Working in sales can be a tough gig sometimes. You have targets to hit, deadlines to meet, and managers to keep happy. That’s why sales prospecting tools have become really popular in the sales world, and should be an important part of any salesperson’s toolkit. 

But what is a sales prospecting tool, why are they so useful, and how do you know which ones are right for you? Let’s tackle those questions one at a time, before getting to the list.

What is a sales prospecting tool?

Imagine a piece of software that helps to automate the process of identifying potential buyers, connecting with them, and converting them into customers. Sounds pretty great, right? This is exactly what a B2B sales prospecting tool does. It’s all about reducing time spent on tasks, streamlining systems, and maximizing results.

What are the most useful tools for prospecting? 

While you might initially feel excited about having some extra support, a little digging into the tools out there can quickly make you feel overwhelmed instead. There are a lot of options available to you. (But who wants to comb through 40+ options?!)

That’s why we put together a handy, slimmed-down list, complete with guidance on the best features of each tool. Use it to find the one that’s right for you, so that you can find your prospects, engage with them the right way, and close more deals. (Hey, you might even scoop up that salesperson of the month award, while you’re at it.)

The best sales prospecting software

When evaluating sales prospecting tools, you’ll want to consider how easy they are to implement into your existing workflow, what kind of time savings they offer, and how much of an impact they’ll make on your monthly targets. With those things in mind, here are the top 10 any salesperson should consider.

1. Magical

‍Best for: Companies or individual salespeople who want to automate their processes and save buttloads of time. (Yes, that’s a scientific unit of measurement.)

Cost: Free.

Before we dive into more traditional sales prospecting tools, it’s worth mentioning why no sales prospecting toolkit is complete without Magical.

With Magical, you'll never have to type the same thing over and over again. Instead, you can refine your best messages, add variables for personalization, and save your templates as easy-to-access shortcuts. Simply type // and choose the message you want to send. Magical will automatically fill variables with key info like the recipient name and company. 

Beyond filling spreadsheets and sending personalized messages en masse, Magical can also painlessly update your databases and forms (like your ATS or CRM). Imagine you have  a set of LinkedIn profiles open and want to add a new prospect to Salesforce (or any other CRM). Simply hit // in the first form field and Magical will auto-populate your fields. 🪄

2. Crunchbase

‍Best for: Companies looking for recommendations that match their ideal customers.

Cost: $49 / user / month on the Pro plan.

Crunchbase is all about simplifying your sales workflow. It does this primarily by suggesting companies to you based on your ideal customer profile. Using Crunchbase’s advanced search tool, you can use various filters—including industry, location, IPO status, funding amount, investment stage, and more—to find and secure new prospects. 

Crunchbase’s database and sales prospecting software also helps you to contact prospects at exactly the right time by alerting you when a company reaches a particular milestone, such as moving to a new investment stage or raising new funding.

3. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

‍Best for: Companies actively familiar with and using LinkedIn.

Cost: $99 / month / user on Professional account

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful B2B prospecting tool that helps you to find sales prospects on the largest professional and business social network, LinkedIn. LinkedIn Sales Navigator gives you a wide variety of advanced search filters and lots of info about each prospect, which is useful for targeting your sales efforts and generating qualified leads.

You can also use InMail credits to contact people directly through the platform, rather than using the limited “connect” features of the main social network.

‍Also read: 

• LinkedIn recruiter message template: 5 spellbinding options
• 4 Tools for Smarter LinkedIn Automated Messaging
• What are the best LinkedIn Automation Tools?

4. ZoomInfo

‍Best for: Companies looking for a large amount of data to explore.

Cost: Starting at $14,955 / year.

It’s always handy to get access to a lot of data and background info on a wide variety of businesses and people. ZoomInfo is a powerful sales prospecting tool because it offers an enormous database of potential prospects. You can dig really deep into company data, including granular details such as department lists and org charts. 

The level of detail on ZoomInfo’s lead lists will help you to tailor your communication approach when you reach out to new prospects. And it’ll give you the info you need to identify companies that are well-suited to your product or service. 

