What is sales intelligence
At its core, B2B sales is about human psychology paired with solid research. The more you know about your lead, their role, company, and market, the sharper your pitch will be. In depth knowledge of your lead’s pain points and problem statement allows you to craft compelling conversation starters and tailor demos and pitches to resonate with their needs. With this, sales teams will be able to engage with and nurture leads meaningfully, handle objections, and close deals faster.
Sales intelligence tools make this possible. Sales intelligence refers to data, signals, insight, and any other kind of information about a lead or an account that helps a sales person take better decisions and action during the sales process. And sales intelligence tools are either AI-native platforms that provide a variety of sales intelligence data or simple sales intelligence tools that provide users access to large databases with contact information.
Sales intelligence tools are essential for sales teams and RevOps teams in B2B companies, and are used by sales development representatives (SDRs), account executives (AEs), and marketers as well to run and manage their daily workflows.
The sales intelligence tool you use could make a huge difference to your GTM workflows and how efficient your outbound sales efforts are. The ideal sales intelligence tool is one that enables you to identify ICP contacts, prioritize targeted leads, enrich leads with not just contact information but a host of other signals and intent insights, and enable you to nurture relationships with them before you make a sale.
Here’s a detailed list of all the sales intelligence tools you can explore:
1. Highperformr
Highperformr is a sales intelligence tool and GTM workflow platform that helps B2B businesses identify leads and enrich contacts using first-party social data. With Highperformr, you will be able to
- Identify ICP leads from target accounts, websites, B2B events or tradeshows, social platforms, or other sources using first-party data.
- Get social intelligence about leads including basic contact information, firmographic data, real-time intent data, and social signals.
- Prioritize leads based on social signals and spearfish the high-potential leads that are most likely to convert soon.
- Manage social media presence and social selling using the Social Media AI Agent to create and schedule personalised social media posts, drive employee advocacy, and amplify brand voice on social platforms to drive business growth.
Highperformr is the best sales intelligence in the market today as it provides real-time data and lead intelligence. Highperformr provides access to a database of 250M contacts, helps identify ICP leads and enrich them with more contextual data and intelligence beyond contact numbers and email ids. With Highperformr, you don’t just get a row of names and contact information but get recent and relevant intel about leads that match your ICP, so you can understand your leads better and connect with them with context, and increase response rates.
Key features:
- Real-time data updates: Highperformr provides real-time signals about contacts, and other sales intelligence about your ICP leads
- First-party data: Highperformr has direct access to LinkedIn data under the hood. This enables Highperformr to provide high quality, recent and relevant information about your ICP contacts. Highperformr has real-time access to LinkedIn data that can help you find not just the contact details of the person but also get sales intelligence on how active they are, what topics they talk about, who their recent LinkedIn connections are, etc.
- White-glove onboarding and Applied AI solutioning: Highperformr offers every customer white-glove onboarding and implementation. You can work with your Applied AI Engineer to configure your account and learn how to make the most of Highperformr to all the sales intelligence you need to close more deals.
- Similarity search: You can find contacts similar to an ICP contact, and find companies similar to accounts you’re targeting.
- Find and build lead lists: Highperformr enables you to build lead lists that match your ICP. This can be based on event or tradeshow participation, keyword search, social media engagements and audience, competitor audience analysis, etc. Essentially, Highperformr helps you identify ICP contacts in addition to enrichment of leads you already have.
- Intuitive and easy to use: The product has been built to be a simple, self-serve platform that RevOps leaders, sales folks, lead development representatives (LDRs) and market research teams, can use to find, enrich and filter leads easily.
- Integrations: Highperformr fits seamlessly into your existing sales and marketing tech stack and can be connected with 100+ products.
- Track job changes: Highperformr enables you to track any career moves of key contacts or prospects. You can get real-time updates on job changes, promotions, or additional responsibilities of your contacts.
- Chrome plugin: The Highperformr Chrome extension can be used to easily and quickly add contacts or posts from LinkedIn to your Highperformr dashboard.
In addition to being a source for data enrichment and sales intelligence, users can manage their GTM workflow on Highperformr – all you need to do is to define and configure your ICP, and Highperformr enables you to find contacts, enrich them with real-time data, get social intent signals, refine your list, prioritize leads, and reach out to the high-potential ones to increase response rates.
Highperformr comes with a GenAI-native social media management platform which you can use to create and publish posts on social media, track the audience engaging with the posts, and identify leads from among your social audience.
