Sales prospecting is a tough, time-consuming, and often tedious task. Most salespeople say it’s the toughest part of the sales process.
At the same time, prospecting is where you build your sales pipeline. It’s a necessary part of growing and maintaining revenue over time. Organizations that learn to excel at prospecting have staying power — and an edge over the competition.
That's where AI comes into play.
AI is a prospecting game-changer. It streamlines processes, gets you more leads, and ultimately boosts your revenue. And when applied right, AI helps you get more done while asking your team to do less.
Use cases for AI in sales prospecting
Not sure where to get started using AI in your outreach and prospecting processes? Consider the seven great use cases below.
Lead scoring
AI lead scoring is a game-changer.
Legacy lead scoring tech — found on platforms like Hubspot and Salesforce — is part-manual and part-algorithmic. It’s based on a combination of simple rules and manual inputs. Lead scores can be time-intensive to produce and often inaccurate, misjudging the value of leads.
AI fixes this. Unlike algorithms, it can use large language models (LLMs) and machine learning to analyze customer sentiment in a human-like way. It can quickly scan emails, meeting transcripts, and more for key signals and turn them into insights — much like a data scientist.
AI can also work with messy data. It excels at finding important data points and patterns with minimal manual input. This makes it a lot easier for human operators to use.
The result is that AI-powered lead-scoring tech can:
- Automatically tidy and prepare messy data for you.
- Pinpoint relevant and qualified leads with no human input.
- Predict customer churn, lead value, LTV, and more.
- Get better at lead scoring over time.
Video personalization
It used to be almost impossible to personalize each interaction with every prospect. Not today, though. AI is making it possible to record one video and then automatically personalize it for each recipient. This means you can send personalized videos to thousands of recipients in seconds.
Here's how it works:
- Create pre-recorded videos for different situations (e.g., one for cold outreach, a few for nurturing, one to showcase a product, etc.).
- AI tools like Sendspark will automatically add names to each video by pulling names from your data automatically. Prospects will hear “Hi, Brandon” or “Hi, Joe” without you having to record those greetings.
- Create dynamically updated landing pages that feature your prospects’ first names, company names, etc.
- Use dynamic video backgrounds to add contacts’ websites or social media pages to your recordings for more personalization.
The result? Each of your prospects gets a highly customized video that engages them and creates a meaningful connection. You get a powerful way to prospect at scale without coming across as robotic!
Follow-ups
Following up on leads is vital, even if they turn you down at first. The problem is that follow-ups are time-consuming and often lead nowhere.
Messaging automation platforms sought to solve this problem with prewritten messages and workflows, but it's clear to prospects that these types of emails are automated.
Enter AI! AI can do more than just send automated messages. It can:
- Help you draft outreach messages for pre-written sequences.
- Address what's been said before in a personalized way.
- Answer basic questions using part-canned, part-generated responses.
- Book meetings on autopilot using your chosen software.
Prospect profiling
Create a detailed profile of your prospects with the help of AI by analyzing data from various sources, such as social media, public records, and company databases.
There are two ways to go about this. You can ask tools like ChatGPT to look up public data on someone without your input. For example, here’s us researching Bill Gates for a hypothetical sales pitch:
The reply will feature some of your prospect’s preferences, values, history, and pain points - which you can use to tailor your messaging and pitch. Here’s what we got in our specific case:
Or you can find the information you need yourself and feed it to an AI tool.
For example, you could take someone’s LinkedIn profile, your personal notes, and anything else you have and save it as a file. You can then feed this file into ChatGPT and ask it to make a prospect profile for you. It'll sift through everything you found and turn it into a useful customer profile.
This is especially useful if you have a lot of data on a prospect. Let’s say your company’s been keeping tabs on a high-value prospect for years. AI can process vast amounts of research in seconds, helping you get up to speed quickly.
Writing pitch scripts
Personalized videos are an incredibly powerful way to prospect. They get 4.5 more clicks and 16 times more opens than other media types.
The problem is that prospecting videos require scripts. These scripts take a long time to write. The alternative — writing from scripts and templates — means they’re not quite as personalized as you want them to be.
