⚡️Bolt - The B2B Sales newsletter by Crono
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly updates and insights on the future of B2B Sales!
Suppose you’re like most salespeople, less than 30% of your week is spent actively selling. Instead, you lose hours manually entering data, tracking leads, and managing follow-ups. In other words, non-selling activities…
Sales prospecting software changes that. The right tool, coupled with a winning sales strategy, helps you:
However, with countless options available, many of which have overlapping features and prices, selecting the best one can feel overwhelming.
This guide breaks down 12 sales prospecting tools into 5 categories and explains how each option supports sales teams in finding, qualifying, and engaging prospects.
Let’s have a look at the categories:
Spending too much time on technology is one of the factors preventing sellers from actually selling. personal engagement.
If you’re not learning new features, you’re likely transferring data between tools to finish a task or managing multiple notifications, among other things.
With sales teams using an average of 10 tools , it’s no surprise that 94% of sales organizations aim to consolidate their tech stacks to reduce complexity
That’s where all-in-one sales prospecting software helps. Instead of assembling separate tools for finding leads, verifying their details, and reaching out, you get a single solution that handles everything.
Ideal for:
Small Teams or Solo Sellers: If you have a handful of reps managing huge lists, an all-in-one sales automation tool can increase your output without the overhead of multiple subscriptions.
Growing Operations: As your prospecting scales, features like automation and analytics baked into these platforms keep you efficient and informed.
With Crono, you can complete every step of your sales prospecting and engagement strategy in one place.
Furthermore, every sales prospecting activity is instantly logged in your CRM (Hubspot, Pipedrive, and Salesforce) at every step, saving you from repetitive manual activity logging.
That way, you no longer have to overspend on multiple tools while waiting months to fully ramp new reps. Everything you need to start booking more sales calls is ready for you.
Here’s how Crono can help your sales team increase appointment rates by 50%.
Discover multiple ways to build high-quality prospect lists faster:
Crono allows you to instantly enrich your contact list with verified emails, phone numbers, and LinkedIn profile links at every step of the list-building process.
For example, when you import a contact list via CSV upload, Crono allows you to enrich every contact and automatically update your CRM in just one click, instead of engaging multiple steps. Less clicking around, more time saved.
And since Crono uses a waterfall data enrichment approach, the system cross-references information from more than 10 top-quality data providers to update your list with accurate and verified contact details.
Make every touch feel personal without the extra work.
Stay on top of every sales prospecting task without the overhead.
See all your sales tasks in a dedicated Tasks page and calendar view—so you never miss a follow-up and always know what’s next.
Get instant alerts on email opens, link clicks, replies, and LinkedIn connection acceptances. This will ensure that you respond at the right moment and move deals forward faster.
Quickly reschedule, skip, modify, or pause tasks to adjust your strategy as prospect interactions evolve and minimize errors.
Crono offers flexible monthly and annual pricing packages for growing and scaling sales teams.
Every pricing tier comes with:
The Pro tier costs 69 Euros/user monthly
The Ultra tier costs 119 Euros/user monthly
Ask Crono for a custom quote.
What they do: Lead generation software equips sales teams with tools to find, research, and connect with potential customers.
How to choose: While they provide access to contact databases, search and filtering tools, and built-in features for managing and tracking interactions with leads, consider these differentiating attributes:
Below is a comparative table highlighting key features and attributes for LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Apollo, and Lemlist.
