Spending hours on cold calls and emails only to get silence in return? There’s nothing more frustrating than dedicating time and effort to outreach that goes absolutely nowhere. For sales reps, those non-responses and unreturned calls feel like dead ends. But, they don’t have to be.
When you have the right sales outreach tools, you can do more than just automate processes. You can target the right prospects, craft personalized messaging that actually resonates, and analyze what’s working—and what isn’t—in real time. With a powerful outreach stack, every email and call becomes a meaningful connection, improving response rates, shortening your sales cycle, and boosting your bottom line.
Discover the best sales outreach tools to help your team maximize their impact heading into 2025.
Types of sales outreach tools
In the world of sales prospecting, having the right mix of tools is essential for building connections, tracking progress, and refining your strategy. Here are the primary types of tools that can help drive effective outreach.
Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms
CRMs are the backbone of sales outreach, allowing you to keep track of every interaction with prospects and customers in one place. They help you organize contacts, automate follow-ups, and gain valuable insights into customer behavior, providing a detailed view of where each prospect is in the sales pipeline so you can make more informed outreach decisions.
Cold outreach platforms
Cold outreach tools focus on the initial stages of connecting with prospects, whether that’s through email or other messaging channels. These platforms help automate repetitive tasks so your team can scale outreach efforts effectively, including:
- Maintaining sales cadences
- Scheduling follow-ups
- Tracking open rates
These tools often come with built-in analytics that you can use to measure your audience’s engagement and refine future outreach based on what resonates most with recipients.
Social media outreach tools
Suppose you want to dabble in social selling or connect with prospects on social media. In that case, you’ll need tools that integrate with social media platforms, or enhance them by using AI to draft outreach or suggesting the right person to reach out to, and when. Social media outreach tools, particularly those designed for professional networks, allow you to research prospects, send personalized messaging, and monitor engagement.
Sales teams can initiate warm conversations with potential clients based on shared interests or industry insights, often creating a more personal connection.
Video communication tools
Video outreach is growing rapidly in popularity because of how personable and engaging it is. Here are a few ways sales teams use video:
- Produce and share quick video messaging
- Explain complex topics or handle common sales objections
- Walk prospects through demos without needing live calls
This approach helps you stand out in crowded inboxes, offering a unique and engaging way to connect with leads on a personal level, including asynchronously.
Sales engagement platforms
Sales engagement tools streamline the sales process. Sales teams can send emails, call clients, and even DM them on their social media channel of choice—all in one sales engagement platform. With these platforms, you create customized outreach cadences, track interactions in real time, and automate next steps based on prospect behavior. Advanced scheduling and sales automation features ensure that no prospect falls through the cracks.
1. Loom
Loom is a personal platform for video messaging. You can use Loom’s screen recorder to easily make quick, custom videos walking a prospect through a use case for your product or something you saw on their social profile that stood out to you. The more you can do to stand out, the better.
Features:
- Screen recorder: Let your personality shine through with short, easy-to-follow product demo videos you can easily record on your laptop or phone.
- Loom Variables: Personalize videos at scale with Loom Variables, which swaps out the names of your prospects, for example, to make each message feel unique.
- Loom AI editing: Automatically remove filler words and awkward silences with Loom AI before sending videos to prospects.
Pros:
- Offers AI features for basic editing, video summary generation, and automatic follow-up messaging
- Lets you embed Loom video previews into emails instead of another boring link
- Adds CTAs to direct prospects directly from your video message
Cons:
- Must mark videos private manually; public is the default setting
Pricing: Loom is free. The paid business plan starts at $15 per month with optional add-ons.
Try Loom for Sales for Free2. HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the best-known CRMs on the market. Regarded for its user-friendly interface and extensive automation capabilities, it’s ideal for managing outreach workflows. With Sales Hub, you can create a series of automated follow-up emails to trigger after a prospect engages with your initial outreach. This means you can stay top of mind for your prospects without needing to send manual reminders. It also keeps the conversation active so you can nurture leads and track responses in a much more hands-off manner.
Features:
- Email tracking: Track open rates and engagement on your emails on a per-contact basis.
- Automated follow-ups: Set it and forget it with automated follow-ups to emails and text messages.
- Templates and snippets: Templatize common outreach messaging, like email follow-ups, to save time.
