8 sales prospecting tools you need for personalized outreach

Good sales teams recognize that prospecting takes a lot of effort–one that works best when accompanied by the right tools and strategy. In a previous post, we discussed the challenges facing sales teams today and key strategies for addressing them. Here, we’ll explore eight tools that enable sales teams to employ those strategies. Specifically, these tools help streamline workflows and hone personalized outreach efforts in order to improve sales pipeline and achieve better results.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

This tool is beloved by sales teams, and with good reason. LinkedIn Sales Navigator empowers users to find the right prospects and target accounts while providing insight on the best way to reach them. How? By culling data from the profiles of LinkedIn members to provide up-to-date and straight-from-the-source information on who they are and what they’re interested in. LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps users organize these insights through a combination of sales prospecting lists, filters,  and algorithms, allowing them to reach the right people, at the right place, with personalized messaging.

As a research tool, LinkedIn Sales Navigator can help sales reps identify decision makers and personalize their outreach by ensuring they understand the prospect–their industry, company, and how the sales rep’s product will help improve a prospect’s business. It has the added benefit of syncing with CRMs (as well as a host of other tools) to improve prospecting outcomes. We wouldn’t dream of prospecting without this tool–and to put our money where our mouth is, we’ve created plenty of content to help you understand the best way to use it.

Salesforce

Salesforce can easily be the backbone of your sales operations. It helps teams manage every stage of the sales cycle by providing an easy way to understand customer data and take action based on them. It’s an industry go-to thanks to its ability to effectively organize information and create campaigns based on that data, as well as its ability to sync with other popular prospecting tools, including LeadIQ. It’s also one of only two CRMs that sync with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, making it a preferred choice for teams invested in the most modern and forward-thinking solutions.

Outreach

Outreach is a sales execution platform that provides data-driven insights alongside automation capabilities so that sales teams can improve their efficiency, predictability, and growth. This tool layers on top of your CRM, offering an automation-enhanced boost so that sales reps can spend less time performing low-level activities, and more time engaging in high-level ones, such as personalizing their prospecting outreach. For example, the platform automatically updates customer information and syncs those updates to the CRM, automates cadences, and provides analytics on performance to boost future efforts. It’s a robust solution that will behoove any sales teams looking to advance their ‘outreach’ operations (pun intended).

Salesloft

Salesloft is a sales engagement platform that shares many of the same objectives as Outreach. Both platforms aim to help users close more deals by providing insights into the buyer’s journey, automating key processes, and streamlining workflows. For example, they share the ability to track engagement activity, set up sequences for email and call, and update information in a user’s CRM.

When it comes to personalization, Salesloft can make sure that your message gets to your prospects (and not in a spam folder) through custom tracking domains that help you track analytics and avoid the “junk mail” label. We recommend Salesloft for budget-conscious teams who are still looking to boost their productivity levels.

Vidyard

For those looking to create personalized and creative outreach, Vidyard is pretty close to necessary in your tech stack. This tool allows users to easily create short videos that are supported by a host of sales-specific options, including templates and analytics for audience engagement.

Users can easily create video clips that directly engage with a prospect and their interests. A custom-made video is one of the smartest and most effective ways to get noticed because it will stand out amongst even the best-written emails. It’s also multi-functional since a well-planned video can serve dual purposes as content for a prospecting email and social media post. When it comes to upping your efficiency, creativity, and personalization efforts, Vidyard checks all the boxes.

Gong

Gong is an intelligence revenue platform, meaning it provides insights into customer interactions and analyzes outcomes so that teams can make better choices around their strategy and pipeline operations. The platform can provide team-wide insights on deals (ongoing and closed), performance, and the marketplace.

When sales teams work with Gong, they’re granting prospectors data-driven insights into what’s working with their engagement and what isn’t. This information elevates nebulous hunches about word choice in a phone call into the more scientific realm of data-driven insights. These insights can help you have more personal sales conversations, informed by what your prospect is looking for and delivered in a manner that makes sense to them. It’s also a great way to bring new hires up to speed, as they can listen to past conversations to become more familiar with a customer.

MixMax

MixMax is a sales engagement platform built specifically for Gmail. It includes a host of features that aid personalization efforts. For example, users can schedule meetings with a single click, eliminating the clumsy back-and-forth that can accompany making an appointment and granting prospects more time to learn about the client. In the same vein, MixMax can help users stay organized. It sends automated alerts and reminders for when users need to follow up with a customer, or when someone engages.

For personalization specifically, the platform uses data from your CRM and LinkedIn to increase reply rates with highly-personalized messages and campaigns. It helps you craft a perfect message by relying on social and CRM insights, making it possible to write a catchy email without having to leave your inbox. MixMax also features Side Chat: a capability that allows users to collaborate with team members on an email to make sure it’s pitch-perfect before hitting send. The platform also allows users to write personalized polls and surveys that increase engagement levels.  

LeadIQ

We’re listing ourselves last here only because we’re polite. LeadIQ is a strong asset in helping sales teams strengthen their outreach through personalization. Our Compose feature helps users generate tailored, complete messages for any prospect in seconds. Using patented AI technology, LeadIQ writes messages from scratch. Each message has a greeting, an insight specific to your prospect, and a tie to your value prop. This allows users to personalize their outreach at scale with just a few clicks.

That’s not all we offer. Our signature 1-click capture & sync feature helps you capture contact information, such as email addresses and phone numbers, for preferred prospects and sync it to your CRM. This capability expedites workflows and creates more time for personalization efforts.

Want more recommendations for prospecting tools? Check out our other blog post on ten free tools that help sales teams get ahead. To learn more about how LeadIQ is helping sales teams strategically prospect with personal, timely messages, check out our blog or book a demo with us.