Features | LinkedIn Sales Navigator | Apollo | Lemlist |
---|---|---|---|
Pricing Plans | Core: $99.99/month Advanced : $149.99/month Advanced Plus : Custom pricing | Free Plan: $0/month Basic: $49/user/month Professional: $79/user/month Organization: $119/user/month | Free Plan: $0/month Email Pro: $59/month [3 users] Multichannel Expert: $79/month [5 users] $99/user/month Enterprise: Custom Pricing [5 users] |
Data quality and quantity | Access to LinkedIn’s extensive professional network for lead generation. | Access to a database of 275M+ contacts and 35M+ companies | Access to a database of 450M+ B2B leads |
Email sending limit | Core: 50 InMails/month – Advanced: 50 InMails/month – Advanced Plus: 50 InMails/month | Free users: 250 daily Paid users: Unlimited daily | Available |
Enrichment Credits [email and phone nb] | Feature not available | At least 1200 free credits per user yearly. | Up to 100 free verified emails /mo |
Advanced Search Filters | All Plans: Advanced lead and company search capabilities. | Advanced filters for lead and account search. Not available on the free plan. | All Plans: Advanced filters for lead and account search. Not available on the free plan. |
LinkedIn Integration | Native platform; full integration with LinkedIn features. | All Plans: Chrome extension available for LinkedIn integration. | All Plans: Chrome extension available for LinkedIn integration. |
Email Campaigns & Sequences | Unavailable: Focuses on lead management | All Plans: With 2 limited sequences for free users. | All paid plans. |
Personalization Features | Lead recommendations and insights. | Lead recommendations and insights + AI writing assistant; text variables. | Lead recommendation and insights. Text variables; custom images; Liquid syntax; AI-powered outreach. |
Integrations | CRM integration with platforms like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. | Integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, and other tools. | Integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zapier, n8n, Make, Aircall, and more. |
AI Features | Account summaries created with Generative AI. | Apollo AI for sales intelligence and automation. | AI-powered message writing and campaign optimization. |
Browser extension | In-app | Chrome extensions for Gmail, Prospecting, Salesforce, Meetings, & Conversation. | LinkedIn Chrome extension. |
Best for: Relationship-based prospecting
LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps sales professionals and teams find, understand, and engage with potential leads and clients within LinkedIn’s extensive network . While it offers advanced features to enhance prospecting and relationship building, it lacks built-in email sequencing and phone contact data. It is necessary to pair with additional tools for efficient lead generation.
Advanced Search Capabilities: You can use filters, such as industry, company size, seniority level, and more, to identify and target the most relevant prospects .
Lead and Account Recommendations: Receive suggestions for potential leads and accounts based on your preferences and previous interactions.
CRM Integration: Sales Navigator can be synced with CRM systems like Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365, ensuring seamless data flow and up-to-date records.
InMail Messaging: Send direct messages to LinkedIn members outside your immediate network, facilitating direct communication with potential leads.
Best for: Multi-channel lead generation and automation
Apollo is an AI-powered B2B sales platform that provides various tools to generate leads.
It is well-known for its up-to-date B2B sales prospecting database, which contains over 275 million contacts and companies. It offers unique advanced filters and AI that can help reveal granular signals such as mergers, acquisitions, and office expansions.
Best for: highly personalized email outreach
Lemlist stands out as a dependable cold outreach platform designed to land emails in inboxes and drive responses.
It makes it easier to identify and connect with key decision-makers through its database of 450 million B2B contacts and 63 million companies, advanced filtering options, email finder, and contact verification tools.
What they do: Multichannel sales engagement software helps sales reps simplify engagement by providing a unified interface for managing customer interactions across channels like email, social media, and phone.
How to choose: While these software solutions offer overlapping features like email tracking, automation for personalized outreach, and social media engagement (e.g., LinkedIn prospecting), you can differentiate them based on attributes like:
Pricing Flexibility : Consider how adaptable the software’s pricing model is to different team sizes and usage needs.
Credit System : Check if software charges credits for sending emails, rewriting content with AI, and enriching data, or plan-based quotas.
Add-on Features : Consider options like email deliverability optimization, AI copilot, SMS capabilities, data enrichment, advanced analytics, or third-party integrations (e.g., Slack).
Below is a comparative table highlighting key features and attributes for Amplemarket, Klenty and Outplay.
