Best Sales Prospecting Software Shortlist
Check out the tools I’ve selected for my top 10 list after evaluating their suitability for your prospecting needs.
- PartnerTap - Best for selling with a partner ecosystem
- Apollo - Best for B2Bs that want access to an existing contact and company database
- Crunchbase - Best for finding new leads based on specific search criteria
- Leadfeeder - Best for finding high-intent buyers in your web traffic
- Cognism - Best for getting B2B phone numbers and email addresses
- Demandbase - Best for using AI to engage with prospects
- Hunter - Best as an all-in-one email outreach solution
- Groove.co - Best for addressing the security and scalability needs of enterprises
- Reply.io - Best for automating personalized communication with prospects
- Vainu - Best for identifying and targeting your ideal customer
- UpLead - Best for finding accurate contact data for your top prospects
- Usergems - Best for reaching your warmest buyers before competitors
Finding, qualifying, and actually reaching new potential clients is a crucial part of most sales operations. But not every organization has quality tools that help them get the job done efficiently while cutting costs and increasing revenue. With my list of the top sales prospecting software options, you’ll learn about the essential features of prospecting tools that help you find and nurture leads, perform in-depth research, and prioritize prospects.
What Is Sales Prospecting Software?
Sales prospecting software is a tool you use to find new leads, make sure they’re quality leads, and contact potential clients to build a relationship and close a sale. Most prospecting tools offer automation to streamline certain tasks, as well as integrations with popular CRMs and other apps to ensure a comprehensive tech stack.
Overviews of the 12 Best Sales Prospecting Software
Below, you’ll find a summary of the top sales prospecting tools on my list, along with a highlight of their best features, popular integrations, a price breakdown, and some pros and cons. You’ll also see a screenshot for each tool to give you an idea of what you can expect from the user interface and inner workings.
1. PartnerTap - Best for selling with a partner ecosystem
This sales prospecting software is a partner-based ecosystem platform that’s designed to securely share information about potential customers with partners. You can access automated account mapping, co-sell with partners, track partner sales pipelines, and explore unique white space opportunities through robust data-sharing controls.
Why I picked PartnerTap: This platform is on my list because of its innovative data-sharing initiatives. You can utilize this tool to sell with, sell through, and co-sell with real-time partner data inside your CRM. See and track partner pipelines and share information with trusted organizations at any time.
PartnerTap Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include partner influence tracking that allows you to get full visibility into your collaboration and route leads to appropriate partners, as well as a mobile sales app that makes it easier to chat with team members and partners about deals.
Integrations include Close.io, Dynamics CRM, HubSpot, Impartner, Magentrix, Salesforce, Slack, Successful Channels, Tableau, Tackle.io, Teams, and Zift Solutions. All integrations are native.
Pricing One-Liner: Custom pricing upon request
Free Trial One-Liner: Free plan available
Pros
- Well-organized with intuitive navigation
- Suggests potential partners from the first log-in
- Automated data mapping to save time
Cons
- If your partner doesn’t have the platform there’s no data to share
- Limited CRM integration options
2. Apollo - Best for B2Bs that want access to an existing contact and company database
As a comprehensive sales intelligence platform, Apollo offers a multitude of tools to help your salespeople prospect, engage, qualify, and contact your leads. This is a versatile all-in-one tool that’s designed to enrich and update accounts, find new leads, and discover your ideal buyer with filters that account for over 65 buyer attributes.
Why I picked Apollo: This B2B sales prospecting tool made my list because they offer a robust database of over 220 million contacts and 30 million companies that can enrich your customer data and enhance your outbound activity, scaling it more effectively with recommendations based on actionable analytics.
Apollo Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include custom outreach with API calls that minimize manual labor, rules-based lead scoring using their behavioral and demographic data, and automatic data enrichment for your CRM.
Integrations include Gmail, Gong, HubSpot, LinkedIn for Business, Marketo Engage, Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce, SalesLoft, SendGrid, and Zapier.