Fortunately, AI is excellent at writing scripts. And with an AI video script generator, you can generate as many scripts as you need for all your prospecting needs. Just choose an objective and desired tone of voice and add any extra details you want to include, and a script is generated for you immediately:
Even cooler? The tool also automatically generates content you can send as an email along with your video.
Sentiment analysis
Sentiment analysis tools analyze interactions — emails, call transcripts, and async messages — using AI and machine learning technology. They then use their data to identify and measure sentiment towards the buying process in general and your specific offer.
The software can then tell you whether a customer is ready to buy — and whether they’re ready to buy from you.
Lead nurturing
AI makes lead nurturing both easier and more effective for sales teams. AI nurturing tools can reengage leads by:
- Sending them messages that sound like they were written by a human.
- Monitoring leads that have become unresponsive and re-engaging them when the time is right.
- Analyzing closed-lost opportunities to find new opportunities (e.g., a lead wanted a specific feature that you now have).
The 12 best AI tools for sales prospecting
If you're excited about the use cases above, it's time to start looking for tools that can bring those use cases to your organization. Here are our 12 favorite AI tools for sales prospecting.
1. Sendspark
Best AI prospecting for creating and sending personalized videos at scale.
Sendspark is a video messaging tool that lets you record one video and then personalize it for dozens, hundreds, or thousands of recipients in just one click.
Designed for sales, marketing, and customer success teams, Sendspark helps you cut through the noise, engage your prospects, and generate better results.
How it works
You get started with Sendspark by uploading an existing video or creating a new video. You can create a video using either Sendspark's desktop app for Mac/Windows or its Chrome extension — each allows you to record yourself, your screen, or both yourself and your screen.
In the introduction to your video, say "Hi, Watermelon," instead of a name. This lets Sendspark know which section of the video to personalize with the recipient's name. After that, the platform uses its voice-cloning technology to replace "watermelon" with the name of individual recipients.
Once your video is complete, you can get started creating individual, personalized videos by adding your recipients to Sendspark. You can do this in several different ways: enter them manually, upload a CSV, import from your CRM, or use Sendspark's API.
When you're finished, simply click "Generate videos," and Sendspark will create personalized videos for everyone on your list, each using the prospect's name in your voice in place of "watermelon."
In addition to personalizing the name in your videos, use dynamic backgrounds to automatically replace what's displayed on your screen in your video with your prospect's website or LinkedIn profile, and create unique thumbnails for each recipient that show a personalized caption or display their brand logo.
When recipients click on your video thumbnail, they're taken to a personalized landing page that includes a header with your company's branding, a custom message, and a call to action. You can even embed your calendar on the page to make it as easy as possible for viewers to book meetings after watching your videos.
Additional features
- Combine videos: Already have a great demo video you don't want to re-record? No problem! Just upload the demo video to Sendspark, record a new introduction, and then combine the two videos to take advantage of Sendspark's personalization features.
- Camera filters: Look and feel your best with virtual backgrounds, filters, and effects to touch up your appearance.
- Analytics and notifications: See who watched your videos, how far into the video they watched, and whether or not they clicked your CTA. You can also get real-time notifications when a recipient watches your video so you can follow up with them while you're top-of-mind.
- Request videos: Use Sendspark to ask customers to create a video for you. They can record instantly from their phone or computer — no installation needed! When they're finished, the video instantly uploads to your Sendspark account.
- Integrations: SendSpark has more than 75 integrations with the top email, CRM, and calendar platforms, including Gmail, HubSpot, Salesforce, Clay, Apollo, Marketo, Outreach, Salesloft, LinkedIn, Chili Piper, Calendly, Pipedrive, and more.
Pricing
Sendspark's pricing starts at $39 per seat per month and includes 200 dynamic video minutes, AI personalization, dynamic backgrounds, and basic CRM integrations.
Ready to get started with Sendspark? Sign up now, or request a demo.
2. Clay
Best AI sales tool for scaling personalized outbound campaigns.
Clay is a powerful AI tool with features that help you enhance lead generation, personalize sales pitches, and automate sales processes.
The tool uses artificial intelligence to automate finding and qualifying leads, resulting in an increased response rate.