Pros:
- Integrates with various communication tools, centralizing outreach
- Connects sales, marketing, operations, and support teams in one software with Hubs
- Scales to grow with your team’s needs
Cons:
- High price point for feature-rich enterprise plans can be out of budget
Pricing: Varies per product. Sales Hub Starter is available for $15/seat per month.
3. Salesforce
Salesforce is a comprehensive CRM solution that enables robust lead tracking, contact management, and pipeline insights. You can use Salesforce to identify high-value leads with data-driven insights so you can focus your valuable time on the most promising contacts in your sales pipeline. Track every interaction with prospects in one platform, and monitor your top leads as they move through the funnel.
Features:
- Einstein AI: Get intelligent recommendations to help prioritize high-potential leads.
- Agentforce: Scale your team’s efforts with autonomous AI sales agents that boost sales reps’ skills and engage with inbound leads.
- Automation capabilities: Automate workflows, like sending quotes for approval, so you can spend more time selling.
Pros:
- Owns popular tools like Slack and Tableau, and provides best-in-class integrations with them
- Lets your team build ultra-customized outreach workflows
- Aligns your teams with a variety of products per role—including sales, marketing, and service
Cons:
- Starter product lacks critical features, like lead scoring, forecasting, and deal insights
- Expensive for higher-level plans, especially those including Einstein AI
Pricing: Varies per product. Sales Cloud Starter costs $25/user per month.
4. Pipedrive
Pipedrive is another CRM option hyper-focused on sales teams. The platform helps teams manage their pipeline with visual, intuitive tools that allow you to set automated reminders for each stage of the outreach process, making optimal follow-ups second nature.
Features:
- Visual pipeline: Get a clear view of each prospect’s status so you can easily organize your outreach efforts.
- Pipeline management: Customize pipeline stages to match your sales cycle and use color-coded cues to understand which leads are about to go cold.
- Insights and reporting: Add custom fields to robust reports tracking pipeline metrics, company-wide goals, and sales rep performance.
Pros:
- Focuses on key activities that drive deals forward, eliminating unnecessary distractions
- Offers free expert implementation support for users who spend more than $1,000 per month
- Has a lower price point than many other CRMs
Cons:
- No free plan available
- Not as many custom fields and reports compared to alternatives
Pricing: Essential plan starts at $14/seat per month.
5. Woodpecker
Woodpecker is an email automation tool purpose-built to tackle the age-old sales problem of poorly performing cold outreach and follow-ups. It allows for automated, personalized email sequences while tracking open rates, click-throughs, and replies.
Features:
- A/B testing: Create a more responsive, successful outreach strategy by testing which elements of your outreach work best.
- Personalized fields: Maintain a human touch in your automated outreach by inserting customized fields.
- Email list verification: Get peace of mind with built-in verification when sending emails to large lists.
Pros:
- Integrates with your favorite software, like Slack, Zoho, and all major CRMs
- Makes onboarding a breeze with robust blog content, tutorials, and user-friendly interface
- Helps avoid common software mistakes, like sending an outreach email to someone who’s already replied to you
Cons:
- No solution for adding opt-in links automatically, which goes against email best practices
Pricing: The plan starts at $29/month and includes cold email features to contact 500 prospects per month.
6. Saleshandy
Saleshandy is an email productivity tool focused on maximizing engagement with cold leads. Saleshandy’s sequencing capabilities make it easy to design effective cold outreach campaigns, track their open rates, and use the performance data to inform your future outreach strategies and refine your approach over time.
Features:
- Automated email sequences: Ensure consistent outreach with automatic cold email sequences that nurture leads over time.
- Unified inbox: Manage multiple email accounts—and conversations—from one central place.
- Advanced lead finder: Get access to a database of 700 million contacts, which you can filter by industry, title, location, and more.
Pros:
- Supports all experience levels for creating email sequences and managing campaigns
- Provides a lead finder to streamline searching for your target audience
Cons:
- Reportedly unreliable email deliverability, depending on the quality of user lists
- Lacks popular CRM integrations compared to alternatives
Pricing: Email Outreach Starter is $36/month, and the B2B Lead Starter is $29/month.
7. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is essential for social selling. Solutions like Sales Navigator can help you find and connect with the right prospects at the right time by uncovering valuable connections you may not know you have. Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to identify key decision-makers at target companies, then send personalized connection requests or InMail messages. Follow up with relevant content or product demos as necessary, building relationships that feel genuine and context-driven.
