6 Game-Changing Sales Tools for Prospecting in 2022

The market for sales technology has become one of the most congested tech genres in the business arena. Today, sales teams have to choose from over 2000 sales technologies to build out their tech stack. Whether they’re looking for sales tools for prospecting, buyer engagement, reporting and forecasting, or demo augmentation, there are hundreds of options for each.

That type of expansive market growth manifests the state of modern B2B sales and the necessity for digital capabilities across the entire sales process. One aspect of the sales process in desperate need of digital transformation is outbound.

In a recent poll, 37% of respondents voiced that the biggest trend in sales over the next two years is a need to completely transform how sellers execute and structure outbound activities. To no surprise, when you Google “sales tools for prospecting,” you’re faced with 18 million pages of results and hundreds of options.

That’s where the challenge is. With so many prospecting technologies to choose from, it can be hard to figure out which tools are the best for creating an ecosystem that enables efficiency while delighting your prospects.

However, a good starting place is differentiating between wants and needs when it comes to prospecting tools. At a base level, your toolset for outbound should address these four areas:

• Easily accessible and accurate buyer information (there’s nothing worse than mistaking Jon Doe for John Doe when your prospecting)
• Sequence automation so you never miss a touchpoint (because ain’t nobody got time for that!) 
• Data collection and insights so you can optimize your methods to make better decisions (you don’t want your time and efforts going to waste, right?)
• Creative ways to reach your prospects (the more you think outside the box the better) 

We’ve rounded up all the tech tools you need to build the best modern outbound tech stack and break the mold of traditional sales. 

Related Content: Modern Outbound Playbook & The Modern Outbound Tech Stack

One Sales (Engagement) Platform to Rule Them All 

Wouldn’t it be great if you had one platform that tracked all of your sequences, integrated with your tried-and-true tools, and actively measured the sentiments of your prospects? Of course, you would — that’s why we recommend Outreach, the leading platform in sales engagement. 

Outreach’s Top Features

• When building your sequences, you can leverage templates and snippets to save time, allowing you to follow up faster with answers to common questions or objections. 

• Got a lot of prospects in your pipeline? No problem! ’The user dashboard in Outreach provides quick access to sequence status and daily tasks. You can also toggle between sequence states to prospect activity and status. (Quick Tip: make sure you attentively build out your instances so that sales reps don’t run into common mistakes and admins don’t have to constantly set new rules.)

• Outreach now offers Buyer Sentiment reports, which go beyond the vanity metrics of “open” and “clicked.” The platform analyzes positive vs. negative responses, objections, unsubscribes, and more. The guessing game of message resonation becomes a lot easier with Outreach. 

Get Personal with Your Prospects and Send a Video

Video is an incredible resource for showcasing your personality and reassuring any stakeholders that there indeed is a human behind the screen. For video prospecting, our endorsement goes to Vidyard. 

Vidyard’s Top Features

• Vidyard makes it easy to record and send videos in just a few clicks and add them to your email sequence. Because Vidyard integrates with Outreach, you can insert your video directly from your Outreach instance or natively from Gmail or Outlook.

• Don’t just leave your prospects high and dry after they watch your video. You can add a CTA button to encourage them to take the next step. Whether that means booking a meeting, requesting a demo, or downloading a piece of relevant content. Make it easy for your prospect to take action. The last thing you want is for them to have to click back to your email for the next step. 
• Vidyard’s native analytics platform gives insights into who’s watching your video, how much of it they watch, how many times they watch it, and more. 

Incentivize With Gifts that Make an Impact

Everyone loves gifts, especially the unexpected kind. In walks direct sending to help sales reps stand out from other sellers.

Historically, direct sending has been the avenue for marketing and CS teams to send out promotional materials. However, frontline sales teams make up the majority of sending teams at 42%, according to Sendoso. Outside of prospecting, sending personalized, relevant gifts can have a huge impact on buyers in later stages of the buyer’s journey. 

We suggest using Sendoso for sales teams on the hunt for direct sending tools to augment their outbound prospecting and customer engagement. Sendoso offers a variety of direct mail, personalization, and eGift options to make a great impression on buyers.

