Outbound sales solutions help businesses connect with their target audience. The question now is which one is the best fit for you.
There are many nuances to consider when choosing an outbound sales software. Testing each one to see what fits takes time and resources. We’re here to help expedite that process.
By the end of this guide, you’ll get an idea of which outbound tool to go for and the best practices to follow when doing outbound sales. But first, we need to learn the following:
- What is Outbound Sales software?
- The benefits of using one for your business
- Outbound sales software to consider this 2023
- What to look for in an outbound solution
What is Outbound Sales Software?
Outbound sales software are sales enablement tools that automate lead engagement, outreach, and nurturing. They should be a standard in every sales process.
That’s because your sales team can use these tools to get data-driven insights on user behavior to help you make great first impressions and lasting relationships.
Each outbound software has its own set of unique features. However, most would have one or more of the following:
- Lead generation tools
- Lead nurturing features
- Automated email marketing tools and features
- CRM integration
- Lead tracking
With the help of these features, businesses can create a more robust and holistic sales strategy. But the benefits don’t stop there. You also get the following advantages.
Benefits of Outbound Sales Software
Outbound sales tools align all the departments involved in the overall sales process. When these processes are automated, you get benefits such as:
Better Personalization
Reaching out to prospects is more fruitful when communications are personalized. This applies to all outbound strategies like cold emails, cold calls, or social media outreach. With the right outbound sales tools, you can even automate personalization, allowing you to scale campaigns.
Improved Segmenting and Content Curation
Personalization significantly improves your chances of landing leads. Paired with segmenting strategies, you get to send better, more relevant, high-value content to nurture leads further. This becomes much easier thanks to insights from outbound sales tools.
Automated Transactional Communication
Imagine if a customer buys your product or service and gets notified about the successful payment an hour late. You’d probably get several complaints. Keeping track of all transactions manually is never a good idea. Outreach tools can automate transactional communications based on triggers to give you and your customers peace of mind.
Sustaining Healthy Lead Pipelines
Healthy lead pipelines are crucial for sustainable growth. That means having a steady supply of qualified leads your team can nurture further down your pipelines. You can always find leads manually, but automating this process through outbound software can save you time and ensure leads are qualified and sales-ready.
Creating Predictable Revenue
Establishing a holistic sales strategy paired with an outbound tool's automation and analytics features can help you generate predictable revenue. The more data on your side, the more accurate your sales forecasting becomes.
Each outbound sales software will come with its own unique set of benefits and features. Let’s look at these tools to see which features your business needs most.
What to Look For in an Outbound Sales Software
An outbound sales software is an investment for your business. So, before committing to one, consider this checklist.
Does the Tool Fit Your Budget?
Your budget ultimately decides what outbound software to go for. Some of the tools in our list are built for startups, others for established enterprise sales teams.
What Features Do You Specifically Need?
Outbound tools can have several features integrated into them. Sometimes, you won’t need to use several of those features for your specific goals.
Who is Going to Use Your Outbound Sales Software?
Some tools are better for individual sales personnel, others for sales leaders overseeing campaigns. Make sure you’re choosing the right tool for the right person.
Outbound Sales Software to Consider This 2023
Different businesses require different features from their outbound sales software. We’ve curated a list of the top outbound sales software and included a best-for section to help you determine which one is best suited for your needs.
Instantly.ai
Instantly is an email marketing powerhouse providing unlimited warmups and sending accounts to users (typically, you need to pay for each account and have limited warmups).
You can run entire email campaigns on autopilot, send emails based on user behavior, and track every email through a centralized inbox with just a few clicks.
Thanks to its intuitive UI and user-friendly analytics, even beginners who aren’t tech-savvy can easily pick up and learn how to use Instantly.
Plus, you get a ton of support from our staff and insights from members of our community.
Best For:
- SMBs looking to scale
- Established enterprises looking for an all-in-one email marketing solution
- Cold email agencies and freelancers aiming to expand clientele
Pricing:
- Growth: $30/mo.
