How to Create Sales Prospecting Lists? 5 Best Tools in 2023

A prospecting list contains all the information of your potential prospects, from their full names and designations to email addresses. Generating an accurate email list requires a deep understanding of the industry and the targeted audiences. 

A sales rep's first and foremost responsibility is to feed the sales pipeline with the most relevant leads with correct information. And a constant flow of relevant leads is very crucial for a business's growth. 

If you are wondering how to create a sales prospecting list, you've come to the right place. This blog post will give you a detailed insight into the process of list building with a step-by-step guide.

Don't forget to check out the best 5 sales prospecting tools to build a sales prospecting list in 2023. 

Let's get going! 

Sales prospecting List: What is It? 

A sales prospecting list is a sheet filled with important information (name, contact details, and email address) of a potential customer. B2B sales reps use these lists to communicate (cold calls and emails) with prospective customers to increase sales. 

These lists contain pre-verified and intent-based leads, so the chances of conversions are way much higher, unlike cold calling to random prospects. Using a highly targeted list also helps maintain positive customer relationships and build a trustable brand image. 

In order to make a sales prospecting list to be successful, it needs to contain the following: 

  • GDPR-compliant B2B data 
  • Buyer persona details
  • Verified email addresses 
  • Phone number
  • Relevant ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) data

6 Steps to Creating a Highly Targeted Sales Prospecting List

1. Research and Learn Your Product

Once you know what you are selling (product) or providing (service), you can truly offer value to your ideal prospects. You must know your offering in detail to bypass a lengthy onboarding process. 

An exceptional sales rep should know the following: 

  • Use cases
  • Feature sets
  • Success stories

According to Harvard Business Review data, the departmental store company Dillard's has seen 5% sales growth (increase in conversions) for each hour a sales rep spent on training.

So it proves that irrespective of the industry, sales reps with in-depth knowledge about their products generate more sales

Before creating a list of prospects, ask yourself:

What solutions does your product offer to the customers? Are there any discrepancies in your product that leads to losing deals? Can you explain your product to your grandparents (or a child or person without prior experience)? And, what makes your product/service stand out from the competitors? 

The answers to these above-mentioned questions will help you to identify the driving force for sales and will help to create an intent-based prospect list. 

2. Research Your Prospects; Build Buyer Persona

The next obvious step is knowing your audience. If you don't know who you are selling your product/service to, it's impossible to generate qualified leads that drive sales. This process will also help you build the sales prospecting list format. 

According to marketing and sales experts, looking at some of your current customers is best to create the structure of your buyer persona. 

Industry

Research whether your best customers work in a particular industry or a set of industries. 

Job Title

What job titles do your best customers hold? Are they in managerial positions, senior managers, policymakers, or any other vertical? 

Company Size

Try to find a pattern of whether your customers come from companies of similar sizes. If not, you can divide them into a few categories — SMB (Small to Medium Business) with 1-50 employees, SME (Small to Medium sized Enterprise) with 51-200 employees, and large corporations/MNCs with more than 200 employees. 

Yearly Revenue

What is your best customers' average estimated revenue in any year? Does it vary within a wide range or fall under a single category? 

Pain Points/Reason to Opt for Your Service (or Product) 

What are the main reasons that drive them to your business? Are the problems somewhat the same for all your best customers or not? 

Referral Potential 

What kind of customers have the best referral potential? Which customers have brought new customers through referrals?

Brand Value

Does your customers' brand value impact your business? How much revenue and customer growth have you seen for that? It is helping you drive more sales for your business. 

3. Start Building the Email List

There is no set-piece method for creating a sales prospect list. You can add or remove a few sections from the above-mentioned list to create your buyer persona. 

Using .vcf or .CSV file is recommended to create your prospecting list in Google Spreadsheet or Excel Sheet. Although maintaining a spreadsheet is cost-effective, it takes a lot of time and leaves room for errors. 

Using a sales automation or list-building tool is best to create error-free and targeted leads. Some of the best tools for sales prospecting list-building tools are Hunter, Voila Norbert, Lusha, FindThatLead, etc. 

On that note, investing in CRM software to automate sales prospecting helps you generate maximum ROI from outreach campaigns. Zoho, HubSpot, and Pipedrive are some of the best CRMs today. 

