Account-based prospecting is the secret sauce to winning more high-value deals in 2026.

Don’t trust us? Let’s go over a familiar scenario to paint a better picture.

A prospect tells you they’re not interested, and what happens next? In most cases, the entire company gets marked as a dead end and everyone moves on to the next person on the prospecting list. 

But the thing is, one prospect is NOT the entire company. Chances are, they weren’t even a business decision-maker but you never got to find that out because: 

• A: You didn’t research the company hard enough, and 
• B: One ‘’no’’ made you drop the entire account.

But why would you even start with a random list of prospects and hope some of them work at companies worth targeting when there’s a better way? When there’s account-based prospecting. 

The premise is simple: you start with the companies that match your ICP, research them, find the right decision-makers inside them, and only then move on to outreach.

Of course, there’s a lot more to account-based prospecting than meets the eye, so today, we’ll be going over:

• What account-based prospecting is
• How it differs from traditional prospecting and related account-based terms
• Why it matters
• How to do it step by step
• And the tool to help execute it all. Spoiler alert, it’s Skylead. 🙂

Let’s dive in!

What is account-based prospecting and how is it different from traditional prospecting?

Account-based prospecting (ABP) is the process of finding and researching high-value companies that match your ideal customer profile, identifying the right decision-makers inside them, and preparing the account for sales outreach.

You may be thinking: isn’t that what prospecting as a whole is all about?

Well, not exactly. Traditional prospecting is prospect-first, meaning you begin your search for people based on specific criteria, such as a job title, seniority, location, industry, or company size. Then, you reach out to them and qualify the company along the way.

In the meantime, account-based prospecting is company-first. You identify the accounts that match your ICP, research their needs, check for buying signals, map the buying committee, and only then look for the right contacts inside those accounts.

Neither approach is automatically better. In fact, traditional prospecting is the essence of B2C sales.

However, if you’re in B2B and going after higher-value accounts, selling to multiple decision-makers, or trying to build a cleaner pipeline, ABP just makes more sense.

Why? Because it helps you answer the most important question right away, and that is ‘’Is this company actually worth our time?’’

What are the advantages of account-based prospecting?

The biggest advantage of account-based prospecting is focus. Instead of filling your pipeline with as many prospects as possible and hoping some of them convert, you narrow your search to companies that are actually worth your time, meaning they are more likely to convert, have a higher lifetime value, and become brand ambassadors.

That alone can change the quality of your entire sales process.

But other than focus, there are a few more benefits that go in favor of ABP.

1. It keeps your pipeline aligned with your ICP

You can have 2,000 prospects with the right job title and still end up with a list full of companies that aren’t a good fit for your business.

Account-based prospecting helps you avoid that by putting the company first.

Rather than prospecting with the mindset of looking up individuals with a specific job title, you prospect with the mindset of looking up companies that are in the market for what you sell. Only after that do you look for the people inside them.

This keeps your pipeline cleaner because every prospect you add is tied to an account that has already passed the qualification process.

2. It helps you prioritize quality over quantity

Traditional prospecting often pushes reps toward volume. And don’t get me wrong, volume has its place. But if you’re selling to high-value B2B accounts, more isn’t always better.

With ABP, you’re concentrating all your effort on where it has the highest chance of paying off, a.k.a. on fewer but better-fit accounts.

That leads to more thoughtful research, better context, and stronger sales conversations once cold outreach begins.

3. It helps you avoid wasting personalization on the wrong companies

Let’s face it, personalization takes time. Sure, you can write a custom icebreaker for every prospect on your list. You can mention their latest LinkedIn post, their company news, or something from their website. But if the company was never a good fit to begin with, what exactly did you win?

Not all companies deserve the trouble, and when you take the account-based prospecting approach, you actually get to decide which ones do.

4. It helps you map the buying committee before outreach starts

In company settings, especially when talking about enterprises, rarely is one person in charge of making decisions.

B2B buying groups commonly include multiple decision-makers, which may include the following:

• Business decision-maker
• End user
• Technical evaluator
• Budget holder
• Potential blocker

Each of them may care about something different. For example, the CFO cares about cost, the end user about ease of use, the tech evaluator about integrations, security, implementation, etc.

With account-based prospecting, you can identify them all and thus plan a much smarter approach.

5. It gives your outreach a stronger context

Account-based prospecting is not outreach. But it absolutely makes outreach better.

Why?

Because once you research the account, you understand what’s actually going on inside the company.

That may include details such as:

• Hiring patterns
• Recent funding
• Expansion into new markets
• Tech stack
• Leadership changes
• Open roles
• Recent product launches

This context gives your outreach a reason to exist, which matters today more than ever. Modern B2B buyers aren’t exactly fond of generic sales messages, with 73% of them actively avoiding sellers that send irrelevant messages. So, the more context you have before reaching out, the better your chances of making your message relevant and, thus, receiving a reply.

6. It supports bigger, more strategic deals

ABP makes the most sense when the account is valuable enough to justify deeper research.

That’s why it pairs so well with account-based marketing and account-based selling. All 3 rely on the same core idea: focus your resources on the accounts that matter most.

And there’s a reason B2B teams are moving in that direction. Demandbase’s 2024 ABM Benchmark Report found that top B2B marketers achieve 81% higher ROI with account-based marketing.

Of course, ABM and ABP aren’t the same thing. But they share the same logic: if you want better results, stop treating every company like it deserves the same amount of effort. Because the truth is: they don’t.

Account-based prospecting and related terms

Speaking of account-based prospecting, marketing, and selling, they’re not the only account-based terms you’ll come across.

And while they all revolve around the same idea - focusing your efforts on high-value accounts - they all serve a different function. 

So, before we move on, let’s quickly define them.

1. Account-based marketing

Account-based marketing, or ABM, is a marketing strategy focused on engaging target accounts through personalized campaigns, content, ads, landing pages, events, and other marketing touchpoints.

2. Account-based selling

Account-based selling, or ABS, is the broader sales process of engaging, managing, and closing high-value accounts.

3. Account-based outreach

Account-based outreach is the act of contacting people inside your target accounts through email, LinkedIn, calls, and other channels.

4. Account-based experience

Account-based experience, or ABX, covers the entire customer journey and represents the full experience an account has with your company across marketing, sales, customer success, support, and other teams.

5. Account-based everything

Account-based everything, or ABE, is the broadest account-based approach. It means your entire company, from marketing and sales to customer success and product, aligns around target accounts. The goal is to create a coordinated experience for key accounts across every stage of the relationship.

How does account-based prospecting work?

Now that we’ve covered what account-based prospecting is and how it fits with other account-based strategies, let’s get into the actual process.

As we’ve already established, ABP happens before outreach. So, the goal here isn’t to write the perfect cold message just yet.

The goal is to figure out:

• Which companies are worth targeting
• Why they’re a good fit
• Who inside those companies should be contacted
• What context can make future outreach more relevant

In other words, you’re building the foundation your outreach will later stand on, and here’s how you can do it.

1. Define your ICP

You can’t find the right accounts if you don’t know what ‘’right’’ means.

And that’s why ABP starts with defining your ideal customer profile, or ICP. This is the type of company that is the best fit for your product, has the highest chance of converting, and is most likely to see real value from what you offer.

To define it, look at your best existing customers and search for patterns across criteria such as:

• Industry
• Company size
• Location
• Revenue
• Team size
• Growth stage
• Tech stack
• Use case
• Pain points
• Average deal size
• Sales cycle length

The goal is to understand what your best accounts have in common, so you can find more of those that look like them.

2. Build a target company list

Once your ICP is clear, it’s time to build your target company list. This is where the account-first part of ABP really kicks in. Rather than searching for individual prospects right away, you search for companies that match your ICP criteria.

You can build this list using:

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator account search filters
• Your CRM
• Website visitor data
• Funding databases
• Job boards
• Industry directories
• Intent data tools
• Competitor customer lists
• Your existing customer lookalikes

At this stage, don’t worry about finding every person inside the companies yet. Just focus on the companies themselves.

If Sales Navigator is the base for your search, we’ve got just the tool to help you put ABP into motion: Skylead.

Skylead is an AI account-based sales engagement platform that doubles as a LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software. And guess what? It comes with an account-based prospecting feature that helps you build targeted contact lists from Sales Navigator search URLs.

The way it works is, you first apply Account filters to your Sales Navigator search using your ICP criteria and copy the URL.

Then, you paste it into Skylead.

From there, Skylead scans the results and pulls all companies into a company list.

3. Research and qualify each account

Now comes the part that separates actual account-based prospecting from simply building any company list.

You need to research each account and qualify whether it’s truly worth your team’s time.

This means looking at account-level details like:

• What the company does
• How large of an opportunity it could be
• Whether they have a relevant pain point
• Whether they’re showing buying signals
• What tools they may already use
• Whether they recently raised funding
• Whether they’re hiring for relevant roles
• If they’re expanding into new markets
• Whether there are existing connections or warm paths into the account

This is where you start separating accounts that look good on paper from those that are actually good for business.

For example, a company may match your industry and size criteria, but if they don’t have the problem you solve, they’re not a strong target. On the other hand, a slightly smaller company that recently hired a new Vice President, opened several relevant roles, and uses a tool that pairs well with yours may deserve more attention.

That’s the whole point of this stage: not just finding accounts, but understanding which ones deserve priority.

Of course, you could go about this step manually, but Skylead also comes with a handy AI data enrichment add-on that helps you speed up the process.

For example, you can ask AI to analyze a company website and determine whether the company is B2B or B2C, product or service-based, part of a specific niche, showing funding signals, or matching any other qualification rule you care about. 

Skylead will create new column(s), complete with results. You can then review the information and filter the list accordingly by deleting accounts you do not wish to target. 

4. Tier your target accounts

Once you’ve researched and qualified your target companies, divide them into tiers based on fit, value, and priority.

For example:

• Tier 1 accounts are your highest-value, best-fit companies. They deserve deeper research, more stakeholder mapping, and highly personalized outreach once the time comes.
• Tier 2 accounts are strong-fit companies with good potential, but they may not require the same level of attention.
• Tier 3 accounts are still relevant, but they’re usually better suited for lighter research and more scalable outreach.

This helps you match effort to opportunity. Because if you treat every account like a Tier 1 account, you’ll burn too much time. But if you treat every account like a Tier 3 account, you’ll miss the strategic opportunities that deserve more attention.

5. Find the right contacts inside each target account

This is where contacts finally enter the picture. But notice the order: first the account, then the contact.

Once you know which companies are worth pursuing, you can start identifying the right people inside them. These are the people who either feel the pain, influence the decision, control the budget, evaluate the tool, or block the deal.

Depending on what you sell, that may include:

• CEOs or founders
• Department heads
• Revenue leaders
• Operations managers
• Tech evaluators
• End users
• Procurement contacts

At this stage, you’re still not reaching out. You’re identifying the people who matter so you can approach the account properly later.

Now, remember the company lists you can build through Skylead? Well, once you’ve cleaned them up, you can also use our tool to get contacts inside them.

Simply navigate to your list, and click ‘’Get contacts’’,

A pop-up will appear prompting you to enter a Sales Navigator lead search URL that you need to filter according to, say, a job title.

Skylead will then compare your lead search results with your company list and return contacts that match your company AND contact criteria.

Yes, it’s that easy. 🙂

6. Enrich account and contact data

Once you have your company list and relevant contacts, enrich the data before moving into outreach.

This step helps you add the context you’ll later use to personalize messaging and prioritize accounts.

For example, you can enrich data around:

• Company overview
• Current role
• Skills
• Recent company news
• Open jobs
• Funding
• Growth signals
• Tech stack
• Lead background

… and much more!

The more context you have, the easier it becomes to understand why the account matters and how to approach the people inside it.

We already talked about using Skylead’s AI data enrichment add-on to get relevant account-level data. You can also use it to enrich contacts within them using details like:

• Bio
• Role
• Skills
• Experience
• Education
• LinkedIn posts

You can also use Prompt AI to describe exactly what you want to find or generate personalized icebreakers, then add the collected insight as a new column for easier use in an outreach campaign.

7. Prepare the account for outreach

At this point, account-based prospecting has done its job. You know which companies are worth pursuing. You know why they’re a fit. You’ve identified the right people inside them. You’ve gathered context that can support future messaging.

Only now does the outreach begin.

That could mean sending emails, LinkedIn connection messages, and LinkedIn inMails, making calls, or combining multiple outreach actions and channels into an automated sequence.

If you’re using Skylead, this transition is pretty straightforward. 

Once your contacts are matched with target accounts and enriched with the right context, you can push them directly into your campaign, a.k.a. Smart sequence. 

The steps in a sequence will unfold according to the prospects’ behavior to help you maximize touchpoints and reach them, one way or the other.

So, as you can see, not only does Skylead help you prospect. It also helps you enrich data and, finally, outreach. Outreach with the right context backed by account research, account fit, and stakeholder mapping to bring the entire sales engagement process full circle.

Frequently asked questions

Is account-based prospecting the same as lead generation?

Not quite. Lead generation is the broader process of attracting or collecting potential buyers and reaching out to them, often as individual contacts. Account-based prospecting is more specific. It starts with finding companies that match your ICP, then identifying the right people inside them.

Is account-based prospecting the same as outreach?

No. Account-based prospecting happens before outreach. It’s the process of finding, researching, qualifying, and preparing target accounts. Outreach is what happens once you start contacting the people inside those accounts through cold email, LinkedIn, cold calls, and other means.

Who should use account-based prospecting?

Account-based prospecting is best for B2B teams that sell to high-value accounts that warrant longer sales cycles, or are targeting multiple decision-makers. It’s most useful if your team needs to focus on quality over quantity, build a cleaner pipeline, or avoid wasting time on companies that aren’t a good fit.

How many accounts should you target with account-based prospecting?

That depends on your team size, market, and average deal value. If your focus is enterprise sales, your list should be smaller and more focused because each account requires deeper research. If you’re targeting mid-market companies, you can usually work with a larger list, as long as every company still matches your ICP.

What do you need for account-based prospecting?

At a minimum, you need a:

• Clear ICP
• Target company list
• Way to research and qualify accounts
• Way to find relevant contacts inside those accounts
• Data enrichment for better context
• A dedicated platform for sales engagement to move on to outreach once prospecting is done

Can you do account-based prospecting manually?

Yes, but it’s not ideal. You can build company lists manually, research accounts one by one, find contacts and information about them through LinkedIn, and keep track of everything in spreadsheets. However, using B2B prospecting tools or top sales engagement platforms makes the process faster, cleaner, and easier to scale.

Start putting the accounts first

With all said and done, it’s clear that account-based prospecting is the way to prospect in 2026 and beyond. After all, why waste time chasing random prospects when you can focus on companies that actually need what you sell?

And with Skylead, the entire process becomes a whole lot easier.

You can build targeted company lists, qualify accounts with AI data enrichment, find matching contacts inside those companies, enrich contact data, and push everything into Smart sequences when you’re ready to start outreach.

So, instead of jumping between spreadsheets, enrichment tools, and outreach platforms, you can keep the entire workflow in one place.

Claim your 7-day free trial now and try it yourself!

Disclaimer: Skylead is not affiliated, endorsed by or connected with LinkedIn in any way.

Today's B2B buyers are a whole different breed. In fact, rather than going straight to the sales rep to learn more about the product or service they are interested in as they did before, 97% of them are more likely to dive into independent research first. But why the sudden change in behavior? It’s because AI-powered tools and digital content were never as accessible as they are now. And while the rise of technology has simplified the buyer’s journey, it’s also caused certain sales tactics to become less effective. Heck, some have even completely died off or were ineffective to begin with.

That said, we sat down with our Head of sales, Andrea, a veteran with 11+ years of experience, to discuss what the future of sales holds. While at it, she reassured us there’s more work to be done than ever before. Provided the right sales tactics are used, that is.

So, we picked her brain on the topic to bring you:

• 24 sales tactics that work in 2026,
• 12 approaches that are best left behind.

We’ll dive into them all in a second. But first, let’s explain what sales tactics really are and what constitutes ethical vs. unethical selling.

What are sales tactics?

Sales tactics are specific techniques that salespeople use to engage prospects, overcome objections, and ultimately close deals. They translate a company’s broader sales strategy into tangible, repeatable actions that drive results. In essence, while a sales strategy outlines your overall plan to reach targets, sales tactics are the day-to-day actions that make that plan work.

Ethical vs. unethical sales tactics

Sales tactics generally fall into 2 main categories: 

• Ethical sales tactics
• Unethical sales tactics

Ethical tactics imply putting your prospect first by listening, being transparent, and genuinely solving their problems. This means focusing on what’s in it for them instead of simply chasing a quick win. When you sell ethically, you build trust, forge lasting relationships, and let your product’s true value shine without the need for gimmicks.

Unethical tactics, a.k.a. high-pressure, aggressive, or manipulative tactics, lean on deception and manipulation. They might help you close a deal today, but they often leave a sour taste. They rely on exaggeration, bluffs, and sometimes even bad-mouthing competitors to force a decision. In the long run, such tactics erode customer trust and damage your reputation.

24 best B2B sales tactics you need to use in 2026

Now that you know the difference between ethical and unethical selling, it’s time to talk about the best sales tactics of the year 2026. 

So, without further ado, here are 24 of our top picks that are all about selling the right, a.k.a. ethical way!

1. Gap selling

When we asked our Head of Sales, Andrea, to talk about her favorite sales tactic, she mentioned ''Gap selling'' with no hesitation whatsoever.

Gap selling is a problem-centric B2B sales approach focused on identifying the gap between a prospect’s current state and their desired future state​. 

It was coined by a coach who goes by the name Keenan, who noted that this technique enables prospects to ‘’see its positive impact on their lives” by directly addressing their specific pain points​. That’s because, instead of pushing products or services, gap selling prompts you to uncover the buyer’s challenges and goals and then position your product/service as the bridge that fills that gap.

In practice, applying gap selling can involve mapping out the prospects’ challenges and goals side-by-side, then highlighting the exact “gap” your solution will close. For example, this can be reducing a manual process from 5 hours to 5 minutes or increasing ROI by a certain percentage. 

As you make this gap and its resolution crystal clear, you create urgency and excitement, which makes the prospect want to close that gap with your help. And because you’ve demonstrated a thorough grasp of their situation, you’ve built credibility and trust, making it an ethical yet high-converting sales engagement tactic.

2. Flip the Script

This is a modern sales tactic popularized by Oren Klaff’s book ‘’Flip the Script,’’ which centers on reversing the typical sales dynamic. The idea is to get the buyer to feel that adopting your solution was their idea rather than feeling pressured by a salesperson​.

Practically, this means moving away from forceful persuasion and instead leading the conversation in a way that the prospect convinces themselves of the value you offer. 

The point is to establish yourself as an equal and a trusted advisor to them by aligning with their perspective and demonstrating insight into their business instead of pitching.

To paint a better picture, let’s say you were in a sales meeting. 

Instead of delivering a hard pitch, you share a case study of a common industry challenge and how it was solved. You ask smart questions about how the prospect sees that challenge in their world.

As they engage, you acknowledge their expertise and perspective (status alignment) and add your own opinions sparingly to fill knowledge gaps. The prospect then begins to draw the conclusion that your solution addresses their needs.

By the end, they might say something like, “It sounds like if we did X (your solution), we could achieve Y outcome, right?” – essentially voicing what you wanted to convey. At that point, they feel in control and confident about the decision, which is incredibly effective for conversion.

3. Challenge with insights (‘’Challenger sale’’ tactic)

Another high-impact tactic is the so-called Challenger sale approach—in essence, challenging your prospects with fresh insights that reframe their thinking.

The Challenger methodology uses a 3-step playbook often summarized as Teach – Tailor – Take control​.

But what does this look like in practice?

Firstly, you teach by sharing thought-provoking insights and educating the buyer about potential risks or possibilities in their industry. For example, “Did you know 52% of companies in your sector are doing X, which is leaving them vulnerable to Y?”. 

Then, you tailor this information to the prospect’s specific business, connecting the dots to their situation or pain points. 

Finally, you take control of the conversation by confidently guiding the next steps, thereby helping the prospect navigate decisions.

This tactic is very effective when used properly. And by properly we mean when you challenge constructively and back it up with facts or case studies, so it’s helpful, not arrogant.

4. Leverage social selling on LinkedIn

Social selling means using social media platforms to connect, engage, and build relationships with prospects before pitching.

In terms of LinkedIn, social selling typically involves sharing helpful content, commenting on your prospects’ posts, and sending them non-salesy messages that provide value. Over time, these interactions warm them up so by the time you do reach out to talk business, you’re already on their radar.

On top of engaging in this type of LinkedIn lead generation, you can also use this platform for research. Use it to learn more about your prospect’s role in their company, their interests, mutual connections, etc, so you can personalize your cold outreach.

Of course, don’t neglect your LinkedIn profile. Optimize it accordingly by changing your default LinkedIn URL, filling in your LinkedIn headline and LinkedIn summary, and upload a professional profile photo and LinkedIn cover photo. Also, don’t forget to keep your posts sharp and brimming with value!

This is important because when prospects check you out (and they will), a strong personal brand can make them more receptive to your message. Consequently, this may translate into more sales.

5. Use buyer intent signals to prioritize leads

Not all leads are created equal—some are WAY more ready to buy than others. So, how do you determine who’s closer to a sale? By studying so-called buying signals, a.k.a. clues that indicate a prospect’s level of interest or urgency.

These signals can include behaviors such as:

• Visiting your pricing page,
• Downloading a whitepaper,
• Opening several of your emails,
• Engaging with your LinkedIn content.

So, what you want to do is strike while the iron is hot. In other words, reach out to these individuals as they are exploring your solutions to maximize the chance of conversion.

Luckily, there are plenty of sales intelligence tools that can help you identify these high-intent individuals, such as ZoomInfo, Leadfeeder, 6Sense, and our personal favorite — Sales Navigator.

6. Zero in on your ideal prospects through LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Speaking of Sales Navigator, it can be used for a lot more than simply identifying buyer intent. As a matter of fact, it’s THE tool for LinkedIn prospecting, meaning it’s where you can find prospects with laser precision.

Now, why are we talking about prospecting when the focus is mostly on sales tactics that help you CLOSE leads? Because no matter how polished your pitch is, if you’re talking to someone who isn’t the right fit, it won’t lead to a deal. 

So, how do you get to those individuals? Through LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters. Though advanced LinkedIn filters are useful, Sales Navigator has a lot more to offer in this regard. 

Specifically, it offers:

• 29 Lead filters
• 15 Account filters

…and 27 of these can be found only on the platform!

You can use this filter to narrow down your search and then save it so you can revisit it later. You can also save individual companies or prospects that perfectly match your ideal customer profile and buyer persona into a Lead list. 

What's more, you can even set up Sales Navigator alerts to notify you of when your target prospects change jobs or share content so you know exactly when to reach out.

7. Engage multiple stakeholders (a.k.a. multi-thread your deals)

In B2B sales, rarely does a single person call all the shots. There’s usually a buying committee or group – and that group has grown larger in recent years, often including managers, executives, end-users, and procurement all weighing in. As a matter of fact, research indicates that the average buying group now involves about 10 to 11 stakeholders.

That’s why one of the best sales tactics of 2026 is to multi-thread. In other words, contact multiple stakeholders in the target account instead of relying on a single person.

As an example, let’s assume you’re selling some type of software. In that case, you might need buy-in from:

• The IT director (who cares about security and integration),
• The end-user team lead (who cares about usability),
• And a VP or C-level executive (who cares about ROI and strategic impact). 

Multi-threading would mean reaching out to each of these personas in parallel, which, in turn, increases your chances of finding at least one internal person who will advocate for you.

Not to mention, when you build relationships across the organization, you create multiple support points for your proposal. If your main contact leaves or goes silent, the deal doesn’t die because you’ve got others on board. Plus, when decision time comes, you’ve already addressed concerns from every angle, making it easier for the group to say yes.

8. Take advantage of multiple channels

So, we’ve already established LinkedIn and its Sales Navigator as the primary places to chat with prospects. But one of the best sales tactics is to rely on multiple channels for your sales outreach.

Multichannel outreach implies using more than one channel to reach out to prospects. Chances are, if they’re inactive on one, they won’t be on other(s), so there’s a higher possibility of getting a response.

You could go about it manually. However, if you'd like to save 11+ hours a week, you are better off relying on our sales engagement platform, Skylead, more specifically, our Smart sequences.

Smart sequences are algorithms that combine outreach actions with if/else conditions. As a result, you get coherent outreach flows that optimize outreach according to the way your prospects behave. In turn, they maximize your touchpoints with them.

You can also connect as many email accounts to Skylead as you wish. The tool will automatically rotate between them while sending emails to help you send tens of thousands of those a month.

Don’t have your prospects’ emails? No problem! You can still take advantage of unlimited email outreach! Namely, Skylead has a native email discovery and verification feature that you can add as a step to your sequence. As a result, the tool will discover and double-verify your prospects’ emails without breaking your outreach flow or using 3rd party tools. And did we mention all of this comes at no additional cost?

9. Warm up cold leads with research and personalization

Cold outreach doesn’t have to feel cold. The trick is to warm up your leads by doing a bit of homework and adding a personal touch to your communication. 

