5 Best Prospecting Tools to Boost Sales in 2025

2. Enhanced lead qualification to prioritize high-intent buyers

Whether you’re meeting a prospect at a trade show or they’re filling out a form on your website, you want to know as much about that prospect as quickly as possible. This isn’t just so you can understand if they fit your ideal customer profile–but because as many as 50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. 

Your team can use prospecting tools to quickly gather the foundational information they need to score leads, follow up promptly, and understand who the decision makers are. 

Keeping tabs on engagement data is also crucial. For example, you can use Vidyard’s video view analytics to track which prospects are watching videos. Your team can then translate individual prospects’ levels of engagement to prioritize the most committed leads.

3. Better understand your ICP to drive insights for smarter selling

Have you ever been in a situation where your team had to close every deal possible, no matter what? After a few months, those customers never fully onboard—and at renewal time, they churn, because ultimately they were never going to be a good customer.

That’s why clearly identifying your ideal customer profile (ICP) and target accounts is so important. It helps ensure long-term revenue growth rather than short-term wins. If the entire company is busy providing customer support to customers who are just going to churn, or focusing product development on features that ultimately won’t move the needle, it’s bad news for the entire organization! 

By investing in prospecting tools that leverage artificial intelligence, you can extract deeper insights for smarter selling. This could mean understanding whether prospects really fit your ICP, or crafting the type of message that resonates the most with your desired customer profile. Investing in this area is extra important for startups or companies launching new products. 

At this point, you have a list of the top prospecting tools and clearly understand the benefits of investing in these types of tools. But how do you choose the best prospecting tools for your team? 

Here’s a 5-step process to help you choose the right tool for your use case.

Step 1: Define your prospecting goals 

Every team can benefit from improving their prospecting efforts—but there are no silver bullets that will magically fix your sales strategies or grow your sales pipeline automatically. What would move the needle the most based on where you are right now? Personalization? Automation? Data-driven insights?

If you’re a small startup, you may not have basic tools in place that could save a ton of time. If you’re at an enterprise company, you likely have those basics covered—so, instead, you should look to extract more insights from the data you have, so you can take those learnings into your prospecting efforts. 

So get really, really clear on what you’re trying to solve by adopting a new tool. You might start by writing down your ultimate end goal. Here are a few examples to inspire you:

• Having a 90% accuracy rate on email addresses for cold outreach
• Understanding what content is the most engaging to your perfect prospects
• Reducing certain manual tasks in your team’s sales process

Step 2: Consider key features and functionality 

Once you’ve charted your endgame, your next step is to develop an understanding of the actual features and functionalities you need to achieve your goals. Given the vast number of tools available, it’s important to clearly define what you’re looking for in the next tool your team tests out. 

Back in the day, you may have broken things down by categories of prospecting tools, such as tools for company data, outreach, and follow-up. 

But many basic sales prospecting tools have been updated with AI advancements. This gives them the ability to cover many of those categories at once. 

So what are the features that your dream tool would have? Start by creating a list of requirements, like certain features or integrations. Break those requirements down into “must-haves” and “nice-to-haves”.

Here are a few questions to ask during this process:

• Do you only need prospects’ contact information, or do you need a more comprehensive prospecting solution? 
• Are you looking for a platform that can help with specific elements of the prospecting process, such as sending AI-generated personalized emails? 
• Which features would actually improve your response rates (or another critical KPI)?

Step 3: Read reviews and compare ratings on G2 or other review websites

How do you usually go about finding new tools? Most folks still go to Google as a first step—but we also suggest seeing what comes up when you ask generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, or Grok. Here’s an example AI prompt:

“I work at a [type of company]. We’ve got a gross sales workforce with [X] workforce members. We’re in search of a brand new prospecting device that might assist us obtain [insert goal from step 1] and has [insert feature requirements from step 2]. What are ten gross sales prospecting instruments that match this standards?”

(When asking AI, be sure to’re utilizing a mannequin that works from up-to-date data. Some fashions’ datasets are solely present as much as a sure 12 months, like 2021 or 2023.) 

From there, check out well-liked assessment websites like G2 or TrustRadius. People who find themselves already utilizing these merchandise go away trustworthy suggestions to assist future consumers make knowledgeable selections. You possibly can search the critiques based mostly on sure standards, corresponding to particular key phrases, firm dimension, person roles, or a sure star assessment. (We propose looking out critiques with 3 and 4 stars, as they are usually probably the most useful!) 

On the finish of this step, it is best to have a shortlist of instruments that may meet your wants. Be sure to try every firm’s web site to get an actual really feel for his or her merchandise, in addition to double-checking that they’ve the options and integrations you’re in search of. 

Step 4: Consider pricing and price range

When you’ve recognized your checklist of prime contenders, there’s one last item to do earlier than you attain out for a demo. You want to perceive the prices of the product…and we’re not simply speaking in regards to the pricing.