Feature | Amplemarket (Startup) | Klenty (Starter) | Outplay (Starter) |
---|---|---|---|
Monthly Price (Annual Billing) | $600 (annual), 2 users included. | $50/user (annual) | $39/user (annual), 1 user. |
Key Features at Entry Level | 30,000 contacts, LinkedIn Automation, AI Intent Signals, Duo AI Copilot | 15,000 monthly contacts, 75,000 monthly emails, Unlimited inboxes (single domain) | 5,000 active prospects, Unlimited emails, AI Sequence Writer |
Free Trial Availability | Yes | 14 days | 7 days |
Credit System | Yes (for email and phone credits) | Yes (for prospecting data in the Plus plan) | No (for core actions, based on available info) |
AI-Powered Copilot Capabilities | Duo AI Copilot (all tiers), Duo Copywriter, Duo Voice, Duo Inbox (higher tiers/add-ons) | AI Copilot for full account management and next steps | AI Sequence Writer, AI Mail Writer, AI Objection Handling (Starter) |
Data Enrichment | Included in all tiers | Prospect IQ (all tiers), Waterfall Enrichment Model (Plus plan) | Not explicitly mentioned |
Best for: Small teams with budget constraints
Outplay positions itself as a sales engagement and sales automation platform for fast-scaling SMBs. If you run a small agency sales operation, you can set up multichannel sales campaigns with conversational intelligence at a scalable price.
For instance, Outplay’s lowest pricing tier at $39 per month enables one user on your team to send unlimited emails, use AI to write sequences, create custom domains, A/B test campaigns, and more.
Best for: Growing teams needing scalability
Klenty enables reps and sales teams to outsource tasks like account research and personalized email writing to AI, so they can focus on building relationships with prospects. Reps who prefer to outsource the entire sales prospecting process to AI can also use Klenty’s AI SDR for full autopilot prospecting.
Sales engagement : Automate engagement on LinkedIn, email outreach, CRM, and phone calls.
DialIQ: A combination of tools to increase dialing volume, send & auto-detect voicemails, and track live sales call metrics.
Best for: Enterprises sales teams with complex needs
Amplemarket positions itself as an AI sales copilot for sales teams. Unlike Klenty and some AI-driven sales engagement software, Amplemarket expands its function beyond the rep and AE functions.
With its platform of tools, Amplemarket is an ideal sales engagement software for:
Amplemarket combines dozens of sales tools into one unified platform. Its sales engagement function is known for the following features:
In this section, we compare Cognism, Clay, and Clearbit based on their attributes and features that help you improve lead quality:
Cognism uses advanced filters to identify ideal accounts, provides phone-verified mobile numbers for direct connections, and prioritizes ready buyers with intent signals.
Clay integrates over 100 data sources and uses AI to automate research and enrichment, tracking real-time customer events for targeted outreach.
Clearbit gathers public and proprietary data and processes it using large language models (LLMs). It offers global coverage for lead scoring and buying intent detection.
What they do: Data enrichment software appends data attributes like job titles, industry, contact information, and company demographics to existing records, to transform basic leads into rich profiles. That way, they help sales teams find and gather detailed information about potential customers, improving lead generation and engagement.
How to choose: Data enrichment software solutions have overlapping features such as contact and company data enrichment, lead scoring, CRM integration, reporting and analytics, etc. When considering your options, consider the following defining features:
Feature/Attribute | Cognism | Clay | Clearbit |
---|---|---|---|
Database Size | 200M contacts globally | Aggregates data from 75+ sources (no fixed proprietary DB) | Over 250M contacts globally |
Data attributes | 50+ data fields (contacts, firmographics, intent) | Can retrieve all common B2B fields and more | 100+ data attributes per record |
Location-Specific Focus | EMEA-focused, with good US coverage (50M+ contacts) | Global coverage | Global reach |
AI and Automation Capabilities | AI for data collection and reasoning | Extensive AI integration – Claygent AI agent automates research tasks (scraping web for intel) | Uses AI (LLMs) to normalize and enrich data (Clearbit’s Breeze uses AI for industry and role mapping) |
Pricing Flexibility | Custom | Offers a free start option with 100 credits/month | Standard plans within the HubSpot ecosystem |
Specialized Data Types or Verification | Emphasis on phone-verified mobiles | Real-time intent signals (e.g., job changes | Over 100 attributes per record (e.g., NAICS codes, seniority), with IP intelligence for buying intent. |
Chrome Extensions & Plugins | Available | Available | Available |
Integration Depth and Ecosystem Fit | Seamless with SalesForce and HubSpot, pushing data in two clicks. | Broad API integration with various tools, no engineering required for syncing. | Native integration with HubSpot as Breeze Intelligence, plus SalesForce compatibility. |
Cognism is one of the biggest sales data providers and data enrichment platforms on the market. It is best known for its strict focus on providing GDPR-compliant and comprehensive B2B contact data in Europe. However, it also has the largest database of US mobile numbers on the market.
