Finding good leads has personally been one of the most energy and time-consuming tasks in my job, and I can say with a high degree of confidence that a lot of people feel the same way–the hours spent sifting through salesforce reports, LinkedIn profiles and doing research can be draining. It’s time that is taken away from doing the job itself–cold-calling. Because of this, I don’t enjoy prospecting. It can be boring, inefficient and requires a lot of willpower to get through. To cope with this struggle I have learned to use the following tools:
- Waalaxy:
This tool will help you skip the hassle of spending hours looking for good prospects to contact on LinkedIn. Using this tool has allowed me to send out hundreds of connection requests to CFOs and Heads of Finance simply by creating some filters and letting the tool do the work for you. Over the weeks I then get new connections added to my network that I can simply add to my CRM and message.
2. Surfe (Ex-leadjet)
This tool allows you to simply go on a LinkedIn profile and add it to Salesforce with one click. This allows you to check whether the prospect is already a customer, whether another Salesperson has contacted the lead, or create a new CRM profile for the lead. Without this tool, I’d have to do the contact-creation manually which would cost me way too much time.
3. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
This list would be incomplete with Sales Nav–it’s crucial for good prospecting. With Sales Nav you can go an account’s profile and find out valuable insights on the company, including headcount growth, who the decision-makers are and even “buyer-intent.” Buyer-intent measures how many employees from that company are viewing your product’s website or LI page, a good indicator of possible interest in using whatever product your selling.