Pricing:
Highperformr offers a simple, free version designed for individual users. For teams and larger enterprises, there’s a 14-day free trial to explore advanced features. Paid plans start at $59 for lifetime access, with optional credit add-ons available starting at $10 for 1,000 credits.
2. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator serves as a sales intelligence tool that can be used by sales professionals to find and engage with potential clients on LinkedIn.
Key features:
- Global access: LinkedIn Sales Navigator provides access to into 860M+ members and 60M+ companies across 200 countries.
- Targeted search: The product comes with advanced filters let users refine searches by industry, job title, location, and more. This makes it easy to zero in on ICP leads.
- AI features: LinkedIn Sales Navigator has also joined the AI wave, providing users with GenAI-powered company summary and help with gaining insights into company hiring trends, department headcount, and recent hires.
- Real-time insights: Since it is a product of LinkedIn, the tool is able to provide real-time updates about key developments such as job changes and company news related to your saved leads and accounts.
Pricing:
LinkedIn Sales Navigator users say that the product is quite expensive and doesn’t offer enough unique functionality to justify its premium pricing. “The functionality overall provides minimal benefit from linkedin itself for the cost of the solution. Linkedin is a valuable tool and networking platform but sales navigator doesn’t offer enough to justify the spend,” a customer pointed out.
3. ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is a sales intelligence platform that provides users access to a large B2B contact database and also helps businesses get buyer intent data and for website visitor tracking.
Key features:
- Large database: ZoomInfo provides users access to over 70M phone numbers and more than 174M verified email addresses.
- Account-based marketing (ABM): In addition to sales intelligence, Zoominfo can be used to run display and social ad campaigns for prospects who have signaled high intent to purchase.
- Integration: ZoomInfo integrates with CRMs, making it easy to manage and helping sales teams save time.
Pricing:
ZoomInfo doesn’t reveal its pricing packages on its website, but indicates that users can choose packages based on the use case, such as sales, marketing, or recruitment (talent). Customers, however, feel that the product can be quite expensive and doesn’t deliver as much value for the money, and prefer one of the many ZoomInfo competitors that offer similar or more advanced features at better prices.
4. Apollo
Apollo.io is a sales intelligence platform that provides users with a database of contact information and enables them to manage other sales activities such as filtering contact information, creating and scheduling emails, managing meetings, automating parts of the workflow, tracking analytics, etc.
Key features:
- Large database: Access over 210M contacts and 35M companies.
- Email automation: The tool enables you to schedule sales outreach with customizable email sequences, A/B testing, and performance tracking to optimize engagement.
- Advanced filtering: You can refine search using 65+ filters, including job title, industry, and company size, to zero in on the perfect leads.
Pricing:
Apollo offers a free plan, and has multiple packages starting from $49 per user billed annually for a Basic version to $119 for larger organizations. Email credits are at the centre of Apollo’s pricing plans and users can purchase more credits as per their needs. Despite the availability of multiple pricing plans and options, customers recommend also evaluating some of the other top Apollo alternatives because Apollo’s customer support and service can be poor, making it difficult to achieve good ROI on the dollars spent on Apollo.
5. Clay
Clay is a sales intelligence tool that helps B2B businesses with their outreach efforts. The company helps import lead lists into the platform, enrich it with data from multiple data enrichment tools, and plan personalized outreach campaigns for the target accounts.
Key features:
- AI research: The AI feature helps with researching the contacts and understanding them better before reaching out to them with a pitch.
- Integrations: The tool integrates with 100+ sales and marketing products.
- Sales outreach: Clay comes with AI features that help you craft relevant, compelling messaging based on the data.
Pricing:
Clay offers a free plan with 1.2K credits per year, and the paid plans start at $134/month for 24K credits. There are multiple tiers based on the features available and the credits available for purchase, going all the way to $1800/month for 1.8M credits a year. You can also choose to customize a package for your company based on your feature set and credit needs.
Many users feel that Clay’s pricing is expensive and find it difficult to use despite the pricing structure, prompting many businesses to look at other Clay alternatives for data enrichment.
6. Lusha
Lusha is a sales intelligence platform that provides data that salespeople can use to identify and engage with prospects.
Key features:
- Search: You can find your ideal customers using an advanced search that filters for intent, job changes, company technologies, funding, etc.
- Automated emails: This feature helps you send personalized and automated email sequences.
- Intent data: The platform helps identify potential buyers and target potential accounts that are actively looking for a solution.
- Job change: Lusha can notify you when your prospect makes a change that influences their buying potential.
