In the title, replace * with: Best, Ultimate, Only, Greatest, or Definitive. (I’ll leave the SEO clickbait-ery at home. Pick any of these adjectives, and you’re right.) Let’s move on to the interesting stuff. The “show, don’t tell”, if you will.
There are 2 camps when it comes to picking the technology you should use to build up your Outbound Sales motion:
Camp #1: Tech-led Sales
“Tech is the answer to all of life’s problems. This is the most important decision you will make, so spend as much time as you need to get it right.”
I understand where this camp is coming from.
Anyone who was alive during the age of dial-up internet and asking people in the street for directions, knows first-hand the impact that technology can have on our lives.
But, over-optimizing your tech can also be a trap.
Because over-optimizing can be an impediment to doing the real work – having conversations with your potential customers. If you waste too much time on tech, you won’t see the month-over-month growth that is imperative to startup survival.
Camp #2: Anti-Bad Carpenters
“It doesn’t matter. Just pick a tool so you don’t waste time. Get to selling – because selling is the only activity that drives growth.”
If you’re a fan of the adage, “only a bad carpenter blames his tools” …you may fall more into Camp 2. (You’re an “Anti-Bad Carpenter”. Kind of like “The Carpenters” but overall, just an infinitely worse band name.)
I admit, I’ve been this person in the past.
The “sales is all that matter and tools are all the same!” crier. And I think the logic behind this argument is a little sounder...
Don’t waste time doing activities that will – one day, down the road, hopefully, but not necessarily soon – lead to us doing actual sales.
“Preparing” to sell can be an excuse. A place to hide. So, you don’t actually have to sell.
Fear & avoidance of selling is one of the biggest pitfalls of selling. You can waste months “preparing” — not realizing that you’re just procrastinating.
But, the problem with this philosophy lies in the current landscape of tools available to us.
Simply put: some tools out there are just plain bad. They will actively derail and get you to focus on the wrong things.
Outbound sales in 2023 is not like a question asked in Montessori school:
There are wrong answers.
So, let’s avoid the pitfalls of both Camps 1 & 2 and let me distill my years of experience – both using & choosing sales tools – into the very best options.
I’ve tried pretty much every tool under the sun at this point. And many of them are bad. (Yes, even some of the very popular ones that you hear about all the time.)
So, here are the 7 outbound sales tools everybody should use.
And this list is for everyone – from the biggest enterprise to the tightest of budgets. These options all scale with you.
Tool #1: Gmail - for your email addresses
I’m starting out boring, but the intrigue will build…
There are two good options for this category: Gmail & Outlook. And that’s for a simple reason: these are the ESPs everybody knows and loves.
You likely already have at least one Gmail or Outlook account for your day-to-day email needs. They are, put simply, what everybody uses.
And for that reason (as well as some other nitty-gritty backstory about Hotmail and others that we don’t need to digress into mid-article), Gmail and Outlook are the way to go.
Pick either of those, and you’re in good hands.
Right now, I personally use Gmail. Because: I also buy my email sending domains through Squarespace. And using these two together, makes setting up SPF/DMARC/DKIM records as easy as possible.
So, get your email addresses either through Gmail or Outlook.
And you can get back to the much more important work of actually doing outbound sales.
Tool #2: Apollo - for your lead data (aka “sales intelligence platform”)
Apollo is your best starting point for lead data.
Think of Apollo basically as Zoominfo that anybody can afford – but also with even better data.
For years, Zoominfo was the gold standard for contact data. Because it was the best option we had.
And a big part of building an outbound org was getting friendly with your Zoominfo account rep to get a discount off that $15k annual contract.
That is no longer the case. Because there are many data providers now, and because Apollo has essentially the same coverage as Zoominfo for $50/month.
So, ignore Zoominfo. And get Apollo instead.
Now, why did I call Apollo just a “starting point”?
This is because: while Zoominfo & Apollo have the best coverage. They will have contact data for almost any market you’re trying to sell into. So they are a “pretty good” option for almost everyone.
But they won’t have the highest quality data for your unique market.
Zoominfo & Apollo are going for breadth. So everyone can use them and they become a household name. But they haven’t invested the time into getting the best data for just autobody shops or just city government offices – aka your unique market.
And for years, we got by without these very specific directories. But now, there are so many options for lead data sources, that there is an option for you & your very specific needs.
But, I still highly recommend starting with Apollo first before specializing.
Apollo will have good enough coverage to get you (at least) a few thousand good contacts from your TAM.
And it won’t be until after you’ve launched your first campaign – that you really know what data is the most valuable to you. So you know if you should spend $1,000 on those email addresses from Franchimp, or actually the email data isn’t useful these franchise managers spend most of the day on the phone (instead of in their inbox like an office worker would).
Every market is different (and each one comes with quirks that you don’t see coming). And the only way to learn what they are is by doing the actual outreach.
