For those belonging to the world of sales, the use of sales prospecting elements is indispensable. In today’s fast-paced world, sales prospecting is incomplete until it’s accompanied by technologically-equipped sales tools that provide the necessary innovative and futuristic features. Sales professionals make use of various sales tools to not just stay ahead of their peers, but also to skyrocket the number for their company. Of these sales tools, sales intelligence tools enable salespeople to collect, analyse, and present vital information to stay updated regarding new leads and insights.
Statistics state that 70% of the companies consider closing a deal as their topmost priority. This is directly related to prospecting, which is one of the aspects that sales intelligence tools assist businesses with. Over 40% of the salespeople reportedly admit that prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process. While sales prospecting is indeed time-consuming, it gets easier with sales prospecting tools. 33% of the users of sales intelligence tools spend 3–5 hours per week gathering the necessary data using these tools, thereby saving a lot more time.
Sales intelligence tools aid companies in tracking the relevant changes by alerting the salespeople of the opportunities regarding their target audience. It helps organise relevant searches for companies with a specific set of updated data points. Although the job of a sales manager seems like selling services and products to people, deep down it’s a lot more than that. Sales intelligence tools helps businesses learn more about their prospects to make the selling process smoother.
WHAT IS SALES INTELLIGENCE?
Sales intelligence can be defined as a wide range of technologies that assist those in sales towards finding, monitoring, and understanding information regarding prospects and the daily business of their existing clients. Data points including firmographics, technographics, and buying signals can be looked up through research involving sales intelligence tools. Therefore, salespeople can complete their search for companies that perfectly match their ideal customer profile.
Digging through all the information nuggets based on the accounts they’re working on, be it in web or printed media, is a far-fetched idea for any individual. No human can pinpoint all the primary stakeholders within their prospect organisations and identify each person's needs and desires. Sales intelligence tools allow you to index real-time company information from millions of open and public data sources every single day. In addition to being aware of a company’s basic information, they’re also in the loop regarding their hidden traits, such as the kind of website technologies they use, their recently sent buying signals, their current interests, etc.
FEATURES OF SALES INTELLIGENCE TOOLS
The best sales intelligence tools must possess features to aid in the growth of your company. The characteristics to look out for in a sales intelligence tool are as follows:
1. Human-Verified Information: Evaluate the research process, email deliverability rate, and confirmation cycles of a sales intelligence tool. Finding the information to engage the right people at the right companies won’t be served to you on a platter. Therefore, data that is sourced from anything apart from a first-person account needs to be verified and confirmed by humans who understands how this information will be used by the clients.
2. Target-Oriented Database: Being enticed by the number generated by sales intelligence tools is indeed easy. However, what’s more important is to check whether those numbers will be translated to data that you will require in your day-to-day prospecting.
3. Intuitive Relationship Mapping: Look at the way in which contacts, brands, parent companies, and agencies are connected, and the role these connections play in planning your outreach. While rating a sales intelligence tool, see to it that it has the mappings and the decision-maker details you require.
4. Key Integrations: The integrations essential to your sales team should be in direct coordination with the key integrations of the sales intelligence tools you’re using. Therefore, make sure to inquire about the features such as social media, ad creatives, the money spent on media, and CRM.
BENEFITS OF SALES INTELLIGENCE TOOLS
The combination of sales intelligence tools and your marketing efforts is a golden one. Sales intelligent tools are beneficial in several ways, as described below:
1 . Optimised Content Creation : Producing sufficient content is one of the biggest challenges faced by any organisation. Every piece of content, be it a social media post or blog content needs to have competent quality. Sales intelligence tools help you with successful content mapping and creation by providing you with a precise image of the types of buyer personas. It also lends a deeper understanding of the pain points of the relevant prospects, thereby helping you create content that can cause lead generation, lead nurturing, and developing healthy client relations.
2. Efficient Channel Distribution : Sales intelligence tools supply you with the knowledge of how and where to approach your leads, causing efficient channel distribution. Such information further leads to the discovery of new business communities that may have been overlooked previously.
3. Advanced Technologies : With technology available at the tip of everyone’s fingertips, your marketing material should cater to mobile devices as well, which isn’t something to fret over, as sales intelligence tools provide you with the best technologies for your content and campaign distributions. It enables you to optimise your content distribution strategies according to the technologies used by your prospects.
