If you take a moment to think about it, the fact that LinkedIn prospecting tools exist is really interesting. Social media has become such a critical part of running—and maintaining—a business that even the process of looking for and generating leads can’t do without it.
And as far as B2B is concerned, LinkedIn takes the cake. It's used by 89% of B2B marketers, and 62% use it to generate leads. It’s evidently a powerful tool for finding your ideal customers and connecting with them.
Dedicated LinkedIn prospecting tools can help you get the most out of the platform. They’ll help you identify potential leads, qualify and engage with them, and automate repetitive tasks (like transferring lead data to your CRM). In this article, we’re going to review 7 of the best LinkedIn prospecting tools to speed up your lead generation.
Looking for a quick summary?
Here are the 7 best tools for LinkedIn prospecting:
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator: LinkedIn’s own business tool lets you find your ideal customers with advanced filters.
- Snov: Find prospects from LinkedIn company pages, LinkedIn Search, and Sales Navigator Search. Manage all your leads with a built-in sales CRM.
- LinkedHelper: Discover new leads and reach out to prospects with personalized messages.
- Magical: Update your CRM with prospect data and send personalized LinkedIn messages at scale.
- WeConnect: Bypass LinkedIn’s weekly invite limits, connect with prospects at scale, and run targeted campaigns.
- LeadIn: A secure suite for managing LinkedIn prospecting. Integrates with your email and comes with its own smart inbox for managing LinkedIn messages.
- PhantomBuster: Scrape and export any LinkedIn data.
The 7 best LinkedIn prospecting tools
1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s own tool for prospecting and lead generation, and we have to say, it’s quite impressive.
It features over a dozen filters for streamlining your search results using firmographic and demographic data. In fact, it also offers something many prospecting tools lack: technographic search. This means you can use Sales Navigator to find accounts that use platforms like Salesforce CRM or Magento.
Getting a Sales Navigator subscription also gives you access to LinkedIn’s premium InMail feature, allowing you to reach out directly to people who aren’t your first connections.
Sales Navigator isn’t perfect, however. The tool’s lack of exporting features can be quite frustrating, especially when you want to move data to your CRM. It doesn’t support integrations with CRMs, either. But, fortunately, you can use a third-party tool like PhantomBuster to scrape and export data from Sales Navigator.
2. Snov.io
Snov.io is a mature sales automation tool with a whole suite of useful features, from prospecting functionality to a fully fledged sales CRM.
It has a limited free plan, called Trial, that offers 150 credits (Snov.io’s currency for finding or verifying emails, etc.) and 100 email recipients. You’ll also get access to the tool’s free LinkedIn Prospects Finder, which is a Chrome extension for generating leads from company profile pages, and LinkedIn search and Sales Navigator search pages.
You can also combine the LI Prospector Finder with Snov.io’s free email finder to collect business emails from LinkedIn profiles. The email finder helps you find emails from different websites, blogs, and even Google search results.
3. LinkedHelper
LinkedHelper is a third-party lead generation tool designed to help you discover new leads, manage contacts through its built-in CRM, run targeted campaigns, and reach out to prospects at scale. It’s also one of the most secure third-party LinkedIn automation tools because, unlike Chrome extensions, it doesn’t embed itself into LinkedIn’s page (meaning it’s harder to detect).
LinkedHelper lets you automate a lot of repetitive lead generation tasks, like messaging (you can set autoresponders), invites, and recommendations, etc. The tool is designed to help sales, marketing, and recruiting teams work better. It comes with a 14-day free trial (with limited features) and the paid plans start at $15/mo (with discounts for longer commitments).
4. Magical
Magical is a free Chrome extension that helps you collect information on prospects and send them personalized messages faster. It has text expansion features (so you can save message templates with custom variables to prospect faster), and also lets you scrape prospect data from open tabs and teleport it to a destination, like a Google Sheet or your CRM.
Magical doesn’t require any setup or technical expertise—downloading it takes just a click, and it works wherever you do (there’s no need for any integrations). You can combine Magical with other LinkedIn prospecting tools to get the most out of it. Because unlike a tool like Sales Navigator, Magical won’t help you search for leads. But once you’ve found them, it helps you update your CRM with their details and send them personalized messages.
5. WeConnect
Like LinkedHelper, WeConnect was also designed to help sales pros, recruiters, and marketers work better. If you’re looking to connect with lots of prospects in a short timeframe, WeConnect helps you get around LinkedIn’s weekly invite limits. You can use the tool to upload your prospects’ email addresses and connect with them at scale.
WeConnect also lets you track and run message campaigns, set autoresponders, manage your team and campaigns, and it even gives you free InMail messages to reach out to people outside of your network.
It has a simple pricing plan starting at $49/month per user, with discounts for annual billing and multiple users.
6. LeadIn
LeadIn claims to be the most secure LinkedIn prospecting tool, and while we can’t promise that it is, it definitely has some solid security measures. LeadIn provides users with a dedicated, local IP address, as opposed to a different IP every time you log in. This local IP feature stops LinkedIn’s algorithms from picking up suspicious activity.
As far as its feature set is concerned, LeadIn is pretty well rounded. It helps you find your prospects’ business emails and verify them in real-time (no more email bounces—phew!), and you can use the smart inbox feature to manage all of your interactions in one place, and the email integration for multichannel outreach.
LeadIn’s only real drawback is the hefty price tag—the paid plans start at 97€ per account, per month. If you’d like to take the prospecting tool for a spin first, opt for the free 14-day trial.
7. PhantomBuster
PhantomBuster isn’t a dedicated LinkedIn prospecting tool, but it can help you get more out of your prospecting efforts, and it works nicely with other prospecting tools. PhantomBuster is a LinkedIn data scraper and automation tool tailored to social media platforms, making it one of the most valuable tools for social media selling.
With PhantomBuster, you can scrape and export data from LinkedIn or Sales Navigator’s search results, making up for LinkedIn’s lack of exporting features. You can also use PhantomBuster to scrape information about company pages, followers, and prospects that you’re interested in reaching out to.
If you’d like to get a feel for PhantomBuster’s potential, check out its library of pre-made automations for LinkedIn and LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Start prospecting on LinkedIn today
LinkedIn is a great platform for finding your ideal customers, connecting with them, and cultivating professional relationships. It’s got 875 million members spread across 200 territories, so there’s a good chance that your prospects are on it.
LinkedIn’s own business tool, Sales Navigator, is great for performing targeted searches and discovering new leads. But if you need extra features—like data exporting, message personalization, or a LinkedIn CRM—then you’ll want to consider third-party tools.
Got questions?
Great, because we have answers.
1. Is LinkedIn good for prospecting?
You bet! In one survey, 40% of B2B marketers cited LinkedIn as the most effective channel for generating high-quality B2B leads. LinkedIn is the largest professional network, so by extension, it has a lot of valuable data for prospecting and generating leads.
2. How do I use LinkedIn as a prospecting tool?
You can use LinkedIn to search for prospects, connect with them, and send them personalized messages. LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator tool also comes with lots of filters to help you find your ideal customers and reach out to them.
3. What are the business tools on LinkedIn?
LinkedIn has several business tools, including LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Recruiter, Ads, Campaign Manager and Marketing Solutions.
