Regardless of the ever-changing landscape of sales, cold calling remains a staple ingredient and should never be overlooked. If you use cold calling tools effectively, you can supercharge your team’s efficiency and level up your entire sales performance.
To make your life easier, we’ve organized these cold-calling tools into 9 relevant sections. Let’s crack on with it!
1. Call Tracking and Analytics
Call tracking and analytics is the practice of analyzing phone calls to gain insights into how your customers behave. When it comes to cold calling, these particular tools provide tons of data based on specific sales metrics such as conversion rates, call duration, and frequency.
Here are two top tier cold calling tools for call tracking and analytics.
tl;dv
tl;dv is a multi-meeting intelligence tool that records, transcribes, and automatically summarizes your virtual meetings for you. It integrates seamlessly with over 5,000 work apps, meaning your meeting notes (including timestamps) can be sent automatically to your CRM of choice after each and every meeting. This gives your calls value long after they finish.
tl;dv’s library hosts all your recordings and is super easy to search. Simply search a keyword and you’ll receive timestamps and the exact moment in the transcript for any time it’s been mentioned. This works across all your meetings. From here, you can make clips that quickly stitch these together, making it great for sales coaching.
Additionally, you can get AI reports scheduled straight to your inbox, covering just about any topic you wish. Want to have a weekly report of your sales team’s cold calls, complete with timestamps for you to quickly rewatch relevant sections? Done.
Gong
Gong is a powerful cold calling tool that gives you insights via automatically recording and transcribing calls. The tool provides a valuable look into conversations between your sales team and prospects. It provides speaker analytics and even AI recommendations for how long salespeople should be speaking (based on a general consensus from data collected from every call made using Gong).
The same AI can offer suggestions based on the conversation you’re having and the content it’s been provided with. This tool is one that is truly designed with cold callers in mind, however, it’s known for being pricey and its AI suggestions can be a little intrusive at times.
If Gong’s (hidden) pricing is too steep for you, or you want something a little less intrusive, try one of these Gong alternatives.
2. Email Tracking
Email tracking can help your team monitor when potential prospects open their emails. It alerts you when a prospect has engaged in your content. With just 24% of cold email pitches being opened by recipients, you need email tracking tools to ensure prospects don’t slip through the net.
Here are some of the best email tracking tools around.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an email marketing software that helps you tailor email campaigns to strike up interest in your potential customers. The analytics Mailchimp provides helps your team prioritize which leads to reach out to concerning the interest they’ve shown.
There is also an awesome automation feature that drip-feeds content to keep specific prospects engaged over time before cold calling. You can even split your contact list by demographic, helping you target your specific audience more easily. Consistent communication is a catalyst for converting cold leads into warm ones.
MailTracker
Once again, MailTracker captures insights that can be used to get a better understanding of your prospect’s interest. Just like Mailchimp, Mailtracker tracks the email open rates to identify which leads are more likely to lead to conversions.
Tracking email open rates gives your team an insight into the best days and times to approach a prospect. For example, if John opens emails on a Tuesday morning, your team will know the best time to reach out.
MailTracker is deeply embedded into Hunter.io, a sales platform that allows you to find emails associated with any domain. This feature is ridiculously beneficial for cold callers. If you want to track emails more strategically and comprehensively, this is one of the best cold calling tools for the job.
3. Social Selling
Social selling is one of the most popular categories of cold-calling tools in the modern day. Using social media platforms, you can start long-lasting relationships with your clients, providing valuable content and increasing sales opportunities by 45% more than a traditional sales approach.
The infographic below displays how much social selling has blown up in the US in the past 4 years.
The idea is simple, let your audience find you and then call them. If you’re looking for tools that can leverage social media, check out these industry leaders.
Buffer
Buffer schedules social media posts strategically to capture maximum engagement from prospects. Their content curation tools are the perfect way to aim relevant content at potential customers to help educate them and warm them up for a potential cold call.
Furthermore, Buffer is a great platform for tracking social media analytics, such as the amount of clicks on a post. Your sales team can adjust their cold calling strategy based on these metrics and therefore improve the quality of the leads generated.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the top social media management platforms and is perfect for generating leads and engaging prospects. It allows you to schedule multiple posts at a time and keep an eye on the engagement your posts receive.
Your team can also use Hootsuite’s Streams to monitor and listen to conversations on several social media platforms, or even track hashtags that are related to your particular industry. It’s a great way to find potential leads.
Hootsuite has been a game-changer for many businesses, including Melia Hotels International. Watch Tony Cortizas, the Vice President of Global Brand Marketing, give his testimonial below.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Next up is LinkedIn’s very own subscription-based tool that’s aimed at enhancing a sales team’s prospecting efforts before cold calling. It’s a much more advanced version of LinkedIn that gives your team the tools to connect and research further into potential prospects.