THE BEST SALES INTELLIGENCE TOOLS
Sales intelligence tools assist you in growing your business. Therefore, choosing the best tool is crucial. Here are some of the best sales intelligence tools to opt for:
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1. UPLEAD
A powerful B2B data provider, UpLead lets you build targeted prospect lists. It gives you access to its lead database of more than 46 million verified B2B business contacts in over 200 countries all over the world. More than 50 filters are available to search for prospects, such as job title, technologies used, revenue, company’s location, and the company’s size.
Link to the Website: https://www.uplead.com/
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 5/5
User Satisfaction (social mentions): "UpLead has been perfect for creating business leads!"
2. WINMO
Winmo’s targeted contact search lets you find the right contact very smoothly. Equipped with a lead database that is regularly updated and populated by its team of researchers, they conduct all their work manually. You’re informed early on about the potential sales opportunities through its sales prediction functionality. You also have the option to set up specific alerts and recommendations to avoid missing any popular leads.
Link to the Website: https://www.winmo.com/
Ratings from Capterra: 4.5/5
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4.5/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 8.7/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): "The best resources, accuracy, and results"
3. DATANYZE
Datanyze provides you with all the necessary information regarding the tech stacks of your prospects. It also allows you to search based on different filters and enrich your existing contact information. It analyses your best customers and provides you with similar prospects. They keep you in the loop regarding news such as the kind of live chat solution Yahoo! is using and so on.
Link to the Website: https://www.datanyze.com/
Ratings from Capterra: 4/5
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 8.5/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): "It allows me to build custom prospect target lists."
4. CLEARBIT
Clearbit offers four main products, namely Enrichment, Prospecting, Reveal, and Forms. Enrichment allows companies to enrich their available contacts and add relevant information, like company size, number of employees, or funding. Prospecting helps you to generate leads and build targeted prospects lists so that you can focus on closing deals.
Link to the Website: https://clearbit.com/
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 8.1/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “A great way to learn more about your contacts and accounts through Salesforce."
5. DETECTIVE
Detective helps you dig out all the little secrets and sales triggers of your prospects. For example, you’re given the information as to whether you’ve already done business with your lead’s competitors. Not only can this data be used for a cold calling session, it also allows you to send personalised emails at scale.
Link to the Website: https://www.detective.io/
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4/5
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “Great product! Keeps me connected to relevant information.”
6. HQ DATA
HQ Data’s mailing list feature ensures that you never run out of leads. You can search for your ideal prospects and build reliable lead lists based on different filters such as company size or household income. HQ Data also helps you to understand your existing customer data to derive the right learnings and decisions. It assists you in contact segmentation and campaign management.
Link to the Website: https://datahq.co.uk
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7. DISCOVERORG
This sales intelligence tool lets you find the right buyer personas and score them based on their fit and purchase intent. The various filters allow you to quickly analyse the data sources and to learn more about potential leads. Sending out personalised messages at scale while making sure that their data is at least 95% accurate is made so much easier with Discoverorg.
Link to the Website: https://discoverorg.com
Ratings from Capterra: 4/5
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 8/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “A must have tool for every sales and marketing team.”
8. CRYSTAL
Crystal provides you with the important data about the personality of the next prospect you call. This is done using data based on social media profiles or written texts, through which the tool uses the DISC approach to assess the personality of a person. Therefore, not only does it help you to learn more about the person, but also about their connections to other people.
Link to the Website: https://www.crystalknows.com/
Ratings from Capterra: 5/5
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4/5
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “Crystal helps me to talk to people the way they like to communicate."
9. LEAD411
A sales intelligence tool with a trigger-based sales platform, Lead411 analyses specific sales triggers in order to identify potential sales opportunities. This includes events such as revenue growth or a new executive joining one of your prospects, and so on. You can make profound decisions and recognise the right moment to reach out to your prospects using its sales intelligence features.
Link to the Website: https://www.lead411.com/
Ratings from Capterra: 4.5/5
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4.5/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 8.3/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “Good investment for anyone looking to improve their business.”
10. LINKEDIN SALES NAVIGATOR
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the paid version of LinkedIn. Allowing you to conduct advanced prospect and company searches, it gives you lead recommendations that might fit your requirements. The Sales Navigator can easily be integrated with your CRM and sync all prospect information. It also provides you with real-time updates on relevant events such as job changes.
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Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 8.5/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): "Very helpful platform to engage potential leads."
11. INSIDEVIEW
Insideview is a tool that helps you to get rid of irrelevant and duplicate information to find the right people and companies that really care for your product or service. This is a unifying targeting, marketing, and sales intelligence platform, where companies can gain real-time insights in the market that allow you to make the right strategic choices. The tool’s Go-To-Market Decision Engine aids you in discovering growth opportunities for your company.