- Hyper Growth: $77.6/mo.
Features:
- Automated email sequences
- Unlimited warmups for high email deliverability
- Real-time email tracking
- Automated personalization using merge tags
- Powerful analytics
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn is universally considered the biggest professional hub in existence. Reaching out to these professionals is an excellent way to boost your business growth.
To help you streamline lead generation on LinkedIn, get Sales Navigator. It’s a prospecting outbound software built to find leads that align with your ICP and buyer personas.
Best For:
- Businesses looking for a robust B2B lead database
- Professionals looking to network
- Finding high-level decision makers
Pricing:
- Core: $70/mo.
- Advanced: $106/mo.
- Advanced Plus: Custom pricing
Features:
- Access to the robust lead database
- Up-to-date prospect information
- 10,000 saved leads
- Centralized account management
- Advanced lead and account search features
Salesforce
Salesforce is one of the earliest adopters of the cloud-based CRM model. It offers automation and sales features. You get in-depth sales analytics, revenue reports, and lead tracking.
If you want to enter enterprise sales, Salesforce can be a powerful asset for your sales team. That’s because it can be integrated into existing enterprise systems with ease.
Salesforce has flexible pricing options for all types of businesses. However, if you want to use most of its features, you must go to a higher tier.
Best For:
- Enterprise sales
- High-ticket outreach campaigns
- Businesses looking to scale
Pricing:
- Starter: $25/mo.
- Professional: $80/mo.
- Enterprise: $165/mo.
- Unlimited: $330/mo.
Features:
- Generative AI and Automated Sales Engagement (Only on Unlimited Plan)
- Lead management
- Email automation and tracking
- Forecast management. (Only on Professional plan and above)
- Advanced Pipieline management. (Only on Enterprise plan and above)
Pipedrive
If you want a straightforward CRM without breaking bank for necessary features, Pipedrive is worth looking into. It’s built for startups and SMBs and helps streamline your lead pipelines.
With Pipedrive, you can manage pipelines better through task automation, built-in report generators, and lead tracking at every stage of the lead journey.
Best For:
- Startups
- SMBs
- Agencies focusing on lead management
Pricing:
- Essential: $14.90/mo.
- Advanced: $27/mo.
- Professional: $49/mo.
- Power: $64/mo.
- Enterprise: $99/mo.
Features:
- Lead pipeline management
- Analytics reporting
- Email automation and tracking
- Revenue forecasting (Only on Professional plan and above)
- Document and contract management (Only on Professional plan and above)
Hunter.io
Hunter is an email outreach software that connects you to the right leads. It leverages proprietary algorithms and AI to find verified leads to help you sustain your pipelines.
With Hunter, your team can save tons of time trying to find the right emails of key decision-makers. But if you’ve already tried Hunter and want to look for something similar, here are our recommended alternatives.
Hunter has great email automation capabilities. However, you need to pay for each new email account you add which can add unnecessary overhead for email outreach campaigns.
Best For:
- Businesses that want to scale lead generation
- Small and Medium enterprises
- Sales and Marketing agencies
Pricing:
- Free plan with limited features
- Starter: $49/mo.
- Growth: $149/mo.
- Business: $499/mo.
Features:
- Email tracking
- Custom tracking domains (Growth plan and above)
- 20 free email accounts (Business Plan, +$10 for each new account)
- Email verification
- CRM Integration
ZoomInfo SalesOs
ZoomInfo can give your team a robust overview of high-value B2B leads. It can even help you find the social profiles of leads to further your personalization efforts.
Among the best features of ZoomInfo is its advanced search features that let you pinpoint leads that fit your demographic, have buyer intent, and already show interest in your products.
Paired with a solid analytics tool, your sales team can focus on leads with the highest chance of conversions.