So, before reaching out to a new prospect, spend a few minutes researching them and their company. Look for a recent achievement (e.g., a funding announcement or product launch), mutual connections, or even a hobby or interest you can find. As we mentioned, LinkedIn can be useful for this. Then use that tidbit in your LinkedIn message, email, inMail, even a cold call. 

For example, you might start an email with:

“Hi Jane, I saw on LinkedIn that you just spoke at the SaaS Summit – congrats! I loved hearing you talk about user retention…” 

…and then, move on to how your product might help with a relevant challenge. This way, you show the prospect that you’re not just batch-and-blasting thousands of people with the same spiel. It earns you a few extra seconds of their attention, which is often all you need to stand out.

Keep in mind that when using Skylead, it’s possible to scale personalized outreach. Namely, our tool has built-in variables that you can add to your messages.

Or, if you’re setting up a campaign using a CSV file, you can even define custom variables with any detail(s) you uncovered during your research.

Want to boost your response rate? We’ve got you covered with a native Image and GIF personalization feature. Use it to personalize any image or GIF with you and/or your prospects’ profile image, company logo, or text of your choice, complete with variables.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so trust us when we say your leads will love it! Who knows? You may even get to beat our 76% response rate that resulted from using this feature!

10. Embrace video selling

You might find yourself in a situation where a message or a static image may not fully convey your enthusiasm or explain a complex solution.

That’s when you want to turn to video selling. This involves using video at various stages of your sales engagement process – from sending quick introduction videos during initial outreach to conducting live product demos or personalized walkthroughs on Zoom to even shooting a short, customized “thank you” video after a meeting. 

But why video? Because it helps replace the face-to-face connection that traditional field salespeople would establish in person. It’s simple. Humans trust what they can see, and by putting your face and voice in front of a prospect, you build familiarity and rapport much faster than text alone. Not to mention, it’s novel and shows you put in the effort.

Want to take advantage of video selling all while using Skylead? Well, you can, as our tool integrates with the #1 video selling platform, Sendspark, to bring you AI-powered dynamic video functionality. This means you can create your videos and personalize them at scale using Sendspark, and then include them in your messages, LinkedIn inMails, or emails in Skylead as you would personalized images and GIFs.

11. Sell value, not features (Value-based selling)

Too many salespeople fall into the trap of pitching product features or using buzzwords, which prospects tune out. 

Value-based selling changes this narrative by focusing on the prospect’s needs and how your solution improves their situation (saves money, increases revenue, reduces risk, saves time, etc.). 

In practice, this means your conversations, proposals, and demos should continually answer the buyer’s unspoken question: “What’s in it for me/my company?”

For example, rather than saying:

“Our software has an AI-driven analytics dashboard,” 

You might say:

 “With our software’s AI analytics, you’ll identify sales pipeline bottlenecks in seconds, potentially recovering 10% of deals that would otherwise slip through – directly boosting your quarterly revenue.” 

See the difference? The latter speaks the language of value and outcomes. 

Implementing this tactic requires discovery because you must understand what the prospect values. Just keep in mind that different business decision-makers value different things. A CFO might prioritize ROI or cost savings, whereas an operations manager could care most about efficiency and ease of use. So, you’ll need to adjust your value points accordingly and use metrics or case studies to quantify them.

Value-based selling also means sometimes challenging the buyer if they focus too much on price. This is when you steer the conversation to total value instead. It’s also closely aligned with gap selling because you highlight the gap between where they are and where they could be and emphasize the value of closing that gap.

12. Turn discovery calls into consultations (Consultative selling)

The discovery call is often the first substantive conversation with a prospect – and how you handle it can set the tone for the entire sales cycle. A top-performing tactic is to approach discovery calls as free consulting sessions instead of a qualifying checklist or a sales interrogation. 

In a consultative discovery, your primary goal is to understand the prospect’s world: their challenges, objectives, and constraints. You ask open-ended questions and really listen to the answers. 

But equally important, you provide valuable insights and advice right on that call, even if it means sharing some expertise without an immediate return. Treat the prospect as if they’ve hired you for an hour to improve their business – that mindset shift unlocks a ton of good.​

13. Practice active listening

Andrea insists that truly hearing your prospect is as vital as presenting the perfect solution. 

And no, we're not talking about just nodding along or waiting for your turn to speak. Instead, you need to be all in. Absorb every word they share, then hit them with clarifying questions to confirm you’ve caught the whole meaning behind their words.

14. Study non-verbal cues

Sometimes, listening isn't enough; you also need to study your prospects' behavior to determine if they are receptive to your pitch. Although, this sales tactic only works if you're on a video call. 

If yes, then pay close attention to subtle changes. You'd be surprised by how much a raised eyebrow, a quick glance, or even a change in posture can reveal.

15. Address “elephants in the room” head-on

When something’s clearly off but no one’s mentioning it, just bring it up. In other words, if you sense a lingering concern, be it about budget, competition, or any other obvious roadblock, address it directly. Confronting these issues shows you’re confident and upfront, and it builds trust by clearing the air.

16. Ask for referrals and introductions

One of the quickest ways to generate high-converting leads is to tap into the networks of your satisfied customers and contacts. 

The concept is straightforward: if you have happy customers (or even just happy conversations with prospects who maybe weren’t a fit), ask them if they could refer your company to anyone else who could benefit from your solution.

You can even create referral incentives or programs. Just be careful as, in B2B, professional courtesy and reciprocity are often incentive enough.

The high conversion aspect comes from the fact that referred prospects come in with a positive bias. They’ve heard a success story about you from someone they trust, so half the battle (credibility) is won. Then, it’s up to you to deliver a similarly great experience.

💡 Pro tip: Build a habit of asking for 1 referral at certain milestones (post-implementation, after a big win, upon renewal, etc.).

17. Co-create sales content with the marketing team

Sales and marketing go hand in hand…one just can't exist without the other. As a sales rep, you probably rely on content like e-books, white papers, and case studies to showcase your expertise and build credibility with prospects. 

Imagine if you had to create all that on your own! You'd be bogged down and have little time left to actually close deals. Instead, the smartest move is to feed your insider knowledge to marketing. They’ll take that information and craft compelling content that lets you focus on what you do best—selling.

Speaking of which, we (marketing) teamed up with the sales team to build a Sales playbook that helped scale Skylead in as little as 9 months. Check it out below to pick up a few tricks up your sleeves!

18. Share customer success stories

Storytelling is the art of sales. And the most convincing stories you can tell are those of your existing customers’ success. Thus, it’s not surprising that incorporating customer success stories, case studies, and testimonials into your sales process can dramatically increase conversion. 

This might happen in a variety of ways: you can mention a relatable client example during sales conversations. Alternatively, you can share written or video case studies (the ones your marketing team created) that detail the problem-solution-result journey of a customer. 

You might also bring up testimonials or quotes from happy users when addressing a prospect’s concern. The idea is to prove with evidence that you’ve delivered the results your prospect is looking for to customers just like them​.

Here’s a quick snapshot from our customer success story with Dennis Goyal to paint a better picture of what we’d share:

19. Streamline and simplify the buying process

An often overlooked sales tactic is making it incredibly easy for the buyer to say yes and move forward. Even if you have the best pitch, a prospect’s enthusiasm can fizzle out if the purchasing process becomes painful or complicated. 

As a salesperson, you should advocate for a seamless customer journey, reducing friction at every touchpoint​. Tactics to do this include providing clear and concise proposals that are easy to understand and not filled with jargon or unnecessary info. 

You can also offer to guide the prospect through internal hurdles. For example, suggest you set up a meeting with their finance team if needed to explain pricing and ROI or provide security documentation upfront to satisfy IT reviewers. 

Then, if scheduling a demo or trial, use a simple booking link or be very accommodating to their calendar to avoid delays. You can also introduce self-serve resources for those who prefer it. Some prospects might not be ready for a live call early on, so have recorded demos or interactive product tours available as well. This way, the buyer can explore at their own pace without pressure, which can then lead to a more productive live conversation when they’re ready (and often filters out folks who aren’t serious). 

Being responsive is part of this, too, so answer messages promptly and follow up when you say you will to keep the process moving.

20. Take advantage of automation

Modern sales reps rely on automation tools a lot more than they care to admit. With reason! After all, they help you automate repetitive tasks (e.g., prospecting, initial outreach, scheduling meetings, etc.) so you can focus more on selling and less on admin work.

There are hundreds of automation tools available, ranging from B2B prospecting tools to sales outreach tools and CRMs even.

Of course, the tactic here isn’t to replace the human touch but to support it. Automation can open doors, but it’s your personal engagement that will close the deal.

21. Follow up with customers

You know your job doesn't end once the deal closes, right? To really show you care, you need to keep following up! 

You can try the 3-3-3 rule here: reach out 3 days after the purchase, then 3 weeks later, and finally, 3 months in.

The first check-in, just 3 days after the deal, is your chance to make sure everything’s running smoothly during the onboarding phase. Then, at 3 weeks, you can see if any questions or issues have popped up and let them know that you’re there for them beyond the initial sale. 

Finally, the 3-month mark is your chance to make sure they’re still satisfied, but it’s also the perfect opportunity to ask for a referral, which is a sales tactic we previously discussed.

22. Tap into cross-selling and up-selling opportunities

After you've built a solid relationship with your customers, it's time to consider if they could benefit from additional products or upgrades.

In other words, it’s time to cross-sell or up-sell them.

Cross-selling involves suggesting complementary items that enhance their current solution, whereas up-selling means recommending a higher-tier option that offers extra value.

If a customer mentions a need or challenge that isn't fully addressed by their current setup, that’s your cue to propose a relevant option. 

Keep in mind that your goal is not to push more products on them but to genuinely help them achieve better results. So, present the option as a natural extension of what they already use, and make sure the recommendation aligns with their aspirations and pain points.

23. Collaborate across teams for a seamless buying journey

Complex deals can involve technical questions or unique challenges that a lone salesperson might not solve. Top-performing sales reps aren’t afraid to pull in colleagues from other departments to help close the deal​. After all, teamwork makes the dream work!

As you know, this blog is a direct collaboration between our marketing and sales team. However, there’s a lot more that marketing and sales can collaborate on. 

Remember the buyer intent signals we talked about earlier? Well, say that a marketing team notices that a specific prospect has downloaded multiple eBooks. In that case, they can flag this as a high-priority lead for sales.

Of course, collaboration isn’t limited to these 2 teams. Sales can also collaborate with developers, where they ask them to hop on a demo call to better explain a technical feature. Or, they can collaborate with the customer success team during the onboarding phase. Scenarios are infinite!

24. Audit and analyze sales calls to improve performance

Recording your sales call is not a direct sales tactic. It is, however, something that will help you determine if the other sales tactics you're using are working. Before you've started recording, though, it's important to ask for permission from your prospects. 

Once you have the green light, go through with it. Then, use these recordings to analyze your calls. Look for the moments where you nailed your pitch and, just as importantly, where you stumbled. Use these insights to fine-tune your strategy, improve your responses, and boost your overall performance.

12 sales tactics to avoid using 

Some of these are high-pressure, aggressive, and purely manipulative, while others are simply outdated. Regardless, they all share one thing: they should be left behind in 2026.

1. Overselling

When you push your product too hard, exaggerate its benefits, or promise more than you can deliver, you risk losing credibility and scaring off prospects. 

So, instead of turning your pitch into a desperate sales push, focus on authentic value. Let your track record and genuine benefits speak for themselves—as they should!

2. Fake enthusiasm

Trying to force excitement that doesn't feel real is a red flag—prospects can definitely see through it. 

Rather than going overboard with enthusiasm, it’s better to be genuine. Being authentic doesn’t mean you can’t show passion, but it should actually reflect how you feel about what you're offering. 

After all, real interest and trust are what resonate the most, not a manufactured act, so you better drop it.

3. Rushing leads through the sales cycle

Speed may seem like an asset, but when you rush your leads, you risk undermining the entire relationship. Moving too quickly can come off as pushy, and you might miss the subtleties of what your prospect really needs. 

So, take a moment to genuinely engage, ask questions, and let the dialogue unfold at its natural pace. When you respect your prospect’s timeline, you're more likely to build loyalty and seal the deal on solid ground.

4. Beating around the bush

When you're not rushing your prospect, you might end up dancing around the important points. But being vague and avoiding the heart of the matter leaves your prospect confused and frustrated. 

The trick is to strike a balance—be clear and direct about the value you offer while still allowing the conversation to breathe.

5. Selling to just about anyone

If you're trying to sell to everyone, you're missing the point, which is to focus on those individuals that truly need your solution.

So, target your ICP and buyer persona, and your pitch will become sharper and more relevant, leading to deeper connections and a significant increase in conversion rate.

6. Pitching products, not solutions

One of the biggest rules of sales is to not do to others what you don't want others to do to you. So, put yourself in the prospects' shoes. How would you feel if a rep was talking about product features on and on? Not great, we bet! 

Prospects aren't looking for a spec sheet; they're looking for answers to their problems. Rather than listing features, translate technical details into tangible benefits that directly impact their bottom line.

7. Playing on FOMO (the ‘’Takeaway’’ tactic)

Many reps swear by this tactic, and if we're being completely honest, it does work. But is it ethical? Not so much.

The Takeaway sales tactic plays on the fear of missing out (FOMO). You hint that what you're offering might vanish if the prospect doesn't act right away. Think along the lines of, “This deal is only available for a limited time” or “We might have to pull this offer soon.” The idea is to create a sense of urgency, which compels the prospect to make a quick decision.

Now, while this pressure can sometimes seal the deal, it often leaves prospects feeling cornered. What’s more, the moment a prospect senses that urgency is artificially created, their genuine interest takes a hit.

8. Ignoring objections

Some sales reps might think that if they simply let objections fade into the background, the issue will just disappear. But ignoring objections is a dangerous game that gives room for doubt to grow and for your competition to swoop in.

Instead of hoping the objection will vanish on its own, ask probing questions to understand exactly what’s behind the objection, then address it directly. 

Andrea says that every objection is an opportunity to show you’re listening and that you genuinely care about solving your prospect’s challenges. Neglecting these concerns not only undermines your credibility but can also cause the prospect to feel dismissed, which is something no one wants to experience during a sales negotiation.

9. Using the ‘’higher authority’’ as a bargaining chip

Some reps love to say, “Let me check with my superiors,” even when they already know the answer. This move is essentially a bluff—pretending that you need approval, even though the outcome is already a done deal. 

The idea is to soften the blow by implying that there's room to maneuver so you can later come back with a counteroffer that looks more appealing. 

This might work to ease the conversation momentarily, but it isn’t exactly ethical. Not to mention, it can make you seem like you’re hiding behind someone else’s decision, which may come off as lacking confidence or authority.

10. Overrelying on discounts

Discounts may provide a quick sales boost, but the long-term effects can be damaging. 

In fact, over-discounting can erode your brand’s perceived value and train customers to wait for price cuts instead of purchasing at full price. More often than not, they also signal that your product/service just isn’t worth its regular price.

So, instead of overusing discounts, the smart play is to focus on adding value to your offerings in the form of exclusive features, better service, or loyalty rewards that don’t undercut your brand’s image.

11. Bad-mouthing the competition

We know how tempting it is to highlight a competitor’s shortcomings, but bad-mouthing them is a definite no-no. 

Talking bad about your competitors shows you’re insecure about your offerings or that you’re biased even. What’s more, it’s possible your prospects used their products/services in the past and had a positive experience with them, which means your negative comments are more likely to alienate them.

Thus, a much better approach is to let the strengths and unique benefits of your product/service shine through on their own merits.

We deliver all our latest updates straight to your inbox.

Sales templates, cold outreach, and industry innovations.

Email *

• I agree with and accept Privacy Policy

Subscribe

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

1. What are tactics in sales?

Sales tactics are the specific, actionable techniques that you use day-to-day to engage prospects, overcome objections, and ultimately close deals. Think of them as the practical steps you take to implement your overall sales strategy.

2. What is the difference between sales strategy and sales tactics?

A sales strategy is your big-picture plan—it outlines your target market, overall approach, and long-term goals. Sales tactics are the hands-on methods you employ every day to execute that strategy and drive results. Simply put, strategy sets the destination, while tactics chart the course.

3. What is the 3-3-3 rule in sales?

The 3-3-3 rule is a follow-up guideline that helps maintain customer relationships after a sale. It means reaching out 3 days after the purchase to ensure smooth onboarding, then 3 weeks later to address any questions or issues, and finally 3 months in to check satisfaction and ask for referrals.

4. What are aggressive sales tactics? (a.k.a. high-pressure sales tactics)

Aggressive or high-pressure sales tactics involve pushing prospects to make a decision quickly by using relentless follow-ups, urgent language, and sometimes even a confrontational approach. These tactics often leave prospects feeling cornered or overwhelmed, which can damage trust and hurt long-term relationships.

5. How to avoid high-pressure sales tactics?

To avoid high-pressure tactics, focus on building genuine, consultative relationships. Listen actively, provide clear and honest information, and let your prospects make decisions at their own pace. By emphasizing transparency and customer-centric solutions, you build trust without forcing a quick sale.

Unleash your full sales potential with the right sales tactics!

You've just discovered 24 sales tactics that can transform your approach and drive conversions in 2026. 

Now, it's time to put these into action—test, iterate, and fine-tune your process until you’re closing deals like never before.

But if we’re being completely honest, the above sales tactics perform best when combined with high-quality tools, such as Skylead. So, don’t wait a second longer! Sign up for your 7-day free trial with Skylead and see how you can pair it up with these proven tactics to make them work in your favor just about every time!

Disclaimer: Skylead is not affiliated, endorsed by, or connected with LinkedIn in any way.

In business, no deal is made without one person: a decision maker. Business decision makers are the ones who have the power to turn your pitch into a yes or shut it down completely.

But the thing is, they aren't always so easy to find and reach out to. Not to mention, even when you think you're talking to one, there’s a chance you’re not.

So, how do you actually get your product/service in front of those who call the shots?

Since our Head of Sales, Andrea, has plenty of experience talking to business decision makers, we consulted her on the matter. So now, we are bringing her findings to help you:

• Identify B2B decision makers based on role, hierarchy, and behavior,
• Find them in real-life situations,
• As well as reach out to them effectively.

We’ll also teach you the right way to pitch to these individuals to close 3 times the deals!

So, shall we?

What are business decision makers?

Business decision-makers are individuals within an organization who have the authority to approve budgets, form partnerships, and make key strategic decisions.

Why are decision makers important in B2B sales and marketing?

Decision makers are responsible for shaping the direction of a business. In other words, their choices directly impact a company’s success - or failure.

They are especially invaluable in B2B environments because they:

• Drive progress - By deciding where resources go, which strategies to pursue, which partnerships to form, and more.
• Maximize efficiency - They prioritize initiatives and allocate resources in ways that ensure teams focus on what truly matters without getting distracted.
• Shape the future - They identify trends and adapt strategies to keep the company ahead of the competition, thereby setting the foundation for long-term success.
• Create opportunities -  They explore new possibilities through strategic decision-making. This can include entering untapped markets, facilitating collaboration with key industry players, or supporting initiatives that lead to fresh revenue streams.
• Unlock potential - Their approval as a result enables teams and companies to act on ideas, scale operations, and achieve goals faster.

Not to mention, B2B purchases rarely come down to just one person. A single decision can involve 6 to 10 stakeholders on average, making it even more important to identify the key players early.

How business decisions are made

Before you start identifying who makes decisions, it’s important to understand how they’re made.

While each company has its own quirks, most business decisions, especially in B2B, follow a similar flow:

1. The problem or need is identified (e.g., declining lead quality, outdated tech stack, new market expansion).
2. Stakeholders evaluate options - Internal teams research solutions, compare vendors, and consider costs, ROI, risks, and integration.
3. Decision maker approves the solution - This is where the business decision-maker steps in to greenlight or reject a proposal.
4. Procurement and implementation - Legal, finance, and operations get involved to finalize contracts and roll out the solution.
5. Post-decision review - Teams measure outcomes against expectations, whether that’s revenue growth, cost savings, or improved workflows.

Why does this matter, though? Because depending on where you enter this process, your message needs to match the moment. If you catch someone at Step 2, your pitch should inform and educate. Step 3? Go in with proof, speed, as well as clarity.

Real-world decision-making examples

To better understand how decision-makers operate, let’s look at a few real-life business scenarios and who typically makes the final call.

Who are business decision makers by role and hierarchy?

Some titles have become synonymous with decision-making. 

But the truth is, whether or not someone is considered a decision-maker depends not so much on their title but more on the company’s size, structure, and the type of decisions being made.

Regardless, there are certain roles and hierarchical levels where they’re commonly found.

C-Level executives

These are the ultimate decision makers in most organizations and are defined by titles such as:

• CEO - Chief Executive Officer
• CFO - Chief Financial Officer
• CTO - Chief Technical Officer
• CMO - Chief Marketing Officer

C-level executives are responsible for the big-picture strategy, resource allocation, and final approvals on major decisions (e.g., high-stakes partnerships, significant investments, organizational changes).

Department heads and directors

Another type of decision makers are department heads (e.g., Head of Sales, Head of Marketing, IT Director, etc.). 

These individuals don’t generally have the final say in multi-million-dollar deals. Nonetheless, since they know their departments best, they often make decisions on a department level. This is especially true in larger organizations.

Managers and team leads

At a more granular level, managers and team leads can make decisions about operational matters. They don’t control the company’s overall direction, but they often influence decisions by identifying needs, shortlisting options, and providing feedback to higher-ups. If you’re pitching a service or product that solves everyday challenges, these individuals can be your entry point.

Hierarchy matters, but so does context

No company has the same structure, and who’s in charge will, in general, depend on the size of the organization.

For example, in small business environments, decision-making may rest solely on the owner or founder. 

Meanwhile, in mid-sized companies, decisions typically involve multiple layers of authority, starting from managers to directors. 

As for enterprise-level organizations, these generally require consultation between cross-departmental teams and C-level executives.

Thus, you need to understand where decision makers sit within the specific company’s hierarchy. Only then can you be sure you’re targeting the right individuals.

5 Types of business decision makers based on behavior

Job titles and hierarchy can clue you in on who the decision makers might be. But it’s their behavior that tells the full story.

That said, here are 5 types of business decision makers according to the way they make decisions. You’ll also find questions they may ask to help you recognize them, actionable tips on how to approach them, along with message templates.

1. Brand-centric

These decision makers are heavily influenced by a brand’s reputation and image. When it comes to them, trust in your company is just as important as the quality of your product or service.

Seeing that, they’ll typically ask questions like:

• What’s your track record in the industry?
• Who else have you worked with?
• Is your company seen as an industry leader?

How to approach them:

Highlight your brand’s credibility because that’s what they are drawn to. To do so, use case studies, testimonials, or showcase awards your company has received during the sales engagement process.

Template:

Hi {{FirstName}},

I’ve noticed how {{CompanyName}} consistently stands out in the {{Industry}} space. 

Companies such as yours have, with our help, won industry awards, built credibility, and boosted customer trust by {{X%}} in under {{Timeframe}}.

I’d love to explore how we can enhance your brand’s reputation and set you apart from the competition. Would you be open to a quick call this week?

Best,

Real-life example:

2. Multifocal

Multifocal decision makers consider multiple angles when making a choice. They look at how a decision impacts various aspects of the business, including budget, operations, scalability, and team morale. 

They’re the ones saying:

• How does this fit with our long-term strategy?
• Will this disrupt existing workflows?
• What are the potential trade-offs?

How to approach them:

Show how your product or service benefits their organization across the board.

Template:

Hey {{FirstName}},

It must be hard juggling costs, operations, and long-term growth at {{CompanyName}}. 

At {{YourCompany}}, we specialize in {{YourSpecialty}} that {{SpecificBenefit}}.

I’d love to share a quick overview of how our platform adapts seamlessly across various departments, ensuring every angle of your operation is covered. Care for a quick demo or call?

Best,

Real-life example:

3. Aggregators

Aggregators are all about gathering data, input, and opinions before making a decision. In other words, they seek consensus and rely on feedback from their teams or peers. 

You’ll commonly find them saying:

• I’ll need to discuss this with my team.
• Can you provide more information for us to review?

How to approach them:

Equip them with detailed resources and supporting materials, such as product demos, white papers, or detailed proposals, that they can share with their team. Be patient, though, as these process-oriented individuals value thoroughness over speed.

Template:

Hi {{FirstName}},

I understand you often gather input from various stakeholders before making big decisions at {{CompanyName}}. 

To help streamline that process, I have a comprehensive set of resources - {{SpecificResources}} - that you can share with your team.

Once everyone has had a chance to review, I’d be happy to discuss specific needs and concerns to ensure a perfect fit. 

Interested in getting these materials?

Best,

Real-life example:

4. Risk-takers

Risk-takers are bold business decision makers who prioritize innovation and speed. As such, they’re willing to embrace uncertainty for the potential of big rewards. 

You’ll hear them say things such as:

• Let’s be the first to try this out.
• We’re looking for a game-changer.

How to approach them:

Focus on innovation and differentiation, all while emphasizing what makes your solution unique and how it can give them a competitive edge. Nonetheless, be ready to discuss contingency plans during the sales engagement, to let them know you’ve considered potential risks.

Template:

Hi {{FirstName}},

I noticed your track record at {{CompanyName}}, and it shows me you’re open to bold moves that can give you a competitive edge. 