LinkedIn SN has advanced search filters such as location and job title which help you narrow down specific criteria and demographics to identify prospects more easily. The platform also matches prospects to a preferential user profile, expanding the range of potential leads available to your company.
4. Lead Generation & Data Enrichment
Lead generation software finds quality leads that have a high possibility of converting from prospect to customer. This saves your team tons of time! 79% of leads will never convert into sales, which shows why generating the right leads is important.
There’s a lot of overlap here with data enrichment too. Data enrichment tools collect data from external sources and pool it into one so that you can enter a cold call with much more knowledge about the prospect, making it easier to make that initial connection.
These 4 picks are some of the best cold calling tools because they improve the likelihood of the prospect being interested.
Apollo
Apollo, one of the most comprehensive cold-calling tools, can enable your team to search its enormous database and identify leads based on specific criteria, such as job title and company size. This narrows down your search and allows you to target different demographics easily.
It also provides automatic call recording and in the higher plans, can even transcribe the calls for you (but it lacks the finesse of dedicated call tracking tools like tl;dv). The in-app dialer allows you to make and receive calls directly on the Apollo platform, streamlining your cold calling process even further.
As Apollo is such a complex platform, it may be too much for some smaller teams. If so, check out some of Apollo’s best competitors.
Clearbit
Clearbit offers real-time insights into your leads’ recent company news, ensuring your team is up to date with important information when reaching out for the first time. The tool boosts your prospect data by gathering little nuggets of information about them from numerous different places. Now your cold calls will immediately have a more personal touch.
On top of that, Clearbit analyzes various factors like the online behavior of prospects and then prioritizes them; using lead scoring, based on the likelihood of converting that prospect into a happy customer before a cold call!
If Clearbit isn’t the right sales tool for you, check out these 5 Clearbit alternatives.
Cognism
Cognism has the biggest database and the highest data accuracy out of all lead-based cold calling tools. The accuracy of its 70 million+ phone numbers is said to be as high as 98%! This makes it one of the best cold calling tools as you can quickly and easily find leads that will be interested in the solution you provide.
Cognism has automatic trigger alerts that let your team know when a lead may be signaling intent to buy or the opportunity to engage with your company. These triggers allow your sales team to stay updated with relevant news but also help in not missing out on a potential warm lead.
Unfortunately, there’s no free plan and getting set up can take a while. If it’s too much of a hassle, you can find some great Cognism alternatives.
ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo, formerly known as Chorus, is a business information database that provides you and your team with all the key information needed when reaching out. The tool uses detailed profiles for potential leads to help you personalize your sales pitch. It has access to millions of verified contacts, ensuring you’re not heading down any dead ends.
Furthermore, ZoomInfo collates information based on recent business updates to make sure your team is always in the loop. It has tons of integrations and an automated task feature that allows you to streamline your cold calling processes and help your team focus on engagement with their prospects.
5. Autodialers
Autodialers are software tools that are commonly used in the sales industry to automate calls to potential prospects. The tool increases efficiency with dialing but also reduces the dead time between the end of the call. When one call ends, the automated dialer will call the next number on your database immediately, making them ideal to use as cold calling tools.
The autodialer industry is one for the future, expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 37.0% from 2021 to 2028.
Here are some of the best.
Five9
Five9 is one of the most used autodialers on the market currently. It’s a cloud-based platform with automated voice response that can monitor and record calls so you can check on your team’s performance via real-time analytics.
The interactive voice response (IVR) allows your team to create voice menus and routes that automatically connect your callers to the correct sector of your business. This cuts down the time it takes whilst handling calls.
RingCentral
RingCentral offers a comprehensive communications platform that includes automated SMS, phone calls, and video conferencing. The wide variety provides your team with complete flexibility when it comes to cold calling. Once again it’s a cloud-based platform, but it also comes with an app that you can download to your smartphone.
The RingCentral app allows you and your team to initiate calls from absolutely anywhere, making it one of the most flexible cold calling tools on the market. It’s great for maximizing productivity due to its automatic call distribution (ACD) feature, which is a little similar to Five9’s IVR.
6. Sales Engagement
Sales engagement’s main focus is to create genuine and meaningful relationships with prospects. Building rapport during cold calls is one of the most effective ways to keep clients happy. Cold calls that last two times longer (5:50 minutes) have a higher degree of success when it comes to converting those prospects into customers.
Here are some cold calling tools for sales engagement.
SalesLoft
SalesLoft gives your team an option to customize, manage, and automate various touch points on the customer journey like phone calls, emails, and social media interactions.
What’s particularly impressive about SalesLoft is the freedom it gives to personalize your team’s outreach. Your team can customize messaging based on previous data which allows you to tailor your cold calls to get maximum engagement.
Groove
Groove gives your team the power to create specific touchpoints from all sources of outreach to target prospects consistently. It has its own integrated power dialer and email tracking feature which is perfect for your team to streamline cold calling processes.