4. Update Email List: Enhance Data Accuracy

Once you've generated a lead list, it's time to enhance the data accuracy and remove dead email addresses and spam traps from the list. 

Lead verification helps you improve your campaigns' deliverability, email open rates, and conversion rates. Remove dead phone numbers, irrelevant leads, and outdated emails to chip in fresh leads. 

You can also opt for a sales intelligence tool such as Outreach, Apollo, Zoominfo SalesOS, etc., to introduce new leads and relevant data to your campaigns.

5. Launch Lead Gen Campaigns

Lunch various modes of lead generation, such as B2B marketing campaigns, SEO practices, website forms, newsletters, and webinars. Sometimes businesses invest in paid advertisements on LinkedIn, Facebook, and ESPs to generate leads

Make sure you add compelling CTAs to attract more audiences. Moreover, you can offer informative guides such as product walkthroughs, free eBooks, templates, webinars, etc., to generate contact details from prospects. 

6. Execute Lead Scoring: Segment Prospecting List

This is the last and most important step to creating an effective sales prospecting list. Once you have collected your prospects' data, categorize your audience based on their intention, sales journey, probability of buying, etc.

Segmentation of your list will help you create more personalized campaigns based on their intent. 

Should You Buy or Build Your Prospecting lists?

Although many B2B businesses prefer buying readymade email lists from third-party platforms, it is advisable to build your list

Of course, buying a pre-made list is easier and time-saving, but it does more harm than good for the business. 

  • Email addresses in a bought list are being contacted several times. 
  • The list may contain dead email addresses and spam traps. 
  • The contacts might not be your target audience. 
  • Your Ip may get penalized or blocklisted. 

Moreover, you could be breaking the codes of the GDPR act. Using a readymade list can negatively impact your deliverability rates, conversions, and brand reputation. 

Use a lead gen tool to acquire highly-targeted and industry-specific leads so you can reach your target audience to drive sales. 

5 Best Sales Prospecting Tools to Build Sales Prospecting Lists in 2023

1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Homepage

LinkedIn is the world's largest social media platform for professionals. So it is an obvious choice for finding relevant leads. 

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is one of the best tools for acquiring prospecting leads. It offers advanced search filters and offers detailed, industry-specific information about each prospect. 

It also offers InMail credits to send cold emails to your potential customers within LinkedIn. 

2. Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder Homepage

This SaaS B2B sales prospecting tool helps find relevant leads for prospecting. It performs company-specific research based on the companies that visit your website, even if they don't fill up any sign-in form. 

Leadfeeder also offers a Chrome Extension (Leadfeeder Tracker), and you can perform lead generation within your CRM platform. Its warm lead generation and ideal customer profile features make it stand apart. 

3. BuiltWith 

BuiltWith Homepage

If you are looking for lead gen tools that can find out competitors' prospects, BuiltWith is the perfect solution for you. It offers multi-channel led generation and offers fresh leads to help you scale. 

You can also research your competitors' insights, such as company size, tools they use, budget, and contact details. 

4. Voila Norbert

Voila Norbert Homepage

Using Voila Norbert, you can search any email address by your prospect's first name. All you have to do is fill in their name and the name of the organization they work for, and you will get access to their professional email address. 

It also offers a Gmail plugin, so you don't have to swipe through tabs to find a lead. This plugin lets you schedule cold emails, automate follow-ups, and set reminders. 

5. Hunter

Hunter Homepage

The last pick on our list is Hunter. It is a lead gen tool with a Google Chrome extension. It is particularly helpful to bring out email addresses from domain names. 

It also deployed a scoring system to find active email addresses. Even if you can't find a prospect's email address, Hunter finds the domain's email format to help you acquire the desired email addresses. 

Conclusion

The more detailed a prospecting list with valid and relevant information, the better. While creating a prospecting list, ensure it contains the full name, telephone number, job title, industry, address, relevant achievements, etc. 

We'd recommend using a sales prospecting tool synced with an email marketing tool to automate B2B marketing from lead generation to sending follow-up emails and let the sales team and marketing team focus on customers and the sales process. 

Never compromise on list building and focus on intent-based lead research. 

Cheers! See you soon. 

Infographic Embed Code:
Content Table:
5
 Min Read

Make More Money. Save Your Time. Grow Your Business.