Our latest solution, {{YourProduct}}, is still in development but has already shown a {{X%}} increase in efficiency among early adopters.

If you’re interested in pioneering something fresh and innovative, let’s chat. I’d be happy to share how we handle any potential bumps in the road.

Best,

Real-life example:

5. Cautious

The opposite of risk-takers, cautious decision makers prioritize safety and predictability. Thus, they’re methodical and prefer to stick with tried-and-true solutions. 

Common phrases include:

• Has this been proven in similar industries?
• What’s the guarantee this will work?
• What’s the ROI, and how soon can we expect it?

How to approach them:

Provide reassurance. In other words, use proven results, ROI data, and clear timelines to put their minds at ease.

Template:

Hi {{FirstName}},

I noticed you value tried-and-true solutions with clear payback. 

{{YourCompanyName}}’s approach has helped clients across {{Industry}} achieve up to {{X%}} ROI within {{Timeframe}} - and we document every stage to keep you informed and reduce uncertainty.

I’d be happy to walk you through these results and answer any questions about the timeline or implementation. Interested in a brief call?

Best,

Real-life example:

How to find the right business decision makers for your business

Now that you know who business decision makers are and how they think, it’s time to find them. 

Decision makers may not always be visible, but they’re not hiding either.

With this in mind, here are 3 steps to take to make sure you catch them where they are.

Step 1: Develop your ICP and Buyer Persona

Before you start searching for business decision makers, you need to know exactly who you’re looking for. And that starts with creating your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and Buyer Persona.

Although these 2 terms are interchangeable, they differ in that:

• ICP defines the perfect company for your product or service based on factors such as industry, company size, revenue, and pain points.
• Buyer Persona focuses on the individual within that company, covering their role, goals, challenges, and decision-making behavior.

Why is it important to define both, though? 

Because, by doing so, you’ll know:

• Which companies to target (e.g., mid-sized tech firms with 200-500 employees facing scaling challenges).
• Who the decision makers are (e.g., CTOs struggling with operational efficiency).
• What messaging resonates with them (e.g., cost-saving benefits, operational improvements, or competitive advantages).

That said, to actually define both your ICP and Buyer Persona, start by:

1. Analyzing your existing customers and identifying patterns in their industry, company size, and pain points.
2. Talking to your sales and support team, seeing as they interact with potential and existing customers daily. Thereby, they can provide valuable insight into their requirements and common objections.
3. Defining key attributes. For ICP, these can be location, industry, revenue, and the growth stage. Meanwhile, when it comes to your Buyer Persona, you can concentrate on the job title, responsibilities, challenges, and goals.

We wrote 2 detailed blogs that explain exactly how you can create both your Ideal Customer Profile and Buyer Persona. So, be sure to check those out!

Step 2: Zero in on them using LinkedIn or Sales Navigator

Given that LinkedIn is home to over 65 million business decision makers across the globe, including over 10 million C-level executives, it's clear it's THE place to find them.

There are a few ways to go about it, and they involve using:

• LinkedIn search
• Sales Navigator
• LinkedIn Boolean search

So, let’s show you exactly how you can use all of these for LinkedIn prospecting.

1. Finding business decision makers using LinkedIn search

The simplest way is to type specific job titles into the search bar (e.g., CEO, Head of Sales, Marketing Director, etc).

However, if you want to get more precise results, we recommend you further refine the search using LinkedIn filters.

To activate filters, type anything you want in the search bar, be that a job title, a company name, etc., and hit enter. Alternatively, you can run a blank search. 

Then, right under the Navigation bar, you’ll find a couple of highlighted filters, along with the ‘’All filters’’ button. 

Click it to open a sidebar menu that contains all filters you can apply to your search, such as:

• Current company
• Past company
• School
• Industry
• Location
• etc.

The next step is to select filters relevant to your ICP and Buyer Persona and click ‘’Show results’’. 

As a result, you’ll get a list of all LinkedIn profiles that match your requirements.

📝 Note: No matter how many profiles show up in your search, LinkedIn only lets you see the first 1,000 results (that’s 100 pages with 10 profiles each). So, it’s best to refine your search as much as possible.

2. Finding business decision makers using Sales Navigator

If you thought LinkedIn search filters were powerful, wait till you see what Sales Navigator has got!

In fact, LinkedIn Sales Navigator Filters include a total of 29 Lead filters and 15 Account filters that allow you to search for decision makers with laser precision, 27 of which are exclusive to the platform. In other words, the latter aren’t available to subscribers to LinkedIn Premium, Recruiter, or basic LinkedIn users.

To get to these, go to the search bar and select either “Lead” or “Account” filters, depending on whether you’re looking for business decision makers directly or companies they work for. It's that easy.

Once you do, you’ll be able to apply any filters you wish to refine search results.

Here’s a sneak peek at all the available filters.

After applying filters, Sales Navigator will list all leads that fit your criteria on the right side of the screen.

What’s more, the platform even lets you save your search with all applied filters. Thanks to this feature, you can revisit your search anytime instead of setting it up all over again. 

To actually save your search, just toggle the corresponding button to the right.

Then, every time you go to the Saved search dashboard, you’ll see:

• The last time you accessed the Saved search.
• The number of new leads added since your last visit.

Rather than saving the entire search, you can also organize your leads into Lead lists.

To do so, identify leads you believe are the decision makers you wish to keep tabs on. 

Then, click “Save” and either create a new list or add them to an existing one.

Finally, the last way you can find business decision makers on Sales Navigator involves using its Personas feature.

To use it, go to the “Personas” tab (you can access it via search or the homepage).

Then, click “Create a new persona”...

…define the following:

• Job title (e.g., Director of Sales)
• Function (e.g., Marketing, Sales)
• Seniority level (e.g., Director)
• Current job title (e.g., Director of Sales Operations)
• Geography (e.g., North America)

…and save.

Once your Persona is created, Sales Navigator will automatically add leads that match these criteria.

By default, Sales Navigator provides 2 preset Personas: Director+ and CXO. Nonetheless, you can create up to 3 additional custom ones according to your LinkedIn sales strategy.

📝 Note: Much like LinkedIn, Sales Navigator also has a search limit, meaning you can only view up to 2,500 profiles per search. Thus, we recommend you refine your search as much as possible using the available filters.

Find the accounts first, then contacts

The above approach is fine, but it involves you manually filtering accounts and leads.

There's an easier way to get to the right business decision makers, and it involves using Sales Navigator and Skylead - our AI account-based sales engagement platform that doubles as a LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software. Or, more specifically, it involves using our account-based prospecting feature.

To do so, start by filtering your ideal companies using the Sales Navigator account filters.

Then, copy the search URL and paste it into Skylead.

The tool will then analyze the results and create a company list that you can further clean up, if you wish to do so.

Once all companies are loaded, click ''Get contacts'' in the right upper-hand corner.

You'll notice a pop-up appear that prompts you to enter a Sales Navigator lead search URL.

So, go back to it for a moment and start a new search, this time, filtered by, say, job titles. Copy the URL and bring it back to Skylead.

The tool will then cross-reference the contact search results with your company list and return a list of relevant people inside those target accounts. These contacts will be available within the Contacts tab, where you can enrich their details, push them to an outreach campaign, or export them in a CSV file.

Bonus: Monitor job changes to find new decision makers

People change jobs, get promoted, or switch roles, which can impact your targeted outreach strategy. 

To make sure this doesn’t happen (and stay ahead of your competition), it’s important to keep track of job changes.

One of the best ways to do so is by using the Sales Navigator Alerts feature, which notifies you of important updates related to your leads and accounts, including when a decision-maker moves to a new role or company (among other things).

All you have to do to receive alerts is save a lead or account. Then, you’ll find all the updates on the Sales Navigator homepage.

But why track job changes? Because doing so allows you to:

• Reach out to decision makers at the right time since new hires and promotions often come with fresh budgets and opportunities.
• Gain a competitive edge by reaching out to them before your competitors.
• Strengthen relationships. For example, you can congratulate these individuals on their new roles to build rapport naturally.

📝 Pro tip: Set up ‘’New Decision Makers’’ alerts for specific companies (accounts) to get wind of new business decision makers as soon as they enter the picture.

3. Finding business decision makers using Boolean search

Want to take your search up a notch? Boolean search is a powerful way to do just that.

It’s a simple search technique that helps you filter through large amounts of data and zero in on exactly what (or who) you’re looking for. What’s more, it works in any field where you can type keywords.

To that end, these are the Boolean operators you can use across LinkedIn and Sales Navigator:

• AND – Shows results that include both terms. (e.g., CMO AND B2B)
• OR – finds profiles containing either term. (e.g., CEO OR Founder)
• NOT – Excludes unwanted terms from your search. (e.g., Manager NOT Assistant)
• Quotation Marks (“ ”) – Searches for exact phrases. (e.g., ‘’Chief Technology Officer’’)
• Parentheses ( ) – Groups search terms for more complex queries. ( e.g., (“Marketing Director” OR “CMO”) AND “SaaS”)

💡 Pro tip: To make the most of Boolean search, mix and match these operators.

Step 3: Research and compile lead data 

So, you’ve identified business decision makers through LinkedIn or Sales Navigator?

Then it’s time to research deep into them and compile data that you’ll later use for outreach.

You can do this manually by reviewing your leads’ LinkedIn profiles, focusing on their LinkedIn headline, LinkedIn summary, work experience, posts, and activity. 

After gathering all the necessary details, compile everything into a prospecting list.

Or, if you've taken the account-based prospecting approach, you can use Skylead's AI data enrichment add-on to automatically get relevant company and/or prospect information. It's Clay-like in what it can uncover, but it comes at a 95% lower price compared to similar tools.

In light of that, you can enrich contacts with:

• Job title
• Current company
• Experience
• Skills
• Their LinkedIn posts

…as well as other relevant details.

Or you can prompt AI to uncover any detail you'd like and even generate personalized icebreakers that you can later use as variables in your outreach campaigns.

How to reach business decision makers

So you know who you should be contacting. Now, it’s time to actually do it.

You could go about cold outreach manually, but Skylead can also help. Yes, it not only lets you prospect and enrich contacts. It also lets you reach out to them across multiple channels. And today, we’ll show you how to do it!

Now, to create a campaign, navigate to the Campaigns page and click ‘’Create’’ to start the process.

Next, give your campaign a name, select a lead source (in which case, you'll be creating a new contact list), and define your settings for multichannel outreach.

As for the lead source, you can skip that part for now if you've already gone through the process of creating a contacts list. You'll just push them to a campaign once you've created it.

We’d like to emphasize that under email settings, you can find the option to select unlimited mailboxes to send tens of thousands of emails a month at no extra cost.

What’s more, each Skylead user gets to prepare these same mailboxes for outreach free of charge. How? By using an infinite email warm-up feature.

If you’re happy with your settings, proceed to the Smart sequence builder page, where, on the right side, you’ll see different multichannel actions & conditions.

Drag and drop them into the white space and connect them to each other to create your Smart sequence. In other words, a coherent outreach flow that acts according to prospect behavior to reach them in the fastest possible way.

Here is an example of a Smart sequence.

If you want to combine multiple outreach methods, a great approach is to start by using Skylead to discover and verify leads’ business emails for your leads. This feature is great for email outreach.

Once the email address is confirmed, Skylead can send your initial message.

From there, you can track engagement, such as whether your email was opened, and use that insight to send a tailored follow-up email after no response. For example, you might send one type of follow-up to leads who opened your email but didn’t reply, and another to those who haven’t opened it yet. And if email brings you no luck, you can also take the conversation to LinkedIn by sending a connection request, message (if connected), or InMail.

This way, every touchpoint is relevant, timely, and more likely to spark a response.

We deliver all our latest updates straight to your inbox.

Sales templates, cold outreach, and industry innovations.

Email *

• I agree with and accept Privacy Policy

Subscribe

Personalize your outreach for maximum impact

Want to truly stand out in the decision makers' inboxes? Take your outreach up a notch with our Image and GIF personalization feature to increase your response rate to 76% and more!

Using it, you can personalize visuals with:

• Custom text
• Profile images
• Company logos

…and insert them into any message-based step.

After you’re done tweaking your sequence and personalizing your messaging, set delays between steps. 

And finally, launch your campaign!

If you haven't imported the contacts, go to the Leads page and locate the appropriate list. Click on the 3 dots next to that list, then select Link list to a campaign.

Next, choose the campaign, then click Link to finish adding contacts.

Alternatively, you can enter the list, then select individual contacts and tap the ''Push to campaign'' button in the upper right-hand corner.

After doing so, a new pop-up will appear asking you to:

• Select the campaign you wish to push business decision makers to,
• Choose the step they should join, and
• Set the time when they will be added.

After confirming these, click ''Move'', and the contacts will be scheduled and ready to enter your campaign.

Respond & track replies with ease

Skylead can help you reach out to business decision makers on auto-pilot. 

But it's up to you to nurture relationships after they reply.

Luckily, Smart Inbox makes this rather simple, seeing as it lets you:

• View all messages and emails in a single dashboard.
• Respond to them directly without switching between different platforms.
• Label your conversations to keep track of conversions and measure ROI.
• Leave notes about leads so you don't have to memorize important details.

Want to know how many leads have replied without manually counting your chats?

Visit the Reports page, where you can keep track of your response rate, along with other metrics, such as:

• Acceptance rate
• Reply rate
• Email open rate
• Email click rate
• Bounce rate
• Emails verified
• etc.

How to pitch to business decision makers 

How you approach business decision makers and pitch to them will depend majorly on how they make decisions. In other words, it will depend on their behavior.

Nonetheless, here are some general sales tactics to help you pitch successfully.

1. Befriend the gatekeeper

Decision makers are often shielded by gatekeepers, a.k.a. assistants, coordinators, or even automated systems. Instead of trying to bypass them, work on building a rapport (unless they are a bot). Doing so can help you gain insider info and improve your chances of getting through.

2. Provide value first

Decision makers get bombarded with pitches every day, so standing out is all about showing what’s in it for them. Jumping straight into your product features won’t cut it. Instead, focus on how your solution solves their challenges or helps them reach their goals.

Want to make them even more receptive? Offer something valuable upfront, such as a free resource, industry insights, or a quick audit.

3 Offer social proof

People trust what others have already validated. And what better way to make them trust you than to share case studies, testimonials, or data that prove your solution has worked for those in similar shoes?

4. Tailor your pitch 

By all means, don’t use the same pitch on everyone! Instead, customize your message based on your leads’ pain points, industry, and goals to make it more personal and relevant. The more aligned your pitch is with their needs, the more likely they are to engage.

We deliver all our latest updates straight to your inbox.

Sales templates, cold outreach, and industry innovations.

Email *

• I agree with and accept Privacy Policy

Subscribe

Frequently asked questions

What are B2B business decision makers?

B2B business decision makers are individuals within a company who have the authority to make decisions on behalf of the organization. They can be found across different levels of an organization, from C-level executives to department heads and managers, depending on the size and structure of the business.

What are examples of decision makers?

Decision makers can include C-level executives, department heads, managers, and business owners, among others. Their authority varies depending on the company's size and structure, with executives making high-level strategic decisions and department heads focusing on team-specific ones. Meanwhile, in smaller businesses, the owner or founder often takes on the role of the primary decision-maker.

How long does it take to reach a business decision-maker?

The time it takes to reach a business decision-maker depends on various factors, such as their role, the size of the company, and your outreach strategy. Generally, high-level executives may take longer to respond due to their busy schedules and gatekeepers filtering their communications.

Get in front of business decision makers in record time!

As you can see, finding and reaching out to business decision makers isn't as complicated as it seems to be. At least not when you're armed with the right resources and tools.

And what better tool to arm yourself with than Skylead? After all, it's your one-stop-shop solution that helps you find, enrich, and outreach more decision makers faster and do it at scale.

Sounds too good to be true? It’s not. But don’t just take our word for it - start your 7-day free trial now to get in front of the right people and grow your business like never before!

Disclaimer: Skylead is not affiliated, endorsed by, or connected with LinkedIn in any way.

Most interactions on LinkedIn go silent after the first touch. The lead accepts your connection request, maybe replies once, and then… nothing. However, a LinkedIn follow up message can change the entire course of your cold outreach. When written the right way, it can reopen the conversation, remind the person why they connected with you in the first place, and even move things toward a reply, a meeting, and ultimately, a closed deal.

Unfortunately, the line between a good and a bad follow-up message is thin. And if you get it wrong, you risk losing the lead for good.

Over the years, we’ve tested hundreds of follow-up messages across sales, marketing, and recruiting. Some flopped. Meanwhile, others got 50%+ more replies. So, we documented what worked (and what didn’t) to help you get it right from the start.

And now, we’re sharing our proven LinkedIn follow up message formula, as well as templates you can copy, paste, and personalize in seconds!

So, let’s get started!

What is a LinkedIn follow up message?

A LinkedIn follow up message is a message sent after an initial interaction on the platform, such as a connection request, conversation, meeting, or job application. Its goal is to re-engage the recipient, provide additional context or value, and encourage a reply or next step.

Why LinkedIn follow up messages matter?

Did you know that only 2% of deals are made after the initial contact? That means that, if you’re not following up on LinkedIn - or failing to send a follow-up email after no response, for that matter - you’re seriously hurting your chances of closing.

And while a better chance of closing deals should be reason enough, there are other benefits that make LinkedIn follow-ups a must-have in any sales outreach strategy.

They lead to stronger connections

If I had a nickel for every time someone wrote me a ''Thank you for connecting on LinkedIn'' message and then disappeared, I’d have enough to cover the LinkedIn Premium cost for most of my connections.

But jokes aside, a follow-up message is what gives the conversation a reason to continue and reinforces your LinkedIn lead generation efforts. It shows that you actually have something to discuss, rather than simply expanding your network.

They help you stand out professionally

The majority of people don’t follow up. And out of those who do, nearly half, 44% to be precise, give up after the first try, either because they’re afraid of being perceived as 'pushy' or because they simply don’t want to bother. So, when you do follow up and do it well, you immediately stand out. It shows you’re proactive, consistent, and not just sending out messages for the sake of it.

They increase response rates

Most LinkedIn cold messages get ignored, not necessarily because leads aren’t interested - it could just be bad timing. The follow-up gives them a second chance to respond, and you a chance to add more context or value. Especially if the timing wasn’t great the first time around, this can be the nudge that gets you the reply.

They help you build credibility in the leads' eyes

When you follow up in a non-intrusive way, you demonstrate professionalism and signal that you’re actually invested in the conversation. Add a bit of personalization or relevance, and it can position you as someone who’s worth responding to.

They keep conversations alive for future opportunities

Not every lead is ready to act now, which doesn’t mean they won’t be in a week, a month, or a quarter. That said, a LinkedIn follow up message helps you stay on their radar until they are ready to move forward. It keeps the connection warm, shows you’re patient, and makes it easier to pick up right from where you left off.

When to send a LinkedIn follow up message?

The best time to send a LinkedIn follow up message is usually between 2 and 5 business days after your last touchpoint. This gives the other person enough time to see and process your message.

But truth be told, the timing of your message depends on the situation. That said, here are some of the most common scenarios and when to send a LinkedIn follow up for each:

1. After a connection request is accepted - Follow up within 1–2 days. This is your chance to start the conversation while your name is still fresh in their inbox.
2. After they reply once but go quiet - In this case, wait 3–5 days before sending a follow-up that references their reply.
3. After they view your profile or message but don’t respond - Follow up after 2–3 days. However, make sure to keep it low-pressure and relevant.
4. After a meeting, call, or interview - Send your follow-up within 24 hours, all while focusing on the next steps or main takeaways.
5. After no response at all - If your first message was ignored, follow up after 3–5 business days. You can also try a different angle or include something useful to increase your chances of getting a reply.
6. When something relevant happens - If you have a good reason to reach out again, for example, you have a resource you’d like to share, an update, or you’re reacting to something they posted, use that to re-engage naturally. In these cases, follow up within a day or 2 of noticing or posting the update to keep the message timely.

How to write an effective LinkedIn follow up message? [Step-by-step formula]

No message is truly perfect. However, after testing hundreds of follow-ups, we’ve found a golden formula that consistently gets replies:

Hook → Context → Value → CTA

This structure helps your message stay relevant no matter the scenario, keeps things conversational, and, most importantly, guides the lead toward a clear next step.

So, let’s dissect it and see how you can apply it to your LinkedIn follow up messages in real life.

1. Hook

This is your opener, a.k.a the first sentence that gets them to keep reading. It can be a brief callback to your last interaction, a personal touch, or even a subtle observation. Either way, the goal is to make it feel like a continuation of the previous message.

Examples:

• Just circling back here in case my last message got buried.
• Saw your recent post on [topic] - it’s spot on! 

2. Context

Now explain who you are and why you’re reaching out. This part is especially important if some time has passed or if your first message didn’t get a reply. The idea is to reestablish the reason for the message without repeating yourself.

Examples:

• We connected last week after I came across your profile while researching [industry/topic].
• I previously mentioned how [your product/service] helps [job title] streamline [process].

3. Value

This is where you give them a reason to care. Share something useful, relevant, or interesting, for example, a case study, a whitepaper, an article, etc. Just make sure it ties into their role, goals, or pain points.

Examples:

• Just published a short guide on [topic] that might be helpful for what you’re working on.
• We helped a similar company reduce [X] by [Y]% - happy to explain how.
• Thought this update might be relevant based on what you shared last time.

4. CTA (Call to Action)

Close with a soft ask. Nothing aggressive, though. A clear, logical next step that makes it easy to say yes.

Examples:

• Open to a quick chat sometime this week?
• Would it make sense to connect for 15 minutes?
• Let me know if this is worth exploring. I’m happy to share more.

LinkedIn follow up message templates for every scenario

So, you’ve got a framework for writing effective LinkedIn follow up messages to follow along.

Still, we get it. Writing messages from scratch just about every time can be a pain. 

If time is of the essence and you’d rather have something ready-made, the following templates, which we've put together for different scenarios, are for you. Simply copy, paste, and tweak them to match specific prospects.

1. LinkedIn follow up message after connecting

Response rate: 24%

Hi {{firstName}},

Thanks for accepting the connection!

I came across your profile while looking into {{industry/topic}}, and your work at {{company}} stood out.

If you're ever open to chatting about {{sharedInterest}}, I'd be happy to stay in touch - no pressure at all.

Real-life example:

2. LinkedIn follow up message after a networking event or meeting

Response rate: 41%

Hi {{firstName}},

It was great meeting you at {{eventName}}! I really enjoyed our chat about {{topic}}.

You mentioned {{specificDetail}}, and I’ve actually come across something that might be helpful.

Would you be open to reconnecting sometime next week? I’d love to keep the conversation going.

Real-life example:

3. LinkedIn follow up message after a sales call or demo

Response rate: 38%

Hey {{firstName}},

Thanks again for the call yesterday. It was great learning more about what you’re working on at {{company}}.

As promised, here’s the {{resource/demoFollowUp}} we discussed. I’ve also included a brief overview of how we can support {{specificGoal}}.

Let me know if you’d like to book a follow-up or need anything else from my side.

Real-life example:

4. LinkedIn follow up message to a client

Response rate: 29%

Hey {{firstName}},

Just touching base to see how everything’s going.

Last time we spoke, you mentioned {{painPoint/projectUpdate}}, so I wanted to check in and see if you need anything from me.

If it makes sense, we can hop on a quick call to review where things stand.

Real-life example:

5. LinkedIn follow up message to a candidate

Response rate: 45%

Hi {{firstName}},

Hope you're doing well!

I enjoyed our conversation about the {{jobTitle}} position and wanted to follow up to see if you had any questions since we last spoke.

If you’re still interested, we’d be happy to talk about the next steps or anything else you need.

Real-life example:

6. LinkedIn follow up message after sending an application or resume

Response rate: 12%

Hi {{firstName}},

Just following up on the application I submitted for the {{jobTitle}} role at {{company}}.

I’m excited about the opportunity and think my background in {{skill/industry}} could be a great fit.

Let me know if there’s anything else I can send your way - happy to chat if helpful.

Real-life example:

7. LinkedIn follow up message after an interview

Response rate: 35%

Hey {{firstName}},

Thanks again for the thoughtful conversation earlier! It was great learning more about the team and the direction you're headed.

I’ve been thinking more about what we discussed, especially around {{topic}}, and I’m even more excited about the opportunity.

Let me know if you need anything else from me in the meantime!

Real-life example:

8. LinkedIn follow up message after no response

Response rate: 11%

Hi {{firstName}},

Just circling back in case my last message got buried.

If now’s not the right time, that’s totally fine - I just didn’t want to disappear if {{topic/value}} is still relevant on your end.

Happy to revisit later if that works better for you.

Real-life example:

Do’s and Don’ts of LinkedIn follow up messages

Before you send that follow up message on LinkedIn, let’s make sure it’s actually worth replying to. These do’s and don’ts will help you strike the right tone, all while staying professional.

Do personalize every message

If your follow-up could be sent to 50 other people without changing a word, it’s time for a rewrite.

This is where a quick LinkedIn profile scroll can save the day, as it should help you find something you can actually reference in the message for a more personalized outreach. While at it, pay special attention to your lead’s:

• LinkedIn headline, 
• LinkedIn summary, 
• Work experience,
• Recent posts,
• Activity.