The power dialer allows your team to simultaneously make several cold calls improving the efficiency whilst working. In addition, the email tracking feature will give you real-time time-insights into the engagement of individual leads via email opening rates and responses. What’s great is, unlike most other cold calling tools, Groove is a jack of all trades that offers a little bit of everything.
7. Customer Relationship Management
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform is a must-have in the sales industry, so much so that 13% of companies say that investing in a CRM platform is one of their top sales priorities.
Below is an infographic explaining why CRMs are so popular in sales.
If you weren’t already aware of how crucial they were to improving your sales team’s performance, you are now! Here are two industry giants you should look into first when choosing a CRM.
Salesforce
Salesforce is a leading CRM, perfect for managing and streamlining your team’s tasks, including follow-ups, scheduling meetings, and sending emails. With its centralized customer database, you have tons of customer information just a click away that your team can use when researching prospects before calls. It’s super useful for keeping all your prospect and customer data in one place.
The CRM also offers call scripting that can be customized and saved so that your sales team has it available during cold calls if they ever start to stumble. It’s well-known for its integrations, allowing you to seamlessly transfer customer data from almost any other software you use directly to your dashboard.
The only real downside with Salesforce is the sheer complexity of it for newcomers. If you aren’t familiar with CRMs, Salesforce can have a pretty steep learning curve.
Hubspot
Hubspot boasts features such as contact management databases and lead scoring. It has excellent task automation and enables sales teams to store prospect information and previous engagement history, so your team can make conversations more personalized.
Hubspot is great at managing and analyzing prospect interactions. It’s easy to use yet intuitive with a wide range of features to help you track and analyze customer behaviors.
The CRM gives you the power to create a treasure trove of customer information that can be used time and time again to enhance your rapport building during cold calls.
8. Sales Training Platforms
One of the most crucial cold calling tools to have in your arsenal is one that helps you improve. Sales training platforms do exactly that. If your team has not been trained properly in the art of cold calling, how can you expect to boost your conversion rates?
About 55% of salespeople lack basic sales skills according to a report by Gitnux. That’s where sales coaching platforms come in. They’re designed to offer guidance and help your team learn how to cold call (and follow up) effectively.
Check out 5 common mistakes to avoid when implementing sales training below.
SalesHood and MindTickle are two leading platforms when it comes to sales training. Let’s take a look at them.
SalesHood
SalesHood is a great training platform that gives you the customization options to tailor-make specific training plans for you and your sales teams, improving your team’s cold-calling skills, as well as other key sales skills. This allows you to avoid one of the common mistakes listed above and have your sales reps suggest which skills they’d like to enhance, making them more engaged in the learning process.
SalesHood also has an awesome collaboration feature known as peer-to-peer learning, where your team can share the teachings and strategies they found most effective! It also offers virtual coaching workshops. Your team can get one-to-one guidance from experienced sales mentors which is arguably the best way you can improve (partnered with practice).
MindTickle
MindTickle also has excellent customization features, empowering your team to improve the skills they want, including cold calling. It’s a versatile learning platform with built-in assessment features to challenge your team whilst learning. You can keep a watchful eye on your team’s progression and identify key areas to improve.
This sales training platform offers analytics based on your team’s performance during these training assessments, so you can track your team’s learning and measure how effective the training is!
9. Integration and Automation Platforms
Integration platforms are the metaphorical string that tie sales apps together. It’s a technology that enables systems to integrate when there is no native integration.
Here are two of the most well-known integration platforms you can use to streamline and automate your sales game when cold calling.
Zapier
Zapier is a popular integration app that can connect almost anything with anything. It acts as a middleman between two external platforms, enabling you to transfer data between them both after certain triggers are activated.
One great example of how Zapier is one of the best cold calling tools is its ability to notify your sales team when your business has a potential new prospect. This allows you to get on the phone ASAP.
Tray.io
Tray.io is a sophisticated integration platform that automates cold-calling processes by transferring time-sensitive data about prospects between platforms instantly. It has a similar suite of features to Zapier, but it’s known to have a more complex interface and a much steeper learning curve. The benefit of this is that it goes above and beyond a simple integration platform.
It’s built to handle enterprise-level businesses so it can be a little intimidating at first glance. Smaller businesses are probably better suited using Zapier. Having said that, Tray’s customizable features make it one of the best cold calling tools in the industry. The personalized edge makes it simple to automate your workflows once you’ve got it up and running.
Try Out Some New Cold Calling Tools
Cold calling, while frowned upon by many, is still a key way to make sales today. The main difference between the past and now is you can enhance your chances with dozens of cold calling tools that allow you to specifically target your audience and multiply the data you have on any given prospect.
There have been 21 cold calling tools shared in this article, some you probably already knew, others you’re maybe just hearing about for the first time. By reading this article, you should be able to figure out which type of tool you need in your business and you’ve got a list of a few specific tools to check out to get you started. Try them out for yourself. Many have free trials so you’ve got nothing to lose.