Tool #3: Clay.com - for your segmentation & personalization
This is my favorite part of the outbound process.
Because this is where you flex your muscles and show off as someone who is great at outbound sales…
As opposed to the many messages I get on LinkedIn from people who clearly have no idea who I am or what I do.
A tool like Clay is how you send messages that aren’t the typical BS you see in outbound.
Tools like Clay are how you establish yourself as an A-player. Someone who’s done his research:
Clay gets you access to the info you need on target accounts, so they ways in which you personalize campaign demonstrate true knowledge that you know what you’re talking about.
And I say “a tool like Clay” – but Clay is currently the only tool I know of in this category.
Think of it like Airtable, purpose-built for Outbound. It’s a supercharged Google Sheet, that has integrations to many major data providers. So you can pull the API key from the data provider you currently use, and cumulate all the data into one big spreadsheet:
So, yes you can pull data from Apollo. (The tool I told you to get earlier). Then, enrich these leads with the info you need to personalize the emails you send to them.
And if you’ve already started with Apollo and are looking to add more data sources, looking at the list of integrations that Clay currently has can be a great place to start.
But, maybe you’re wondering, why do all of this in Clay instead of just pulling data into Google Sheets?
A few reasons:
Clay fills in all the gaps. An example of this: after I’ve pulled email addresses from Apollo & verified them, I will run the remaining leads (the ones with unverified email addresses) through a Prospeo enrichment to see if Prospeo has the lead’s correct email address. So I lose fewer leads from my Apollo pull.
Clay is an easy & cheap way to test new data sources. If I’m thinking that my Apollo leads might benefit from LinkedIn data or Harmonic.ai data, I can use Clay credits to pull data from 10 test leads, and see if the data I get will make my email campaign template better. If not, I can move on to a different idea.
Clay’s ChatGPT is better than others I’ve tried. This is a topic for another article, but if you’re using ChatGPT in your campaign, I’ve found that using OpenAI’s API key through Clay has given me better outcomes than other tools I’ve tried.
Clay saves you a lot of time going back & forth between spreadsheets. If you’ve ever had a data analyst job, or any job where you had to pull data between multiple spreadsheets to get them into one cohesive place, you know how time-consuming this can be. But because Clay is integrated with most of the data sources you will want to use, you can skip this laborious process.
Tool #4: Smartlead.ai - for your outbound sequencer (aka “sales engagement tool”)
Okay, unlike my Gmail recommendation for Tool 1, where I said you can pick Gmail or Outlook, no big deal.
Smartlead is not that same kind of recommendation. Pick Smartlead for your outbound email sending, and ignore everything else.
There are basically 3 evaluation criteria when it comes to an outbound email sending tool:
Ease of use (UX)
Ability to customize/personalize campaigns
Deliverability
Smartlead blows everyone else out of the water in all three categories.
Category #1: Smartlead takes minutes to set-up. And they clearly understand their customer & their customer’s UX deeply. It’s the easiest tool I’ve ever used here (and I’ve used almost all of them).
Category #2: It might surprise you (it surprised me), but many popular tools don’t let you add custom merge tags for any custom field you might want.
Or, won’t let you add a personalized video.
Or, it won’t let you personalize based on day of the week, date of the month, or time of day.
Basically, all the other tools have some limitation on what you are able to use to personalize your emails. But, not Smartlead. Smartlead has it all.
Category #3: Smartlead has the best deliverability. Hands down.
This is a big topic – a topic for another article. But Smartlead has every single feature that’s needed for great deliverability (inbox warmup, inbox rotation, custom domain tracking, deliverability score built into the platform). And they are more robust here than any other platform I’ve seen.
So, this category is simple: go with Smartlead & ignore the rest.
Tool #5: Neverbounce, Debounce, or Zerobounce - for your email validation
Email validation is huge. The biggest pitfall in outbound sales is burning your email domain’s reputation and killing your deliverability.
All the strategy, copywriting, and expensive lead data in the world can’t get your prospect’s attention if you can’t even get into their inbox.
And deliverability only gets more challenging every year. But thankfully, there are email validation tools that help us only send emails to real, verified email addresses.
And the three tools I recommend above – Neverbounce, Debounce and Zerobounce – all have the highest accuracy rates of any tools out there. And similar pay-as-you-go pricing models.
I use Neverbounce because I’ve had a lot of success with it in the past over many, many different email addresses, so I trust it.
But I’ve tested Debounce & Zerobounce, with similar accuracy rates. (It also might be worth trying Debounce since it’s overall cheaper – but all 3 of these tools are inexpensive.)
There are other email validation tools out there, but they either aren’t as accurate, charge too much, or recommend “catchall” emails. So I don’t recommend them.
Tool #6: Calendly, Savvycal, or Cal.com - for your calendar link
And now, all you need is a calendaring tool.
Go with Calendly if you like going with the popular choice with name recognition.
Or go with Savvycal or Cal.com if you know there are features/pricing that you like better from one of those tools.