Pricing One-Liner: From $49/user/month
Free Trial One-Liner: Free plan available
Pros
- User-friendly with low barrier for entry
- Powerful and accurate email finder tool
- Straightforward navigation through the tool
Cons
- An excessive amount of spam block
- Limited responsiveness from the help function
3. Crunchbase - Best for finding new leads based on specific search criteria
This platform focuses on automating prospecting tools to provide faster personalized insights that ensure more qualified leads. Crunchbase provides an advanced search tool that helps sales teams search for prospects dependent on specific criteria, like company size, headquarters location, industry, and other company data.
Why I picked Crunchbase: One unique aspect of Crunchbase that put it on my radar is the way it recommends companies as prospects based on your ideal buyer profile. The tool searches its own database to enhance your prospect list with contact data from organizations you might not know about.
Crunchbase Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include prospect tracking with real-time alerts for your sales representatives so target accounts never go stale, as well as contact information and email verification that always connects you to company decision-makers.
Integrations include Aberdeen, Aumentoo, BuiltWith, G2 Stack, Itonics, IPqwery, Knowledge360, MadeMarket, PrivCo, and Salesforce.
Pricing One-Liner: From $29/user/month
Free Trial One-Liner: 7-day free trial + free plan available
Pros
- Targets data for SaaS sales
- Extremely user-friendly platform and navigation
- Has a very extensive database of company information
Cons
- Comes with a high price tag for small businesses
- Salesforce integration could use improvement
4. Leadfeeder - Best for finding high-intent buyers in your web traffic
As a cloud-based sales prospecting tool, Leadfeeder helps your team identify website visitors using Google Analytics data. Any time one of your target companies visits your site, you’ll get an automatic email notification to ensure you can follow up with unique email sequences in a timely manner. Leadfeeder is designed to improve your prospecting efforts by automatically scoring and prioritizing your website visitors.
Why I picked Leadfeeder: This platform made my list as a valuable prospecting tool because you can control which companies and website visitors ping your interest. Create a list that hides incompatible leads from Leadfeeder and won’t be counted toward your monthly quota of new contacts.
Leadfeeder Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include assigning prospects to your sales team based on industry or web activity and enriching prospect contact information through profile data on social media.
Integrations include Crisp, Drift, Facebook, Google Ads, Google Analytics, Intercom, LinkedIn, Slack, Zapier, and Zendesk.
Pricing One-Liner: From $199/month
Free Trial One-Liner: 14-day free trial +.free plan available
Pros
- Interface and navigation are easy to use
- Ideal for small and medium businesses
- Good onboarding and customer service
Cons
- Going through some growing pains as they integrate with DealFront
- Credit-based pricing structure can be inflexible
5. Cognism - Best for getting B2B phone numbers and email addresses
With this global sales intelligence platform, you can use an internationally compliant database of emails and phone numbers to get worldwide sales coverage of B2B contacts that put you in touch with the decision-makers your team is looking for. You can use this tool to find prospects, update stale data, and populate missing data points.
Why I picked Cognism: Cognism is on my list because it does so much more than just provide you with the contact information for potential prospects. This platform also ensures a 98% accuracy rate for these contacts for high-quality lists that deliver better returns. You can build highly targeted campaigns in less time with their prospector tool.
Cognism Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include compliant mobile data that’s been cleaned against a global do-not-call list and advanced sales intelligence that offers more targeted data for when to contact, who to contact, and what to say.
Integrations include HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, Outreach, Pipedrive, Salesforce, SalesLoft, and Zapier.
Pricing One-Liner: Custom pricing upon request
Free Trial One-Liner: Free demo available
Pros
- 98% accuracy for contact data
- GDPR compliant contact data
- Dedicated customer support rep for each account
Cons
- Limited search filters for contacts in CRM
- Large lists cause a bit of a lag
6. Demandbase - Best for using AI to engage with prospects
This platform is a cloud-based B2B marketing automation solution that’s designed to target your high value accounts with a range of AI automation tools that include Personalization, Advertising, Measurement, and Conversion. You can use these features for account-based retargeting, advertising, analytics, live chat, and campaign performance monitoring.