Most instruments have a price for entry, often per person per 30 days. However many groups neglect the gentle prices which can be additionally related to bringing on a brand new device. This contains workforce coaching and onboarding, technical setup, process disruptions, and maintenance and support costs.

For example, setting up Salesforce is a pretty big undertaking, especially if teams want to do it right the first time and get the most value out of all their features. But setting up Pipedrive or Copper are much easier endeavors. If those smaller solutions deliver all the features you need, it may be in your team’s best interest to go with the lower-lift option.

You can gather information about ancillary costs by scouring the product’s website, or searching social media sites like Reddit. 

Step 5: Request a demo or trial to test the tool

Does the company offer a free tier or trial of their product? Or do they require you to speak to the sales team before testing out the tool? 

We recommend always requesting a demo and testing out the product whenever you can. This way you not only get a personalized demonstration tailored to your needs, but also a sense of how the company treats its customers. Are they not following up with the info you requested? Does their team feel a little too pushy? Does their website say one thing but their product, but in reality, it works differently?

If you’re only experimenting with a free tier or trial, certain features and functionality might be limited—meaning that you’re not seeing the platform’s full potential. If you request a demo and are honest about the fact that you’re testing out a few tools, you may be able to get access to a full version of the product so you can really take it for a spin.

And make sure that you have an actual test prepared! You should try to perform the same processes across each of the products you’re testing. Don’t just get in there and click around—have a clear plan to evaluate! 

Here’s how you can be sure you’re giving each product a fair shot: Tracking your findings on a scorecard. Here’s an AI prompt to help you craft a unique scorecard:

“We are evaluating several tools to help with [insert goal from step 1]. Every device has [insert feature requirements from step 2]. However we additionally want to have a look at the setup course of, coaching necessities, and customer support. Create an analysis scorecard we will use to maintain monitor of every firm and charge them throughout the essential classes.” 

On the finish of this testing course of ,you will have narrowed the sphere to 1 or two prime instruments. That is the place you possibly can take one other take a look at pricing, get your workforce’s suggestions, and negotiate with the seller to see if they will give you a deal.

Whereas everybody on the workforce finally advantages from having the very best gross sales prospecting instruments, probably the most direct advantages will likely be to the workforce members who’re utilizing them each day. Nonetheless, you shouldn’t sleep on the advantages that these instruments may also supply to managers and even firm executives.

Gross sales Representatives (SDRs)

Sale Representatives, also referred to as SDRs, are the quarterbacks of closing offers. Whereas usually probably the most junior position within the gross sales workforce, they’re the frontline of your gross sales workforce. As soon as they get the prospect engaged, they go it alongside to the closers. They’re those within the weeds making an attempt to determine potential clients, drafting chilly emails, and establishing the preliminary conferences. 

SDRs’ opinions matter probably the most when adopting a brand new device—as a result of they’re those finally utilizing it. If administration loves a device however the SDRs don’t, probabilities of it getting adopted and built-in into their each day workflow is slim. 

Explore our agentic AI playbook for SDRs.

Enterprise Growth Representatives (BDRs) and Account Executives

BDRs and Account Executives are those in command of closing the deal. SDRs go the ball over to those reps to be able to transfer the deal down the funnel whereas tackling the prospect’s questions and issues. 

These sellers are nonetheless fairly lively customers of prospecting instruments, together with CRMs, firm and speak to knowledge instruments, and gross sales video platforms. However they’re additionally utilizing different instruments within the stack all through their day-to-day, corresponding to gross sales engagement platforms, assembly schedulers, and AI notetakers. BDRs and Account Executes are centered on getting the handbook duties off their plate to allow them to spend extra time doing what they do finest: closing offers.

Dive into our agentic AI playbooks for BDRs and Account Executives. 

Gross sales managers

Gross sales managers and different leaders are centered on guaranteeing their groups are as productive as doable and on monitor to hit their targets. Managers must also be capable to determine high-intent leads and assist their groups prioritize sure duties and offers. 

They need to have knowledge at their fingertips that may assist them accomplish two targets: Serving to their workforce be the very best sellers they are often, and translating gross sales knowledge into insights for firm executives. So whereas managers could have the least direct involvement with these sorts of  instruments, they want to have the ability to extract insights and show ROI from every prospecting device their workforce makes use of. 

Whew, that was fairly the information! We hope you now have a transparent motion plan on the best way to decide the very best prospecting device for your small business, together with some prime choices to discover. 

And keep in mind, if you wish to stand out in a crowded inbox it is advisable to be utilizing video! Vidyard’s customized video messages are extremely efficient at participating prospects – regardless of should you’re recording movies manually or utilizing AI to robotically ship customized movies at scale.

Automate customized video engagement Use agentic AI to generate and ship customized movies to consumers on the good time, each time. Learn More