Use that info to show you’ve done your homework and make it clear that they are not just another name on your prospecting list.

Do use a positive & professional tone

Your tone sets the stage for how your message will be perceived. Too friendly, and it might feel unprofessional. Too formal, and it might feel cold or automated. 

What you want to do is aim for that middle ground: approachable, clear, and respectful. For example, rather than saying ''Following up as per my previous message'' say, ‘’Just wanted to follow up in case you missed my last message.’’

The takeaway? Sound like someone you’d respond to. It’s really THAT simple.

Do be clear and brief

The average human attention span is just 8.25 seconds. So if your message takes a paragraph to get to the point, I hate to break it to you, but it’s probably not getting read. 

To counter that, keep it brief. Say what you need to say, minus the fluff. One idea, one ask, one next step. That’s all you need.

Do stay patient and considerate

You’re not the only message in your lead’s inbox. People get busy, distracted, or just need a minute before replying, and that’s okay. Following up is a great sales tactic. Following up too soon or too often? Not so much. Give it a few days before nudging, and always assume good intent. You’re building a relationship, after all, not closing a support ticket. A little patience goes a long way in how you’re perceived.

Don’t be pushy or impersonal

“Hey, just circling back again - can we schedule something for tomorrow at 2 PM?”

If this is your second message and you’ve never actually spoken to the person, that’s not a follow-up. It’s a calendar ambush.

Pushy messages or recycled templates won’t do you any favors, especially when you’re still building the relationship. You’re not trying to close the deal in one go. You’re trying to keep the conversation going. Big difference.

Instead, be human. Add context, show interest, and write something that doesn’t make the other person feel like lead #47 in your queue.

Don’t make assumptions about a lack of response

''Guess you’re not interested...''

''Not sure if you’re ignoring me or just busy.''

Please don’t.

Just because someone hasn’t replied yet doesn’t mean they’ve ghosted you. People get busy. They forget. They read your message on mobile and mean to respond later. It happens.

Assuming the worst makes you look impatient. Or worse, passive-aggressive.

Don’t use all caps or excessive punctuation

YOU DON’T NEED TO SHOUT!!! Seriously.

All caps and extra punctuation might grab attention, but not in a good way. It can come off as aggressive, spammy, and a little too much.

We deliver all our latest updates straight to your inbox.

Sales templates, cold outreach, and industry innovations.

Email *

• I agree with and accept Privacy Policy

Subscribe

Advanced LinkedIn follow up message tips to stand out even further

Sending LinkedIn follow-ups that ''check the boxes'' isn’t enough, especially when inboxes are packed and attention spans are short. These tips are here to help you go the extra step, stay top-of-mind, and get more replies without sounding like a bot.

A/B test your follow-up messages

Does a short, direct follow-up get more replies than one with a bit more context? Only one way to find out - A/B testing.

Truth be told, not every message will work for each lead, meaning you’ll need to experiment with different ones. Your best bet is to A/B test element by element: hooks, CTAs, even the message length. Keep an eye on the results, and over time, you’ll spot patterns that can help you write better LinkedIn follow up messages.

Use LinkedIn features other than messaging

If your follow-ups are getting ignored, stop relying only on messages. LinkedIn gives you other ways to reengage.

For example, you could:

• Comment on their post
• View their profile
• Tag them in a relevant post (only if it’s connected to something you talked about or they shared)
• Share their content with a quick note

These touchpoints can warm up a cold lead or set the stage for your next message, without making you look desperate.

Track & optimize your follow-up performance

You could have the best targeted outreach strategy there is, but if you’re not keeping tabs on how your follow up messages are performing, all of that is in vain.

To start with, create a simple system to track your messages and note:

• Who you messaged
• When you sent the follow-up
• What version of the message you used
• Whether they replied

After 20–30 messages, review the outcomes. Which got replies? Were they shorter? More personalized? Did they include a resource or a specific CTA? From there, double down on what’s working and adjust what isn’t.

Is it okay to follow up on another channel if LinkedIn isn’t working?

Absolutely!

If your message gets buried or ignored, it doesn’t mean the opportunity is lost; it just means it’s time to take the multichannel outreach route and reach out to your leads via email.

But let’s be honest… doing this manually? Not ideal.

That’s why we built Skylead - an AI account-based sales engagement platform that doubles as a LinkedIn automation tool and cold email software.

It's designed to help sales teams, marketers, lead gen agencies, and recruiters save 11+ hours a week on prospecting, data enrichment, and outreach.

With Skylead, you can go beyond LinkedIn and take full advantage of unlimited email outreach. Just connect as many mailboxes as you want, and the tool will auto-rotate through them, letting you send tens of thousands of emails a month at no extra cost.

And don’t worry about deliverability. As part of the same subscription, you also get infinite email warm-up functionality, so your messages land exactly where they’re supposed to: in the primary inbox.

No emails for your leads? No problem! Skylead can discover and verify emails on the go, without disrupting your outreach flow.

In fact, you can uncover many other details about your leads and the companies they work for using our AI data enrichment add-on. You can also prompt AI to get additional context and generate personalized icebreakers that you can use as variables in your outreach sequences.

Speaking of sequences, none of this would be possible without Smart sequences - our signature feature that uses if/else conditions and multichannel steps to move your outreach forward based on your lead’s behavior. This way, you reach the right person, at the right time, on the right channel.

And if you need personalization? We’ve also got that. In fact, Skylead lets you:

• Personalize images and GIFs with your lead’s logo, photo, name, and/or custom text
• Use native or custom variables for a message that feels truly 1-on-1
• A/B test your messaging to see what actually resonates

But if you really want to maximize your chances of getting a reply regardless of the channel, we suggest you begin the sales engagement process using our account-based prospecting feature. Use it to create account lists directly in Skylead that match your ICP to a T, then identify the right contacts inside them. Once that's done, you can move on to data enrichment and finally outreach.

So, as you can see, with Skylead, you get a complete, behavior-driven sales engagement and follow-up system that helps you find and reach out to the right leads in less time.

Frequently asked questions

Should you send a follow-up message on LinkedIn?

Yes. Following up is an important part of any outreach strategy. It helps re-engage the recipient, increases the likelihood of a response, and demonstrates persistence and professionalism.

How do you politely follow up on LinkedIn?

Maintain a respectful and friendly tone. Acknowledge the previous message, provide a brief reminder of the context, and suggest a simple next step. Avoid sounding impatient or overly persistent.

How to send a follow up message after no response on LinkedIn?

Wait approximately 3–5 business days before following up. Consider offering a new context, a resource, or a question that adds value to the conversation and encourages a response.

How many follow-ups should you send before moving on?

Generally, it is advisable to send up to 2 or 3 LinkedIn follow up messages. If there is no engagement after that, it may be best to pause or explore alternative channels for communication.

What to do if you don’t get a response after multiple attempts?

Change your approach. Engage with the person’s content, explore a different channel such as email, or revisit the lead at a later time when the timing may be more appropriate.

How do you know if your follow-up strategy is working?

Track metrics such as reply rates, profile views after sending a message, and the number of conversations that progress to the next step (e.g., meeting booked, reply received). Over time, these indicators will help you identify what types of messages and timing yield the best results.

Can I use LinkedIn voice or video messages for follow-ups?

Yes, using LinkedIn voice or video messages can help your follow-ups stand out, as well as feel more personal. These formats are especially useful in relationship-based outreach, such as sales or recruiting. However, they should be used thoughtfully: keep them brief, relevant, and professional to maintain the recipient’s attention and respect their time.

Replies go to those who follow up

The first message might get you noticed. But it’s often the LinkedIn follow up message that will get you a reply. Because conversations rarely move forward unless someone nudges them. And when done right, that someone can be you.

So, go ahead: follow up. Most people won’t. You’ll stand out just by showing up again.

And if you want to spend less time chasing leads and more time closing them, Skylead can help. We’ll give you the tools to find the right companies and contacts inside them, enrich their data, then engage them across multiple channels without losing the human touch.

Start your 7-day free trial and see the difference for yourself!

Are you looking for the top sales engagement platforms in 2026? Well, you’re in the right place! In fact, we tested the most widely used tools to see how they actually perform in real-life scenarios.

Having spent years in the sales automation space, we’ve seen firsthand that the biggest challenge isn’t in fact finding a sales engagement tool. It’s finding one that actually fits the way your team sells. 

Some platforms work best for enterprise teams running multichannel outreach, while others are better suited for cold email campaigns, Gmail-native workflows, or straight-up prospecting.

So, to help you figure out which one makes the most sense for you and your team, we’ll be breaking down 13 platforms in total, starting with their:

• Main use cases
• Standout features
• Tradeoffs
• Pricing

So, grab your popcorn and let’s begin!

What is a sales engagement platform?

A sales engagement platform is software that helps salespeople automate and manage their sales outreach.

These tools allow reps to:

• Create outreach sequences
• Track prospect engagement
• Automate follow-ups
• Personalize communication at scale

If you want a deeper breakdown of how these tools work, read our complete guide on what a sales engagement platform is, where we also tackled why your sales engagement process depends on using one. 

But now, let’s get straight to the chase and introduce you to the top sales engagement platforms in 2026.

How we evaluated the sales engagement platforms

Before the roundup, let’s briefly explain how we determined which platforms deserve a spot on the list. 

Basically, we’ve tested these tools ourselves over the course of several days using the following evaluation criteria:

• Multichannel outreach features
• Sequencing capabilities
• Email deliverability
• CRM integration
• Personalization features
• Scalability
• Pricing and overall value for money

Each platform was used in a simulated outreach workflow, all so we could evaluate how well it performs in real scenarios.

Overview of top sales engagement platforms

TL;DR? In that case, here’s a quick comparison table you can reference. 

If any of the platforms tickle your fancy, you can also jump straight to their section by clicking on their name in the table below.

Quick summary

• Best overall: Skylead
• Best for enterprise sales teams: Outreach
• Best Gmail-native solution: MixMax 
• Best for built-in prospect data: Apollo

13 top sales engagement platforms to drive more sales in 2026

1. Skylead: Best for sales teams and agencies

Overview

Skylead is a sales engagement platform built for agencies and sales teams that want to book 3x the meetings in less time.

The star feature of Skylead is Smart sequences - dynamic outreach flows that combine outreach actions with if/else conditions and adapt in real time based on prospect behavior.

That means your team doesn’t have to guess what comes next or manually juggle follow-ups. Skylead handles the execution of steps while reps stay focused on strategy, conversations, and revenue-generating work.

With Skylead, users can also discover and verify leads’ emails, warm up infinite mailboxes at no extra cost, personalize messages using images and GIFs, liquid syntax and spintax, keep track of replies through a Smart inbox, and much more.

That makes it especially useful for:

• Sales teams
• Lead generation agencies
• Marketers
• Recruiters

Key features

• Smart sequences that combine outreach actions with if/else conditions to form coherent outreach flows.
• Unlimited email outreach with inbox rotation, so you can send tens of thousands of emails a month.
• Email discovery & verification. Use it without breaking your outreach flow and avoid bounces by sending emails to valid addresses only.
• Infinite email warm-up to maintain strong deliverability and keep emails away from spam at no extra cost.
• Advanced personalization features, including Image & GIF personalization, spintax, and liquid syntax, which can increase the reply rate to up to 76%.
• Advanced reporting to analyze the performance of outreach campaigns.
• Smart inbox that holds all correspondence in one place and simplifies conversion and ROI tracking.

Potential tradeoffs

Because Skylead focuses heavily on outbound sales automation, teams looking for deep CRM analytics or forecasting features may still rely on tools like Salesforce or HubSpot alongside it.

Nonetheless, the software comes with 2-click integrations with popular CRM - HubSpot, PipeDrive, and Salesforce. Thus, it’s simple to include in the larger sales ecosystem.

Pricing

Skylead has a single price of $100 per seat per month. You can also subscribe to the Annual plan, which gets you 2 months free.

2. Outreach: Best for enterprise sales teams

Overview

Outreach is one of the most widely used enterprise sales engagement platforms, designed for large sales organizations.

The platform focuses heavily on sales execution and pipeline management, helping teams manage multichannel outreach while tracking engagement across large prospect databases.

From our experience, Outreach works best when multiple teams - SDRs, AEs, and revenue leaders - need a centralized platform to coordinate outreach and monitor pipeline activity.

Because of its enterprise focus, Outreach includes advanced features like AI-driven deal insights powered by Kaia AI, sales forecasting support, and workflow automation across large sales teams.

Key features

• Automated sequences and playbooks that standardize outreach processes.
• AI-powered engagement insights that analyze historical interactions to recommend optimal send times and follow-up strategies.
• Sales analytics that track pipeline activity, rep performance, and engagement metrics across campaigns.
• Direct integration with Salesforce CRM to sync prospect activity automatically.

Potential tradeoffs

Outreach is designed primarily for mid-market and enterprise organizations.

So, for smaller sales teams or startups, the platform can feel:

• Overly complex
• Expensive
• Slower to implement

Thus, many smaller teams prefer simpler platforms, such as Skylead, that require less onboarding.

Pricing

Outreach lets users choose between 3 plans:

• Amplify Core
• Amplify Plus
• Amplify Pro

Unfortunately, they don’t disclose their pricing publicly, meaning you’ll need to reach out to their team for details. 

From our experience, though, we can tell you that their pricing is volume-based, like in Skylead. So the higher the number of seats you need, realistically, the lower the cost per one.

3. Salesloft: Best for teams focused on sales coaching

Overview

Salesloft is another enterprise-focused sales engagement platform that combines outreach automation with conversation intelligence and sales coaching tools.

While platforms like Outreach focus heavily on execution workflows, Salesloft places a strong emphasis on helping sales leaders analyze conversations and improve rep performance.

The platform captures engagement data from emails, calls, and meetings, then uses that data to provide insights into how deals progress through the pipeline.

That said, Salesloft can be a specifically strong fit for organizations that prioritize rep training, deal inspection, and sales management.

Key features

• Sequence builder that allows you to create automated outreach sequences that combine emails, calls, and social touches.
• Conversation intelligence technology that records and analyzes sales calls to identify coaching opportunities and deal risks.
• Deal analytics across accounts and deals.
• Sales coaching dashboard where users and team members can review calls and messages to improve their outreach.

Potential tradeoffs

Similarly to Outreach, Salesloft is built primarily for enterprise sales organizations, which means that:

• Pricing can be high
• The setup requires onboarding
• Smaller teams may not use all features

So, if you want a simpler automation tool, lighter sales engagement platforms may be easier to adopt.

Pricing

Depending on your needs, or rather, your team size, you can choose between the Advanced or the Elite plan.

But much like Outreach, Salesloft also doesn’t disclose the pricing. To get the exact details, you also need to request a demo with their team.

4. Lemlist: Best for testing out AI message personalization

Overview

Lemlist is a sales engagement platform built for those who want to find leads, enrich contact data, and run multichannel outreach from one place.

Instead of relying on separate tools for prospecting, enrichment, and outreach, Lemlist combines these steps into a single workflow. This means you can search for prospects in its built-in database, enrich their contact details, and then immediately add them to automated campaigns.

The platform supports email, LinkedIn, calls, and even WhatsApp outreach, all managed inside one sequence. It also includes AI-powered personalization that pulls insights from LinkedIn profiles, company websites, and other data sources to help customize messages automatically.

Key features

• Built-in B2B lead database with over 600 million contacts across 65 million companies.
• Waterfall email enrichment, a.k.a. a feature that automatically checks multiple data providers to find and verify prospect emails, similar to what Skylead does.
• Multichannel outreach sequences that combine email, LinkedIn, calls, and WhatsApp steps.
• AI personalization that helps generate message variables and icebreakers using data pulled from LinkedIn and company websites.
• Unified inbox to track all prospect interactions across channels in a single conversation thread.
• Lemwarm - an email warm-up tool that helps improve email deliverability (though it costs extra).

Potential tradeoffs  

No Lemlist feature is truly unlimited. Many depend on credits and add-ons, which means the monthly price can easily skyrocket. 

For example, this is exactly the case with Lemwarm, their email warm-up tool, which you need to pay extra to use. Not to mention, pricing is based per mailbox. So if you want to warm up a new email domain with multiple accounts, you’re looking at shelling out hundreds of dollars!

That’s a major drawback compared to Lemlist alternatives like Skylead, which offer infinite email warm-up at no additional cost and let you warm up as many mailboxes as you need.

Pricing

Lemlist lets users choose between their 3 plans:

• Email Pro - $79/month per user (Grants access to email features only)
• Multichannel Expert - $109/month per user (Adds multichannel functionality)
• Enterprise - Custom pricing (Includes all Multichannel features + advanced support)

They also offer a number of paid add-ons, as seen in the picture below, which further raise the cost of the subscription.

Additionally, should you choose to use Lemwarm, you’re looking at spending the added:

• $29/month per mailbox under their Essential plan
• $49/month per mailbox under their Smart plan

5. Apollo: Best for uncovering prospect data

Overview

Apollo is another sales engagement tool that helps you find leads and their data and run outreach.

That said, it’s very similar to Lemlist in that, rather than stitching together a data provider, sequencing tool, dialer, and enrichment platform, it tries to cover the whole workflow inside one product. 

That includes outbound, inbound lead conversion, data enrichment, and even deal execution features like call summaries, meeting prep, and follow-up automation.

Key features

• Built-in B2B database with 65 filters for targeting, updated monthly with new 5.3M contacts.
• Outbound automation to build multichannel campaigns, automate follow-ups, and manage prospecting tasks.
• AI Assistant that helps with list building, research, messaging, sequence creation, and workflow automation.
• Deal execution features such as call summaries, task creation, and pipeline boards.

Potential tradeoffs

Apollo is broad, which is also the problem. Because it tries to cover data, outreach, enrichment, and deal execution in one platform, some features are not as developed as others, as we found out while testing it.

For example, advanced personalization options, such as image and GIF personalization, or liquid syntax and spintax, are missing. There is no integrated inbox, either, which users can use to directly reply to outreach messages.

Not to mention, while they offer a free plan, serious use usually means moving to a paid tier and keeping an eye on credits for enrichment and related actions. That’s also what positions some other Apollo alternatives as superior options.

Pricing

Apollo adopts a Freemium model, meaning you can use it for free… theoretically. In reality, the Free version is for testing purposes only, given that it grants only 75 monthly credits, which you can use to enrich emails, phones, and other prospect data.

If you’d like to experience Apollo fully, you can subscribe to the following tiers:

• Basic - $59/month per user. Includes 2,500 credits.
• Professional - $99/month per user. Includes 4,000 credits.
• Organization -  $149/month per user. Includes 6,000 credits.

Additional credits can be bought, though the rate varies depending on the amount needed.

They also offer 2 paid add-ons:

• Inbound - $149/month per team (Identifies up to 50,000 companies visiting your website and enriches form contacts)
• Advanced dialer -  $149/month per team

6. Instantly: Best for cold email campaigns

Overview

Instantly is a sales engagement platform designed primarily for high-volume cold email outreach.

Its strongest angle is simple: help teams send at scale, land in the primary inbox, and manage deliverability without turning setup into a full-time job. That’s why Instantly is especially popular with agencies, outbound teams, recruiters, and founders running aggressive cold email campaigns.

Beyond email sequencing, Instantly also includes a lead database, AI-powered personalization, pipeline analytics, inbox management, website visitor identification, and its own lightweight CRM.

Key features

• Unlimited email accounts.
• Automated email warm-up and deliverability optimization tools.
• Built-in B2B Lead Finder, which gives access to a 450M+ lead database with filters and AI-based prospecting workflows.
• Unibox and CRM. Users can manage replies, calls, SMS, and tasks from one inbox, while the CRM adds salesflows and AI-based lead handling.
• AI Copilot that can suggest campaigns, build lead lists, summarize analytics, as well as help write sequences. 

Potential tradeoffs

Is Instantly.ai worth it? Why, yes, but the tool comes with a couple of downsides. For example, plenty of features are available, but they’re spread across separate products like Outreach, Lead Finder/SuperSearch, and CRM. So if you want the full setup, the total cost can add up fast.

Also, while Instantly has expanded beyond email, it still feels most native to cold email-first workflows rather than full multichannel sales engagement.

Pricing

Instantly sells 3 solutions (Outreach, SuperSearch, and CRM), as mentioned earlier, with each having its own separate plans.

That said, Outreach plans grant access to email automation features and warm-up, and include the following:

• Growth - $47/month per user
• Hypergrowth - $97/month per user
• Light Speed - $358/month per user

Meanwhile, SuperSearch turns Instantly into a B2B prospecting tool by unlocking the built-in lead database. Plans include:

• Growth - $47/month per user
• Supersonic - $97/month per user
• Hyper Credits - $197/month per user

And for those who prefer keeping their tech stack minimal, Instantly also offers a mini CRM, with 2 different tiers available:

• Growth CRM - $47/month per user
• Hyper CRM - $97/month per user

So, if you want to use all 3 of their sub-products, you’re looking at spending a minimum of $141/month per user. But realistically, probably a lot more.

7. Reply.io: Best for AI-powered multichannel outreach

Overview

Reply.io is a sales engagement platform built for teams that want to automate multichannel outreach with a stronger AI layer.

It combines prospecting, sequence building, email deliverability, LinkedIn outreach, calls, SMS, WhatsApp, meeting scheduling, and AI-generated messaging in one platform. 

On top of that, Reply also offers Jason AI SDR, which turns the product into a more AI-led outreach system for those who want to automate even more of the process.

From what we’ve seen, Reply is a strong fit for those who want more than cold email alone, but don’t necessarily want an enterprise-heavy tool like Outreach or Salesloft.

Key features

• Multichannel conditional sequences with email, LinkedIn, calls, SMS, WhatsApp, and even Zapier-connected channels inside one sequence.
• AI outreach feature-set with AI-generated sequences, AI email personalization, AI variables, and AI response generation.
• Audience discovery, contact enrichment, validation, and access to large prospect databases through integrated data sources.
• Deliverability toolkit with warm-up, Gmail API sending, Postmaster integration, and domain health tools.
• Unified inbox and scheduler to manage conversations in one inbox and book meetings directly from sequences.

Potential tradeoffs

Reply comes with AI email personalization, but that’s where the personalization stops. There’s no way to personalize images and GIFs, and the advanced options like spintax and liquid syntax are visibly absent, too.

Also, most of the functionality depends on add-ons and credits. So, while Reply starts at a reasonable price, the full setup can get more expensive.

Finally, team management capabilities aren’t included in the product unless you’re subscribed to their Agency tiers. If that’s a big deal to you, a Reply.io alternative, such as Skylead, might suit you better.

Pricing

Reply.io has 3 categories of pricing (Sales Outreach, AI SDR & Agencies).

To start with, they offer 2 Sales Outreach plans:

• Email Volume - Starts from $59/month per user
• Multichannel - Starts from $99/month per user

Then, there are also AI SDR plans that include access to their AI sales agent, Jason:

• AI SDR Starter - Starts from $800/month
• AI SDR Growth - Starts from $2,500/month
• AI SDR Enterprise - Custom

Finally, Agencies are granted 2 plans, including:

• Agency Core - Starts from $210/month per client
• Agency AI SDR - Starts from $500/month per client

Hybrid plans are available, too, though they require a talk with the sales team.

And much like Lemlist and Apollo, Reply.io relies on add-ons to complete its sales engagement functionality, especially when it comes to Sales Outreach plans that only have the basic features included.

More specifically, they offer:

• Channel add-ons - LinkedIn automation at $69/month per account and Calls & SMS automation at $29/month per account
• AI & Live Data add-on for prospect information. Pricing is dependent on the number of credits, but it starts from $39/month.
• Email Validation add-on for validating prospect emails. Pricing is dependent on the number of credits, but it starts from $20/month.

8. MixMax: Best for Gmail-native sales engagement

Overview

Some sales teams don’t want to jump between dashboards all day. They live in their inbox, run conversations from email threads, and schedule meetings directly from there. That’s exactly the environment Mixmax is designed for.

Instead of pushing users into a separate workspace, Mixmax keeps most of the sales workflow inside Gmail (though it also supports Outlook). Sequences, scheduling links, CRM syncing, and follow-ups all operate from the inbox itself.

The platform has recently leaned heavily into AI as well, introducing a Copilot ecosystem made up of Inbox Copilot, Meeting Copilot, and Engagement Copilot. Together, these tools recognize buying signals, help reps prioritize conversations, and recommend the next action needed to move prospects further down the funnel.

Key features

• Inbox-native interface that allows users to run sequences, manage replies, and schedule meetings directly from Gmail
• Meeting Copilot that helps reps prepare for calls, capture notes automatically, and generate summaries with clear next steps.
• One-click scheduler that allows users to send availability links and coordinate meetings without back-and-forth emails.
• Workflow automation for CRM updates, follow-ups, reminders, and sequence enrollment.

Potential tradeoffs

Mixmax works best when the inbox is the center of your sales workflow. Teams that prefer a dedicated outreach platform with built-in prospecting databases or deeper pipeline management might find the tool slightly narrower in scope.

Pricing

MixMax plans are structured around their 3 copilots:

• Inbox Copilot - $34/month per user
• Meeting Copilot - $34/month per user
• Engagement Copilot - $65/month per user

If you’d like to use all 3, you can also subscribe to the MixMax Suite at $105 /month per user.

A free plan is available as well, although it’s quite limited and, therefore, not enough for professional use.