Link to the Website: https://www.insideview.com
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4.5/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 8.1/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “Customer acquisition with the courtesy of InsideView.”
12. VAINU
Vainu makes it possible for you to save time while having more sales. It contains hundreds of filters, data visualisation, and notifications about the best timing to contact prospects, and makes it easier for you to close the deal. This tool will let you constantly analyse information to find patterns and give you advanced search filters through its machine- learning algorithms.
Link to the Website: https://www.vainu.com/
Ratings from Capterra: 4.5/5
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4.5/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 9.7/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “Well equipped prospect webcrawler with Hubspot CRM integration and awesome customer support.”
13. ZOOMINFO
Zoominfo is backed by a comprehensive B2B database to ensure that a company finds the right people. It allows you to filter by location, industry, job title, company revenue and more, to make the search as simple as possible. It also aids you in finding only the information you need. This tool gives you the most direct contact information that leads to more sales and bigger growth for your company.
Link to the Website: https://www.zoominfo.com/
Ratings from Capterra: 4.5/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 8.3/10
Ratings from g2crowd: 4.3/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): ““Great data, easy to use and train teams to use, valuable tool for sales/marketing.”
14. DATAFOX
A tool that lends you everything you need to have your CRM stacked up with intelligent company data, not only does DataFox help you have better communication with existing clients and to get more leads, it also gives you the chance to concentrate on more strategic tasks. You can forget about data anomalies or duplicated entries, because this tool scales with your needs.
Link to the Website: https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/datafox/
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4.5/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 8.4/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “Very helpful for BDR/SDR roles.”
15. APOLLO
A unified engagement acceleration platform, Apollo gives its users access to a database of over 200 million contacts. Its main features include a built-in fully customizable scoring engine, full sales engagement stack, native account playbook builder, and an impressive custom deep analytics suite.
Link to the Website: https://www.apollo.io/
Ratings from Capterra: 4.5/5
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4.5/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 8.1/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “Has made prospecting quicker and easier.”
16. OWLER
A sales intelligence tool that serves as a community-based business information and insights platform, Owler provides salespeople with real-time news and alerts. With this tool, companies can also gain insights to help them close more business and stay on top of their competitor’s moves.
Link to the Website: https://www.owler.com/
Ratings from TrustRadius: 8.1/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “Best platform to know more about your market.”
17. D&B HOOVERS
D&B Hoovers is one of the biggest company databases containing over 100 million people and 200 million company profiles. Its data and insights help users accelerate revenue, manage risk, and lower cost. This tool is delivered through the Dun & Bradstreet Data Cloud.
Link to the Website: http://www.hoovers.com/
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 7.3/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “Cost Effective Prospecting Solution.”
18. HUBSPOT SALES HUB
Designed to improve and scale your entire sales process, HubSpot Sales Hub provides you with interaction and engagement tracking and notifications. This makes it easier for companies to track where prospects are in the buyer’s journey and follow up with the right messaging at the right time. It helps you do more outreach in less time with its email templates, automation, and automated data entry.
Link to the Website: Hubspot
Ratings from Capterra: 4.5/5
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4.5/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 8.3/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “Best marketing software that includes awesome features which anyone can use easily.”
19. PROSPECT.IO
Prospect.io fits seamlessly into your existing process of sales prospecting, and also comes as a Google Chrome extension. It helps you find email information for potential leads and also offers a one-click way to launch email campaigns right from the browser. The tool also provides with you an add-in integration.
Link to the Website: https://prospect.io/
Ratings from Capterra: 4.5/5
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 3.5/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 10/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “An amazing prospecting/cold mailing tool.”
20. SALESFORCE SALES CLOUD
Salesforce Sales Cloud intends to optimise sales performance from planning through to closed sales. It helps you connect and sell to leads at scale, and the tool offers some of the most comprehensive, end-to-end sales intelligence features. Its artificial intelligence helps you monitor and adjust your sales strategy and forecast performance.
Link to the Website: https://www.salesforce.com/in/products/sales-cloud/overview/
Ratings from Capterra: 4.5/5
Ratings from G2 Crowd: 4/5
Ratings from TrustRadius: 8.3/10
User Satisfaction (social mentions): “A Fantastic CRM Tool That is Built for Scale.”
About the author
Rachael Chapman
A Complete Gamer and a Tech Geek. Brings out all her thoughts and Love in Writing Techie Blogs.
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