12 Top-Shelf Solutions for High-Quality B2B Lead Generation

B2B lead generation isn’t just about bringing in as many leads as possible—it’s about finding the right fit between businesses. While an overall strategic framework is necessary for your B2B efforts, we’ve also put together some B2B lead generation software solutions that, used in sequence and to scale, will ensure you have the information and business plan to find the right customers and partners. 

As you’ll see from the pricing layouts, the process is scalable, but we’ve put this particular list together to accommodate the full spectrum of business sizes, from entrepreneur to enterprise. So, while it’s certainly possible to use some of these solutions in a cost-effective way, we’ve also accommodated solutions for handling big ad budgets, major campaigns, and large events (although most enterprise-tier SaaS will require contacting the vendor for pricing). 

We’ll work our way up to that, though. For now, let’s start with some research.

Data Collection 

Zoominfo

It’s always good to start with the big picture, so begin your B2B lead generation journeys by leveraging data and contact solutions like Zoominfo to put together a list of potential outreach targets. While there are competitors in the lead gen data market (Slintel, for example), Zoominfo still boasts the biggest data set in its field. For a relatively comprehensive picture of your target market and its main players, the breadth of Zoominfo’s data is still immensely beneficial. 
For the B2B sequence we’re describing here, you’ll want to begin by making a list based on:

• Company size (number of employees)
• Yearly revenue

And, if you’re in the tech sphere:

• Currently-used technology solutions (available with upgrade) 

Solutions like Zoominfo are becoming more and more essential in the B2B lead generation process and we’ll likely see the information available become both wider ranging and increasingly accurate in coming years.  While you likely won’t be able to contact many of these companies directly yet, this basic phase will give you an idea of who you want your ideal clients to be and it’s a good way to prepare yourself for the next phase, Account-Based Marketing.

Cost: Contact vendor

ABM 

MRP Prelytix

Account-Based Marketing (or ABM) used to be a taxing process with uncertain rewards. But, in the modern business world, you can leverage various big data and AI solutions to bypass the drudgery phase of ABM and start putting together a list of businesses that are likely B2B partners. One such solution, MRP Prelytix, greatly refines the ABM process by using predictive analytics (hence the name) to optimize intent-based marketing campaigns. Among other data, MRP Prelytix shows:

• which segments and buyer types are interested in your product and company 
• which value propositions will resonate with your most likely prospects
• which verticals are interested in different components of your product offering and which pieces of content are speaking to their needs

ABM can be a taxing and sometimes disappointing process, but with tools like MRP Prelytix, you have a means of conducting ABM that is far superior to the research and speculation that the process used to require. 

Cost: Contact vendor

Marketing Automation 

Vendasta 

Because Vendasta is an end-to-end commerce platform, it will show up a few times in this process. For now, let’s begin at the top of the funnel. Compared to similar alternatives, Vendasta’s Marketing Automation is, well, actually automated. With Vendasta, your lead generation, personalized content, and en masse email delivery are all automated. With a great UX experience for both you and your clients, Marketing Automation—rebranded for your company—becomes your centralized top-of-the-funnel solution. Vendasta’s Marketing Automation ties directly into the Platform’s internal CRM, so you don’t need to worry about integrations or an out-of-control tech stack.
Alternately, just use Marketing Automation as a separate module integrated with your existing solutions.

Ad Intelligence 

AdEspresso

AdEspresso from Hootsuite is an ad optimization platform for Facebook, Instagram, and Google ads. Its ad testing features and analytics are especially useful for B2B: by testing and tracking different ads, you’ll start getting a better idea of that ideal partnership. 
AdEspresso gives you clear demographic information about who’s responding to your ads, great for not only getting an idea of specific leads, but helping you cast a wider net by determining the efficacy of your marketing personas. While each subscription tier has numerous features, they are primarily grounded in the amount of ad spending the automation can cover.  

Website Visitor Tracking 

Leadfeeder

After you start your marketing campaigns, you’ll (hopefully) see a boost in your web traffic, but unfortunately, a lot of those visitors will remain anonymous. Leadfeeder is a solution (among several) that lets you track website visitors and prioritize leads based on industry, company size, country of operation, and so forth, giving you specific lead information as well as an idea of who’s interested in your business in general.  

Leadfeeder does this by pulling data from Google Analytics (via the Google Analytics API) and combining it with IP data. With enriched IP data, Leadfeeder puts together information on the contact which you receive based on your prioritized categories. Because we’re talking about B2B, you’re not targeting a random consumer, but rather someone with a business relatively similar to (and compatible with) yours. If you do decide to contact someone from your website traffic in a B2B capacity, you can likely explain what your business can directly offer theirs, so you won’t just be spamming your prospects, but offering them specific solutions for their specific businesses.

Conversational Marketing 

Drift

Chatbots and live chat solutions are an important part of finding the right B2B partnership match. With even a few questions, you can determine a website visitor’s company size, segment, and particular set pain points, effectively qualifying the lead. 
Drift’s more complete set of offerings includes:

• Live Chat
• Chatbots
• ABM Chat (which begins with more specific questions)
• Meeting organizer (within chat)
• Video (within chat)
• Mobile access
• Email (reply management, deliverability, and email bots) 
•  

The Drift conversational platform takes this to the next level and fleshes out the important conversational element of creating long-lasting B2B relationships. Between a strong, question-detecting chatbot and a number of live chat and email response products, Drift lessens a B2B company’s reliance on forms and expresses the inter-business interest and intent behind the best B2B partnerships. 