9. Klenty: Best for AI-powered outbound workflows

Overview

Klenty takes a slightly different approach to sales engagement. Instead of focusing purely on email sequences, the platform centers its workflow around AI-driven outbound execution.

The idea is simple: let AI handle the heavy lifting while reps focus on conversations. Klenty’s Agentic Cadences can research accounts, generate personalized emails, and execute outreach steps automatically across multiple channels.

At the same time, the platform supports the more traditional parts of outbound as well, including dialers, CRM integrations, deliverability monitoring, and multichannel sequences. Calling is particularly important here, with Klenty offering both Parallel Dialer and Power Dialer capabilities for teams that rely heavily on outbound calls.

Key features

• Agentic Cadences. AI researches accounts, personalizes messaging, and executes outreach steps automatically.
• Parallel and Power Dialers to call multiple prospects simultaneously or work through contact lists sequentially.
• AI account research with insights pulled from over 150 data sources for a more personalized outreach.
• Email deliverability suite that includes inbox rotation, warm-up, validation, and domain health monitoring.

Potential tradeoffs

Klenty is a powerful tool, but we noticed it’s not as user-friendly compared to other sales engagement platforms out there. The learning curve is steep, especially when dealing with more complex cadences.

While we didn’t personally have issues with their support team, many users on G2 and other review sites mention slow response and resolution times. We can see that being a major drawback when choosing between top sales engagement platforms, considering Skylead’s support team, for example, has a 7-second average response time.

Pricing

Klenty offers 3 Sales Engagement plans, billed quarterly:

• Starter - Credit-based, starts from $60/month
• Growth - $85/month per user
• Plus - $119/month per user

Dialer plans are billed separately and come in 2 forms:

• Basic - $45/month per user, billed quarterly
• Advanced - $119/month per user, billed quarterly

10. SmartReach: Best for unlimited email outreach

Overview

Running large-scale cold outreach often comes down to infrastructure: multiple sending domains, inbox rotation, deliverability monitoring, and careful campaign scheduling. SmartReach focuses on that side of the equation.

The platform is widely used by agencies and outbound teams that need to manage campaigns across many email accounts without paying per-seat fees for each mailbox. SmartReach allows unlimited sending accounts, which makes scaling campaigns significantly easier.

Beyond cold email, the platform also supports LinkedIn tasks, calling steps, shared inbox management, and AI-generated sequences. Everything is organized into multichannel workflows that guide prospects through email, social, and phone interactions.

Key features

• Unlimited sending accounts to run campaigns across multiple inboxes without additional costs.
• Multichannel outreach across email, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and calls.
• Deliverability toolkit that includes warm-up, inbox rotation, spam tests, and built-in email verification.
• Shared team inbox that centralizes conversations and helps teams manage replies collaboratively.
• AI-generated email sequences.

Potential tradeoffs

While testing SmartReach, we found their reporting and analytics were slightly underdeveloped.

Unquestionably, they let you connect unlimited email accounts. But they fail to explicitly mention that they cap the number of active prospects you can have monthly.

On top of that, lower-tier plans are missing several features that Skylead, for instance, includes out of the box, such as inbox rotation, ESP matching for email warm-up, and integrations with other platforms. 

Pricing

SmartReach has Email Outreach, Sales Engagement & Agency plans.

They offer 4 Email Outreach plans:

• Email Outreach Basic - $29/month per user
• Email Outreach Plus - $89/month per user
• Email Outreach Pro - $199/month per user
• Email Outreach Scale - $499/month per user

Meanwhile, Sales Engagement plans include:

• Sales Engagement Basic - $39/month per user, with 1 calling seat & 1 LinkedIn manual seat
• Sales Engagement Plus - $99/month per user, with 3 calling seats & 3 LinkedIn manual seats
• Sales Engagement Pro - $249/month per user, with 10 calling seats & 10 LinkedIn manual seats
• Sales Engagement Scale - $599/month per user, with 100 calling seats & 100 LinkedIn manual seats

Finally, Agencies can choose between:

• Email Outreach Pro - $199/month per user
• Email Outreach Scale - Credits-based, starts from $499/month per user
• Sales Engagement Pro - $249/month per user, with 10 calling seats & 10 LinkedIn manual seats
• Sales Engagement Scale - Credits-based, starts from $599/month per user, with 100 calling seats & 100 LinkedIn manual seats

11. HubSpot Sales Hub: Best for teams that want CRM and sales engagement in one place

Overview

Some teams don’t want a separate sales engagement tool layered on top of their CRM, but one system that handles outreach, lead management, pipeline tracking, reporting, and forecasting under the same roof. That’s exactly the kind of audience HubSpot Sales Hub is built for.

As a matter of fact, HubSpot combines sales engagement features with its CRM, which makes it particularly appealing to growing companies that care about ease of use just as much as functionality.

On top of the usual sales tools like sequences, call tracking, deal pipelines, and scheduling, HubSpot now relies heavily on AI as well, with features like Breeze Prospecting Agent, guided selling, forecasting, and conversation intelligence.

Key features

• Lead and pipeline management from a single workspace.
• Automated multichannel outreach that adapts based on prospect engagement.
• Call tracking and meeting scheduler to keep deals moving.
• Conversation intelligence and forecasting with AI-powered projections.
• CRM-native experience.

Potential tradeoffs

HubSpot is one of the best CRM software for sales, so their Sales Hub software will naturally fit into the workflow of their users. 

However, if you are already using a different CRM and just want a sales engagement platform to run your outreach from, Sales Hub may feel broader (and pricier) than necessary once you move beyond the free or Starter tiers.

Pricing

Although HubSpot provides a free version of the Sales Hub software, given the limited features provided, we can’t consider it one of the top sales engagement platforms.

Thus, to get real value, you need to subscribe to one of their 3 paid tiers:

• Starter - $15/month per seat
• Professional - $100/month per seat
• Enterprise - $150/month per seat
  

12. Clari: Best for forecasting and revenue execution

Overview

Clari plays in a slightly different lane than most tools on this list. It’s not merely trying to help reps send more outreach. It’s trying to help revenue teams see every signal across the pipeline, forecast more accurately, and act on risk before deals slip.

That’s why Clari is often used by larger revenue organizations that need more than just sequences and call tracking. The platform combines sales engagement, pipeline management, forecasting, revenue insights, and customer growth workflows under what it calls a Predictive Revenue System.

Meanwhile, on the sales engagement side, Clari focuses primarily on productivity. Its AI helps reps prioritize next steps, automate CRM updates, personalize outreach, and apply insights from calls and deal activity in real time.

Key features

• Forecasting and revenue insights to improve forecast accuracy and pipeline visibility.
• AI-guided sales engagement that provides next-step recommendations, message personalization, and helps with activity prioritization.
• Automatic CRM activity capture to reduce admin work.
• Call intelligence technology that automatically identifies objections, intent signals, and next steps from sales conversations.
• Manager coaching tools that help managers inspect deals and coach reps more effectively.

Potential tradeoffs

Clari is much broader than a typical sales engagement platform, which is both a benefit and a catch. Teams looking for a lightweight outreach tool may find it too enterprise-heavy, while smaller sales orgs may not need the full forecasting and revenue system.

Pricing

Clari provides a total of 4 subscription packages:

• Out-of-the-box
• RevAI
• RevDB
• Expert Support

However, pricing is undisclosed, meaning you need to get a quote from their team directly.

13. Salesforce: Best for Salesforce-native sales teams

Overview

Salesforce Sales Engagement is the obvious option for teams that already use their Sales Cloud and want outreach built directly into their CRM.

Rather than acting as a separate platform, Sales Engagement works as part of the broader Sales Cloud ecosystem. That means reps can manage cadences, tasks, emails, calls, scheduling, conversation insights, and AI recommendations without constantly switching between tools.

This setup is particularly handy for larger companies that already rely on Salesforce for pipeline management, reporting, and process automation. In those environments, keeping sales engagement inside the CRM in general means less friction, cleaner data, and stronger visibility for managers.

Key features

• Sales cadences with structured outreach steps across email, calls, and social touches.
• Work Queue and to-do management of tasks and cadence steps.
• Engagement intelligence powered by AI recommendations and customer signals. Helps identify high-priority prospects and next best actions.
• Conversation insights that you can use to analyze calls and surface objections for improved objection handling. You can also use them to create coaching playlists from successful calls.

Potential tradeoffs

Salesforce Sales Engagement makes the most sense if Salesforce is already the center of your sales process. If it isn’t, the product can feel overly complicated compared to simpler tools that are faster to roll out.

It’s also not really a standalone sales engagement platform in the same way that tools like Skylead, Instantly, or Reply.io are. To get the most value from it, you generally need the broader Salesforce setup around it, which can end up costing hundreds of dollars per user.

Pricing

Sales Engagement is part of Salesforce’s Sales Cloud, so you’ll need a Sales Cloud subscription to use it.

There are 6 in total, including:

• Free suite
• Starter suite - $25/month per user
• Pro suite - $100/month per user
• Enterprise - $175/month per user
• Unlimited - $350/month per user
• Agentforce 1 Sales - $550/month per user

However, Sales Engagement is included out of the box with the Unlimited and Agentforce 1 Sales plans only. For all other plans, it’s available as a paid add-on that costs $50/month per user.

We deliver all our latest updates straight to your inbox.

Sales templates, cold outreach, and industry innovations.

Email *

• I agree with and accept Privacy Policy

Subscribe

Frequently asked questions

What is the best sales engagement platform?

In truth, there’s no single best sales engagement platform. The right choice depends on your use case, team size, as well as your outreach strategy. For example, enterprise sales teams often prefer platforms like Outreach for structured workflows, while teams focused on cold outreach may choose tools like Skylead for scalable email campaigns.

What features should a sales engagement platform have?

A good sales engagement platform should include multichannel outreach, automated sequences, engagement tracking, personalization capabilities, and CRM integration. Many teams also look for built-in prospect data, email deliverability tools, analytics, and collaboration features that help sales reps manage outreach and follow-ups efficiently.

How to choose a sales engagement platform?

Start by defining your outreach channels, team size, as well as existing tools. Then compare platforms based on automation capabilities, personalization options, CRM integrations, pricing, and scalability. Testing the platform through a free trial or demo is the best way to see if it fits your sales workflow.

What is the difference between a CRM and a sales engagement platform?

A CRM stores and organizes customer data, tracks deals, and manages pipelines. A sales engagement platform, on the other hand, focuses on executing outreach - automating emails, calls, and follow-ups while tracking prospect interactions. In practice, sales engagement tools often integrate with CRMs to help teams manage both relationships and outreach workflows.

Which sales engagement platform should you opt for?

We’ve reached the very end of our top sales engagement platforms roundup, and now it’s time to answer the final question:

Which option should you go with?

Truth be told, no one can answer that but you. In general, it all boils down to your use case, your personal preferences, your workflow, tech stack, and ultimately, your budget.

For example, if you are looking for a sales engagement platform with a primary focus on cold email functionality, an ideal tool for you could be Instantly.ai. 

On the other hand, if you’re a Gmail user who likes to keep things inside Gmail, you’ll probably be happy with MixMax. 

And if you’re after a complete solution that allows for:

• Multichannel outreach
• Unlimited email outreach
• Email discovery & verification
• Infinite email warm-up
• Native image and GIF personalization

…and more, Skylead’s got you completely covered. 

It also comes with a 7-day free trial that you can take advantage of immediately. So, what are you waiting for? Sign up now to claim it and experience how simple sales engagement can be with a reliable tool by your side.

Disclaimer: Skylead is not affiliated, endorsed by, or connected with LinkedIn in any way.

Looking for an Evaboot alternative? You’re in the right place!

If you're in sales, marketing, or recruiting, chances are you've used Evaboot (or still are) to clean and export LinkedIn Sales Navigator leads.

But maybe you're hitting limits - on verified emails, data volume, or LinkedIn itself. Or maybe you're just exploring tools with a better price-to-feature ratio. Whatever your reason, you're not alone.

In fact, thousands of teams search for tools like Evaboot every month, whether for LinkedIn prospecting or LinkedIn lead generation purposes, email verification, or building cleaner prospecting lists. And that's exactly what this guide is here to help you with.

In this article, you'll find:

• A quick overview of Evaboot’s strengths, cons, and pricing
• The top Evaboot alternatives compared side by side
• In-depth reviews of 8 tools that help you prospect and reach out to your leads

We also included user ratings, real user pros & cons, and pricing details, so you don’t have to do the digging.

Let’s start with the basics. 👇

What is Evaboot?

Evaboot is a LinkedIn data cleaning and export tool designed to help sales, marketing, and recruiting teams get more value from LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

It’s especially popular with users who want to:

• Scrape LinkedIn Sales Navigator leads’ information and export it to a CSV file
• Clean job titles and remove junk data
• Get verified business emails without extra tools
• Build cleaner, ready-to-use outreach lists

But as useful as it may seem, Evaboot is neither perfect nor the only game in town.

Evaboot cons

And that brings us to the limitations Evaboot users often face. 

First and foremost, Evaboot comes in the form of a Sales Navigator Chrome extension. 

Why is this a problem? Because, chrome extensions inject a code into LinkedIn making your LinkedIn account visible to LinkedIn and subject to potential restriction. 

That said, if you'd like to keep your account in good standing, we recommend you switch to a tool that's cloud-based (we’ll get to that in a second).

Now, while the above is the biggest Evaboot con in our eyes, their users are also commonly bogged down by the:

• Lack of outreach features - Evaboot focuses solely on data extraction and cleaning. There are no built-in sales outreach capabilities, so if you'd actually like to get in touch with your leads, you'll need to add another tool to your stack.
• Email verification volume caps - All plans come with a monthly limit on verified emails. Once you hit your quota, you’ll either need to wait for the next cycle or pay for add-ons.
• Lack of built-in enrichment - Evaboot doesn’t enrich contact data beyond what’s available in Sales Navigator. If you need firmographic details, tech stack info, or buying signals data, you’ll need another enrichment provider.
• Higher cost per verified lead - As your team grows or prospecting volume increases, the cost per verified lead can become less competitive compared to all-in-one tools.
• Dependence on Sales Navigator - Evaboot pulls data exclusively from Sales Navigator. So, if your prospecting workflow spans multiple channels or databases, it may not be enough to cover your needs.

Evaboot pricing

Evaboot runs on a credit-based system, where each action you take consumes credits. Here’s how it breaks down:

• 1 lead or account exported = 1 credit
• 1 email found + verified = 1 credit
• 1 email verified only = 0.5 credit

In other words, exporting a single lead with a verified email costs 2 credits (1 for the export + 1 for the email verification).

Their pricing starts at $9/month for 100 credits, and scales up depending on the number of credits you need. Larger plans can give you thousands of credits, but the structure means costs rise quickly if you’re exporting and verifying at higher volumes.

And since Evaboot doesn’t include the outreach feature, many teams also end up paying for additional tools on top of the credit spend, making the overall cost higher than it first appears.

Best 8 Evaboot alternatives 

If you’ve reached the limits on what Evaboot can do, don’t worry, there are plenty of other tools on the market.

That said, here’s a quick comparison of the Evaboot alternatives you should know about:

Now, let’s get into them in detail, shall we?

1. Skylead

User rating: ⭐4.8

Why, yes, that’s us!

Skylead is a cloud-based complete tool for account based prospecting and sales engagement designed for agencies, sales teams, recruiters, and marketing teams who want to save 11+ hours a week and close 3x more meetings.

Now, let’s get into the features that make our tool the strongest Evaboot alternative.

Account based prospecting

The best way to find your ideal leads is to find your ideal companies first. That is exactly what Skylead offers - account based prospecting. With it you can:

• Create account lists directly in Skylead
• And discover contacts by company to reach them out.

In other words, once you added your companies, Skylead can help you find and match contacts within those selected companies so your pipeline stays aligned to your ICP. This way you can really zero in on your target companies that are most likely to convert, are your true partner, and have greater lifetime value.

AI data enrichment

Apart prospecting, we introduced a game-changing feature - AI data enrichment which you can use to:

1. Enrich contact & company data
2. Prompt AI to get specified info or generate personalized icebreakers for each contact
3. Use all gathered info directly inside your sequences as variables.

It’s Clay-like in what it can uncover, but it’s connected to your outreach workflow, so you avoid constant tool switching and data importing.

Smart sequences

We were the first tool on the market to bring about Smart sequences - a type of outreach sequence that you build by combining if/else conditions with different email and LinkedIn automated actions. As a result, you get coherent outreach flows that adapt to your prospect’s behavior to reach them in the fastest way possible.

Now, unlike tools that cap the number of steps you can add to your outreach campaign, we give you unlimited sequence steps. 

You can also track performance in detail in:

• Graph view to spot oscillations at a glance
• Table view to observe daily trends
• Step-by-step view to see the individual performance of each step in a sequence

Plus, you can A/B test your content at every stage to see what resonates most with your audience.

Unlimited email automation

Skylead allows you to connect unlimited email accounts to the tool. At no extra cost, at that! Not only can you connect as many mailboxes as you wish, but you can also use as many as you want within the same campaign. The tool will auto-rotate through them to help you send tens of thousands of emails a month, all while sticking to the healthy sending limits.

Infinite email warm-up

You connect unlimited inboxes, as you’ve learned, but you can also warm them up free of charge, courtesy of our partner, an email warm-up tool, InboxFlare. Thanks to the infinite email warm-up, you can rest assured your emails will stay clear of the spam folder and land in the primary inbox just about every time.

Email discovery & verification

Unlike Evaboot, which caps your verification volume, Skylead comes with an unlimited email discovery & verification feature. This means you can reach prospects even if their email isn’t publicly listed, while keeping bounce rates low and your sender reputation high. 

Image and GIF personalization

With Skylead, you can instantly boost replies by adding personalized images and GIFs into your cold outreach. You can enrich your visuals with:

• Your lead's name
• Their and/or your photo
• Their and/or your logo
• Custom text

It’s a small touch that can improve your response rate by up to 76%! Best of all, it comes included at no extra cost, as well.

Pricing

Skylead comes at a single cost of $100 per seat a month, which gives you access to all features with no limits. You’ll also find tutorials, templates, and guides to get the most out of our tool right away. 

AI data enrichment acts as an add-on. What makes this pricing truly different is simple: our core value is not to make money from these credits, and it will never be our business model. Credits are priced based on actual costs of our third-party providers (OpenAI, Bright Data, etc), and we offer a special rate of $1 for 100 credits.  We also negotiate volume discounts with our providers. This means that, as overall usage across all users increases, costs will decrease and will be passed back to our users. This makes AI data enrichment up to 95% more cost-effective compared to similar tools on the market.

And if you need help in real-time? Our support team is known for lightning-fast responses, as quick as 7 seconds on average!

If you prefer a longer commitment, we’ve also got an annual plan. Opt for it, and you’ll get 12 months for the price of 10. Not bad, huh?

We don’t expect you to commit right away, though. Feel free to try out our tool for 7 days free of charge & see for yourself why we are the #1 Evaboot alternative!

2. Wiza

User rating: ⭐4.6

Wiza is built for teams focused on lead extraction, email & phone verification, and data enrichment. It doesn’t belong to the sales outreach tools category, but it does simplify turning LinkedIn search results into lead lists with accurate contact information.

Pros

• Easy-to-use interface
• Clean, real-time email & phone verification
• Integrates with CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, and Pipedrive

Cons

• Similar to Evaboot, it relies on scraping LinkedIn data (which comes with risks)
• Credits-based model. Even with “unlimited” plans, there may be limits on “exports” or how many contacts you can process in given workflows
• Focuses only on extraction and verification - no outreach or personalization features

Pricing

Wiza has a free plan that you can use to find and verify 20 emails a month + 5 phone numbers.

When it comes to paid plans, though, it comes with 3 Individual plans, including:

…and a Team plan for 3+ users with unlimited emails and phone numbers credits, which starts at $399/month and is billed annually.

3. Emelia

User rating: ⭐4.8

Emelia brands itself as an all-in-one B2B prospecting tool. However, compared to Evaboot, it goes beyond simple scraping and data cleaning by adding multichannel outreach capabilities into the mix. Nevertheless, since it is a chrome extension, it is not safe solution, like Skylead is.

Pros

• Combines prospecting and outreach in one platform
• Built-in email finder & phone number discovery
• Email outreach with mailbox rotation
• Email warm-up included
• Magic Writer, a.k.a. a Chat GPT for sales-copywriting-like agent that writes messages for you

Cons

• Email outreach is unlimited only on the highest tier
• Credits still apply to some features (e.g., phone finder, enrichment)

Pricing

Emelia features 3 core plans which differ in the number of connected mailboxes, LinkedIn accounts, CRM integrations, and included monthly credits.

All plans come with email warm-up, unlimited email sending, scraping, and contacts, though.

If you need additional credits, you can buy them at $19/month for 1,000 credits (used for actions like email finding, phone number discovery, and verification).

There’s also a free trial to test the tool out before committing.

4. Bardeen

User rating: ⭐4.7

Bardeen is a browser-based workflow automation tool that allows you to extract data from across the web and push it into your CRM or spreadsheets. You can think of it as a productivity and automation copilot.

With it, you can build your own custom workflows. Or, use prebuilt Playbooks to speed up contact scraping and enrichment, or route leads into Notion, Airtable, Google Sheets, and HubSpot, among other tools.

Pros

• Automates repetitive prospecting tasks
• Offers prebuilt Playbooks for lead generation, enrichment, and data management
• Works directly in your browser
• Supports pushing data from custom workflows to your CRM

Cons

• Not a full-scale outreach platform (no native messaging features)
• May require technical setup or customization for more advanced automations
• It's a Chrome extension making it not safe for your LinkedIn account

Pricing

Bardeen has 3 annual plans that differ in the number of credits, available integrations, and level of support.

There’s also a free plan with 100 credits that you can use to build and test your automations.

And just in case you were wondering what Bardeen credits are used for, it’s for account monitoring, lead enrichment, and triggering actions across your connected apps.

5. Skrapp

User rating: ⭐4.6

Skrapp is a B2B lead search and enrichment platform that helps its users build verified prospect lists. It offers multiple ways to find emails - from uploading a list of names and domains to using its own database of over 200M professionals and 20M companies. It also includes email verification and basic company enrichment features.

Pros

• Multiple ways to find emails: by name, domain, or using Skrapp’s B2B contact database
• Built-in email verification with 97%+ accuracy
• Company enrichment with role, industry, and revenue insights
• API and CRM integrations

Cons

• Chrome extension for scraping data from LinkedIn
• Lacks outreach capabilities
• Credits-based pricing model can get costly at scale

Pricing

Skrapp offers a free plan, along with 2 paid ones.

The main difference between them is in how many email credits** you get, how many users you can add, and whether your unused credits roll over.

If you need more volume, you can scale the Enterprise plan even further, to 20K, 50K, or 100K+ credits/month. Though bear in mind that the price can increase up to $699 a month in that case.

**Email credits are used every time you find, verify, or enrich a contact.

6. LeadLoft

User rating: ⭐4.8

LeadLoft is a modern sales engagement platform built to help B2B teams automate lead generation and outreach in one place.

While it’s not as customizable as some larger platforms, it’s built for speed and simplicity, meaning it’s a good fit for smaller teams with no technical know-how who want results fast.

Pros

• Combines prospecting and multichannel outreach under one roof
• Verified contact data and phone numbers
• Built-in email warm-up, enrichment, deduplication, and bounce protection
• AI tools for writing emails, building playbooks, and qualifying leads
• Native CRM with activity tracking and deal management

Cons

• Limited reporting and analytics for large sales teams
• Higher user seat costs for teams wanting to scale the sales engagement process
• No flexible credits-based plan for light users

Pricing

LeadLoft has 2 monthly plan options with a free trial for both:

They also provide a fully Managed Service, though you need to contact their team to get the exact pricing details.

7. PhantomBuster

User rating: ⭐4.5

PhantomBuster can be a time-saver for teams who want to automate repetitive data tasks without coding. 

Namely, it’s a data automation platform that helps teams extract, enrich, and act on prospect data from 15+ online platforms. It’s known for its prebuilt automations (called “Phantoms”) and enrichment workflows that run in the background to deliver fresh leads every day.

Pros

• Automates repetitive data collection and workflows across multiple platforms
• Supports hundreds of prebuilt “Phantoms” (automation templates)
• Can extract contact data and push it directly into CRMs or spreadsheets
• API access for custom integrations
• Flexible cloud-based setup (no need to run automations locally)

Cons

• Steep learning curve if you’re not tech-savvy
• Can be time-consuming to set up and troubleshoot

Pricing

PhantomBuster offers a 14-day free trial with 2h of execution time, 1K AI credits, 5 Phantom slots, and 50 email credits.

Meanwhile, paid plans start at €69/month, with 3 main pricing tiers:

8. GetProspect

User rating: ⭐4.2

GetProspect is an email finder and lead generation platform with a focus on B2B data. It allows you to search for contacts by role, company, or industry, then export verified emails with basic enrichment.