Ask Cognism a quote.
Clearbit, now known as Breeze Intelligence for Hubspot, automates the data enrichment process through CRM integration or API. It automatically enriches the raw data in your CRM by pulling in over 100+ firmographic and demographic attributes to round out the contact, lead, or account. Data can also be processed manually in the dashboard.
With Clay’s CRM enrichment tool, you can route any structured and unstructured data source through Clay, to enrich, format, and score contact data, before it shows up in your CRM. For example, you can pass a list of conference attendees who complete a sign-up form through Clay to generate additional data on each contact before logging into your CRM— ensuring you have clean and updated CRM data all the time.
Without a proprietary database, it depends solely on third-party integrations, which may raise costs or lead to reliability concerns due to provider instability.
Sellers who master social selling are 51% more likely to smash their quotas (straight from LinkedIn’s data).
Why?
Because today’s B2B buyers are savvy—they spend 27% of their decision-making time researching online, devouring 13 pieces of content before picking a vendor.
With 53% of that content found on social media, social selling puts you where your buyers already are—scrolling feeds, soaking up insights, and ready to connect.
Social selling tools support and enhance your brand so it is easier to book sales meetings with prospects because they already recognize your name and trust you.
If you’re looking for the best social selling tool to share value, spark conversations, and add that personal touch that seals the deal, consider the following factors:
Integration with social networking platforms .
Inbox & messaging function to nurture lasting relationships.
Insights & performance tracking for real-time data on trending topics, measure your impact, and know exactly what’s moving the needle.
Multimedia content management. Store templates, schedule posts, brainstorm ideas, and drop videos or voice notes that grab attention and keep prospects hooked.
Chrome/browser extension for smoother workflows.
Add-on tools like an AI-Copilot that drafts razor-sharp messages and suggests tweaks.
LeadDelta is a LinkedIn CRM built for sales reps who want to network smarter. It pulls your connections into a clean, no-clutter interface, so you can forge 1-on-1 relationships faster and turn contacts into opportunities.
With LeadDelta, you can unify your team’s network in one place, using tags to organize and collaborate on relationship-building tasks easily. If you often find LinkedIn’s native messaging overwhelming, this tool simplifies how you manage and engage your LinkedIn network, keeping your focus on driving results.
Socialeads enables sales teams to see exactly which LinkedIn posts and topics influenced leads , customers, revenue, or any other event tracked in your CRM. This way, your sales team knows what’s actually driving results, from both personal and business pages, instead of just guessing.
With this data, sales teams can write more targeted posts, estimate the number of leads each post might generate, and even use those insights to refine outreach. By knowing which topics resonate most and drive conversions in the CRM, they can tailor their messaging for maximum impact.
Now you’ve explored the different categories of sales prospecting software, the essential features within each category, and the unique differentiators that set certain tools apart. Ultimately, your choice should be the solution that best aligns with your team’s sales strategy and growth goals.
If you’re growing or scaling your sales team, Crono is the safest investment. It provides the most comprehensive, cost-effective solution that automates every stage of prospecting and outreach. Need proof? See how Crono helped Unguess book 800+ meetings with qualified leads .
Copyright © Crono SaaS Ltd 2025 . Headquarters: London, United Kingdom. All rights reserved. Crono Saas Ltd. 2nd Floor, 168 Shoreditch High Street, London, E1 6RA. VAT: GB447958927
Disclaimer: Crono is not affiliated, associated, authorized, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with Microsoft or LinkedIn, or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates.
The name LinkedIn, as well as related names, marks, logos, emblems, and images are registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive monthly updates and insights on the future of B2B Sales!