How to Create Sales Prospecting Lists? 5 Best Tools in 2023

5
Min
Created On
December 3, 2022

A prospecting list contains all the information of your potential prospects, from their full names and designations to email addresses. Generating an accurate email list requires a deep understanding of the industry and the targeted audiences. 

A sales rep's first and foremost responsibility is to feed the sales pipeline with the most relevant leads with correct information. And a constant flow of relevant leads is very crucial for a business's growth. 

If you are wondering how to create a sales prospecting list, you've come to the right place. This blog post will give you a detailed insight into the process of list building with a step-by-step guide.

Don't forget to check out the best 5 sales prospecting tools to build a sales prospecting list in 2023. 

Let's get going! 

Sales prospecting List: What is It? 

A sales prospecting list is a sheet filled with important information (name, contact details, and email address) of a potential customer. B2B sales reps use these lists to communicate (cold calls and emails) with prospective customers to increase sales. 

These lists contain pre-verified and intent-based leads, so the chances of conversions are way much higher, unlike cold calling to random prospects. Using a highly targeted list also helps maintain positive customer relationships and build a trustable brand image. 

In order to make a sales prospecting list to be successful, it needs to contain the following: 

  • GDPR-compliant B2B data 
  • Buyer persona details
  • Verified email addresses 
  • Phone number
  • Relevant ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) data

6 Steps to Creating a Highly Targeted Sales Prospecting List

1. Research and Learn Your Product

Once you know what you are selling (product) or providing (service), you can truly offer value to your ideal prospects. You must know your offering in detail to bypass a lengthy onboarding process. 

An exceptional sales rep should know the following: 

  • Use cases
  • Feature sets
  • Success stories

According to Harvard Business Review data, the departmental store company Dillard's has seen 5% sales growth (increase in conversions) for each hour a sales rep spent on training.

So it proves that irrespective of the industry, sales reps with in-depth knowledge about their products generate more sales

Before creating a list of prospects, ask yourself:

What solutions does your product offer to the customers? Are there any discrepancies in your product that leads to losing deals? Can you explain your product to your grandparents (or a child or person without prior experience)? And, what makes your product/service stand out from the competitors? 

The answers to these above-mentioned questions will help you to identify the driving force for sales and will help to create an intent-based prospect list. 

2. Research Your Prospects; Build Buyer Persona

The next obvious step is knowing your audience. If you don't know who you are selling your product/service to, it's impossible to generate qualified leads that drive sales. This process will also help you build the sales prospecting list format. 

According to marketing and sales experts, looking at some of your current customers is best to create the structure of your buyer persona. 

Industry

Research whether your best customers work in a particular industry or a set of industries. 

Job Title

What job titles do your best customers hold? Are they in managerial positions, senior managers, policymakers, or any other vertical? 

Company Size

Try to find a pattern of whether your customers come from companies of similar sizes. If not, you can divide them into a few categories — SMB (Small to Medium Business) with 1-50 employees, SME (Small to Medium sized Enterprise) with 51-200 employees, and large corporations/MNCs with more than 200 employees. 

Yearly Revenue

What is your best customers' average estimated revenue in any year? Does it vary within a wide range or fall under a single category? 

Pain Points/Reason to Opt for Your Service (or Product) 

What are the main reasons that drive them to your business? Are the problems somewhat the same for all your best customers or not? 

Referral Potential 

What kind of customers have the best referral potential? Which customers have brought new customers through referrals?

Brand Value

Does your customers' brand value impact your business? How much revenue and customer growth have you seen for that? It is helping you drive more sales for your business. 

3. Start Building the Email List

There is no set-piece method for creating a sales prospect list. You can add or remove a few sections from the above-mentioned list to create your buyer persona. 

Using .vcf or .CSV file is recommended to create your prospecting list in Google Spreadsheet or Excel Sheet. Although maintaining a spreadsheet is cost-effective, it takes a lot of time and leaves room for errors. 

Using a sales automation or list-building tool is best to create error-free and targeted leads. Some of the best tools for sales prospecting list-building tools are Hunter, Voila Norbert, Lusha, FindThatLead, etc. 

On that note, investing in CRM software to automate sales prospecting helps you generate maximum ROI from outreach campaigns. Zoho, HubSpot, and Pipedrive are some of the best CRMs today. 