Features:
- Extensive filtering options: Find your target audience with 40+ filters in Sales Navigator, including company size, industry, and job title.
- InMail: Reach out to prospects even if they’re not first-degree connections, creating a personal touch that’s difficult to achieve with traditional cold outreach.
- Client recommendations: Use your saved searches to identify recommended companies to target with Sales Navigator.
Pros:
- Provides access to 1+ billion LinkedIn members on a global scale
- Offers relationship intelligence insights for engaging your target buyers at scale
Cons:
- Extremely expensive to upgrade to Sales Navigator, especially when paying per sales rep
Pricing: LinkedIn is free for all users. Sales Navigator Core starts at $79.99/month with a one-month free trial.
8. Apollo.io
Apollo.io is a sales engagement platform that streamlines outreach with features like sequencing, email templates, and lead scoring. You’ll get access to a vast database of verified contacts so you can quickly build prospect lists and reach out at scale.
Features:
- Lead scoring: Prioritize follow-ups based on their likelihood to convert so you spend more time with high-quality leads.
- AI-generated email sequences: Write personalized emails with AI, including the ability to tailor emails to prospects based on their role or industry.
- Built-in dialer: Increase your cold call response rate with Apollo’s database of verified phone numbers and integrated call system for built-in transcripts and call recordings.
Pros:
- Integrates its sales engagement features directly with sales data to illuminate your best-performing strategies
- Optimizes inbound with accurate routing, shorter lead forms, and automatic lead qualification
- Offers very cost-effective plans
Cons:
- Limited mobile version compared to the desktop platform
Pricing: Free plan available. The basic plan starts at $49/user per month.
What should you look for in a sales outreach tool?
With so many options for sales outreach tools, it’s crucial to know which features to prioritize. Here’s a breakdown of key factors to evaluate when comparing multiple tools in the same category, like CRMs, sales video software, or email outreach platforms.
- Personalization capabilities: Tailored messages resonate better with prospects, so look for tools that allow you to add a personal touch. With Loom video messaging, you can use screen recordings to make your messages unique to each prospect. Tools that allow for dynamic personalization fields are invaluable in email campaigns, too.
- Integration capabilities: Ensure the tool can integrate with your existing tech stack, such as CRMs, email, and calendar software. Integrations streamline data across platforms so you can keep track of interactions and automate workflows. A CRM that integrates with email providers can automatically log every email interaction, providing a complete picture of prospect engagement.
- Metrics and analytics: To refine your outreach strategy, choose a tool that offers metrics like email open rates, reply rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates. This allows you to gauge the effectiveness of your campaigns and make data-driven adjustments. Tracking these KPIs helps your team understand which outreach methods resonate most with your audience.
- Ease of use: Look for features like a Chrome extension and other functionality that make the tool easy to navigate. Intuitive interfaces can reduce the learning curve for your team and help them stay productive. Look for user-friendly tools that minimize setup time and increase time spent on actual outreach. Loom’s Chrome extension, for instance, makes it easy to record sales videos for new outreach in just a couple of clicks.
- Pricing: Consider the cost and whether the tool offers a free or trial version. For smaller teams, a free plan or scalable pricing structure can help control costs while still providing essential features. A tool that grows with your business can also save you from needing to switch platforms as your team expands.
- Automation capabilities: Look for tools that automate repetitive tasks, such as follow-ups and scheduling. Automation helps reps stay on top of outreach without manually tracking every interaction. For example, tools that offer automated email sequences can keep prospects engaged with minimal effort from the sales team.
- Additional features: Some tools offer extra capabilities, like scheduling meetings or sending follow-up reminders. A tool with built-in scheduling features can make it easier for prospects to book time directly, reducing friction in the sales process. This is particularly helpful in streamlining communication and preventing scheduling back-and-forth.
When you’ve assembled the right combination of sales tools, you can tackle outreach like a pro. You’ll be capturing potential customers’ attention, fostering connections, and ultimately, closing deals.
Maximize the impact of your sales outreach with Loom
As you build your outreach strategy, remember that tools are only part of the puzzle. Experimenting with A/B testing, engaging in multi-channel prospecting, and collaborating with the marketing team on email marketing campaigns can all amplify results and keep your approach fresh.
Enhance your sales team’s outreach with Loom’s video tools. Start personalizing today!
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