5. Semrush 

‍Best for: Companies wanting to boost their SEO performance. 

Cost: $120 per month on Pro plan.

Semrush is more of an SEO solution than a sales prospecting tool, but it can also be used in combo with a tool like Crunchbase to reveal extra useful info about your prospects. Through Semrush, you can uncover data on your website’s number of monthly visits, number of page views, your homepage’s bounce rate, and other details. 

You can use this information to gauge the potential success and growth of a prospect, and to reference pain points that the prospect might be feeling. For example: “I saw that your traffic dropped with the latest Google algorithm update. Here are a few tips for you to figure out what’s gone wrong.”

Note: There are lots of similar SEO tools out there—Ahrefs, Moz, SimilarWeb, SpyFu, and more. Do some exploring to find one that suits you best.

6. Clearbit Prospector

‍Best for: Companies looking for real-time updates.

Cost: $24K per year for Reveal Premium.

Clearbit Prospector is an online sales prospecting tool that helps you to build accounts and lead lists that are highly-targeted to your ideal market. The best thing about Clearbit is that the data is kept meticulously up to date, with real-time updates and the near-constant refreshing of data. 

Clearbit is also very good at helping you identify the companies that visit your site anonymously, and alerting you when key accounts engage. This info helps you to drive engagement, and also to to build target lists based on custom criteria.

7. Calendly

‍Best for: Companies wanting to manage their calendars better.

Cost: $12 per user per month on Professional plan.

Calendly isn’t a standalone sales prospecting tool, but it can be used to streamline and boost your sales processes when combined with one. It’s a scheduling tool that makes it simple and quick for potential prospects to book a call, demo, or meeting with you. 

Calendly syncs directly with Google Calendar and automatically makes blocked-out time unavailable to prospects. You can also get a plugin that syncs with Gmail to make it even easier to schedule events with prospects. (Combine this with Magical and those emails will be out in seconds!)

8. Overloop (Formerly, Prospect.io)

‍Best for: Companies looking for smooth CRM integration.

Cost: $19 per user per month.

Overloop is a sales prospecting tool that integrates smoothly with some of the biggest CRM platforms out there, such as Hubspot and Salesforce. It also includes a number of powerful features, including in-depth reporting, forecasting, and email automation to make your life easier and more productive. 

Simply install a Chrome extension to search for the contact details of your key decision-makers in any domain.

9. FollowerWonk

‍Best for: Companies interested in using Twitter as a sales tool.

Cost: $29 / month on Target plan.

With 330 million users, there’s no denying Twitter’s position as one of the world’s most powerful social networking platforms. This makes it a hugely valuable source of potential leads and prospects.

FollowerWonk gives you everything you need to deep-dive into Twitter. Search for specific keywords and FollowerWonk will create a list of all the handles that use that word in their bios, as well as info on where they’re based, what kind of topics they discuss on Twitter, and who they follow. This makes it easy to start engaging with them.

10. Mention

Best for: Companies interested in monitoring what’s in the press.

Cost: $99 per month on Starter plan.

If you’re going to land a variety of leads and prospects, you need to cast your net far and wide. Mention is a media-monitoring tool that lets you know whenever a brand or keyword you stipulate is mentioned. 

You can use it to monitor sentiment about your own brand or that of your competitors, or to see what kind of publicity prospects you’re interested in are getting. Mention monitors over 1 billion platforms across the internet every day, including press articles, review sites, forums, and blogs.

Integrating Magical with B2B prospecting tools

Equipping yourself with the right software is vital to the success of your sales activities. But as this list shows, the definition of “sales prospecting tools” is more varied than it first seems. This means it’s important you pick a platform that suits your needs best.

Whatever you decide, each and every one of the tools we’ve featured here integrates brilliantly with Magical. No matter which sales tool, CRM platform, or sales prospecting software you’re using—Magical just works. Download it for free today and watch the magic happen.