4. Update Email List: Enhance Data Accuracy

Once you've generated a lead list, it's time to enhance the data accuracy and remove dead email addresses and spam traps from the list. 

Lead verification helps you improve your campaigns' deliverability, email open rates, and conversion rates. Remove dead phone numbers, irrelevant leads, and outdated emails to chip in fresh leads. 

You can also opt for a sales intelligence tool such as Outreach, Apollo, Zoominfo SalesOS, etc., to introduce new leads and relevant data to your campaigns.

5. Launch Lead Gen Campaigns

Lunch various modes of lead generation, such as B2B marketing campaigns, SEO practices, website forms, newsletters, and webinars. Sometimes businesses invest in paid advertisements on LinkedIn, Facebook, and ESPs to generate leads

Make sure you add compelling CTAs to attract more audiences. Moreover, you can offer informative guides such as product walkthroughs, free eBooks, templates, webinars, etc., to generate contact details from prospects. 

6. Execute Lead Scoring: Segment Prospecting List

This is the last and most important step to creating an effective sales prospecting list. Once you have collected your prospects' data, categorize your audience based on their intention, sales journey, probability of buying, etc.

Segmentation of your list will help you create more personalized campaigns based on their intent. 

Should You Buy or Build Your Prospecting lists?

Although many B2B businesses prefer buying readymade email lists from third-party platforms, it is advisable to build your list

Of course, buying a pre-made list is easier and time-saving, but it does more harm than good for the business. 

  • Email addresses in a bought list are being contacted several times. 
  • The list may contain dead email addresses and spam traps. 
  • The contacts might not be your target audience. 
  • Your Ip may get penalized or blocklisted. 

Moreover, you could be breaking the codes of the GDPR act. Using a readymade list can negatively impact your deliverability rates, conversions, and brand reputation. 

Use a lead gen tool to acquire highly-targeted and industry-specific leads so you can reach your target audience to drive sales. 

5 Best Sales Prospecting Tools to Build Sales Prospecting Lists in 2023

1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator Homepage

LinkedIn is the world's largest social media platform for professionals. So it is an obvious choice for finding relevant leads. 

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is one of the best tools for acquiring prospecting leads. It offers advanced search filters and offers detailed, industry-specific information about each prospect. 

It also offers InMail credits to send cold emails to your potential customers within LinkedIn. 

2. Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder Homepage

This SaaS B2B sales prospecting tool helps find relevant leads for prospecting. It performs company-specific research based on the companies that visit your website, even if they don't fill up any sign-in form. 

Leadfeeder also offers a Chrome Extension (Leadfeeder Tracker), and you can perform lead generation within your CRM platform. Its warm lead generation and ideal customer profile features make it stand apart. 

3. BuiltWith 

BuiltWith Homepage

If you are looking for lead gen tools that can find out competitors' prospects, BuiltWith is the perfect solution for you. It offers multi-channel led generation and offers fresh leads to help you scale. 

You can also research your competitors' insights, such as company size, tools they use, budget, and contact details. 

4. Voila Norbert

Voila Norbert Homepage

Using Voila Norbert, you can search any email address by your prospect's first name. All you have to do is fill in their name and the name of the organization they work for, and you will get access to their professional email address. 

It also offers a Gmail plugin, so you don't have to swipe through tabs to find a lead. This plugin lets you schedule cold emails, automate follow-ups, and set reminders. 

5. Hunter

Hunter Homepage

The last pick on our list is Hunter. It is a lead gen tool with a Google Chrome extension. It is particularly helpful to bring out email addresses from domain names. 

It also deployed a scoring system to find active email addresses. Even if you can't find a prospect's email address, Hunter finds the domain's email format to help you acquire the desired email addresses. 

Conclusion

The more detailed a prospecting list with valid and relevant information, the better. While creating a prospecting list, ensure it contains the full name, telephone number, job title, industry, address, relevant achievements, etc. 

We'd recommend using a sales prospecting tool synced with an email marketing tool to automate B2B marketing from lead generation to sending follow-up emails and let the sales team and marketing team focus on customers and the sales process. 

Never compromise on list building and focus on intent-based lead research. 

Cheers! See you soon. 