Email Address Finder 

Hunter.io

For the visitors and prospects that you still don’t have full contact information for, email address finders like Hunter.io are an option. Of course, this isn’t an exact science, which is why Hunter’s confidence scoring makes it especially practical for what it does. 
Keep in mind that this won’t make your emails magically compliant. To avoid spamming, make sure you're familiar with the email laws of your prospects’ various jurisdictions. Hunter.io's pricing is determined by monthly requests, each of which consists of domain search, email finder, and email verification. 

LinkedIn

Although it might seem obvious, LinkedIn is definitely one of the most important components to a successful B2B strategy. In fact, it’s been speculated that as much as 80% of B2B leads originate from LinkedIn (Brafton). 

It’s important to stress that your LinkedIn strategy often doesn’t need an additional software component. While various products will automate blasts of LinkedIn messages, they’re not an advisable option. First of all, with generic, non-personalized copy, the origins of automated LinkedIn messages tend to be fairly obvious. Secondly, and most importantly, LinkedIn will definitely discourage you from, well, spamming their system. In basic terms, you’re already breaking the LinkedIn user agreement by employing these solutions and you will almost certainly receive a warning message. The bottom line? Tread carefully.

Instead, simply maintain a real, healthy LinkedIn presence. Although that may be a bit trite, it’s a very important part of the B2B conversation. For real B2B success, you’ll want executive representatives of both businesses to meet at some point.

LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator let’s you make the most of its network by providing you with insights from interactions with your company’s content. Again, B2B is about finding the right matches for powerful, long-term partnerships and collaborations. Put bluntly, doing the most you possibly can with LinkedIn’s network and its insights is a must for B2B. 

Lead Retrieval and Capture 

Attendify

While this step might not occur exactly at this stage in your process, it’s an important one to point out. All successful B2Bs have to make themselves known through whatever means necessary, but that means that leads coming from events and appearances might not yet be in your actual pipeline. That’s why lead retrieval and capture solutions, products that track your leads from various events, appearances, and groups, have become an increasingly important component to the B2B lead process.  Using an event lead retrieval and capture solution like Attendify lets you make the most out of your events and, more importantly, proves the ROI for investing in those events. 
Lead retrieval and capture is, in many ways, easier in the B2B world in which event attendees are more aware of mutual benefits than consumers, so your lead information in a solution like Attendify tends to be fairly robust after B2B events. 

CRM 

For the sales relationship and conversion element of your B2B lead generation process, we’re going to offer several options and their associated benefits. 

Salesforce 

Salesforce is the most widely-known CRM solution and it still holds up in many respects. Usable in both B2C and B2B applications, Salesforce provides users with expected marketing automation functionalities, such as campaign automation, sales insights, prospect tracking, service and support automation, open APIs, and more.

Outside of this (now) standard functionality, Salesforce stands out when it comes to prospect tracking and lead analytics, offering some of the most robust prospect insights available to marketers.

One of Salesforce’s greatest pitfalls is its dependency on the AppExchange marketplace and the associated costs of adding third-party applications to meet your unique needs. The Salesforce platform has also become somewhat fragmented through the separation of services into various “clouds” (ex. service cloud, marketing cloud, etc).

Vendasta CRM 

Vendasta’s AI-driven CRM is designed specifically for you and your sales team to conquer your local B2B market. Because business owners are often too busy with their own operations, it’s important for B2B lead generation solutions to tell you when the prospect is ready to buy. 

While Vendasta’s CRM does organize your sales pipeline, it’s more than that: the CRM turns your sales team into local experts with clear, actionable insights for your clients. With ongoing reporting, you establish yourself as your clients’ trusted provider of digital solutions and more. 

Vendasta's CRM boasts both inter-Platform connectivity as well as modularity, so use it on its own or use it alongside Vendasta’s Platform for selling to SMBs or for enterprise B2B.

Collaboration Integrator 

IBM Sterling B2B Integrator

Congratulations! Now that you’ve converted your lead into a B2B partner, you can take the next steps toward synchronizing your businesses and optimizing your offerings and data. For this, you might consider a solution like the IBM Sterling B2B Integrator. While there are other options, the IBM Sterling B2B Integrator remains the top choice on the market.  IBM’s B2B integrator is an always-on, hyper-connected B2B solution capable of handling complex supply chains and large exchanges of electronic messaging. It’s claim to fame is it’s remarkable level of security: by way of example, every transaction that goes through the US Federal Reserve goes through IBM Sterling (until the release of FedNow).  
The full extent of IBM’s integrator can’t be expressed here. However, rest assured that it is, in fact, still the industry standard for B2B data on any scale, from entrepreneurs to global brands, and should remain a consideration for channel connectivity. 

Cost: ~$450/license

Platform, Marketplace, and Services

Vendasta 

Now that your B2B relationship has been established, you're going to need a place for this business opportunity to live and thrive. Enter Vendasta (again). Of course, you can still branch out and refer to information from these other solutions, but, like many Vendasta users, you might prefer keeping your lead generation process centered in the Platform. If that’s the case, just head back to the Vendasta lead generation step—and repeat to scale.

Conclusion

By introducing these software solutions in your lead generation process, you’ll be providing yourself with the insights and marketing strategies needed to cultivate excellent B2B customer relationships and partnerships. As we’re sure you know, good B2B is all about communication and finding the optimal partnership arrangement. By now you should have a great idea about how your business and your new partners’ businesses can work together moving forward.

That being said, technology is only one piece of the broader lead generation puzzle. By pairing great tools with the right tactics, you can amplify the success of your lead generation programs. Check out our 300-page Fundamental Guide to Lead Generation to uncover 39 strategies that you can pair with these best-in-class tools.