Why I picked Demandbase: I included this tool on my list because it offers high-level account intelligence that provides predictive models to mine data for insights and actionable recommendations. Using these opportunities, sales teams can engage with clients on a more personal level that makes cold emails and calls a thing of the past.
Demandbase Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include journey stage mapping to tailor messaging and personalize email templates and automated data cleansing and enrichment for higher accuracy.
Integrations include Drift, Dynamics 365, Eloqua, Excel, Gmail, HubSpot, Marketo, Outreach, Qualified, Salesforce, and SalesLoft.
Pricing One-Liner: Custom pricing upon request
Free Trial One-Liner: Free demo available
Pros
- Provides an avenue for better alignment of sales and marketing
- Knowledge-sharing attitude from the customer service team
- AMB-focused features and capabilities
Cons
- User navigation could be a little more intuitive
- No immediate alerts for inbound activity
7. Hunter - Best as an all-in-one email outreach solution
If your sales strategy is focused on closing deals over email, Hunter is the platform that is designed for email outreach and drip campaigns. With their arsenal of tools, you can send cold emails, insert images into your emails, and export domain search results to your other tools. You can use their prospecting tool to find emails on company websites, handle follow-ups, and verify domains.
Why I picked Hunter: I put Hunter on this list because they take their features beyond simply prospecting. You can use their tools to verify domains and track prospects who have opened your emails. Guarantee accurate contact information and monitor contact progress to gain valuable insights into your campaign performance.
Hunter Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include a domain search tool to find the best contact person directly on a prospect’s website, email finder that helps sales professionals find an email based on a prospect’s name, and email verifier that ensures accurate contact information.
Integrations include Captain Data, HubSpot, Kimoby, Lyne.ai, PhantomBuster, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Woodpecker.co, Zapier, and Zoho CRM.
Pricing One-Liner: From $49/month
Free Trial One-Liner: Free plan available
Pros
- Easy to use with the Chrome extension
- Simple, user-friendly interface
- Very low barrier for entry
Cons
- User navigation can be a little confusing
- CC and BCC email options are clunky
8. Groove.co - Best for addressing the security and scalability needs of enterprises
As a sales productivity platform, Groove focuses on building connections. Their platform targets communication tools for better team support, repeatable playbook templates to enhance the buyer journey, and tech stack connections to improve visibility that compound decision-making and data insights.
Why I picked Groove: This platform caught my eye because of its native Salesforce integration. The app really prioritizes engaging on top of Salesforce in order to eliminate the need to map fields or sync two systems. Data remains secure and up to date no matter what you’re doing.
Groove Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include a scalable prospecting tool that personalizes emails, LinkedIn messages, calls, and SMS, as well as advanced activity capture and accurate sales reporting through automated Salesforce interactions.
Integrations include Cloudtalk, Constant Contact, ExecVision, Gmail, Gong.io, LinkedIn for Business, Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce, Seismic, and Spinify.
Pricing One-Liner: Custom pricing upon request
Free Trial One-Liner: Free demo available
Pros
- Simple design for intuitive navigation
- Seamless user-experience for onboarding
- No steep learning curve
Cons
- Limited editing options in the Flow tool
- Limited specificity in email templates
9. Reply.io - Best for automating personalized communication with prospects
As a sales prospecting software, Reply helps your team build targeted prospect lists from their free database of over 100 million contacts. This platform can also help you streamline your sales process through AI tools that handle email template creation, outreach sequences, email prioritization, and email responses.
Why I picked Reply: This platform made my list because it leverages AI to automate many of your manual communication needs. Whether you’re dealing with booking calls or handling objections, the Jason AI tool can respond to incoming emails on your behalf.
Reply Standout Features and Integrations:
Standout features include automated multi-channel outreach through email, social media, and SMS and Jason AI — the first B2B conversational AI that’s powered by ChatGPT.