Pricing:
Lusha offers a basic free version, and the plans with richer features start at $37/month for 3 seats. Larger teams get tailored solutions and custom pricing based on the requirements.
7. Cognism
Cognism provides companies with B2B contact information and intent data. The platform offers access to person and company-level data, and data from across the world.
Key features:
- AI search: The feature helps you find and enrich contact details using a search functionality.
- Scheduled enrichment: This functionality keeps your CRM or database accurate and actionable with automated data updates.
- Intent data: Cognism helps you identify accounts actively searching for your product or service, and enables you to target key decision-makers when they’re ready to buy.
Pricing:
Cognism doesn’t highlight its pricing plans on the website but clarifies that its tailored packages include a flat platform access fee which covers data maintenance, set up, onboarding and 24-7 live chat support.
8. Kaspr
Kaspr.io is a sales intelligence tool that focuses on European contact data. Given the GDPR and restrictions around data collection, many sales intelligence providers don’t promise accuracy or extensive access to data on European companies or contacts but Kaspr claims to be GDPR aligned and promises access to over 200M profiles.
Key features:
- European contacts: The company focuses on GDPR-compliant contact data for over 200 million European profiles, ideal for businesses targeting EU markets.
- Chrome extension: It features a Chrome extension to pull contact information directly from LinkedIn profiles.
Pricing:
The company offers a basic free plan, and the paid version starts at 45€ per user per month, and goes up to 99€ for larger organizations. User reviews indicate that this pricing can be steep, especially for startups or small businesses.
9. Hunter
Hunter.io is a tool to help users find email addresses associated with specific domains or people. It is a good sales intelligence tool to go for if you’re looking to particularly connect with people on email.
Key features:
- Email verification: Hunter can be used to verify all email addresses and receive a confidence score to assess accuracy before initiating contact.
- Bulk search: The platform supports bulk enrichment so you can upload a list of domains to find and enrich email addresses for large-scale campaigns.
Pricing:
Hunter has four pricing tiers for its outreach tool, starting from $34 to $349 for unlimited seats, and the breadth of features increasing as you go to the higher tiers. It offers credit-based access to its email search and verification services through its Data Platform plans. You can also have a package customized for your needs.
10. UpLead
UpLead is a B2B data and sales intelligence tool that provides access to a database of business contacts and companies, and offers verified emails, mobile numbers, and intent data.
Key features:
- Large database: You can access 160M+ leads with 50+ search filters to find your ideal customers.
- Buyer intent data: The feature helps identify and engage with prospects actively researching solutions.
Pricing:
UpLead doesn’t have a free plan, just a 7-day trial. It has two packages for $99/month and $199/ month, and custom pricing for enterprises with wider feature requirements.
11. LeadIQ
LeadIQ is a sales intelligence platform that offers access to a comprehensive B2B contact database.
Key features:
- LinkedIn extension: You can use the plugin to capture lead information directly from LinkedIn using a Chrome extension.
- Email generation: The feature helps generate personalized, contextually relevant email templates with the AI-powered Scribe.
- CRM integration: The platform syncs data directly with Salesforce or HubSpot.
Pricing:
LeadIQ offers a free plan, and has a couple of packages starting from $36 a month per user, and has custom pricing for larger enterprises that want a wider range of features.
12. Winmo
Winmo is a sales intelligence tool for advertisers and agencies. The product provides data on leads, alerts on who’s buying, and lists of decision-makers who control marketing budgets.
Key features:
- Targeted search: Browse thousands of national advertisers, agencies, and decision-makers and curate targeted lists.
- Alerts: The WinmoEdge helps with sales forecasting by alerting you to sales opportunities.
Pricing:
Winmo’s website doesn’t mention pricing. There are four packages you could choose from depending on the kind of data you require.
13. Bombora
Bombora is a sales intelligence tool that provides B2B intent data based on prospects’ digital journey across 5,000+ B2B websites.
Key features:
- Company surge: Bombora’s B2B intent data solution consists of 15,600+ intent topics sourced from a data cooperative of more than 5000 websites.
- Visitor insights: This feature identifies site visitors and provides users with a complete picture of anonymous traffic.
Pricing:
Bombora’s website doesn’t mention pricing but customer reviews indicate that it can be expensive.
14. Lead411
Lead411 is a sales intelligence provider that gives users access to mobile phone and email data. It also partners with Bombora to provide customers with B2B intent data.
Key features:
- Unlimited data views: The company doesn’t apply a cap on how many email or phone number views you can access.