Pros

• Access to a B2B contact database with 200M contacts, 230M corporate emails, 26M international companies, and 130M phone numbers
• Easy email search by company or domain
• Email verification included
• Bulk email checker with duplicate removal
• CRM integrations available (e.g., HubSpot, Pipedrive)

Cons

• Using their Chrome extension to find someone’s email on LinkedIn is not a safe solution
• The accuracy of data may vary depending on industry and region, despite the 95% accuracy claim
• Limited enrichment

Pricing

Much like the majority of other Evaboot alternative solutions, GetProspect uses a credit-based model. Their plans include:

You can also purchase additional email and phone credits if need be, with prices varying based on the number of credits purchased.

How to cancel Evaboot?

If you’ve chosen your ideal Evaboot alternative, it’s time to cancel your subscription.

The good news is that it’s fairly easy to do so. Just:

1. Go to your Evaboot account page using this link: https://app.evaboot.com/?page=account.
2. Scroll down to the Billing section.
3. Click Cancel subscription.

A pop-up will appear explaining that you’ll lose your credits in a month in case you proceed.

If you’re ok with that, confirm your choice by clicking ‘’cancel my subscription.’’ You’ll also get a confirmation email once it goes through.

If you’d rather not cancel yet, you can pause your subscription for 1, 2, or 3 months instead. This should give you enough time to check whether any of the Evaboot alternatives are working for you.

In that case:

• Your credits will roll over month-to-month for the entire duration of the pause.
• You’ll still be able to use your existing credits.
• Your subscription will automatically resume on the scheduled date, unless you extend the pause or cancel.

We deliver all our latest updates straight to your inbox.

Sales templates, cold outreach, and industry innovations.

Email *

• I agree with and accept Privacy Policy

Subscribe

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

How do I choose the right Evaboot alternative?

It depends on your goals. If you’re just looking to extract data, some tools focus solely on that. Others offer a more complete workflow that includes email outreach, lead management, and CRM integrations. Think about how the tool fits into your stack, your team size, and your growth needs.

Can I integrate an Evaboot alternative with my CRM?

It depends on your CRM and the alternative in question. In most cases, the answer is yes, as most tools on this list support native integrations with popular CRMs like HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive. Even if a tool doesn’t offer direct integration, you can often connect it through Zapier.

What happens to my Evaboot credits if I cancel my subscription?

When you cancel your Evaboot subscription, you have one month to use your remaining credits. After that, they expire. If you pause your plan instead, your credits will roll over during the pause period.

Found your ideal Evaboot alternative? 

Evaboot is a solid tool,  but it’s not for everyone. Whether it’s the lack of outreach, the LinkedIn compliance risk, or the extra cost from stacking tools, it’s understandable if you’re looking for something more flexible.

The good news? We’ve given you 8 Evaboot alternatives, each with its own strengths.

Now it’s up to you to pick the one that fits your workflow, team size, and growth goals.

And hey, if you’re still unsure, why not take Skylead for a spin?

Sign up now & take advantage of our 7-day free trial!

Since you landed here, chances are you’ve been researching sales engagement platforms, trying to understand what they are and what they do. So, what is a sales engagement platform really?

On paper, it sounds simple - software that helps salespeople engage prospects. But in reality, it covers a lot more than just sending messages.

Modern sales teams juggle multiple prospects and channels simultaneously, dozens of daily follow-ups, not to mention endless admin work inside CRMs and spreadsheets. Without a system tying all of that together, conversations often fall through the cracks, outreach becomes inconsistent, and reps spend more time learning to use multiple new tools than they do selling.

That’s exactly the problem a sales engagement platform was built to solve.

That said, today, we’ll be breaking down what a sales engagement platform really is, its core features, how it works, and how it supports the entire sales engagement process. As a bonus, we’ll introduce you to one of the best such platforms on the market, so you can put what you've learned into practice. Spoiler alert -it’s Skylead. 😉

What is a sales engagement platform?

A sales engagement platform (SEP) is software that helps sales teams plan, manage, automate, and optimize every interaction with prospects and customers alike across the entire sales cycle.

It’s meant to replace multiple tools that these individuals typically use during the process, allowing them to:

• Build structured outreach sequences
• Automate follow-ups based on timing or prospect behavior
• Personalize messages at scale
• Track engagement signals like opens, replies, and clicks
• Prioritize prospects
• Reduce repetitive work

… and more!

Sales engagement platform vs. sales enablement platform vs. CRM

These 3 tools often get lumped together. In reality, they serve very different purposes in the sales stack.

Now, let’s dig a little deeper into what each one does to understand what a sales engagement platform is really and how it differs from these two.

CRM

A customer relationship management software or CRM is your system of record, so to speak. It stores contacts, accounts, deals, and activity history and is meant to help you track deal stages and pipeline, forecast revenue, and keep customer data organized.

Popular examples include HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Zoho CRM.

In other words, CRMs show you where deals are, but even the best CRM software for sales doesn’t do much in terms of moving them forward.

Sales enablement platforms

On the other hand, sales enablement platforms focus on preparing reps to sell more effectively, with the highly regarded options being Seismic, Showpad, and Gong.

They typically provide training and onboarding materials, sales content libraries that include case studies, decks, and other materials created in collaboration with the marketing team, as well ascoaching resources, objection handling techniques, and playbooks.

Their job is to make sure reps have the right knowledge and content at their fingertips, so that, when the time to sell actually comes, they’re fully prepared. They stop short of execution, though.

Sales engagement platforms

And that brings us to the sales engagement platforms. 

We previously talked about what sales engagement is, and then, we said it’s the ‘’execution layer’’ of the sales process where conversations with the prospects finally happen.

Now, don’t get me wrong, sales engagement can absolutely happen without a tool. But doing it manually means juggling inboxes, setting calendar reminders for follow-ups, updating the CRM after every interaction, and trying to remember who opened what and when. That might work with 20 prospects. With 200, however? Not so much.

In such situations, you need a sales engagement platform - a system that makes sales engagement at scale possible. It structures, automates, and tracks how reps interact with prospects across channels, so execution becomes consistent instead of reactive.

To make the distinction crystal clear:

• CRMs store customer information and record what happened.
• Sales enablement platforms prepare reps for conversations.
• Sales engagement platforms help execute those same conversations.

So, as you can see, SEPs don’t just store data or provide content. They drive action.

Who are sales engagement platforms for?

Contrary to popular opinion, SEPs aren’t built for SDRs only. 

Rather, they are built for anyone looking for a consistent way to engage prospects at scale while keeping things personal.

In terms of specific roles, that usually includes:

• SDRs / BDRs handling high-volume outbound who need structured sequences, automated follow-ups, and clear signals on who to prioritize next.
• Account executives (AEs) managing active deals who want one place to track conversations, stay on top of stakeholders, and move opportunities forward faster.
• Sales managers requiring visibility into rep activity, engagement quality, and pipeline momentum.
• RevOps / Sales Ops teams responsible for process consistency, tooling, and reporting across the funnel.

But roles aside, sales engagement platforms are especially valuable for those who:

• Work with high lead or account volume
• Sell across multiple channels
• Want predictable execution
• Care about scaling cold outreach
• Need real engagement data to improve performance over time

Benefits of using a sales engagement platform

According to industry data, the vast majority of sales organizations have adopted or plan to adopt engagement platforms because they:

• Give reps tools to focus on selling rather than completing repetitive tasks
• Standardize best practices across teams
• Make engagement measurable and repeatable
• Enable faster ramp-up for new hires
• Provide actionable signals on prospect behavior

All of this adds up to higher conversion rates, faster cycles, and more predictable sales performance than teams using disconnected tools.

That said, let’s get into the individual benefits of using SEPs so you fully understand why you need one.

Improved sales efficiency and productivity

Sales reps spend far less time selling than most teams realize. Multiple studies show that reps typically spend only 28% of their week on actual sales activities, with the rest going to admin, internal meetings, and tool-hopping.

Sales engagement platforms tackle this head-on by automating repetitive work like follow-ups, activity logging, and meeting scheduling. Teams using SEPs consistently report double-digit increases in rep productivity, simply because sellers stop wasting hours on manual tasks and start their day with a clear, prioritized action list.

Higher response rates and more meetings booked

Outbound campaigns that use structured sequences across multiple channels (email + calls + social) generate up to 4-5 times higher engagement compared to single-channel outreach. And teams using automated sequences typically see 40% higher reply rates than those relying on manual follow-ups.

Why?

Because with SEPs:

• Every prospect gets contacted at the right time
• Follow-ups actually happen
• Messaging stays consistent
• Engagement signals trigger the next step automatically

Instead of guessing who to contact next, reps act on real behavior: opens, clicks, and replies.

Faster deal cycles

Deals slow down when momentum drops. Sales engagement platforms help prevent that by keeping prospects warm throughout the buying journey. Organizations using SEPs commonly report shorter sales cycles (often by 10-20%), simply because conversations don’t slow down and stakeholders don’t get forgotten.

Better visibility for managers and RevOps

Without an SEP, managers rely heavily on CRM data that’s often incomplete or outdated.

With a sales engagement platform, though, activity tracking happens automatically. That gives leadership visibility into:

• Which reps are engaging accounts
• Which sequences perform best
• Where deals are dropping off
• How prospects respond

This leads to stronger coaching, cleaner forecasting, and faster process improvements - all based on real data instead of assumptions.

Faster onboarding for new reps

New hires usually struggle with 2 things: knowing what to do and when to do it.

SEPs solve both.

By providing ready-made sequences and workflow templates, new hires can start executing proven plays from day 1. Many teams report significantly shorter ramp-up times because beginners don’t have to invent their own process - they simply follow what already works.

Scalable personalization

Sales engagement platforms make it possible to keep the sales outreach relevant while working with hundreds of prospects at once. Reps write the core message, while the platform handles personalization, timing, sequencing, and delivery.

That’s how teams maintain a human touch without slowing down.

Key features of sales engagement platforms

At their core, sales engagement platforms are built to help users run targeted outreach, follow up on time, and maintain consistent communication with prospects, without juggling five different tools at the same time.

While every platform looks a little different, most SEPs share the same core building blocks.

1. Multichannel outreach

Modern buyers don’t use one platform only, meaning that to actually get to them, deals require multiple touches across different channels. This is confirmed by stats, too, which suggest that it takes an average of 8 touchpoints to close a prospect. Or, as Jeb Blount explains in his book, Fanatical Prospecting, even up to 50 touchpoints if they are unfamiliar with your brand. 

Now, imagine if you sent 50 emails to the same person. That would be... a lot, to say the least. It would also be a massive waste of time if it happens your prospects are inactive on email. 

Now, pair that with touches on social media, particularly a platform they are active on, and up go your chances of getting a response.

Of course, you don't have to go about multichannel outreach manually. The good thing about sales engagement platforms is that they let users reach prospects across different channels, all within one sequence. So, if, say, a prospect is silent on one channel, the tool goes straight to the next.

2. Sequences

Sequences (or cadences, depending on the tool) are the backbone of any SEP.

They allow you to map out your outreach once, then reuse it across hundreds of prospects. 

A typical sequence might include:

• an initial email
• a follow-up email after no response 
• another email a few days later
• a message on social media

Once launched, the sequence unfolds either depending on the prospect’s behavior (in more advanced cases) or the time delay set between outreach actions.

That said, Skylead, our very own AI account-based sales engagement platform, was the first on the market to introduce so-called Smart sequences - algorithms that combine outreach actions with if/else conditions. As a result, you get coherent outreach flows that respond to prospects’ behavior in real time to make the most of your touchpoints and reach them in the fastest possible way!

And if you rely on email outreach for the most part, you’ll be happy to know that:

• A: Not only can you connect unlimited mailboxes to your Skylead account and thus, send tens of thousands of emails a month to your prospects at no additional cost,
• B: You can also discover and verify your leads’ emails without breaking your outreach flow and thus, prevent bounces that hurt your deliverability and sender reputation.

3. Personalization at scale

Most SEPs allow you to personalize messages at scale using variables (a.k.a. merge fields) for details, such as first and last name, company name, role, industry, etc. Some, Skylead included, also let you import your own variables to personalize virtually any detail you like. 

And speaking of Skylead, it comes with advanced personalization features, including:

• Spintax, which lets you rotate phrase variations (such as hi, hey, hello).
• Liquid syntax, which combines variables and conditions to show different content to different prospects based on predefined rules.
• Image and GIF personalization that lets you personalize visuals with text and variables, as well as your own and your prospects’ profile images and company logos.

As a result of this combination, you get fully personalized outreach that feels absolutely human and gets you up to 76% increase in response rate!

4. Engagement tracking

Sales engagement platforms don’t stop at sending messages. They also track what happens after these are sent.

That might include:

• email opens
• link clicks
• replies
• social media profile views
• social media connections

… and more, depending on the platform.

These signals help users spot interested prospects faster and stop wasting time on accounts that aren’t engaging.

To paint a better picture, Skylead comes with a dedicated Reports page where you can analyze the performance of your Smart sequences in 3 different view modes:

• Graph, where you can easily observe oscillations.
• Table, to track day-by-day performance.
• Step-by-step, to examine the performance of individual steps in a sequence. This is particularly useful if running A/B tests, as you can compare up to 5 message variants side by side.

5. Unified inbox

Most sales teams still manage conversations across multiple places: Gmail, social media, CRM notes, and maybe even Slack. That fragmentation slows things down and makes it harder to keep context.

That’s why most sales engagement platforms include a unified inbox that pulls all prospect conversations into one place. Emails and all social replies sit side by side, so users don’t have to jump between tools just to answer a message.

With Skylead, this comes in the form of a Smart Inbox.

It holds your entire correspondence with prospects, regardless of channel. You can reply directly from it, leave internal notes on specific leads, and add tags to track things like meetings booked, conversions, or deal status. Everything stays connected to the outreach sequence (a.k.a. campaign), so you always know what happened before responding.

6. CRM integration

You know what a sales engagement platform is already, and that it’s different from a CRM. It’s also not supposed to replace one. Rather, it’s meant to work alongside it.

For that reason exactly, the best sales engagement platforms must integrate with CRM.

A good SEP automatically syncs activity like emails sent, replies received, etc., back to your CRM. This keeps customer records up to date without forcing users to log every interaction manually.

Skylead integrates directly with popular CRMs like Salesforce and Pipedrive. And if your tech stack looks a little different, you can still connect Skylead to virtually any CRM or internal tool through webhooks or API.

How to choose the right sales engagement platform

By now, you know what a sales engagement platform does and which features matter. The next question is obvious: how do you actually pick the right one?

Because while most SEPs look similar on the surface, they’re very different once you start using them day to day.

Here’s what we recommend focusing on.

1. Start with your sales motion

Before comparing tools, get clear on how your team sells.

Ask yourself:

• Are you running high-volume outbound outreach or account-based outreach?
• Do reps work mostly over email, social, or both?
• Are you focused on prospecting, deal acceleration, or both?

Some platforms are built mainly for SDR-heavy outbound. Others shine in account-based sales. A few handle both well.

If the platform doesn’t match your actual workflow, no feature list will save it.

2. Look for workflow flexibility (not just automation)

Automation alone isn’t enough.

What you really want is flexibility: the ability to adjust outreach based on prospect behavior, change paths mid-sequence, and personalize without breaking your flow.

Static cadences are fine for basic use cases. But if you care about timing, intent, and real engagement, make sure the platform supports behavior-based logic, not just fixed delays.

3. Make sure you will actually use it

If users find the platform clunky, slow, or confusing, adoption drops. And once adoption drops, your ROI disappears.

Pay attention to:

• How intuitive the UI feels
• How many clicks it takes to launch an outreach campaign
• Whether daily tasks are clear and prioritized
• How easy it is to reply, personalize, and adjust sequences

A sales engagement platform should simplify your day, not add another layer of friction.

4. Check CRM sync quality

Almost every SEP claims CRM integration. That doesn’t mean they all do it well.

What you want is:

• Automatic activity logging
• Clean contact and account syncing
• Reliable status updates
• Minimal manual cleanup

If you still have to update the CRM by hand, you’re missing half the value.

5. Prioritize engagement data and reporting

Make sure the platform gives you clear visibility into messages sent, replies, and clicks, and sequence performance as a whole.

This is what allows managers to coach effectively and RevOps to optimize processes based on reality, rather than assumptions.

6. Think about scale

You might be a team of 3 now. That doesn’t mean you’ll stay that way.

Look for a platform that can grow with you, meaning it supports:

• Multiple seats
• Unlimited mailboxes
• High message volumes
• Deep personalization
• Complex workflows

Switching SEPs later on is painful. So, choosing one that supports growth saves you from rebuilding your entire outreach stack down the line.

At the end of the day, the best sales engagement platform isn’t the one with the longest feature list.

It’s the one that fits your sales motion, removes manual work, gives you clean performance data, and helps your team execute consistently.

Common myths about sales engagement platforms

Sales engagement platforms are everywhere now. And with popularity comes… confusion.

Over the years, our sales team at Skylead has noticed a few recurring myths that stop teams from adopting SEPs or using them properly.

That being said, we had them list the most common objections they hear, so we can, once and for all, bust all the myths.

Myth #1: It’s just an email automation tool

This is the most common one.

Yes, SEPs send emails. But if that’s all they did, they wouldn’t deserve their own category.

A true sales engagement platform structures multichannel outreach, tracks engagement signals, prioritizes prospects, syncs activity to CRM, and creates repeatable workflows across the entire funnel.

Email automation is a feature. Execution management is the real value.

Myth #2: Only SDR teams need it

Sales engagement platforms are often associated with high-volume outbound. And while SDRs benefit massively from structured sequences and automated follow-ups, they’re not the only ones.

Account executives use SEPs to:

• Keep multi-threaded deals organized
• Follow up consistently with stakeholders
• Maintain momentum in longer sales cycles

Meanwhile, managers use them for visibility, whereas RevOps uses them for process standardization.

And honestly, execution consistency benefits the whole team, not just the top of the funnel.

Myth #3: It will make outreach robotic

This fear is understandable. After all, bad automation does feel robotic.

On the other hand, good automation feels structured.

Modern SEPs allow:

• Variables and conditional messaging
• Behavior-based follow-ups
• Channel switching based on engagement
• A/B testing for continuous improvement

So, if your outreach sounds robotic despite using a modern sales engagement platform, sorry to break it to you, but that’s not a platform problem. It’s a messaging problem.

Myth #4: Our CRM already does this

CRMs are built to store data. They are not built to manage complex outreach workflows, automate multi-step sequences, or trigger actions based on engagement behavior.

Some CRMs offer basic sequencing. But they rarely provide the flexibility, reporting depth, and execution control of a dedicated sales engagement platform.

Not to mention, if you still rely on calendar reminders and manual follow-ups, your CRM isn’t solving the execution problem.

Myth #5: It’s too advanced for small teams

This one actually works the opposite way, as small teams benefit the most from structure.

When you don’t have 10 reps, you can’t afford dropped follow-ups, inconsistent messaging, or stalled deals. 

In this case, a sales engagement platform doesn’t add complexity. It removes chaos. And it gives small teams the ability to operate like larger, more mature organizations, without hiring extra people.

We deliver all our latest updates straight to your inbox.

Sales templates, cold outreach, and industry innovations.

Email *

• I agree with and accept Privacy Policy

Subscribe

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

What does sales engagement mean?

Sales engagement refers to all interactions between sales reps and prospects across the buying journey. This includes emails, calls, social touches, follow-ups, and meetings. The goal is to keep communication consistent, relevant, and timely so deals move forward.

What is the difference between a CRM and a sales engagement platform?

A CRM stores and organizes customer data, tracks deal stages, and supports forecasting. A sales engagement platform manages outreach execution. It structures sequences, automates follow-ups, and tracks engagement. In short, the CRM records what happened, while the SEP drives action.

Do sales engagement platforms replace a CRM?

No. Sales engagement platforms are designed to work alongside a CRM, not replace it. The CRM remains the system of record for pipeline and forecasting, while the SEP manages outreach workflows, follow-ups, and engagement tracking.

Are sales engagement platforms only for outbound sales?

No. While they are widely used for outbound prospecting, sales engagement platforms also support inbound follow-ups, deal acceleration, renewals, and multi-stakeholder communication. Any sales motion that depends on timely, structured engagement can benefit from an SEP.

What does the future hold for sales engagement platforms?

Sales engagement platforms are evolving toward AI-driven execution and deeper data integration. Future SEPs will prioritize buying signals, suggest next best actions, and unify account-based prospecting, outreach, conversation data, and CRM syncing. The focus is shifting from basic automation to intelligent workflow orchestration across the entire sales cycle.

From understanding sales engagement to actually executing it

With everything said and done, it’s time to give the straight answer to the original question: what is a sales engagement platform?

Sales engagement itself is the execution layer of the sales process. A sales engagement platform is the system that supports that same execution at scale.

It gives your team the structure and, of course, the tools to turn strategy into action by organizing outreach, automating follow-ups, tracking engagement signals, and keeping every prospect conversation in one place.

But the real question now is: do you want your team relying on a hunch or on a system that actually supports consistent execution?

If the latter is your answer, Skylead is the sales engagement platform for you. It helps you run structured multichannel outreach, automate follow-ups based on real prospect behavior, and keep every conversation in one place - so you close 3x more deals while saving 11+ hours a week on repetitive tasks.

Try it free for 7 days to see how predictable, scalable sales engagement actually feels!

Sales engagement gets talked about a lot. Sales engagement process? Much less so, and that’s where most teams get stuck.

Many sales organizations invest in better tools, automate more touchpoints, and add more channels, yet deals still stall, follow-ups fall through, and results stay unpredictable. Not because reps aren’t talented or trying hard enough, but because there’s no clear system behind how engagement should actually happen from the first touchpoint to close and beyond.

If you already understand what is sales engagement but struggle to make it consistent across deals, reps, or channels, what you need is a structured sales engagement process - a defined sequence of stages where each interaction has a purpose, a goal, and a clear signal for what comes next.

Lucky for you, you don’t have to look hard to find it, as we’ll be walking you through:

• What this process entails
• How it differs from the traditional sales process
• Why it’s critical for a predictable pipeline and revenue

You’ll also learn about the 7 core stages high-performing sales teams follow (ours at Skylead included) and the elements that make the process scalable.

What is the sales engagement process?

The sales engagement process is the structured, repeatable system sales teams use to manage interactions with prospects and customers across the entire buying journey.

In practical terms, it defines:

• When to engage
• How to engage
• Why does a specific interaction happen at a given moment

The sales engagement process turns engagement into a clear sequence of stages, where each stage has a goal, a set of recommended actions, and signals that tell reps when it’s time to move forward.

That said, many people confuse sales engagement with the sales engagement process. And although they’re related, they are not exactly the same. 

Sales engagement is the umbrella term that describes all interactions between sales reps and prospects - emails, calls, LinkedIn messages, demos, follow-ups, and everything in between. 

Sales engagement process, on the other hand, is more specific. It defines how those interactions are organized, sequenced, and repeated across deals so engagement stays consistent, intentional, and measurable, no matter who’s selling or which channel is used.

Sales process vs. sales engagement process

Here’s another distinction we need to make: the sales process and the sales engagement process are NOT the same.

A traditional sales process is stage-based and outcome-oriented. It typically includes stages such as:

• Lead generation
• Qualification
• Discovery
• Demo or presentation
• Proposal
• Closing

Its primary purpose is visibility and control. It helps sales teams track where deals are, forecast revenue, and understand what needs to happen next from a pipeline perspective.

What it doesn’t define in detail is how reps should engage prospects inside those stages.

That’s what the sales engagement process does. It lives inside the sales process, and clarifies:

• Which interactions should happen at each stage
• Which channels are most effective at that point
• How often should reps follow up
• What buying signals indicate progress or disengagement

In other words, while the sales process tells you that a deal is in the qualification stage, the sales engagement process tells you how to approach the prospect at this stage, what kind of message to send, when to follow up, and what outcome signals readiness to move forward.

Without this layer, reps are left to figure things out on their own.

Why is an effective sales engagement process important?

Sales engagement doesn’t fail because teams don’t send enough messages. It fails because engagement isn’t coordinated.

When there’s no defined process, reps rely on personal habits, memory, and intuition to decide when to follow up, which channel to use, or how to move the prospect to the next step in the journey. That might work for a handful of deals. It breaks the moment volume increases, or more people join the team.

A structured sales engagement process changes that dynamic, and the impact shows up in a few very real ways.

It strengthens customer relationships and builds long-term loyalty

From the buyer's side, inconsistent engagement is easy to spot. They get chased when they’re not ready, ignored when they are interested, or contacted multiple times with no awareness of previous conversations. That kind of experience slows deals down while also eroding trust.

When there’s a clearly defined engagement process, buyers are met with relevant, well-timed interactions that reflect where they actually are in their decision-making. Instead of feeling pressured or forgotten, they feel guided. That same consistency carries into post-sale follow-ups, which is why teams with structured engagement processes tend to see more renewals, upsells, and referrals over time.

It positively impacts sales cycle length, conversion rates, and revenue

Some deals stall because momentum is lost. Follow-ups are delayed. Messages repeat the same pitch. Buying signals go unnoticed. And suddenly, a ‘’warm’’ opportunity goes cold.

Research shows that B2B deals typically require between 8 and 15 meaningful touchpoints before closing, and complex sales can need 20 or more interactions. Yet many reps stop following up too early or engage without a clear plan. A structured process closes that gap, leading to higher conversion rates and shorter sales cycles, which, naturally, translates into more revenue.

It brings predictability and scalability to the pipeline

One of the biggest challenges sales leaders face isn’t closing deals. It’s forecasting them.