Integrations include Gmail, Hightouch.io, HubSpot, Hyperise, Integrately, LimeLeads, LeadFuze, Make, noCRM.io, and Zoho CRM.
Pricing One-Liner: From $60/user/month
Free Trial One-Liner: Free plan available
Pros
- Easy to use and learn
- Very responsive support team
- Intuitive and minimalist UX
Cons
- Limits on how many emails you can send per day
- Limited export options for responses to outreach
10. Vainu - Best for identifying and targeting your ideal customer
As a sales intelligence and prospecting platform, Vainu offers users access to a database of about 100 million companies that are already enriched with public, open, and predictive data. This platform can transform haphazard data into actionable leads and insights by identifying prospect signals and prioritizing valuable sales.
Why I picked Vainu: This solution made my list because of the way it gathers and presents data to sales reps about their prospects. Vainu does the hard work of gathering all the relevant information and then takes it a step further by presenting it in an easily digestible format so your reps can get to know accounts faster and stay on top of any changes.
Vainu Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include extensive filters that help you build targeted prospect lists from the Vainu database and automated prospecting that notifies you as soon as an account meets your predefined criteria.
Integrations include Gmail, HubSpot, Lime CRM, LinkedIn, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Slack, SuperOffice CRM, and Zapier.
Pricing One-Liner: From $4,500/year + $820 onboarding fee
Free Trial One-Liner: Free trial available
Pros
- Very user friendly for sales and marketing
- Easy to learn with minimal training
- Robust B2B contact database
Cons
- Has a steep onboarding fee
- Only offers a Nordic plan or a global plan
11. Uplead - Best for finding accurate contact data for your top prospects
This lead generation software is designed to be an essential prospecting tool that can help any business manage their account-based marketing with targeted sales generation, opportunity engagement, and real-time email verification. You can build customizable B2B prospect lists, configure your criteria for ideal leads, and engage with prospects through email and chat.
Why I picked Uplead: I chose this solution for my list because of their high accuracy for data verification and validation. After grabbing a prospect’s contact data, including mobile numbers, direct dial numbers, and email addresses, you can use their real-time email verification tool to ensure the information you have is correct.
Uplead Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include bulk lookup using over 40 data points to look up prospects in real time, data enrichment that improves your contacts with over 50 data points, and intent data to gauge when a prospect is actually ready to buy.
Integrations include Close, Copper, Dynamics 365, Insightly, Mailshake, Nimble, Outreach, Pipedrive, Salesforce, and Zapier.
Pricing One-Liner: From $74/month
Free Trial One-Liner: 7-day free trial + free plan available
Pros
- Easy to learn and navigate
- Alternative import options for non-integrated CRMs
- An intensive commitment to data accuracy
Cons
- Unlimited lead generation is expensive
- Limited pricing flexibility for low volume leads
12. UserGems - Best for reaching your warmest buyers before competitors
UserGems is a sales prospecting software that targets a very specific type of potential customers — those leads that have changed jobs. Whenever a previous contact starts at a new position, UserGems tracks these job changes and automates the outreach workflow to restart your relationship once they get settled within their new position. This platform operates as an always-on campaign to deliver new leads directly to sales reps every month.
Why I picked UserGems: I included this solution on my list of the best sales prospecting software because they target a very specific niche that can be a highly lucrative lead generator. With access to new hire information, UserGems brings previous customers back to you as a whole new client without anyone having to do anything to re-establish your previous relationship.
UserGems Standout Features and Integrations
Standout features include job change capture that identifies and targets new hires with a previous connection to your company and a streamlined onboarding process that ensures you go live in just one week.
Integrations include Groove, HubSpot, LeanData, Marketo, Outreach, Salesforce, SalesLoft, and Slack.