All 3 of these tools have the features you need to successfully book meetings. And I do recommend putting some effort into the booking page you create (like adding your headshot next to your name + putting in a description for a meeting + limiting how many days out into the future your prospects can book).
These are the three best. And as you start to get positive replies, this booking link will save you a lot of time & make you look more professional. (And you can use one of these for free most likely, so no reason not to.)
…And that’s it. That’s the list of outbound tools. 6 tools you can set-up today.
And it took me years of experience using these tools. Alongside many hours of research into the plethora of options available. To uncover these as the best 6.
So I hope I’ve saved you the months/years it took me to find these 6. These are (IMHO) the best (and only strong) options out there.
NOTE: you may notice Zoom (or a video-conferencing tool) is omitted from this list, but that’s another reason I use Gmail – we get Google Meet for free. Which is just as good as (if not better than) Zoom.
Wait, where is Salesforce, Outreach.io & Zoominfo on this list?
They aren’t there. Very much on purpose.
I covered my hatred for Zoominfo under the “Apollo” section, so scroll back up there if you’re interested in that hot take.
But as for Salesforce & Outreach?
Don’t get me wrong: these tools aren’t bad. But they’re also very much over-hyped. They are not mandatory entrance fees for getting into outbound sales. On the contrary, they are sometimes good tools, for certain outbound sales teams, trying to do specific things.
When to add Salesforce to the stack:
If you’ve already got multiple reps and you’re trying to grow to 10+ reps, I do recommend Salesforce.
If you don’t have multiple reps yet, or you don’t want to grow to 10+ reps, Salesforce is buying custom industrial cabinetry for your studio apartment. You will need a contractor and his entire team to build out your solution, and you’ll end up with a custom build that is way too complicated for your set of matching IKEA plates and bowls.
It will be too much work to set-up, and then it won’t be the right fit for what you need.
So if you want a CRM and you aren’t planning something massive, go with Pipedrive or Hubspot. Pipedrive being the simplest & easiest. Hubspot being slightly more robust.
It may also seem weird that I didn’t include a CRM as a requirement for starting outbound sales. And that’s because CRMs are built for keeping in touch with accounts and opportunities over the long-haul. You don’t need that to get started with outbound. Smartlead will let you tag the stages your lead gets to. But once you hit 20+ active opportunities, or once you want to start launching re-engagement campaigns to leads you’ve reached out to previously, you’ll want to add a CRM. Until then, you can honestly track with a spreadsheet or just email snoozes. (CRM’s take time to build out & set-up. And this can be a distraction from selling. Only get one once you feel you actually need it.)
When to add Outreach.io:
If you’re doing cold calls yourself, or you have at least one SDR on the team, get Outreach.
Outreach.io has a great UX built for SDR work. That great method where a rep is individually personalizing each email based on research from each account. And personalizing cold calling scripts to that account as well.
But, you can also personalize outbound campaigns at scale inside Smartlead. You don’t have to do the SDR approach (if you’re not yet ready to hire for this role, or if you don’t have the budget to hire an SDR).
Outreach is so popular because the SDR model is so popular. And it is a great fit for orgs who are using that approach.
Optionals tools you may find useful
I won’t dive deep here because I don’t want you to get bogged down in all the options. (That’s the biggest roadblock when picking your tech stack.) But I want you to be aware that there are more categories & great options that may end up solving problems for you down the line:
LinkedIn Sales Navigator: if you’re doing manual research on individuals leads at your target accounts or want to see what your leads are posting, getting Sales Navigator is the best way to do this
ChatGPT: I’m sure you’ve never heard of this tool, so I’ll explain what it does… but all jokes aside: yes, you really can use ChatGPT to personalize emails at scale. I do it all the time. But this is another topic for another time, and I have launched many campaigns, personalized without ChatGPT, that were very successful. So ChatGPT is not mandatory.
Phantombuster/Texau: these are the best tools to help with creating hyper-segmented campaigns with strong personalization
Web scrapers: Zenrows (paid), Instant Data Scraper (free), and Outscraper (paid) are my three favorite scrapers for getting custom data on your target leads & accounts that you can’t buy from sources like Apollo
Phone Ready Leads: if you’re all-in on cold calling, and even have multiple reps, shell out the thousands per month to get phone-ready leads that can quadruple your connect rates and radically transform your pipeline generation
Lead routing: many options in this category (Chili Piper, Vanillasoft), but irrelevant until you’ve got 5+ reps; then, mandatory
There are also many tools outside the scope of this list:
voice calling tools
Twitter automation tools
auto-dialers
power dialers
predictive dialers
AI sales assistants
sales compensation tools
Etc.
Some of these are a waste of time. Some of these might actually veer you off course. But, all of them are a distraction.
Unless they are one of the 6 I recommend in this article, or listed under the optional categories above, ignore them.
And with all of these new weapons in your arsenal, let’s get back to selling.