- Custom triggers: The platform allows users to create custom triggers based on a number of factors so you can find the best contacts for your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
- Lead411 data: Lead411 offers Bombora B2B intent data where users can select 5-25 topics and discover companies that are actively looking for services and solutions.
- Complicated Navigation: Finding leads by type within the portal can feel clunky. “There could be some modification to the filters, like being able to add more than one at a time,” a reviewer on G2 suggested.
Pricing:
Lead411 offers a 7 day free trial, but no free packages. The paid versions are priced at $99/month per user, and custom pricing for larger teams with other requirements. Buyer intent data is available only on annual subscriptions.
15. Demandbase
Demandbase is a tool that helps B2B businesses with account-based marketing (ABM) and helps customers identify and target their ideal customers.
Key features:
- Account insights: Demandbase provides deep account-level data that helps you target high-value accounts for ABM campaigns.
- Custom web pages: It enables companies to customise web pages with tailored images, copy, CTA buttons, etc. and personalize your website for target accounts.
- ABM metrics: Demandbase helps track and measure account-based metrics that matter like engagement, journey stage movement, ad performance, etc.
Pricing:
Demandbase does not reveal its pricing plans on the website. It mentions that pricing is tailored to the company’s requirement, and includes a platform fee that covers all the essential software and services and a flat fee per user.
16. Leadfeeder by Dealfront
Leadfeeder is a B2B sales intelligence tool that helps businesses identify and engage with companies visiting their websites. It automates the process of lead scoring and identifying high-intent leads.
Key features:
- Filtering leads: The product automatically filters the lead list to remove bots, ISPs and other valueless traffic.
- Integrations: The product can be connected with other sales and marketing tools.
Pricing:
Leadfeeder by Dealfront offers a free version with some basic features, and a paid plan that costs €99 per month.
17. Clearbit - Hubspot Breeze
Clearbit is a data provider that was acquired by Hubspot in December 2023. The product, now called HubSpot Breeze, is part of the Hubspot platform.
Key features:
- Optimize forms: One of the key features is the ability to shorten information forms. After using the tool, users can ideally remove fields that Clearbit can enrich, and create the forms to collect prospect data that can be more useful for sales teams.
- Visitor insights: Hubspot Breeze, formerly Clearbit, has a feature that helps track which companies visit your website over hours, days, weeks, or months. The platform also makes it easy to identify prospects visiting high-intent pages (like pricing) and cross-check if they’re already in HubSpot.
Pricing:
Since Clearbit is now part of Hubspot, the products and services that Clearbit used to offer are part of the other services and packages that Hubspot offers and the pricing can vary based on the combination of products you use from the Hubspot platform. The free plan allows users to define Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs), track audiences, and monitor website visits, making it accessible even for smaller teams with limited budgets.
18. Datanyze
Datanyze is a sales intelligence tool that helps users get contact information of B2B sales prospects.
Key features:
Chrome extension: This feature helps get contact information directly from LinkedIn profiles and company websites.
Conversation starters: The platform also provides salespeople with icebreakers that can be used to have more meaningful conversations.
Pricing:
The company offers a 90-day free trial after which users can choose from the paid packages that start at $29/month for 80 credits.
19. 6Sense
6Sense is a sales intelligence tool that provides users buyer intent data, account information, contact information, and helps companies build programmatic advertising campaigns.
Key features:
- Intent data: The tool predicts buying stages and identifies intent at the keyword or topic level, so you know which accounts are ready to engage.
- Account prioritization: The AI features also help you prioritize accounts, conduct research, and even draft personalized emails.
- Ad targeting: The platform enables you to execute display, video, retargeting, and social ad campaigns aimed at high-intent buyers.
Pricing:
6Sense doesn’t reveal its pricing model on the website, and only lists the features available under each of its plans - Free, Team, Growth, and Enterprise.
20. Seamless.ai
Seamless.ai is a sales intelligence tool that helps businesses find contact information, get buyer intent data, and track job changes to identify leads. Seamless.AI has several AI tools that customers can use to research contacts, write sales pitches, and automate sales and marketing workflows.
Key features:
- Large contact database: Users have access to over 1.3 billion business contacts and 121 million companies.
- Intent data: Seamless.AI identifies prospects actively researching topics relevant to your offerings.
- AI email writing: Customers also have access to an AI copywriting tool that generates tailored sales emails.
- Job change tracking: The product helps identify new opportunities and maintain relationships when contacts or prospects switch jobs.
Pricing:
- Seamless.ai’s website does not mention the pricing plans available. It only highlights the three broad options and the set of add-ons available for purchase.