Pricing One-Liner: Custom pricing upon request
Free Trial One-Liner: Free demo available
Pros
- Frequent alerts of new leads with up-to-date data
- Easy to learn and navigate
- Unique concept to connect you with already warm prospects
Cons
- Some limitations with certain CRM integrations
- Primarily a B2B focused tool
Other Options
Because there are so many sales prospecting and lead generation tools out there, it’s impossible not to mention a few other tools that aren’t part of the selection above. While they might not have made my top 12 list, they may still be the right fit for your needs.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator - Best for LinkedIn-focused prospecting with extended network access.
- Owler Max by Meltwater - Best for using Sales Intelligence to get real-time data on leads.
- HG Insights - Best for data-driven prospecting decision-making targeting LinkedIn and Salesforce.
- Close - Best for sales teams of more than 100 people with national and international needs.
- Lead Forensics - Best tool for identifying and tracking B2B website visitors to cultivate leads.
- Outreach - Best software for consolidating other sales tools in your tech stack and getting rid of unnecessary apps.
- Allego - Best sales prospecting platform with AI-powered enablement for hybrid sales teams.
- Lusha - Best B2B prospecting tool with insights about buyer behavioral signals and interest scores.
Selection Criteria For Sales Prospecting Software
If you’re wondering how I developed my list of the best sales prospecting software for this article, here’s a short summary of the main selection and evaluation criteria:
Core Functionality
Not every prospecting tool is built the same, so I looked for some commonalities that made a tool an ideal solution for a broad range of industries and prospecting processes. Some of the core functionalities I prioritized include:
- Finding and nurturing leads
- Doing a deep dive into prospects
- Prioritizing prospects based on your customer fit
- Efficiently contacting multiple prospects at the same time
- Maintaining a consistent contact schedule for follow-ups
- Streamlining the entire sales process
Key Features
To achieve the functionalities I’ve listed above, you’ll see several features listed repeatedly on every sales prospecting software breakdown, including:
- Lead Generation: This feature is designed to help you find the contact info of new prospects — whether it’s a browser plug-in, existing lead database, or web visitor tracking.
- Lead Scoring: This tool helps you determine which prospects are the best fit for you. It compares a lead’s behavior with your ideal customer profile and helps you keep an eye out for buying signals that tell you when to reach out.
- Lead Management: You can use this feature to track interactions your sales team has with potential buyers, including phone calls, SMS, emails, and real-time chats. You should have a rich history for each client.
- Automation: Sales automation tools help you minimize manual operations within your sales process, like automated dialing for cold calls, welcome messages, and notifications for follow-ups.
Usability
Any tool that joins your tech stack must be easy to learn and navigate, no matter how feature-rich it is. I chose those tools that indicated an intuitive training experience to quickly onboard your team.
Software Integrations
I know you probably have a whole host of other tools that help maximize your sales operations, including a CRM and analytics apps. So I looked for those sales prospecting software options that could integrate with as many other apps as possible to ensure a connection with what you’re using right now.
Pricing
Since every software is slightly different, you can expect to see some variation in the range of pricing plans listed above. While I focused on finding the best price-to-value ratios, there are some plans designed for SMBs (around $15/month) and others designed for enterprise organizations (around $200/month). You’ll also see some free and custom plans on my list.
People Also Ask
Still working on figuring out why you need a sales prospecting software and how you should approach the hunt? Here are a few additional details to answer some of the most frequently asked questions.
What are the benefits of sales prospecting software?
Who uses sales prospecting software?
What are the 3 stages of sales prospecting?
Other Revenue Operations Software
Sales prospecting software isn’t the only tool you may need to streamline your operations. Check out a few of these other essentials to enhance your sales pipeline.
- LinkedIn Automation Tools
- B2B Sales Software
- Sales Engagement Software
- Salesforce Alternatives
- Lead Mining Software
- Sales Acceleration Software
What’s Next?
If you found the right sales prospecting software for your needs on my list, congratulations! It’s time to move forward with other improvements for your organization. Not sure where to go next? The RevOps team has plenty of unique insights for every niche. Sign up for the newsletter to get a look into the newest trends on a weekly basis.