Sendoso’s Top Features

• Address confirmation may have been Sendoso’s most innovative feature addition when remote took over the corporate world. Instead of sending personalized gifts to the wrong address (or uninhabited offices), users can set up their account to require address confirmation before the package hits the mail. 
• Booking meetings can be the hardest part of a seller’s job, but eGift automation offers some incentive for prospects. However, the key is to stand out. Sending a Starbucks gift card is nice, but sending an eGift that aligns with your prospect’s interests puts you on a whole new level. If the prospect is obsessed with fishing, you can send them a gift card to Bass Pro Shops. Sendoso offers hundreds of eGifts for food, beverages, entertainment, and charity.
• Have no idea where to start with Sendoso? Try their new feature, Sendoso Playbooks — a curated selection of products to send and clever messaging you can use to take the guesswork out of direct sending so you can spend more time connecting with buyers. 

LinkedIn Sales Navigator – The Pinnacle of Prospect Info

It’s no secret that LinkedIn Sales Navigator has become one of the best sales tools for prospecting on the market. With more than 800 million members, LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides a user-friendly tool for finding and connecting with your exact ICP. 

LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s Top Features

• The search bar on LinkedIn can only do so much. Conversely, the advanced search options offered in LinkedIn Sales Navigator allow sellers to build and filter in-depth searches. There are more than 30 advanced search options you can apply in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, including geography, industry, headcount, seniority level, and more. You can also save those searches for later and have them updated with weekly alerts.

• Every sales rep knows: you aren’t selling to one prospect, you’re selling to a whole buying committee. Knowing who all is involved can be a big challenge. With the Account Mapping feature, you can see exactly who the other decision-makers in the organization are. 

A good rule of thumb with LinkedIn engagement is the more active on LinkedIn your prospects are, the more opportunities you’ll have to engage with them. However, don’t start by boiling the ocean; choose 25 people to connect with daily and naturally (and creatively!) strike up a conversation through direct messaging. 

Related Content: How to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Successful Prospecting

Richer Database = Fewer Missed Opportunities

How many times have you been ready to contact a prospect only to find that you don’t have all the right contact information? Bounded email? Wrong number? We’ve all been down that road before. That’s why accurate B2B contact info and company data is pivotal to saving reps time in modern sales.

For the most accurate prospect information, with a 95% human-verified database, we recommend SalesIntel.

SalesIntel’s Top Features

• With SaleIntel, you can build lists based on various filters or intent. Fill in any missing information you may have and search for your ideal customer profile and buyer personas. You can easily enrich and improve existing lists. Plus, manage inbound requests and keep your CRM data accurate too. Additionally, if you are a seller in a very niche market, you might benefit from SalesIntel’s custom search requests.
• If you have both SalesIntel and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, your next move should be downloading SalesIntel’s Rev Driver Google Chrome extension. You can automatically capture the contact information for anyone on your open Sales Navigator list and add it to the database. Voila! No more missing information and fully verified.

Take Actionable Insights on Your Performance

How many times has your manager asked for your latest outbound campaign numbers? And how many times have you been scrambling to find them across all your touchpoints? If this sounds like you, you might want to consider a tool like InsightSquared. 

InsightSquared is a six-in-one platform that gives you a complete view of your revenue operations. 

InsightSquared’s Top Features

• InsightSquared brings together all of your outreach touchpoints and data into a single source to gain actionable insights. Instead of running adjacent reports across your various platforms, InsightSquared consolidates them into a single dashboard.
• You also get access to lead source activity broken down by day to determine which plays are over-performing or underperforming. 
• Let’s be real, not all SDRs and AEs have the same skill set when they’re setting sequences, writing emails, or making dials. However, InsightSquared gives sales managers an inside view into where certain reps are excelling and where they need coaching. Users can extract performance trends for each rep to coach each individual and create personalized improvement plans backed by data.

Related Content: B2B Sales Tech to Eliminate Constraints and Influence Growth

Create Your Modern Outbound Tech Stack Today

With the ever-evolving hybrid landscape, the sales tools of the past just aren’t going to cut it anymore. In tandem with the skills and drive of A+ sellers, sales teams need modern tools and resources to help them navigate virtual selling. And with the tools we’ve highlighted here, you’ll be setting a foundation to power through the next set of challenges in store for the digital age.

For more information on the power and impact of these tools, download Skaled’s Modern Outbound Playbook & The Modern Outbound Tech Stack. You’ll learn more about the challenges surrounding outbound sales teams and the modern tech stack empowering today’s digital sellers. Not to mention, a fresh new set of sales plays to keep you and your reps on top.