The platform also enables research-driven personalization, allowing you to craft personalized messages based on enriched data that increase the quality of your responses and conversations.
Best for
Clay has features like AI-powered lead generation, personalization, and automation to enhance sales efficiency and effectiveness.
What you’ll like
The AI-driven software lets you access and connect 50+ data providers like Open AI, Google Sheets, and Debounce with your Clay account.
How it helps sales teams
When we talk about sales processes like data scraping, enrichment, and personalized messaging, sellers used to do it all manually. But Clay lets you automate these processes via AI.
With Clay Templates, sellers can automate their go-to-market process from end to end, eliminating the need for manual work and saving time and resources.
This includes processes like:
- Scraping data from multiple sources.
- Enriching the data collected with additional information.
- Writing personalized messages using AI-driven technology.
These enhancements in the sales process will help you focus on more strategic tasks rather than spending time on manual tasks.
Pricing
Clay comes with a free plan that offers 100 credits per month and some basic features. Apart from this, you can opt for a paid plan to increase your credit limit and get premium features.
3. Copy.ai
Best AI sales tool for automating processes with workflows.
Copy.ai’s Sales OS helps you build workflows and playbooks for your entire sales process, from lead generation to opportunity management.
The platform lets you scrape the web, particularly LinkedIn profiles, to study them and craft personalized messages for sales prospecting.
Copy.ai’s Workflow feature lets you manage the simultaneous creation of diverse content types, be it follow-up emails, sales pitches, or personalized tutorials.
Best for
Copy.ai allows sales teams to create workflows and automate parts of their sales process, like discovery, scoring, enriching, and analysis.
What you’ll like
Copy.ai is a one-stop shop for all your sales needs. One feature that sets it apart from its competitors is its vast library of integrations (more than 2,000).
How it helps sales teams
Copy.ai automates manual tasks for sellers, such as lead scoring, deal analysis, prospecting, etc. In other words, the sales OS, combined with AI, powers the entire sales process.
The platform offers a pre-built workflow to get started. These workflows are designed to help sellers with enriching lead information, lead scoring, inbound lead follow-ups, lead research, and more.
Pricing
Copy.ai comes with a free plan that offers one seat, 2,000 words in chat, and 200 bonus credits. But if you want to extend the limits and bring your team on board, you can opt for one of the paid plans it offers.
4. Warmly
Best AI sales tool for identifying the companies visiting your site.
Warmly lets you identify which companies are visiting your website so you can target them accordingly.
The platform lets you uncover which accounts demonstrate buying intent, see what they research, and identify which website pages they spend the most time on.
Best for
Warmly is best for prioritizing leads with AI and closing the deals that matter the most. Warmly’s AI lets you automatically follow up with hot prospects who visit your website and show high interest in buying from you.
What you’ll like
Warmly offers an out-of-the-box feature, Autonomous Revenue Orchestration, which combines intent data with actional data to capture buyers' interest in real time.
How it helps sales teams
The Warmly AI platform lets you de-anonymize website visitors. It has several key features that sellers can leverage instead of doing things manually:
- AI SDRs that auto-prospect for you
- AI buyer intent analysis
- Job change data for prospects
Pricing
Warmly offers a free plan with some limits and basic features for you to test the platform out. If you want to use the tool with premium features, you’d want to upgrade to one of its paid plans.
5. Lavender
Best AI sales tool for writing more personalized emails.
Lavender analyzes what’s working in your prospecting emails and gives you objective feedback.
The platform has an email coach that grades your email and gives tips on how to improve the copy. The tool will find and fix anything that hurts your chances of getting a reply, using generative AI and data from millions of emails.
The personalization assistant brings prospect data directly to your inbox. It suggests ways you can personalize emails based on data.
Best for
Lavender offers AI email-scoring capabilities that analyze email effectiveness and provide insights into areas that need improvement to increase reply rates.
What you’ll like
If you struggle to write good emails, Lavender is a lifesaver. It analyzes your emails and suggests what to add and what to remove, boosting your copywriting skills.
