The business world revolves around building expanded networks of contacts. Finding new leads and turning them into clients is crucial both for the B2C and B2B spheres. Of course, this process requires both time and effort. However, you can optimize practically anything if you have the right tools for that. Below, we will discuss top sources to get new business contacts and turn them into leads.
SignalHire
SignalHire is a very versatile database of business contacts that comes with a handy browser extension. This tool can help you find email addresses, phone numbers, and links to social media accounts. The web version supports bulk and individual search by industries, job titles, skillsets, companies, and many other criteria. Any data you find via this database can be exported in neat CSV files, making SignalHire one of the best tools for building narrowly targeted email lists. Further on, this data can be used for business development, marketing, even recruiting.
The browser extension is ideal in combination with LinkedIn. A simple click on the extension icon while looking over someone’s professional profile can pull all the database’s contact data. The latter has over 400 million verified professional contacts, so the odds of finding business contact information on someone you need are quite high.
Of course, such versatility comes at a price. However, none of the functional tools for pulling contact data are free. In contrast to most other services listed below, SignalHire has one of the best price/quality ratios, which is why we placed this service first. For starters, you get five free credits (searches) a month. On top of that, you can choose from several flexible plans that cost around $39-$49 a month.
Uplead
UpLead is another useful tool for B2B lead generation. Its functionality is similar to SignalHire — you can use UpLead to find business contact information and export it into CSV files. However, this database is not so vast — it has around 30 million contacts. The pricing is surprisingly not moderate, though. You will need to pay $99 a month for the essential mode. More advanced plans may cost up to $399.
Salesfully
One more useful tool that can help you find new business contacts and expand your professional network. Unlike UpLead, Salesfullly has a large database and moderate pricing. The billing logic is very simple — users pay just $29 a month. Besides, this service offers 100 first searches for free. After, a paid subscription kicks in. However, Salesfully databases is twice lesser than those of SignalHire — around 200 million corporate contacts. This could be enough, of course, but not for everyone.
Lusha
One more useful service that has quite a lot of verified contacts and a handy browser plugin. The only problem is the pricing, which could have been more moderate. Lusha offers 100 credits that directly translate to searches for $79. Alternatively, you can get 300 credits for $199. This plan supports team access — up to five different users can make use of this offer. Another drawback is that Lusha does not have a searchable database and only works with its Chrome extension. So, it might not be the best option for business development that relies on bulk searches. It is not a bad fit for recruiting, though — aside from its pretty steep pricing.
Hunter.io
Hunter.io is another example of a polished-up service that can help find new business contacts. The prices are very reasonable — it even has an entirely free plan that supports 25 searches. For more advanced functionality, you should be prepared to pay $49 a month — this plan will give you 500 searches. The most expensive subscription is Enterprise — $399 a month for 30,000 searches. Additional plans are $99 for 2,500 searches and $199 for 10,000 searches.
All are great and fair offers. However, Hunter only supports email lookup and verification. It can also search for company domains, but it does not support phone lookup and cannot offer links to social media accounts. All in all, finding an email of someone you’d like to contact is a good start. On the other hand, making a new business connection implies having a better picture of the person behind this email. So, if you are already willing to pay to get contact data on someone you do not know personally, it makes sense to invest in software that provides all relevant information on this person. This saves a lot of time on additional research and eventually improves the quality of your new connections.
Aeroleads
Aeroleads is another great tool that can find valid email addresses and does not charge you a fortune for that. The most basic plan is $49 for 1000 searches, and the most advanced one is $499 for 15,000 searches. An in-between option is $149 a month that translates to 4,000 searches. The pricing is fair, but the above tool (with pretty much identical functionality) is way more affordable in the long run.
As you can see, top sources to find new business contacts come with similar functionalities, but are very diverse in pricing. Obviously, tools that only look up emails are more affordable, and you should consider them. However, the best way to make truly meaningful connections is to get a larger picture of who these people are. So, it also makes sense to consider more advanced software, even if it costs a little more.
