That the sales process should be automated goes without saying. Marketing and sales have plenty of tools to make their mundane tasks easier like scheduling follow -ups, finding tidbits of information to personalize their emails, entering customer data to their CRM, bulk messaging, autodialing, appointment setting, invoice generation, and whatnot. But what about B2B lead generation? What aspects of prospecting and lead generation can be automated?
These days trying to sell to random people takes too much time and effort. Whereas some businesses still buy B2B lead lists, others prefer to use other ways of online lead generation, such as:
- Finding new businesses leads on LinkedIn
- Scraping websites for business leads fitting your ICP
- Buying subscription to solid databases
- Analyzing customer data
- Building lead lists in-house
And each of these ways can be automated with relevant tools and software. While some prefer to outsource B2B lead generation to websites and trust their choice of prospecting tools, others tend to generate business leads in-house and need to find what to fill their tech stack with. For the latter, let’s have a quick rundown on lead generation software to speed up the sales cycle.
Automation software to find business leads online
Technology creates ample opportunities for businesses to find qualified leads fast. From publicly-available data to hand-curated lead lists, automated software uses AI-powered insights to make your sales efforts more efficient. Use the category of tools on this list that fits your sales needs the most.
LinkedIn automation software
LinkedIn is a go-to social platform because (1) it is a legit professional network and (2) it has the most up-to-date data. To assist salespeople with their B2B lead generation efforts, LinkedIn provides paid options, such as:
LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Being able to integrate with your CRM platform, Sales Navigator helps salespeople find and connect with business leads using advanced search options and customized lead recommendations. When using Sales Navigator, salespeople can track and save leads, log sales activity, and update lead data (e.g. job change).
LinkedIn Lead Gen Form. As part of the associated ad campaigns, businesses can leverage this tool too. Lead Gen Forms tool facilitates gathering lead data by asking users simple questions. Coming with pre-filled data, forms are easier for leads to use than onsite forms.
The only problem for salespeople, however, is lack of organic automation on LinkedIn. If you want to send 100 messages per day, you do it manually and spend hours prospecting and lead nurturing.
Thankfully, there is an abundance of automation tools that can be used on LinkedIn. Regarding specifically data extraction and scraping, here is a list of tools you can use on LinkedIn:
AeroLeads. If you want to scrape lead data from LinkedIn and transfer to your CRM, this is a trusted tool. Having bulk name search and company search, AeroLeads creates unique mailing lists with verified addresses, enriches lead data, and tracks emails. $49 per month per 1,000 leads.
VoilaNorbert. Available as a Chrome extension, the tool has the best performance on LinkedIn finding and verifying email addresses, setting triggers for certain actions to activate Lead Gen Forms, and adding leads to your CRM. $49 per month per 1,000 leads.
Slik. Extract email addresses of your LinkedIn connections and export data to your CRM. $49 per month per 750 leads.
LeadLeaper. Available as a Chrome extension, LeadLeaper automates email scraping and validation on your LinkedIn lead list. $29 per month per 3,000 leads.
Web scraping tools to find qualified business leads
Many scraping tools are multifunctional and work both on LinkedIn and across the web. So if you have an email extractor for LinkedIn, you most probably can use it on various professional websites to scrape personal and business emails from. Many options have a free trial period and affordable prices.
Hunter.io. The tool searches and validates professional contact information across the Internet. $49 per month per 500 leads
Import.io. The tool scrapes the web and integrates well with other applications. Price is provided at request depending on project size.
Lusha. Available both as a Chrome extension and plugin, the tool not only finds professional email addresses but also enriches your systems and databases. $75 per month per 1440 leads.
Email database software
Many web scraping tools put up extensive databases and provide web scraping services to their clients.
Echobot Target. Having the largest pool of German-speaking employee data, Echobot Target has recently been introduced as a UK company and employee database. The tool facilitates prospecting with data enrichment, lead qualification, sales triggers, advanced search and target audience segmentation.
Zoominfo. The tool uses open source intelligence data to fill up its B2B database with contacts, names, locations, etc. across multiple industries. Zoominfo’s cloud-based platform provides assistance to sales, marketing, and recruiting alike. Having purchased RingLead, ZoomInfo helps combine data sources.
Use Customer Intelligence tools
Customer analytics is an essential component to many B2B lead generation efforts a company may use. Customer Intelligence software often gathers data similar to your current client base. Get a steady stream of qualified leads with any of the following tools:
Datanyze. It’s a sales automation platform that provides accurate email addresses and mobile numbers on your leads.
Vainu. It’s an AI-powered sales intelligence platform that personalizes marketing and sales outreach. Integrations with HubSpot, MS Dynamics, Pipedrive, and Salesforce enables salespeople to update incomplete information on their leads and automate their workflows.
Other lead generation tools
Technology allows salespeople to make use of almost every lead who has ever wandered on your website or got into the pipeline. Don’t let them slip through the cracks with these tools:
LeadFeeder. Reach out to leads that have found you and visited your website to check out the product and pricing. As a B2B website visitor tracking tool, LeadFeeder tracks your leads’ online behavior and website activity and makes predictions regarding their purchase intent.
BuiltWith. It’s a technology tracking platform that reveals what software and technologies other companies use. You can have your lead list filtered by what types of software the company uses and offer them your product.
LeadIQ. As a prospecting platform, LeadIQ provides accurate business information and new contacts for your pipeline. With such integrations as Sales outreach, LeadIQ makes lead management like a breeze.
Folderly. Lead generation is hardly possible without email outreach these days. To help your emails find their recipients without getting to a spam folder, improve your email deliverability up to 99%. Use Folderly, a super-efficient email spam checker.
What tools will you choose for your tech stack?
The abundance of technology these days fills salespeople’s martech to the brim. Don’t blow your toolstack excessively. Read product reviews and make preliminary selections. And then have a free trial to see how a tool works out for your sales goals. It is possible to find a perfect tool that can do LinkedIn and email outreach, scrapes the web, and has a solid database. Know what you need and keep looking.
One more way of finding new leads is to outsource the prospecting process to a professional lead generator. This strategy can work out for you perfectly well if your sales team has limited capacity and is better focused on closing and objection handling. Give us a call if it sounds like you!