When engagement varies from rep to rep, the pipeline becomes hard to trust. Some deals move fast, others stall silently, and it’s unclear whether that’s due to buyer intent or execution gaps.

A sales engagement process makes performance easier to predict because engagement follows defined patterns. You can see where deals slow down, which stages cause drop-offs, and which touchpoints perform best.

That visibility is also what makes scaling possible. Instead of relying on a few top performers, teams can replicate what works across the entire organization, onboard new reps faster, and grow volume without sacrificing quality.

It aligns sales, marketing, and customer-facing teams

Without a shared engagement process, teams operate independently.

Marketing generates leads without knowing how they’ll be followed up on. Sales engages prospects without visibility into prior touchpoints. Customer success picks up accounts with little context on what was promised during the sale.

A defined sales engagement process acts as a common thread across teams. It aligns messaging, timing, and expectations throughout the buyer journey, from first interaction to long after the deal is closed.

The result is a smoother handoff, fewer dropped balls, and a more consistent experience for both buyers and internal teams.

Not to mention, a whopping 54% of sales leaders agree that working with the marketing teams leads to an increase in revenue growth, with 61% of marketers saying that creating content in collaboration with sales helps generate higher quality leads.

7 core stages of the sales engagement process

High-performing teams don’t just do sales outreach and hope deals will close by themselves. They guide prospects through a sequence of stages where each interaction builds on the last one, responds to buyer behavior, and pushes the conversation toward a clear outcome.

While the exact details vary by industry, deal size, and sales motion, most effective sales engagement processes follow the same core stages, including:

1. Prospecting and lead identification
2. Outreach
3. Qualification
4. Presentation and engagement
5. Proposal and negotiation
6. Closing
7. Post-sale follow-up and retention

Together, they cover the full journey - from first contact to long after the deal is signed.

Notice how some of these stages above overlap with what’s typically included in a sales process itself? That’s intentional.

The difference is this: the sales process tells you where a deal is, while the sales engagement process tells you how to engage the prospect at that point.

1. Prospecting and lead identification

In the sales process, prospecting is often treated as a prerequisite, something that happens before engagement really begins.

In the sales engagement process, it’s where engagement starts.

That’s because who you choose to engage with determines the quality of every interaction that follows.

At this stage, the goal isn’t to contact as many people as possible. It’s to identify accounts and contacts that are worth engaging right now, based on fit and context.

Effective prospecting focuses on:

• Matching your ideal customer profile (ICP)
• Identifying business decision-makers
• Spotting signals that justify outreach (growth, role changes, new initiatives, tech adoption, etc.)

This stage also defines who should not enter your engagement flow. Filtering out poor-fit or low-intent leads early prevents wasted follow-ups, irrelevant messaging, and stalled deals later in the pipeline.

When prospecting is treated as the first engagement stage, not just where you build a prospecting list, outreach becomes more relevant, conversations start faster, and downstream stages convert more consistently.

2. Outreach

This is the stage most teams think of when they hear sales engagement. Emails, LinkedIn messages, calls, follow-ups. But without a clear engagement framework, outreach quickly turns into a mix of one-off messages, inconsistent follow-ups, and channel hopping with no real agenda behind it.

In a structured process, outreach is intentional and sequenced. Every touchpoint has a role to play.

At this stage, the goal isn’t to pitch or push for a decision. It’s to open the door to a conversation and give the prospect a reason to respond.

That starts with context. A prospect should immediately understand why you’re reaching out and why now, whether that’s tied to their role, a recent company change, or a specific problem they’re likely dealing with. 

From there, channel choice matters just as much. Some conversations start best over email, others on LinkedIn, and some only move forward after a call reinforces earlier touchpoints.

Follow-ups are part of this stage, too. They’re planned in advance, spaced intentionally, and adjusted based on how the prospect reacts, not sent just because “it’s been a few days.”

Just as importantly, outreach includes signals, which a sales engagement platform like Skylead can help you track and act upon. Opens, replies, clicks, profile views, meeting bookings, and even silence all provide feedback. Those signals dictate what happens next, whether that’s moving to qualification, changing the message, switching channels, or pausing engagement altogether.

Need a proven framework for targeted outreach? 

Download our sales playbook to see how we engaged our leads and scaled Skylead from 2,500 to 10,000+ users in just 9 months. As a bonus, you’ll get access to outreach sequences and message templates that you can immediately use to jump-start your engagement.

3. Qualification

Once cold outreach turns into an actual conversation, the focus shifts from getting a response to understanding whether the opportunity is worth pursuing further. In other words, it’s time to qualify the lead.

Qualification is a series of interactions where reps learn whether the prospect has a real problem you can solve, how urgent that problem actually is, who’s involved in the decision, and whether it makes sense to keep investing time and effort

Effective qualification happens through:

• discovery calls and exploratory conversations
• thoughtful follow-up questions
• paying attention to engagement signals (responsiveness, depth of answers, willingness to share context, etc.)

4. Presentation

This is the point where prospects expect to see how your solution applies to their situation.

It’s also where you translate what you learned throughout the process into a focused experience that answers one core question for the prospect:

“Can this actually solve our problem?”

Presentation can take form of multiple formats, depending on the deal and how the buyer prefers to engage.

In practice, that often includes:

• Live demos centered around one or two use cases discussed during qualification
• Walkthroughs of specific workflows or outcomes that prospects care about
• Short presentations that frame the problem first, then show how your solution fits
• Supporting materials like case studies, examples, or recordings shared after the call

What matters most at this stage is relevance. Potential buyers lose interest quickly when presentations feel generic or disconnected from earlier conversations, making it imperative to prepare a sales meeting agenda in advance.

This is also where engagement becomes more interactive. Prospects ask more detailed questions, bring in additional stakeholders, and start evaluating trade-offs. Pricing, technical constraints, or internal approval processes often come up here, and objection handling has a direct impact on whether the deal keeps moving.

When this stage is done well, the prospect gains clarity - not just about the product, but about the next step. That clarity is what makes moving into proposal and negotiation feel natural rather than forced.

5. Proposal and negotiation

By the time a deal reaches this stage, the prospect is no longer evaluating whether to move forward, but how.

Many teams treat this as a simple handoff: send a quote, wait for feedback, follow up if nothing happens. In reality, this stage is where most of the fine print of the decision gets worked out, and where deals either close or fall through.

The proposal itself should reflect everything uncovered earlier in the process. Scope, pricing, timelines, and included features shouldn’t come as a surprise. If they do, it usually means something was missed in the qualification or presentation.

What actually happens here is a series of small but important exchanges. Prospects ask clarifying questions. New stakeholders get looped in. Procurement or legal may request changes. Internal priorities surface that weren’t visible before.

Negotiation, in this context, means removing obstacles that prevent a decision. Sometimes that means adjusting terms or offering discounts. Other times it means explaining trade-offs, reinforcing value, or helping the buyer navigate internal approval.

This stage also demands tighter engagement than any other. Slow replies or unclear next steps can derail deals that were otherwise ready to close. That’s why proposal and negotiation need to be treated as an active engagement phase, with defined follow-ups, clear timelines, and explicit ownership on both sides.

6. Closing

By now, the prospect understands the problem, sees how your solution fits, and has agreed (at least in principle) on scope and terms. The goal of this stage is to help them complete the decision and finalize the deal.

Closing usually involves:

• confirming final approval from all decision-makers
• completing contract signing and paperwork
• aligning on start dates, onboarding steps, or handover to implementation

Reps play a coordination role at this point. They follow up on outstanding approvals, answer last-minute questions, and keep momentum alive without applying unnecessary pressure.

Once the agreement is signed, the deal seamlessly moves forward into post-sale engagement, without a drop in communication or context.

7. Post-sale follow-up and retention

The buyer’s experience shouldn’t reset just because the deal is done. In fact, the period immediately after closing is when expectations are highest, and trust is still being formed.

Post-sale engagement typically focuses on confirming that onboarding or implementation starts smoothly, reinforcing what was agreed on during the sales process, and making sure the buyer knows who owns what moving forward.

Depending on the organization, this stage may involve a handoff to customer success, account management, or onboarding teams.

Early check-ins are especially important. In fact, simple follow-ups to confirm progress, address initial friction, or clarify next steps can prevent small issues from becoming reasons for churn later on.

Over time, post-sale engagement shifts toward retention and growth. Ongoing communication helps teams spot expansion opportunities, identify satisfied customers who may become advocates, and proactively address risks before renewals come up.

Elements of a winning sales engagement process

Defining stages is only half the job. What separates a sales engagement process that looks good on paper from one that actually works day to day is how those stages are supported.

High-performing teams don’t rely on individual reps to “figure it out.” They put a few foundational elements in place that make consistent engagement possible, even as volume grows and teams scale.

Playbooks and sequences

A winning sales engagement process is documented, and no, not in the rigid scripts or same generic messages sense. It means clear guidance on what good engagement looks like at each stage. Playbooks outline recommended actions, messaging angles, follow-up timing, and exit criteria so reps aren’t starting from scratch every time.

Sequences are the execution layer of these playbooks. They help teams manage and keep track of touchpoints while still leaving room for personalization and judgment. When done right, sequences support reps instead of replacing them.

Channel selection and touchpoints

Not every channel works equally well at every stage. Cold outreach, qualification, late-stage follow-ups, and post-sale check-ins all call for different approaches. A strong sales engagement process defines where email makes sense, where LinkedIn adds value, and when a call is necessary to move a lead further down the funnel. 

Just as important is pacing. Too many touchpoints too fast can feel intrusive, whereas too few leave the buyer doing nothing, which is often worse than saying no.

Personalization

Personalization is what keeps a structured process from feeling robotic. That can be as simple as referencing a prospect’s role, industry, or recent activity, or as deep as tailoring demos, proposals, and follow-ups to specific use cases.

What matters most in personalized outreach is relevance. Every interaction should answer the unspoken question in the prospect’s mind: ‘’Why is this useful to me right now?”

Automation and technology

Automation exists to remove friction, not judgment. The best teams use sales engagement technology to handle repetitive tasks, such as prospecting, scheduling follow-ups, tracking engagement signals, or logging activity, so reps can focus on conversations that require context and decision-making.

We can’t talk about sales engagement automation without mentioning our very own Skylead. It’s THE software to use when you want to save 11+ hours a week on repetitive tasks and book 3x more meetings.

Performance tracking

You can’t improve what you can’t see. It’s that simple.

A strong sales engagement process makes it easy to spot patterns, test changes, and refine execution based on real data.

Team alignment and training

Finally, engagement only works when everyone is on the same page.

Sales, marketing, and customer-facing teams need a shared understanding of how prospects are engaged, what’s been promised, and what happens next. Training helps new reps onboard faster and experienced reps stay consistent, even as processes evolve.

When these elements work together, the sales engagement process becomes a system that supports predictable growth, repeatable results, and a better experience for both buyers and sellers.

Common mistakes to avoid in the sales engagement process

Even those who understand the importance of sales engagement often struggle to execute it well. Not because the idea is wrong, but because small missteps compound quickly across deals, reps, and channels.

Here are some of the most common mistakes we’ve seen salespeople make.

Lack of a clear strategy or goals

If reps don’t know what each stage is meant to achieve, engagement becomes reactive. Messages are sent because it feels like time, follow-ups happen out of habit, and progress is judged by activity rather than outcomes.

A sales engagement process only works when every stage has a purpose. Without that, teams end up busy. But effective? Not so much.

Over-reliance on automation without personalization

One of the fastest ways to undermine a sales engagement process is to lean too heavily on automated sequences without enough context or customization. Reps have been using chat GPT for sales copywriting for a while now - so much that prospects have learned to spot generic messages from a mile away, especially when they ignore prior interactions or repeat the same pitch across channels.

The result is predictable: lower response rates, stalled conversations, and disengagement. Automation should create consistency and save time, sure, but it’s personalization that keeps engagement human.

Ignoring data and feedback

Many teams track engagement metrics but don’t actually use them. Open rates, replies, meeting bookings, and drop-offs are all signals. When they’re ignored, teams keep running the same playbooks even when they’re clearly not working. Over time, this leads to bloated processes that look structured but produce inconsistent results.

Neglecting follow-up and post-sale engagement

Engagement gaps don’t only happen early in the funnel. Deals often stall because follow-ups aren’t planned or ownership isn’t clear, particularly during proposal, closing, or immediately after the deal is signed. Post-sale engagement is another frequent blind spot, where communication drops just when the buyer needs reassurance and guidance the most.

Poor alignment between sales and marketing

When marketing and sales operate independently, prospects experience disjointed messaging, awkward handoffs, and repeated questions. Leads arrive without context. Sales conversations contradict earlier promises. And to top it all off, customer success inherits accounts with incomplete information, which creates friction after the sale and puts retention at risk before value is even delivered.

We deliver all our latest updates straight to your inbox.

Sales templates, cold outreach, and industry innovations.

Email *

• I agree with and accept Privacy Policy

Subscribe

How to optimize and scale your sales engagement process?

Designing a sales engagement process is one thing. Running it consistently, at scale, without losing personalization or control, is where most teams struggle.

This is exactly the problem Skylead was built to solve.

Skylead is a sales engagement platform and outreach tool that helps teams execute their engagement process end-to-end - from first touch to post-sale follow-up - without relying on spreadsheets, reminders, or guesswork.

Here’s everything that makes Skylead the tool to use when you want to optimize and scale your sales engagement process.

Scalable outreach that doesn’t put deliverability at risk

One of the biggest bottlenecks in sales engagement is volume. Reps want to reach more prospects, but inbox limits and deliverability risks get in the way.

Well, not with Skylead!

Namely, you can connect unlimited email accounts to the tool and automatically rotate them to send tens of thousands of emails per month while staying within safe sending limits. There’s no manual switching and no extra fees as your email outreach volume grows.

To protect deliverability even further, Skylead includes email discovery and verification directly inside your outreach flow. Emails are found, double-verified, and used in sequences automatically, reducing bounces and keeping your sender reputation clean.

And because deliverability starts long before the first outreach campaign, we’ve partnered up with an email warm-up tool, InboxFlare, to provide infinite email warm-up. This way, you can have your mailbox(es) gradually prepared for outreach, so emails land in the primary inbox instead of spam.

Smart sequences that adapt in real time

We can’t talk about Skylead without mentioning our star feature - Smart sequences.

Instead of their static, linear counterparts, Smart sequences combine outreach actions with if/else conditions. You define the logic once, and the tool adapts execution based on how prospects behave.

• No reply? Send a follow-up email after no response automatically.
• An email opened but ignored? Switch channels.

... and countless other scenarios!

This allows reps to focus on strategy while the platform finds the fastest path to engagement for each prospect.

Personalization that actually feels personal

Structured engagement doesn’t work if messages sound automated.

Skylead gives you multiple layers of personalization, depending on how deep you want to go.

For example, you can use predefined or custom variables to personalize messages with first and last name, role, company, or any other data you choose.

In the meantime, Spintax lets you rotate phrase variations (like hello, hi, or hey)  inside bulk emails, so messages don’t look or feel repetitive.

For advanced use cases, there’s Liquid syntax, which combines variables and conditions to show different content to different prospects based on rules you define (such as if/else conditions or available user data).

Not to mention, you can run up to 5 A/B tests for every message-based step in your Smart sequence to see what kind of personalization or angle works best for your leads!

And when text alone isn’t enough, Skylead’s native image and GIF personalization lets you embed names, company logos, profile photos, or custom text directly into visuals. Because sometimes, an image really does say more than a thousand words (and brings about a 76% increase in response rate!)

Visibility into what’s working

A sales engagement process only improves if teams can see how it performs.

That’s why our tool includes built-in outreach analytics, allowing users to track performance day by day through clear graphs and tables, or drill down into step-by-step performance within each sequence.

One inbox for every conversation

All replies across channels land in a Smart inbox.

From there, reps can respond directly, leave internal notes, add tags to conversations, and track outcomes. Because everything is connected, it’s easy to see which conversations turned into meetings, which deals closed, and how outreach contributes to ROI.

Pretty handy, don’t you think?

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

What is the difference between sales engagement and sales enablement?

Sales enablement prepares reps to sell by providing training, content, and playbooks. Sales engagement focuses on execution: how reps interact with prospects across channels, when they follow up, and how conversations progress.

How do I choose the right sales engagement platform for my team?

Look for a platform that fits how your team actually sells. An ideal platform should support multichannel outreach, flexible sequencing with conditional logic, strong personalization options, and built-in analytics. Ease of use matters just as much as power. If reps can’t adopt it quickly, even the best features don’t help.

What are the best channels for sales engagement?

There’s no single best channel. Email works well for structured outreach and follow-ups, LinkedIn supports warm touches and visibility, and calls help move complex or stalled deals forward. Effective sales engagement combines channels and adjusts based on prospect behavior.

How can I measure the effectiveness of my sales engagement process?

Effectiveness goes beyond activity volume. Track reply rates, meeting bookings, stage-to-stage conversions, deal velocity, and drop-off points. A strong sales engagement process makes these signals visible and, thus, helps teams identify what drives progress and where engagement breaks down.

Is sales engagement only for outbound sales?

No. Sales engagement applies to outbound, inbound, and post-sale interactions. Inbound leads still need timely follow-ups and clear next steps, while post-sale engagement supports onboarding, retention, and expansion. Sales engagement revolves around managing interactions, regardless of how a lead enters the pipeline.

Build a sales engagement process your team can actually follow

If your reps have to stop and think, “What should I do next?” in the middle of a deal, the problem isn’t execution. It’s the lack of a sales engagement process that they can rely on.

When engagement is structured, reps don’t guess their next move. Deals don’t fall through. And growth doesn’t depend on a handful of top performers remembering to follow up. Instead, teams operate with clarity, consistency, and momentum across channels, stages, and the entire buyer journey.

If you’re serious about building a predictable pipeline and scaling without losing personalization, the process comes first. The right tools simply make it easier to execute.

That’s exactly where Skylead fits in.

Ready to put your sales engagement process into action?

👉 Try Skylead free for 7 days and see what structured, scalable engagement actually feels like.

Disclaimer: Skylead is not affiliated, endorsed by, or connected with LinkedIn in any way.

Are you searching for the best cold email software to generate leads, drive sales, and scale your business? However, with so many tools claiming to be the best, knowing which ones actually deliver is not exactly a walk in the park.

Recognizing how hard it is to find objective information, we’ve decided to give you some. Thus, we’ve tried a total of 21 of the best cold email software, evaluated them according to several criteria, and are bringing you our findings.

And if this is TL;DR for you, here’s a table for quick comparison.

However, if you’re curious to see which cold email software we ranked as the best and why, be sure to check out our hands-on experience with each one.

What is cold email software?

Cold email software is a type of tool designed to simplify and optimize the process of reaching out to prospects through email. It is commonly used by salespeople, marketers, recruiters, and agencies looking to connect with potential clients, partners, or candidates at scale.

What to look for in the best cold email software?

There are plenty of cold email software on the market, meaning the margin for error is high.

So, how do you choose the best cold email software out there?

It all boils down to the following:

1. Automation

Manual cold outreach is time-consuming, not to say exhausting. Thus, to save yourself more than 11 hours a week you’d spend on it, look for tools that do more than just send task alerts.

However, our advice is to go with a tool that has a Smart sequences feature, such as our Skylead. Smart sequences are outreach sequences that execute steps in a logical order according to the way your prospects' behave, thanks to if/else conditions. Using them, you can maximize touchpoints with leads to make sure your initial emails don't go to waste.

2. Deliverability

What good are your emails if they keep landing in spam?

That is to say, your software of choice should come equipped with features that ensure your emails make it to the Primary inbox. In other words, shop around for those with email warm-up, deliverability testing, blacklist monitoring, and similar functionalities.

3. Integration

For cold email software to be considered the best, it needs to work seamlessly with your existing tool stack (e.g., CRM, Slack, etc.). Otherwise, you are sure to experience workflow interruptions.

4. Personalization

Did you know that personalized email subject lines can see up to 20% higher open rates compared to those without personalized details?

For that reason, your best bet is to go with the software that lets you personalize your outreach. This may include the option to insert placeholders (a.k.a. variables) that auto-populate based on your leads’ information, such as first and last name and company name. The other handy feature is image and GIF personalization, which lets you personalize visuals with the text, logo, or name of your leads.

5. Analytics

You can’t know how good of a job the cold email software is doing without having insight into the data. Therefore, your go-to choice must have an Analytics dashboard that gives you the birds-eye-view of different metrics (e.g., open rate, click-through rate, reply rate).

6. Cost-effectiveness

The best cold email software for you is the one with the best price vs. feature ratio. In other words, a one-stop-shop tool that gives you the most value for your money. Simple as that.

Our testing methodology

So, you know what it is that makes a cold email software ‘’the best.’’ But you still need options. And options we’ll provide. Tried and tested ones, as a matter of fact.

But not before we’ve explained the criteria we used for the testing.

That said, we got hands-on with the most popular cold email tools to see what they’re really made out of, focusing on:

• Ease of setup - We signed up for each tool, went through the onboarding process, and tested how easy it was to get everything up and running.
• Key features - We poked around every feature to see if it actually worked as promised. Did the tools make life easier? Did they deliver on their big claims? We were bent on finding that out!
• Deliverability - We run actual email outreach campaigns to see whether emails would land in the Primary inbox or spam.
• User-friendliness - Some tools are so complicated they feel like they need a manual. Therefore, we made sure to assess how intuitive and easy-to-use each tool was.
• Price vs. features - Finally, we compared pricing to what each tool actually delivered. Our goal was to identify which tool was the best value.

The 21 best cold email software we tried

Now that you know what makes a great cold email tool and how we tested them, let’s get to the main event.

We’ve rounded up the 21 best cold email software on the market, carefully evaluating each one based on the criteria we laid out earlier.

With this in mind, for each tool, we’ll cover:

• User score
• Key features
• Pros
• Cons
• Pricing

And to keep it real, we’ll also share expert opinions—straight from the mouths (or keyboards) of actual users who’ve worked with these tools. 

So, let’s dive in!

1. Skylead - Best cold email software for salespeople looking for one tool that has it all

User score: ⭐ 4.7 / 5

Well, hello there! This is us! 🙂

Skylead is an AI account-based sales engagement platform that supports both LinkedIn and cold email outreach. Basically, it is your one-stop-shop tool for all your outreach needs.

Key features

Why do we say Skylead is a one-stop-shop tool? 

Because it has everything you could possibly need for cold email outreach in one place and at one cost, including support for:

• Email and LinkedIn automation
• AI data enrichment
• Account-based prospecting
• Unlimited email outreach to send tens of thousands of emails at no extra cost;
• Email discovery and verification to reduce bounces and protect your domain;
• Image & GIF hyper-personalization to increase your response rate up to 76%;
• Email warm-up to keep your emails away from spam.

That said, Skylead is the 1st tool on the market to introduce Smart sequences. In other words, algorithms that combine if/else conditions with multichannel actions to form coherent outreach flows. Why? To find the fastest path to your leads.

Now, let’s get deeper into features that make Skylead one of the best, if not the best cold email software.

Account based prospecting

The best way to find your ideal leads is to find your ideal companies first. That is exactly what Skylead offers - account based prospecting. With it you can:

• Create account lists directly in Skylead from Sales Navigator account list URL
• And discover contacts in those companies to reach them out.

In other words, once you added your companies, Skylead can help you find and match contacts within those selected companies so your pipeline stays aligned to your ICP. This way you can really zero in on your target companies that are most likely to convert, are your true partner, and have greater lifetime value.

Unlimited email automation

With Skylead, you can connect as many mailboxes as you need, making it possible to send tens of thousands of emails a month at no extra cost.

There’s no cap on the number of active leads you can manage, either. That basically means you can reach out to as many leads as you want and expand your outreach without limits.

Curious how it’s possible to send so many emails? It’s all thanks to our inbox rotation feature, which alternates sending emails across multiple mailboxes that you connected (email accounts). This way, your email-sending volume is distributed evenly, which keeps your accounts within safe sending limits.

Email discovery & verification 

Using email discovery and verification, you can find and double-verify your leads’ email addresses to reduce the chances of bounces that could harm your deliverability and sender reputation. But the best part? It won’t interrupt your campaign creation flow.

Simply add the Find & verify business email step to your Smart sequence, and the tool will automatically locate and double-verify your leads’ emails.

What sets this feature apart is its exceptional accuracy—one of the highest on the market. Plus, it’s unlimited and included in your subscription at no extra cost. That means you can use it as much as you need without worrying about additional fees.

AI data enrichment

Apart from email discovery and verification, we introduced a game-changing feature - AI data enrichment which you can use to:

1. Enrich contact & company data
2. Prompt AI to get specified info or generate personalized icebreakers for each contact
3. Use all gathered info directly inside your sequences as variables.

It’s Clay-like in what it can uncover, but it’s connected to your outreach workflow, so you avoid constant tool switching and data importing.

Infinite Email warm-up

Cold email software can only bring desired results if the accounts used for outreach are ready for it. But to make sure that happens, they need to be properly warmed up. Otherwise, the risk of your emails landing in spam runs high.

And since we know how important email warm-up is to the outreach process, we decided to partner up with the email warm up tool, InboxFlare, to bring you infinite email warm-up.

And yes, this is another feature you can use as a Skylead user at no extra cost.

