large sales teams looking to optimize their lead conversion process. While robust, its pricing may be high for very small businesses. But for teams seeking to streamline scheduling and stay ahead of the competition, Chili Piper is a game-changing tool.

Standout Features

• Instant lead qualification and routing
• Advanced scheduling with one-click booking
• Chat playbooks to engage web visitors
• Automated assignment between SDRs and AEs
• Comprehensive demand conversion analytics

Pricing

• ChiliCal Teams: $15/user/month (annual)
• Demand Conversion Platform: $72/user/month (annual)
• Individual products from $30/user/month plus platform fees

TL;DR: Who's This For?

Chili Piper is an ideal solution for medium to large B2B sales teams looking to optimize lead routing, meeting scheduling, and conversion rates across the sales funnel.

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Which Is Best for You?

With so many powerful sales prospecting tools available, the right choice depends on your specific needs and priorities. Here's a quick recap of which tools excel in different scenarios:

• Best for AI-Powered Content Creation: Copy.ai is the top pick if you want to harness AI to rapidly generate high-quality sales content while ensuring brand consistency. It's ideal for small to medium GTM teams.
• Best Comprehensive CRM Platform: Salesforce and HubSpot are both excellent choices if you need a robust, unified CRM solution. Salesforce is better for larger enterprises with complex needs, while HubSpot suits startups and SMBs wanting an all-in-one platform.
• Best for B2B Social Selling: LinkedIn Sales Navigator is unmatched for sales professionals who want to find and engage prospects on LinkedIn. It's a must-have for any B2B sales team.
• Best for Optimizing Sales Efficiency: Salesloft and Outreach are both powerful options for B2B sales teams looking to boost productivity and drive predictable revenue growth. They're best for mid-market to enterprise organizations.
• Best for Targeted Email Outreach: Hunter, Apollo, and Voila Norbert all offer excellent email finding and outreach capabilities. Hunter has the most accessible pricing for individuals and small teams. Apollo provides the most comprehensive B2B data. Voila Norbert boasts industry-leading accuracy.
• Best for Streamlining Lead Routing & Scheduling: Chili Piper is the clear winner for medium to large sales teams that want to optimize lead qualification, routing, and meeting booking.

The best sales prospecting tool aligns with your team's unique goals, integrates with your workflow, and delivers the insights and efficiencies you need to hit your numbers. Many of these platforms offer free trials, so don't hesitate to test a few before committing.

Final Thoughts

Sales prospecting is a critical but often challenging part of the sales process. Finding the right leads and engaging them effectively can make or break your ability to hit quota and grow revenue. Fortunately, there are many excellent sales prospecting tools available to help you work smarter, not harder.

Here are 11 of the best tools for sales prospecting:

1. Copy.ai - An AI-powered platform to streamline GTM Velocity
2. Salesforce - The leading CRM to manage customer relationships end-to-end
3. HubSpot - An intuitive all-in-one CRM well-suited for SMBs
4. LinkedIn Sales Navigator - Leverage LinkedIn data to find and engage prospects
5. Salesloft - A revenue orchestration platform to build pipeline and close deals
6. ZoomInfo - Extensive B2B database and intelligence for go-to-market teams
7. Outreach - Powerful sales execution platform to optimize productivity and growth
8. Hunter - Find and verify professional email addresses for outreach
9. Apollo - Comprehensive sales intelligence and engagement solution
10. Voila Norbert - Accurate email finder and verification with outreach tools
11. Chili Piper - Streamline lead routing and meeting scheduling to convert more leads

While each has its own strengths, the right tool for you will depend on your specific needs, team size, budget, and existing tech stack. Consider testing out a few to see which one fits best into your sales process and helps you prospect more efficiently.

The sales technology landscape continues to evolve rapidly. By adopting the right tools and staying on top of emerging trends, you can equip your team to build a strong pipeline, nurture relationships, and consistently crush quota. Happy prospecting!

FAQ for tools for sales prospecting

1. What are sales prospecting tools? Sales prospecting tools are software platforms that help sales teams identify, research, and connect with potential customers more efficiently. They streamline the process of finding and qualifying leads.

2. What are the benefits of using sales prospecting tools? Sales prospecting tools can save time, increase productivity, improve accuracy, provide valuable insights, enable personalization at scale, and help sales teams manage a larger volume of leads. This ultimately leads to more conversions and revenue.

3. What are some of the best tools for sales prospecting? Some top sales prospecting tools include Salesforce for CRM, LinkedIn Sales Navigator for B2B social selling, Salesloft and Outreach for optimizing sales efficiency, ZoomInfo for B2B data and intelligence, and tools like Hunter and Apollo for targeted email outreach.

4. How do I choose the right sales prospecting tool for my team? Consider your team's specific needs and goals, such as lead generation, data enrichment, email outreach, or sales automation. Look for a tool that integrates well with your existing workflow and tech stack. Many tools offer free trials to test before committing.

5. What features should I look for in a sales prospecting tool? Key features to look for include advanced search and filtering options, data accuracy and enrichment, email finding and verification, personalized email sequencing, CRM integration, detailed analytics and reporting, and AI-powered insights and automation.

6. How much do sales prospecting tools typically cost? Pricing for sales prospecting tools varies widely based on features, users, and scale. Some tools offer limited free plans, while others range from around $50-$500+ per user per month. Enterprise plans often require custom pricing. Consider your budget and potential ROI.

7. Can sales prospecting tools integrate with my CRM? Yes, most leading sales prospecting tools offer direct integrations with popular CRM platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive. This allows for seamless data syncing, workflow automation, and a centralized view of prospect and customer interactions.