What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

  • dfbvrsg
  • svsv

Static and dynamic content editing

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

How to customize formatting for each rich text

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

Author’s Details

Sattwik Das

Sattwik is a Digital Marketing professional at SmartLead. He is a dedicated content writer who focuses on juggling words to bring out meaningful content. He is experienced in well-researched and SEO-optimized content creation, content editing, and copywriting for various businesses throughout the globe. His expertise in SEO, SMM, and SMO with a touch of creativity helps businesses grow and maximize their credibility and sales.

linkdin-icon

Edited by:

powerful-icon-3

Frequently asked questions

General Questions

Can I import a CSV file into an already running campaign?

Yes, you can import a CSV file into an already running campaign. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Go to the campaign that you want to import the CSV file into.
2. Click on "Edit campaign" to access the campaign settings.
3. Look for the option to upload a CSV file and click on it.
4. Choose the CSV file from your computer that you want to import.
5. Map the fields and Choose/associate a client. The system will process the CSV file and import the data into the campaign.

By importing a CSV file, you can update the campaign with new leads without interrupting the campaign's flow.

Is it possible to connect Outlook via OAuth?

Yes, it is recommended to connect Outlook via OAuth. OAuth (Open Authorization) is an industry-standard protocol that allows applications to access user data on various platforms, including Outlook, without requiring the user to share their login credentials. By connecting Outlook via OAuth, you enhance security and ensure a seamless and secure integration between your application and Outlook.

How can I connect Outlook using OAuth?

To connect Outlook using OAuth, follow these steps:

1. Open your email accounts module in Smartlead
2. Look for the option to add accounts and select it.
3. Choose Outlook as the email provider you want to connect.
4. Clicking on the Outlook logo will redirect you to the Outlook login page.
5. Enter your credentials and log in to your Outlook account.
6. Follow the prompts to authorize the application to access your Outlook account using OAuth.
7. Once the authorization is complete, your application will be connected to Outlook via OAuth, enabling secure access to your Outlook emails and data.

By following these steps, you can establish a secure and authenticated connection between your application and Outlook, ensuring seamless integration and access to your email account.

Why am I experiencing delays in fetching emails from my ESP to MI?

If you are experiencing delays in fetching emails from your Email Service Provider (ESP) to the Master Inbox (MI), there could be a few reasons for this. It is important to note that fetching emails from the ESP to the MI can take some time due to various factors such as network latency, ESP server load, and the size of the email inbox. Here are some points to consider:

1. Time interval: The Master Inbox usually fetches emails at regular intervals, which can range from 5 to 55 minutes. This interval allows the system to retrieve and process new emails periodically.

2. Fetch replies button: If you need to fetch replies immediately, you can use the "Fetch replies" button available in the Master Inbox. Clicking on this button triggers an immediate fetch of replies from your ESP's email inbox folder.

If the delays persist or you encounter any issues with fetching emails, it is recommended to reach out to the Smartlead support team for further assistance.Please note: 

Filtering or rules: Review any filtering or rules set up in your ESP that could potentially affect the delivery of emails to the MI. Ensure that emails are not being automatically sorted, archived, or blocked based on certain criteria.

Why doesn't categorizing leads, such as "Not interested," stop campaigns for them?

Categorizing leads, such as marking them as "Not interested," does not automatically stop campaigns for those leads. The purpose of lead categorization is to classify and organize leads based on their specific attributes or actions. However, categorizing a lead as "Not interested" does not halt the campaign because the system relies on replies from leads to determine if a campaign should be stopped.

In most cases, when a lead categorizes themselves as "Not interested," they may choose not to reply to the email or take any further action. As a result, the campaign continues until it reaches its completion or encounters other stopping conditions.

It's important to note that when a lead does reply to an email, the system recognizes the response and stops the campaign for that particular lead. Therefore, replies from leads serve as the primary trigger to stop campaigns rather than lead categorization alone.

In some cases,A lead might have to be categorized for various reasons even if they do not intend to reply, such as organizing their inbox or indicating their preference. Such categorization does not automatically stop the lead from receiving further emails in the campaign. In such cases the emails have to stopped manually

What type of business can use Smartlead?

No, you get access to unlimited email accounts and warmup accounts without having to pay per account. This will let you scale your email outbound and without paying a penny more.

Powerful Automated Email Marketing that Drives Sales.

  • All Features Included
  • No Credit Card Required
  • Free Warmup Included
powerful_automate_bgimg