With InboxFlare, you can:

• Warm up infinite mailboxes in 30+ languages
• Choose your own warm-up topics
• Perform regular deliverability testing
• Monitor blacklists

Once you’ve activated your InboxFlare seat, you’ll be able to connect it to your mailbox(es), be they with Gmail, Outlook, or another ESP. InboxFlare also lets you add custom SMPT. Once connected, it will use AI to craft a unique warm-up strategy.

Skylead pros

• Unlimited email outreach to send tens of thousands of emails per month at no added cost.
• Built-in email discovery and verification to reduce bounces and protect your sender reputation.
• Infinite email warm-up in more than 30 languages.
• Smart sequences combining multiple channels to maximize touchpoints with leads.
• Image and GIF hyper-personalization to increase the response rate.
• Advanced reporting with export options and integration capabilities via Webhooks or API.
• Smart inbox to manage all conversations in one place.

Skylead cons

• InboxFlare isn’t built directly into Skylead.
• No native integrations with HubSpot, Salesforce, and other popular CRMs (integration is possible, though, through Zapier or API).

Pricing

Skylead's cost $100 a month per seat, and you get the above features, plus a 1-on-1 onboarding call to get you started and a targeting support call.

AI data enrichment acts as an add-on. What makes this pricing truly different is simple: our core value is not to make money from these credits, and it will never be our business model. Credits are priced based on actual costs of our third-party providers , and we offer a special rate of $1 for 100 credits. Also, as overall usage across all users increases, costs will decrease and will be passed back to our users. This makes AI data enrichment up to 95% more cost-effective compared to similar tools on the market.

What more could you ask for?

Expert opinion

‘’If/else conditions in Smart Sequences are also great. It's low code, so it's great because I'm not good at coding yet. I also like the Find & verify business email step, which finds email addresses most of the time. So you get, like, two ways you can get in touch with the client.’’

—Toine Boelens, Founder

2. Smartlead - Best for in-app email warm-up

User score: ⭐ 4.3 / 5

Smartlead is a relatively new software that automates and streamlines cold email outreach.

Key features

Smartlead comes with support for unlimited mailboxes, inbox rotation, and a built-in email warm-up feature that helps build a strong senders’ reputation. We found it very reliable while testing the tool.

The software also has a Subsequences feature, a.k.a. email sequences that get triggered once specific conditions are met (e.g., if a lead bounces, if they reply, etc.).

Moreover, Smartlead has a Unibox, which lets you keep track of all emails and respond to them from one place. 

Finally, they have an Analytics dashboard where you can keep track of your email campaigns’ performance.

Pros

• Good deliverability rates, courtesy of the built-in email warm-up feature with ESP matching.
• Support for unlimited mailboxes, as well as mailbox rotation.
• User-friendly interface that doesn’t overwhelm.
• Unibox to keep conversations organized.
• Native integration with HubSpot and 3rd party integrations via Webhooks and API.

Cons

• You can’t use it for LinkedIn lead generation because it lacks real multichannel outreach capabilities. Namely, you can add multichannel tasks into your sequences but need to perform them manually.
• No options for personalization other than variables, thereby positioning Smartlead alternatives like Skylead as a better option.
• Lack of email verification and discovery.

Pricing

Expert opinion

‘’Smartlead's email follow-up automation is a time-saver for crafting and delivering outreach sequences. Pre-designed templates are cool and a helpful advantage, especially for those new to cold emailing. The interface isn't the most intuitive. If you're new to cold email platforms, there might be a learning curve involved.’’

— Stephen O., Director of Sales Marketing

3. Apollo - Best for its built-in lead database

User score: ⭐ 4.5 / 5

Apollo is a powerful multichannel sales engagement platform that allows users to combine email, LinkedIn outreach, and cold calls in their campaigns.

Key features

Using Apollo, you can set up simple campaigns with automatic or manual emails while leveraging LinkedIn automation features to send connection requests and messages and engage with your leads’ posts.

Additionally, the tool integrates natively with platforms like Pipedrive, HubSpot, and Slack to provide seamless data synchronization during the sales engagement process.

It also includes A/B testing capabilities to optimize your campaigns and an AI-powered feature for crafting personalized outreach messages.

Lastly, Apollo boasts a database of over 275M contacts, which you can use to pull leads directly into your campaigns, along with an email verification and inbox rotation features.

Pros

• Multichannel support for email, and phone outreach.
• Access to a large database of 275M+ contacts.
• Native integrations with Pipedrive, HubSpot, and Slack.
• A/B testing capabilities to refine your outreach strategy.

Cons

• Limited number of connected mailboxes (up to 15 for users of the most expensive plan).
• Multichannel sequences lack conditional logic, a.k.a if/else conditions found in Smart sequences.
• The tool uses Chrome extension to scrape lead information on LinkedIn, which could get your LinkedIn account restricted.
• Isn't compliant with LinkedIn's ToS.
• AI functionality for crafting personalized messages is fairly basic, as we found.
• They integrate with Hyperise for Image & GIF personalization, which adds costs to the subscription (+$69 a month per seat).
• Lack of email warm-up feature.
• The tool also doesn’t have an integrated inbox, which was pretty inconvenient for us.

Pricing

Expert opinion

‘’Apollo is an easy go-to tool for generating leads and understanding the size of your market. The user interface is a bit clunky and not super intuitive at times, though.’’

—Zack P, CPO

4. Instantly - Best cold email software for its ease of use

User score: ⭐ 4.6 / 5

Instantly is a cold email software and email management platform that has quickly gained popularity for its scalability and user-friendliness, which we couldn’t help but notice the moment we set it up.

Key features

Instantly allows you to connect and manage unlimited email accounts, like Skylead and Smartlead, making it possible to scale your outreach significantly. While all connected accounts can be used in the same campaign, inbox rotation alternates sending emails from different accounts, so you can send more emails daily.

The software includes a built-in unlimited email warm-up feature. They also offer a B2B Lead finder, a database of 160M contacts, with filters similar to LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters (e.g., job titles, locations, industries, etc).

Using Instantly.ai, users can also conduct A/Z testing with up to 26 email variations.

What’s more, the software’s Unibox consolidates all email conversations into a single inbox for easy management. Meanwhile, its built-in CRM allows users to track lead statuses, make calls, and send SMS directly from the platform.

Instantly users can also verify their leads’ emails to reduce bounces and protect domain reputation.

Pros

• Simple and fast set-up.
• User-friendly interface.
• Unlimited mailboxes with inbox rotation to enhance deliverability.
• Unlimited email warm-up feature included.
• Unibox for streamlined conversation management.
• A/Z testing to optimize email performance.

Cons

• Basic reporting features may not meet the needs of users seeking detailed analytics. Furthermore, we didn’t like how you cannot export CSV or PDF reports.
• B2B Lead database and CRM cost extra.
• Lacks email-finding capabilities.
• Instantly is a cold email software only, meaning it’s not suitable for those relying on LinkedIn prospecting and outreach across multiple channels.
• Some users complain using Instantly damages their domain reputation, though we cannot say we experienced this while testing it ourselves.

Pricing

Expert opinion

‘’I am really happy with Instantly this far. It is such a well-rounded platform. You do have to pay quite a bit if you want to get the full experience, though.’’

—Niryen Z., CEO

5. Lemlist - Best for advanced personalization in email outreach

User score: ⭐ 4.5 / 5

Lemlist is a cold email software with advanced personalization capabilities. However, higher-tiered plans turn it into a multichannel platform.

Key features

We tested Lemlist’s most expensive plan. Therefore, we could create multichannel sequences combining email, LinkedIn, and cold calls. Additionally, conditions can be added to sequences to cover multiple outreach scenarios.

But what the software is best known for is its personalization features. Specifically, using Lemlist, users can customize images, intro lines, and even create dynamic landing pages. 

Lemlist also offers Lemwarm, a built-in email warm-up tool that’s meant to keep emails out of spam folders.

To aid lead generation, Lemlist includes an email finder and verifier, as well as access to a B2B lead database with over 450M contacts.

Pros

• Supports multichannel outreach with actions and calls.
• Advanced personalization features, including custom images and dynamic landing pages.
• Lemwarm email warm-up tool to enhance deliverability.
• B2B lead database with as much as 450M contacts.

Cons

• Limited email discovery and verification, even with the highest-tier plan. Additional credits cost extra ($1 for every 100 emails found and verified).
• The quality of leads in the B2B database is inconsistent, as we found.
• For those who’d like to go beyond their lead database, the tool offers a Chrome extension for LinkedIn prospecting. However, this means that is not safest solution to use for LinkedIn outreach.
• Cannot connect unlimited email accounts. Namely, the highest-paid plan lets you connect up to 15 mailboxes maximum.

Pricing

Expert opinion

‘’Lemlist is better than many other tools because it gives you the tools to actually be unique and send emails in a slick manner. I WISH WISH WISH they had unlimited email accounts. That's the only thing I don't like about it, it caps you at 5 email accounts (15 with the pro plan).’’

—Zach Y., Founder

6. Reply.io - Best for AI sales engagement

User score: ⭐ 4.5 / 5

Reply.io is a versatile sales engagement platform built for teams who prefer handling their entire outreach in one place.

Key features

Although primarily a cold email software, over the years, Reply.io has turned into a multichannel solution for sales engagement. That said, you can use it to create sequences with conditional logic that combine emails with automatic and/or manual LinkedIn actions.

Email-wise, we loved that, much like with Skylead, Smartlead, and Instantly, we could connect unlimited mailboxes to the tool, and it would later auto-rotate through these while sending emails. There’s also no cap on how many emails you can send monthly.

Moreover, each Reply.io user gets free access to Mailtoaster.ai for email warm-up.

In terms of integrations, the software natively integrates with some of the best CRM for sales, HubSpot and Pipedrive. Nonetheless, the support for 3rd party integrations via Zapier webhooks is there as well.

We found their Analytics dashboard intuitive and noticed that it contains a lot more details than some other sales outreach tools.

The newest addition to Reply.io is Jason, their AI SDR agent who finds leads, creates outreach sequences, personalizes interactions, automatically replies, and books meetings.

They also provide a sales AI chatbot to turn website visitors into traffic, although we haven’t tried this feature and can’t objectively rate it.

Pros

• Support for multichannel outreach combining email and LinkedIn tasks.
• Unlimited mailboxes and inbox rotation.
• Free Mailtoaster.ai seat for email warm-up.
• Native integrations with HubSpot and Pipedrive.
• AI SDR Jason for automated prospecting and engagement.
• Detailed analytics dashboard for performance tracking.

Cons

• AI SDR Jason requires an additional subscription. Moreover, the price heavily depends on the number of active contacts. Moreover, it’s not as advanced and certainly can’t replace human SDRs, as they claim.
• Full access to their +1M B2B lead database requires a separate subscription, and so does the AI chatbot.
• Chrome extension (Findy) to find leads directly on LinkedIn can cause account restrictions meaning it is not compliant with LinkedIn's ToS.
• Message personalization is scarce (despite AI assistance), and the option for image and GIF personalization is lacking.

Pricing

Reply.io has 4 main pricing plans, whereas multiple sub-plans are available.

In the meantime, if you’d like to use their AI SDR agent, expect to pay $299 for 1,000 active contacts a month. However, if your needs exceed this, the price can easily skyrocket as it’s volume-based.

Expert opinion

‘’Reply is very easy to use, with a straightforward UX design and plenty of features for base-level users like me. I started using Reply for outreach campaigns in my role, and getting over the learning curve was a cinch. Unfortunately, as I'm writing this, Reply does not have a direct integration with Microsoft Outlook, which might inhibit some of my use cases.’’

—Ian L, Customer Success Manager

7. Expandi - Best for ESP integration

User score: ⭐ 4.3 / 5

Expandi is a cloud-based LinkedIn automation tool that also extends its capabilities to the email channel.

Key features

As opposed to Reply.io, Expandi was originally a LinkedIn automation tool that added the email channel into the mix. Thus, now, you can use it to create Smart sequences combining LinkedIn messages, inMails, and emails in a single workflow. However, keep in mind that Expandi isn't compliant with LinkedIn like Skylead is.

While testing Expandi, we were pleasantly surprised to find out that the tool lets you connect all email accounts, whether from major ESPs (Gmail, Outlook) or a custom SMTP.

Personalization-wise, this software comes with predefined variables, though you can also add your own. Additionally, provided you pay for Hyperise, you can even enrich your emails with personalized images and GIFs thanks to their direct integration.

Finally, if you wish to connect Expandi with other tools, the good news is that you can do so through Zapier webhooks or API.

Pros

• Smart sequences for multichannel outreach.
• Predefined and custom variables for message personalization.
• Integrates with major ESPs like Gmail and Outlook, as well as custom SMTP.
• Zapier webhooks for third-party integrations.

Cons

• Focused more on LinkedIn, with basic support for email automation.
• You can connect 1 mailbox at a time. We found this rather limiting.
• 100 emails a day sending limit.
• Expandi doesn’t have an email warm-up feature, nor does it offer it through a partner.
• The tool can’t discover and verify leads’ emails. It can only scrape publicly available emails on LinkedIn and only if you’re connected with someone.
• Image and GIF personalization, while there, is possible thanks to Expandi’s integration with Hyperise. Thus, it costs extra. Moreover, our impression is that it’s inconvenient to use.
• The UX is confusing, which is especially noticeable during the campaign creation.

Pricing

Expandi, like Skylead, has a single plan that will set you back $99 a month per seat. 

Nonetheless, if you want to combine it with Hyperise, count on paying an additional $69 a month. This brings the total cost to $168 per 1 seat. For this reason, certain Expandi alternatives are proving to be better cold email software.

Expert opinion

‘’Great automation for LinkedIn. Easy UX. Constant webinars to learn. Tons of new features are always being added. Email outreach is very limited, though. I cannot see if the lead booked a meeting on a calendar to trigger enrollment - if they had this, I would use it for email as well.’’

—Jacob M., SDR

8. Hunter.io - Best for email discovery and verification

User score: ⭐ 4.4 / 5

Hunter.io is a popular email discovery tool. Nonetheless, it has expanded its services to include cold email outreach capabilities through its Campaigns feature.

Key features

Hunter.io's strength lies in its ability to discover and verify email addresses associated with specific domains or individuals.

However, with the introduction of Hunter Campaigns, users can now create and manage simple cold email campaigns directly within the platform. This feature supports personalized email sequences with automated follow-ups. It also integrates seamlessly with Gmail, Outlook, and custom SMTP.

The number of mailboxes you can connect to Hunter.io depends on the plan. Nonetheless, all plans support mailbox rotation.

Moreover, we couldn’t help but notice how simple Hunter Campaigns are to use. Not to mention, you get access to the Reports page to track your campaign performance.

For integrations, Hunter supports Zapier webhooks and has a public API, making it easy to connect with other tools in your tech stack.

Pros

• Great email discovery and verification capabilities.
• Direct Gmail and Outlook integration for sending emails.
• User-friendly interface suitable for beginners.
• Free plan available for users with limited needs.

Cons

• Email outreach features are scarce compared to other cold email software.
• Email sequences are basic and lack if/else conditions.
• No built-in email warm-up feature.
• Limited email discovery and verification credits. It’s possible to purchase more, though the exact rate varies by plan. Moreover, the tool, while accurate, isn’t as successfully at finding and verifying emails as Skylead.
• Theoretically, you could connect unlimited mailboxes to the tool. However, this would cost you $10 for each additional mailbox, which is a con if you ask us.

Pricing

Hunter Campaigns is available under all 5 paid plans.

Expert opinion

‘’Email verifier and Email finder come in very handy whenever I upload bulk leads. Also, the option to follow up in the same thread just by keeping the subject line blank is something I like. There are a few downsides. First up, the UX could be far better, it takes a while to find simple options like cloning the campaign. Moreover, the follow-up frequency is confusing- it never shows you the date of sending. All the sent mails are also visible in my gmail sent-box.’’

—Vinayak H., Product Marketing Associate

9. Saleshandy - Best cold email software for email tracking

User score: ⭐ 4.4 / 5

Saleshandy is a go-to tool for anyone who values unlimited email capabilities and reliable campaign tracking capabilities.

Key features

Saleshandy is considered one of the best cold email software because it allows for unlimited email accounts, sequences, and email tracking. 

The tool also offers email warm-up through its partner, TrulyInbox. However, the daily warm-up limit varies by plan. We also didn’t find it to be very reliable during our testing since our emails landed in spam, regardless.

Additionally, Saleshandy includes email discovery and verification, as well as mailbox rotation.

Meanwhile, direct integrations with CRMs like HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Salesforce allow seamless workflow automation.

The platform also offers A/Z testing and detailed email performance analytics to help users optimize their campaigns.

Pros

• Unlimited email accounts, sequences, as well as email tracking.
• Email warm-up through TrulyInbox integration.
• Mailbox rotation to send more emails daily.
• Direct CRM integrations with HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Salesforce.

Cons

• The number of active prospects is limited by plan, and so is the number of emails sent monthly.
• We realized their ‘’unlimited mailboxes’’ claim isn’t exactly true because you can use a maximum of 50 mailboxes per campaign. And that’s with the highest subscription!
• Email discovery and verification credits aren’t unlimited, either, as is the case with Skylead. Instead, credits are capped by the plan.
• The subscription also determines the number of warm-up emails exchanged daily.

Pricing

Saleshandy offers 4 email outreach plans.

Expert opinion

‘’The price is very reasonable and has many features like unlimited email warm-up, email automation, analytics, and many more. I hope there will be some improvement in email warm-up features in the future.’’

—Shamim Ahmed A., SDR

10. Snov.io - Best for its real-time sentiment analysis

User score: ⭐ 4.7 / 5

Snov.io is a sales engagement platform rather than merely a cold email software. It’s meant to help you automatically find leads and reach out to them to close more deals in less time.

Key features

Snov.io’s email campaigns are enhanced by smart triggers that adapt based on recipient behavior. The platform also has an A/B testing feature, which lets you experiment with multiple variations of your subject lines and email bodies.

One feature we really liked is the AI sentiment analysis, which detects a lead’s interest level in real-time and suggests how to adjust messaging.

If you're interested in using multiple channels for your sales outreach, Snov.io even offers an optional LinkedIn automation add-on. However, this add-on that costs extra.

Additionally, Snov.io, much like Skylead, Smartlead, Instantly, and similar tools, allows you to connect unlimited mailboxes. Similarly, it supports unlimited mailbox rotation. 

The platform also includes email discovery and verification and directly integrates with HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Calendly.

Finally, it has built-in email warm-up, email tracking (for Gmail), and deliverability testing features.

Pros

• Unlimited mailboxes with rotation.
• Built-in email warm-up to improve sending reputation.
• AI-driven sentiment analysis for real-time adjustments.
• Native integrations with HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Calendly.
• Multichannel support with LinkedIn touches (via paid add-on).

Cons

• LinkedIn automation, while there, requires an additional fee and is not compliant with LinkedIn's ToS.
• Slight learning curve due to the platform's broad range of features.
• Limited email discovery and verification credits.
• The Starter plan lets you warm up up to 3 mailboxes.
• Given that the Pro plan has volume-based pricing, the cost can easily skyrocket.

Pricing

The add-on for LinkedIn automation costs an extra $69 a month per account.

Expert opinion

‘’Reliable outreach and research tool. I like the efficiency and speed of searching and validating emails, ease of use, and customer support. However, lots of emails are not really in the database. There’s also a lack of detailed statistics and dark mode.’’

—Denis B.

11. Klenty - Best cold email software for video personalization

User score: ⭐ 4.7 / 5

Klenty is a cold email automation platform that helps sales teams hyper-personalize their outreach.

Key features

While testing Klenty, we were really impressed with their Liquid email templates. These templates use dynamic formulas to automatically adjust email content based on when prospects receive or open your emails. As a result, they make each touchpoint feel extra personalized.

And if plain text isn’t cutting it, Klenty lets you take it a step further with video personalization. Namely, you can embed videos into your emails with custom elements to further stand out.

We also appreciated Klenty’s flexibility when it comes to sequencing. You can reorder steps, adjust delays, and even clone successful sequences to save time and replicate winning campaigns.

Klenty also provides deliverability insights to help you understand how many emails land in the primary inbox, like a warm-up tool that you can use with Skylead.

Additionally, the tool includes email verification, supports unlimited mailboxes with inbox rotation, and has email tracking to keep you informed about engagement levels.

Lastly, the platform can be integrated with other software via API or Webhooks.

Pros

• Liquid email templates for advanced personalization.
• Video personalization to stand out in inboxes.
• Flexible email sequencing.
• Detailed deliverability insights to optimize campaigns.
• Email discovery and verification based on prospects’ name and company domain.
• Integrations via API and Webhooks.

Cons

• No monthly pricing plans; only quarterly or annual payments are available.
• LinkedIn automation, albeit there, relies on a Chrome extension, rendering it unsafe.
• If your bounce rate is high (which can happen if you’re using their tool to verify emails, as we experienced), the campaign won’t automatically stop.
• You can connect unlimited mailboxes to the tool, as we discovered, only if they share the same domain. You can add more domains if you’d like, but only if you pay an additional $30 per domain.
• There are no 1-on-1 onboarding calls. And seeing that the platform isn’t easy to navigate, this is definitely a disadvantage.

Pricing

Klenty only has quarterly and annual plans, with the latter being up to 20% cheaper.

That being said, there are a total of 3 pricing plans available.

Expert opinion

‘’I liked the ability to run campaigns through Klenty using salesforce data. However, I didn’t like that Klenty does not automatically stop a campaign if an email is bouncing.’’

—Matthew D., Distribution Manager

12. Woodpecker - Best for teams prioritizing email deliverability

User score: ⭐ 4.7 / 5

Woodpecker is a cold email software designed to maintain optimal email deliverability.

Key features

Woodpecker is best known for its focus on email deliverability. The platform includes a built-in email warm-up feature, auto-reply detection, and email verification (powered by Bouncer), which ensures your emails avoid the spam folder.

The tool also supports A/B testing, allowing you to experiment with up to 5 variations of subject lines and email content.

The good news for teams managing multiple email accounts is that Woodpecker also offers unlimited mailbox connections with auto-rotation to spread your sending load and protect your domain.

It also fits right into your tool stack through native integrations with HubSpot and Pipedrive, along with Google Sheets and Calendly.

Speaking of integrations, it can be expanded into a multichannel outreach platform through the integration with Dux-Soup, a LinkedIn automation tool.

Pros

• Built-in email warm-up for improved deliverability.
• Auto-reply detection to better manage follow-ups.
• Unlimited mailboxes with auto-rotation.
• Integrates directly with popular CRMs, plus Google Sheets and Calendly.

Cons

• The subscription limits the number of prospects you can contact, and costs can escalate quickly if you need to scale.
• The number of mailboxes you can warm up, and emails you can send monthly is capped. Unless you’re paying for the highest subscription.
• No multichannel outreach.

Pricing

Woodpecker offers 4 plans, albeit pricing depends on the number of contacted prospects, mailboxes warmed up, and emails sent. 

That said, prices start from:

Expert opinion

‘’Over the years, I have used all the major players, from the large SEPs to platforms with similar functionality and costs to Woodpecker. Woodpecker stands out for me due to the fundamental fact that it has deliverability at the forefront of everything it does. Nonetheless, the Hubspot integration is basic and does not allow activity tracking at the contact level. Moreover, the warm-up feature is new and works, but it needs more ability to monitor and control settings.’’

—Oliver K., Head of Sales Development

13. Mailshake - Best for its AI email writer SHAKEspear

User score:⭐ 4.7 / 5

Mailshake is a cold email software with support for multichannel outreach.

Key features

One of Mailshake’s unique selling points is SHAKEspeare AI Email Writer, which is included for free with every account. Its job is to help you write personalized emails at scale.

However, using Mailshake, you’re not limited to automating cold email outreach only. The tool supports outreach via multiple channels (LinkedIn and phone), although only under its Sales Engagement plan. This means you can seamlessly switch between email, LinkedIn, and direct calls within the same sequence. Still, these sequences are simple. What's more, due to automation, it is not compliant with LinkedIn's ToS.

The platform also offers unlimited email warm-ups and mailbox rotation for better deliverability. Moreover, we found its A/B testing to be particularly helpful for testing different variations of messaging.

Finally, the tool integrates directly with Salesforce, Pipedrive, and HubSpot and supports over 1,000 additional integrations via Zapier webhooks. Therefore, it’s rather easy to fit into your workflow.

Pros

• SHAKEspeare AI Email Writer is included for free.
• Unlimited email warm-ups and mailbox rotation for improved deliverability.
• A/B testing to keep track of what’s working, as well as what’s not.
• Direct integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive.
• Supports more than 1,000 integrations via Zapier webhooks.

Cons

• SHAKEspear AI, though useful, can be easily replaced with Chat GPT for sales copywriting.
• The Starter plan doesn’t support multichannel outreach.
• There is no built-in email verification (you’ll need a 3rd-party tool).
• You can connect up to 5 mailboxes maximum. And that’s only if you’re subscribed to their most expensive Sales Engagement plan. Other than that, you’re left to work with only 2 email accounts.
• LinkedIn outreach is not compliant with LinkedIn's ToS.
• Analytics can be hard to comprehend, in our opinion.
• Frequent bugs.
• Annual billings only and no free trial.

Pricing