How to Use Automated Prospecting [+ Top Tools to Save Time]

Prospecting is a must-do for any salesperson. But from it comes an enormous amount of necessary repetitive tasks.

You can easily feel like you’re treading water without many results - especially if you are using low-quality data or struggling to find the right leads.

Since ineffective prospecting is an enormous waste of resources and time, what if we said there’s an easy way to streamline the sales process?

It’s called ✨ automated prospecting. ✨

Automated prospecting tools help by using technology to aid sales reps in finding higher quality leads, accurate prospect information, and personalizing at scale.

The five automated prospecting steps

Sales tools with automation features help with the core activities of the sales team. This includes making it easier for reps to access contact data, find new leads or send outbound campaigns.

There are five steps for automated prospecting:

1. Identify your leads.
2. Get the contact data.
3. Outreach.
4. Prospecting KPIs.
5. Managing your leads.

Now, let’s look at each of these in more detail. 👇

1. Identify your leads

Identifying leads is always one of the most difficult parts of outbound prospecting.

It’s also time-consuming and stressful. So, this is one area where automated prospecting can really help. 

The most efficient way to find leads that align with your ideal customer profile (ICP) is to use a tool like LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator can help sales reps find leads based on criteria like their company’s size, industry, location, or annual revenue. 

Sales Nav can also help to find the right individuals based on their job titles. Finding the right personas is crucial in today’s market to multi-thread within accounts and use tactics like bottom-up selling.

You need to build lists of the right people and then determine how to prioritize the qualified prospects identified.

On Sales Navigator, there are several criteria you can use to filter your lists. We’ve highlighted the key ones below. 👇

LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers automated prospecting through the “new contacts” feature. This is where new leads that match specific criteria will be added to your lists each week, ensuring a continually updated pool of prospects to reach out to.

When it comes to finding great leads, try these LinkedIn Sales Navigator strategies: 

• Use Sales Navigator’s Boolean search to limit or expand your potential leads. Boolean search allows you to use keywords and operators (AND, OR, and NOT) in your search to include and exclude specific audiences from your lists. Find exactly who you want right away. 
• Create lists of high-intent qualities. This could look like those who have changed jobs in the last 90 days (especially if they’ve used your tool before), previous role matches your target persona, and those who’ve viewed your profile in the last 90 days.
• Build multiple lists. This should include industry lists, current customers, closed-won buyers, closed-lost deals, and existing customers with the most seats. Each presents new (but warm) opportunities. Closed-lost deals may be open to contact later. And, if someone leaves to join a new company after using your tool, they may be willing to work with you again. 
• Dig for info on the ground level. Don’t just prioritize decision-makers when you build your lists. Remember, to get into an account, you must approach the decision-maker with knowledge. This is why speaking to end users first is great to get an understanding of the pain points and motivations behind the solution they’ve currently got in place.  

2. Get the contact data

So, now that you know who your prospects are, it’s time to get their contact data. Sales Navigator is great for building lists and automating a continuous flow of new leads to reach out to. But you are limited to just reaching out on LinkedIn.

Any good sales rep knows that multichannel is the way forward. ⏩

Getting a prospect’s phone number gives you a direct line to start making sales calls.

And good news: Getting a prospect’s contact data is easier than ever with automated prospecting tools like Kaspr.

Kaspr’s LinkedIn Chrome Extension enriches data while you prospect on LinkedIn. The Extension gives you instant access to accurate contact information, including cell phone numbers, email addresses, and company info. With Kaspr, you can automatically send this contact data to the web app or straight to your sales apps.

Kaspr can also provide contact information on lists you’ve created through LinkedIn Sales Navigator or the profiles appearing in LinkedIn searches. This lets users source prospects’ contact data in bulk, making daily work much easier and faster. 

And don’t sweat about compliance - we’re GDPR and CCPA aligned. 

👻 You can get started with Kaspr free, with no credit card required 

3. Outreach

Most lead generation techniques prioritize inbound leads, but outbound activity is the only way to target the “winning zone”. These are the 30% of people in the market who are not buying right now.

This 30% might not even be problem-aware yet. But it’s your job to be the guide and nurture prospects through the buyer’s journey to a sale. This often means SDRs encounter objections like “not right now”, says Chris Ritson, Co-founder and CEO at Flexprts.

Approaching prospects that might not even be problem-aware yet means your outreach sequences need to be relevant to each individual.

To do this, try following these first-touch strategies: 

• Identify key stakeholders and decision-makers first. Make sure you’re identifying everyone within the account. This spans right from end-users to the decision-makers.
• Multi-thread within accounts. Instead of messaging a single key stakeholder, get the involvement of multiple stakeholders across different departments to get them all on board. Multi-threading makes this possible. 
• Do your research. Get information on the business and the stakeholders themselves. Learn about company size, industry, and funding. You want to be as prepared as possible before you send the first message or pick up the phone. 
• Get the information you need as soon as possible. During your initial outreach conversation, you’ll also want to make sure you look for information about pain points, current sales tech stack, team size, and processes. 
• Be real and authentic. No one wants to be sold to by ChatGPT. Be yourself, and add some personality and originality to the outreach. This can help you establish rapport during the sales process.
• Acknowledge the cold outreach. Most people don’t love cold sales calls. Ask if you can take 30 seconds of their time to make your pitch. This is a great tactic to open a cold call with because you've asked the prospect for permission to continue, which in-turn buys you more time!
  
  

💡 As a bonus, phone calls allow you to pick up on buyer signals and intent more readily than direct messaging or email.

Sales automation tools can help with personalized sales outreach at scale.

SDRs can use Kaspr to find stakeholder email addresses, create a prospect list, and reach out directly from the dashboard.

They can also use our Aircall and Ringover integration to make phone calls, speeding up the outreach process significantly.

