7 Best Sales Prospecting Tools for Small Business Budgets

Sales prospecting is a difficult task. Not only do you have to research to find the right potential leads, but you also need to reach out, make contact, encourage them to start a conversation, start building rapport, and then keep them moving through your sales pipeline until a deal is closed. If you are a small business, you may not have a sales team in place to help and this may fall on you to do while you run your business. When it comes to prospecting, the internet is a great place to start but you will soon get overwhelmed as to where to search. Fortunately, there are plenty of platforms out there that you can use as a guide in your prospecting journey that are designed to specifically cater to small businesses. 

With the advent of technology and open-source technology, it’s become a lot easier to find free and inexpensive tools you can use to help in your efforts. SMBs and solopreneurs have a lot more resources today to handle everything from prospecting and finding leads to tracking them, scoring them, and even continuing the relationship after the initial contact.

These tools are there to assist you and your sales team and free up valuable time. This allows your team to spend more time with each prospect and give them a more personal experience. It also ensures that your team isn’t wasting time on tedious sales admin work when more time should be spent on negotiating and closing deals. In the list below, we’ll look at seven must-have tools to help you improve the sales prospecting efforts for your small business.

The 7 tools every small business can use for sales prospecting

1. Smith.ai

You know Smith.ai for our dedicated team of 24/7 virtual receptionists who answer inbound calls, but we do so much more to help small businesses. Our Outreach Campaigns greatly improve an SMB’s sales development efforts. We make outbound calls to leads with your goals in mind, whether it is to schedule appointments, take payments, or screen leads. We even have bilingual services, if needed. Let us focus on your lead follow-ups and sales outreach while you run your business.

To learn more, schedule a free consultation to discuss how the 24/7 sales-trained, live agents at Smith.ai can improve your sales prospecting.

2. EngageBay

EngageBay is a great tool that helps determine where each lead came from and offers lead scoring software, which identifies your most qualified leads and lets you track engagement. That way,  you know who to follow up with. The best part is that it is free for up to 15 users, which makes it a great fit for small businesses. They also offer built-in landing pages, will help you customize your sales pitch based on client details, and give you a clear sales pipeline visualization. This will help you get started, but if you want more features, their upgraded plans include email sequencing, workflow automation, reporting, call records & scripts, and a dedicated account manager. 

3. Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a CRM by salespeople, for salespeople. You can automate just about any step of your sales process. Once you create a deal, you can trigger personalized emails, or move a deal along the pipeline while you focus on more important tasks. Their Essential plan starts at just $14.90 per month per user and comes with a 14-day free trial. In just one dashboard, you can view and manage leads, deals, contacts, and events which is convenient. They also allow you to import data from a spreadsheet or prior CRM and they integrate with over 400 apps, so it works with the programs you already use. By having all your lead information in one place, it makes it easier to gather, store, and follow up with prospects.

4. Reply

Reply is an AI-powered sales engagement platform that automatically creates new opportunities at scale. You can look through their B2B database and filter to build prospect lists. From there, you can generate tailored sequences. They know what channels work best for your specific cases. Reply handles basic customer responses, like sharing more details, addressing common objections, and even booking meetings. They can take care of the full engagement cycle for you. For $60 per user per month, you can connect one mailbox account to send emails, receive 1,000 data credits monthly, and have access to their conversational AI assistant. Reply does offer a free plan with limited features, which is a good way to check out what they can offer before moving forward with a paid plan. 

5. Crunchbase

Crunchbase is an all-in-one sales prospecting solution that helps you find target companies at scale, use verified contact data to identify the right people and connect with decision-makers right within Crunchbase. One of the biggest selling points is that it comes with live data that you can narrow down by job title, industry, and company, then segment and design your ideal lead generation strategy. You can also keep tabs on trigger events and buyer signals to make more intelligent decisions about deals in the future. Plans start at $49 per user per month with a free trial available for testing..

6. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn is a big competitor in the sales world and its Sales Navigator tool is one reason why. You can use it to see real-time sales updates to your lead database, segment them, and then reach out to their millions of members with their DM or InMail features. With their Core plan, you can receive alerts on your saved leads or accounts, and create custom lists. It also integrates with your CRM, making information sharing a breeze. There are several tiers of the platform available and although it’s not free, it can be worth every penny.

7. Overloop

Overloop is a sales engagement platform that helps you streamline and improve the management of your sales pipeline by creating more personalized outbound campaigns —  mixing cold emails, LinkedIn automation, and phone calls. One of their best features is their visualization tool. You can use it to see your entire sales prospecting process and track your performance, which allows you to execute better sales strategies. Overloop can help you automate your workflow and track all inbound and outbound conversations with its CRM tool plus it integrates with many third-party apps. With pricing as low as $40 per month per user, and with its 14-day free trial, it is a platform you might want to check out. 

Get help with sales prospecting when you partner with Smith.ai

Running a small business can be overwhelming. Not only are you responsible for operations and overhead, but also for making sure you’re constantly in “sell” mode. 

Smith.ai can reduce the amount of sales development work that typically falls on you and your team’s plates. Let our Outreach Campaigns team supply you with targeted leads (at the low cost of $1/lead), and then do the outbound calling on your behalf. We’ll even send follow-up texts and emails to improve conversion rates. In doing so, we’ll create more sales opportunities for your team, so you can focus your time on high-value work — like closing the deals.

To learn more, schedule a free consultation now.