The benefits of using sales intelligence tools
Sales intelligence tools are critical in a RevOps team’s or sales team’s toolstack. They can bring about several tangible improvements to the sales process. Here are some of the benefits of using sales intelligence tools:
- Drive better sales conversations: With richer signals about your leads, you can craft conversations that resonate with your prospects and ensure that you give targeted demos, address their unique needs, and demonstrate value.
- Prioritize high-intent leads: Sales intelligence tools help you prioritize leads based on those that are most likely to convert soon, and focus your outreach efforts on the right leads at the right time.
- Gain an edge over competitors: Sales intelligence tools like Highperformr enable you to spot leads engaging with competitors and reach out to them in time, to ensure you don’t lose a lead to a competitor.
- Build stronger relationships: The insights you gain about a contact can help you understand them better, and nurture richer relationships. This helps at every phase of the sales process and also ensures that there is lower risk of churn.
- Build a bigger pipeline: Sales intelligence helps you uncover opportunities you didn’t know existed. Intel about the lead or the employer can open up opportunities for upselling or cross selling, and you could even discover new use cases for your product based on the signals from the sales intelligence tool.
- Shorten sales cycles: Understanding leads well helps establish richer relationships and establish trust easily. When you know your leads well, your conversations and demos are more targeted, and you don’t end up spending a lot of time on back-and-forth conversations. This helps you close the deals faster.
- Improve revenue forecasting: Sales intelligence tools are extremely useful for RevOps teams as they help with revenue forecasting. With better understanding of your prospects and where they are in the buying journey, you can forecast revenues accurately.
- Nurture leads on social: Sales intelligence tools like Highperformr help you to nurture your leads on social media. Highperformr’s social publishing platform with the native social media AI agent enables you to create posts easily. This helps you cultivate an audience, engage with them on social media, and understand them better.
What to look for in a sales intelligence solution
Selecting the right product can shape your sales and outreach strategies. You’ll have to analyze your company’s business requirements and then list your requirements from a sales intelligence tool to ensure that the tool is able to give you everything your business needs.
Here’s a detailed guide to help you find the best sales intelligence platform:
Define your objectives
First, make a list of what you want to achieve with the tool before you go into comparing features and capabilities of the different sales intelligence providers in the market. Do you want to update your CRM with enriched leads, are you looking to enhance email deliverability, or does your business now need a tool equipped to give you precise insights about your target accounts? Once the objectives are clear, you can shortlist products and then find the right match.
Ensure that the product fits into your GTM strategy
Here are some things you need to consider:
- If your organization is investing in AI lead generation, ensure that the sales intelligence platform has AI capabilities.
- If your sales and marketing team relies heavily on email campaigns, pick a sales intelligence tool that provides verified email data with low bounce rates and high deliverability.
- If your team focuses on outbound sales and cold calls, select a tool that provides verified phone numbers, particularly mobile numbers and direct dials, rather than generic office numbers.
- For account-based marketing (ABM), pick a sales intelligence tool that can provide firmographic and technographic data and has been built to assist with ABM.
Check data update frequency
Recency and relevance are critical factors for any sales team. When selecting a sales intelligence tool, ensure that the vendor refreshes the data frequently. Outdated data can lead to wasted effort and missed opportunities.
Analyze pricing models
Most sales enrichment tools work on a credit-based system, where each record enriched deducts a certain number of credits. Check if unused credits roll over to the next billing cycle—this can save costs, especially if your usage varies month-to-month.
Evaluate integrations
Ensure the tool integrates seamlessly with your existing sales and marketing tech stack. Check for API access or webhooks that allow enriched data to sync into your workflows without manual intervention.
Look for value-add features
Many sales intelligence provides go beyond just providing you with the intel about leads. Look for tools that:
- Help identify your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
- Provide insights into your target market, such as key industries or geographies.
- Enable you to engage with the contacts and leads you have identified.
Ensure customer support
Reliable customer support and onboarding managers can make a big difference in how effectively you use the tool. Look for vendors that offered dedicated account managers, access to live chat or phone support, and access to a community or a Discord channel.
Highperformr - the best sales intelligence tool for B2B businesses
It must be pretty clear by now that Highperformr is the best sales intelligence tool for B2B companies. Highperformr stands out from all other tools because it provides real-time data and helps enrich leads and target accounts with recent and relevant intent signals that help businesses go after the right leads at the right time.
To learn more about how Highperformr can help your sales teams, schedule a demo with our team here!
