I help the team with our outbound research so thought I would write a blog about our go-to B2B research tools. Since we work with many different solutions, targets, and use cases, we use different tools. Hopefully, this blog will bring you some good options for your B2B research tools.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is my favourite tool for research. It is used to create larger lists through filtering for big outbound campaigns for contacts. Some of the common filters we use include:

• Size of company

• Location of headquarters

• Contact location

• Industry

• Seniority level

• Job title

In some cases, the industry data is not available or incomplete and in that case we will use keywords found in the profile. We also use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for Account Based research. In those situations, we are looking for types of contacts at specific companies. This means trying different titles and keywords that meet with your buyer persona.

Wiza

We use Wiza in conjunction with LinkedIn. It can be used as a one-off through an individual LinkedIn page to get an email and/or phone number. Wiza can also be used in conjunction with LinkedIn Sales Navigator to create lists. It pulls through the data from LinkedIn like name, title, and more. It also adds an email, which we have found is very accurate. The information is then downloadable into a CSV file so it can be imported into your CRM. It allows for research at scale. It is also a Canadian-based start-up.

Knockd

We have only been using Knockd for the last few months, but it has quickly become one of our most important tools. Knockd is great for contacts and businesses that don’t have a great LinkedIn presence. We have used it for many use cases including farms in the Niagara Region and solar installers in Canada. It provides both the phone number and email address. We are excited to try more with a new signal feature that tracks indicators that can help with the timing of outreach efforts. We met Knockd through the Innovation Factory.

Apollo

Apollo is our go-to solution for finding phone numbers and emails. The credits needed for the phone are much more than the email. We don’t use the sequencing or call features within Apollo, as we prefer to do them in the CRM.

We have paid versions for all the tools we reference in this post. They all have some form of free trial or offering. I always recommend trying the free option to start to ensure it meets your needs.

If you are curious about how to build out your outbound campaigns, please connect with me.