Best For:
- Sales development representatives (SDRs)
- Sales and marketing agencies
- Recruitment agencies
Pricing: Available upon request
Features:
- Sales automation features
- Advanced lead searching
- Generative AI
- Workflow management
- Conversation Intelligence
HubSpot
Hubspot is a powerful CRM and outreach tool that helps the sales team focus on qualified and verified leads. Although Hubspot has email automation features, including sales cadence and follow-ups, it’s not built for sending cold emails.
Best For:
- Sales and marketing
- SMBs and Enterprise
- Businesses looking for a powerful CRM
Pricing:
- Free plan with limited features
- Starter: $45/mo.
- Professional: $450/mo.
- Enterprise: $1,200/mo.
Features:
- Lead management
- Sales pipeline management
- Sales automation
- Automated sequences (Professional plan and above)
- Custom reports and analytics (Professional plan and above)
Salesloft
Salesloft is a sales outreach platform built to improve your team’s productivity in their workflow. The tool boasts intuitive analytics, engagement, and pipeline performance monitoring.
Salesloft also offers tailored sales rep coaching, email automation features, and conversation intelligence for businesses starting out.
Best For:
- Sales managers
- Startups looking to get into sales outreach
- SMBs and Enterprise
Pricing: $75 - $125/mo. depending on the plan you choose.
Features:
- Pipeline generation
- Customer lifecycle workflows
- Forecasting and revenue management
- Lead opportunity management
- Automated outreach campaigns
Demandbase
Demandbase is an excellent choice for businesses that want to focus efforts on creating better sales pipelines and monitoring customer engagement. With its Go-To-Market platform, the tool can help you discover B2B opportunities faster.
With conversational AI and sales intelligence, sales and marketing departments can create standardized communication strategies.
Best For:
- B2B marketers
- Sales and marketing agencies
- SMBs and Enterprise
Pricing: Flexible pricing options. Offers A La Carte options for features.
Features:
- Account-based management
- Sales Intelligence
- Pipeline prediction models
- Qualification score models
- B2B marketing features
Outreach.io
Outreach is a sales engagement platform that enables your sales team to become more productive and efficient with their tasks.
It offers deal engagement features, conversation intelligence, insights, and pipeline management. With Outreach, your team can create pipelines, close deals, and monitor progress at a record pace.
Best for:
- Frontline sales teams
- Small businesses
- Enterprise.
Pricing: Available upon request
Features:
- Sales engagement
- Pipeline management
- Sales forecasting
- Action plans
- Analytics
InsideSales
InsideSales is a sales acceleration platform built for engagement, predictive analytics, and data visualization. Thanks to its automation features, your sales team can focus on what they do best—closing sales. You can automate admin tasks, email sending, onboarding, and more.
Best For:
- Sales managers
- Account executives
- Sales and marketing.
Pricing: Pricing is tailored per company
Features:
- Sales cadence automation
- Analytics reporting
- Qualification scoring
- CRM Integration
- Buyer intelligence
Cognism
Cognism leverages sales intelligence to help sales teams better understand their prospects. You can automate lead generation, prospecting, and qualifying. Your SDRs can then focus on sales-ready prospects determined based on triggers and intent data.
Best For:
- Sales and marketing
- Account executives
- Medium to large-scale Enterprise
Pricing: Pricing is available upon request
Features:
- Business intelligence
- Sales automation features
- Prospecting
- Intent Data
- Marketing and outreach automation
Key Takeaways
Outbound sales software can significantly improve your overall sales process, from cold emails to sales negotiations. Here’s a quick recap of important info you might’ve missed:
- Outbound sales software allows you to engage, nurture, and close leads at scale.
- Use an outbound tool to automate repetitive tasks such as personalization, sequencing, or scheduling.
- To find an outbound tool fit for your needs, consider your budget, goals, and the end-users first.
If you want an outbound tool that can help you automate email marketing at scale, Instantly has you covered! Sign up for a free trial today!