👻 Did you know: You can try Kaspr’s automation for free

4. Prospecting KPIs

Sales leaders love KPIs, and so should you. 😻

As a sales rep, you need to have a daily game plan to set goals for yourself and track how you're doing.

The core KPIs of prospecting include:

• Response rates (per SDR per outreach platform).
• Number of connection requests accepted on LinkedIn.
• Number of leads added to your list of prospects.
• Total number of prospect outreach encounters. 
• Number of hours per day spent prospecting per SDR. 
• Number of first-time meetings with customers booked.
• Number of high-intent actions, like trial sign-ups or requests for pricing information.
• Number of prospects converted to sales in a set time period.

Automated prospecting software can help you track some of these KPIs.

Kaspr reports on the number of connection requests accepted on LinkedIn and the total number of phone numbers and emails accessed through the platform to track ROI better.

This makes it easy for sales leaders to see exactly how many fresh leads you are identifying (and ideally reaching out to) thanks to our platform, monitoring their progress.

5. Managing your leads

Automated prospecting goes beyond identifying new potential customers; you also need to nurture and organize the leads you’ve already got.

Managing your leads from a top-level point of view is critical.

Focus on conversion potential, prioritizing leads that have high buyer intent signals and that of course align with your ICP. 💥

Then, use automated follow-ups to keep in touch so you can nurture relationships with these potential customers.

The first step, though, is to make sure that all of your lead data ends up in your CRM so you can track customer relationships and customer journeys.

You can also use Kaspr for lead management to cut back on administrative tasks. Add notes to client profiles, set tasks, and build lists within Kaspr after you’ve saved your leads to the dashboard. This means you can keep track of which prospects you’ve connected with or contacted.

Kaspr also integrates with popular CRMs, including HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and more, so you can send your lead information straight from Kaspr to the CRM already in your tech stack. 

Tools that automate your prospecting

When you’re ready to begin automating your prospecting, knowing which tools to choose can make all the difference.

Here are three sales prospecting software tools we recommend using: Kaspr, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Outreach. 

Kaspr

G2 rating: ⭐ 4.4/5

Kaspr is great for finding the data you need quickly and easily.

We can help you automate prospecting by giving instant access to phone numbers and email addresses and helping you outreach with sequences.

Our LinkedIn Chrome Extension lets you capture a prospect’s name, phone number, email address, and company info while viewing their LinkedIn profile. You can also access and get this information through LinkedIn Sales Navigator when creating lists to find data in bulk.

We also provide actionable insights, including:

• Number of email addresses. 
• Number of phone numbers saved.
• Number of LinkedIn connection requests accepted.
  
  

“If you did the math, Kaspr probably saved us around 4-5 hours per week. The automation features like the LinkedIn workflows have saved us time and reduced the margin for error.”

 

- Mateusz Jaworski, SDR Manager at Cloud Direct

Kaspr’s all-in-one prospecting tool has a free base plan available.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator 

G2 rating: ⭐ 4.3/5

LinkedIn Sales Navigator can help you identify prospects with a simple search, which can be as broad or narrow as you’d like.

Since so many people are on LinkedIn, it’s an invaluable tool. You can find key stakeholders in specific organizations based on their job title, and search for prospects with qualities like company size or industry.

Instead of trying to comb through different organizations and searching for people manually, LinkedIn Navigator automates and streamlines the process.

You can request a demo to learn more about their pricing. 

Outreach

G2 rating: ⭐ 4.3/5

Outreach is an AI-powered marketing and selling tool that helps you predict whether or not deals will close - while offering powerful features that can increase the likelihood that it does.

They offer advanced features like sentiment analysis, A/B testing, smart email assist, and forecast predictions. 

This range of automation features can help your sales staff move leads through the sales funnel once they’re already in it, increasing success throughout the cycle. 

You can request pricing to compare plans.

FAQ

Do you still have some questions about automated prospecting? We’ve got answers! Check out our FAQ. 👇

What is automated prospecting?

Automated prospecting uses software to streamline the prospecting and sales process.

Examples include:

• Finding prospects.
• Collecting prospect data.
• Outreach and follow-ups with potential customers.

Which tool is best to help with automated prospecting? 

Kaspr is a free automated prospecting tool that can help SDRs get in touch with new prospects fast.

The Kaspr Chrome Extension allows SDR, recruiters and founders to view contact data while prospecting LinkedIn or export contact data from lists on Sales Navigator to your CRM in bulk.

Once you’ve got the information, Kaspr will help with outreach, too. Send messages on Kaspr  LinkedIn or email, and you can use dialer integrations to place sales calls the second you’re ready.

What are the best ways to use automation in outreach? 

Automation should be used to support your outbound activity, but definitely not as a spam cannon.

Use sales automation tools to:

• Identify prospects and key stakeholders. 
• Research the prospects and stakeholders to prepare for a cold call.
• Collect up-to-date contact information.
• Create personalized sales pitches for each prospect.
• Streamline or eliminate repetitive tasks. 
• Replace manual tasks with automation to reduce human error.

Do not use sales automation software to:

• Mass email leads with a generic message.
• Find as many leads as possible, regardless of quality.
• Continually spam people who are uninterested or don’t respond with endless email campaigns.

Try Kaspr for free

Kaspr is an all-in-one prospecting automation tool. Using highly specific account-based marketing (AMB) strategies?

Need accurate phone numbers?

All of the above?

We can help. Sign up for free today.

Join Kaspr’s 50K+ users to take advantage of everything we offer: 

✅ All-in-one prospecting tool.
✅ GDPR and CCPA aligned.
✅ No credit card is required for sign up.
✅ 500M+ email addresses and phone numbers.
✅ Fully self-service.
✅ Custom plans available.
✅ Free to get started.