How it helps sales teams
Lavender automates the manual task of email analysis and optimization for sellers. It uses AI to suggest improvements in readability score, sentence length, subject line score, etc. to increase the likelihood of getting a response from your prospects.
Pricing
Lavender comes with a free plan where you can analyze 5 emails per month and use basic features. It has three paid plans to choose from.
6. Amplemarket
Best AI sales tool for prospecting at scale.
Amplemarket’s primary aim is to enhance sales efficiency and effectiveness. It offers smart lead generation features, high-quality B2B data, and an AI assistant to accelerate sales cycles and streamline prospect interaction at scale.
Best for
The platform leverages AI to identify ready-to-buy prospects and offers contact-level intelligence insights for high-value connections.
What you’ll like
The software lets you track job changes and promotions of your best prospects so you can make the most of new buying opportunities.
How it helps sales teams
Amplemarket automates the manual task of lead generation and qualification.
The tool helps sellers build a database of leads enriched with lead-gen tools. Sellers can search for leads by company or job title.
The platform also automates other sales processes like lead qualification, follow-ups, and email deliverability optimization.
Pricing
Pricing for Amplemarket is not publicly available.
7. Aligned
Best AI sales tool for collaborating with leads.
Aligned is a platform for customer collaboration, enabling sales teams to gain more visibility and control over deals.
With Aligned, you can create content assets like decks, case studies, product videos, etc., and share them in all customer workspaces you create.
Best for
By leveraging AI, Aligned keeps all your customer-sales team conversations in one place, so you can refer to them, see why a prospect didn’t or did convert into a buyer, and take action based on insights.
What you’ll like
Aligned lets you simplify B2B buyers’ journeys as it eliminates back-and-forth messaging between buyers and sales teams. The tool offers everything in one place:
- Virtual sales room for deals
- Share sales content with customers
- Streamline all discussions into topics
How it helps sales teams
Aligned helps sellers automate the manual task of deal orchestration and fulfilling sales quota.
The platform provides a single source of truth for customers and process standardization, enabling sellers to gain more control and visibility over their deals.
Aligned's AI-powered mutual success plan keeps sellers on top of deals, builds strong business cases with champions, and gets multiple stakeholders on board, enhancing sales engagement and customer experience.
Pricing
Aligned offers a free plan that lets you create 3 digital rooms per seat and gives access to some basic features. If you want to onboard your team, get more digital rooms, and unlock premium features, upgrade to one of its paid plans.
8. SetSail
Best AI sales tool for tracking sales activity.
SetSail is an AI-powered tool that gives you insights like deal alerts, meeting preparations, MEDDIC analysis, and more. These insights help you win deals effectively and increase pipeline growth, win rates, and quota attainment.
Best for
SetSail gives AI-powered insights, transforming data into improved sales behaviors and enhancing sales performance via signal-based selling strategies.
What you’ll like
The software keeps a healthy competition between your sales reps to see who closed more deals weekly or monthly. It’s a great way to keep your sales reps motivated and, at the same time, bring more business to your company.
How it helps sales teams
SetSail automates the manual task of logging relevant emails, meetings, and contacts in your CRM.
The platform automatically logs all relevant communication and contact details, such as job title, function, email address, and phone number, back to the CRM system, streamlining the admin work related to the sales process.
Pricing
Pricing for SetSail is not publicly available.
9. Seamless
Best AI sales tool to find verified leads.
Seamless is a real-time search engine for B2B sales leads. It gives verified contact information like cell phone numbers, emails, and direct dials to connect with your ideal customers.
Best for
Seamless AI has a powerful AI search engine that helps users connect directly with their ideal customers in real time, shortening the sales cycle and closing more deals.
What you’ll like
Seamless comes with a Google Chrome extension that automates data entry and list building. The extension can potentially save two to three hours of manual work, boosting sales team productivity.
How it helps sales teams
Seamless automates the manual task of building sales lists and the prospecting process for sellers.
Previously, sellers spent significant time manually researching and compiling contact information for potential leads, but Seamless AI's Autopilot feature automates this process.
Apart from building lists, the Writer feature of Seamless also helps you generate sales copy with AI.
Pricing
Seamless offers a free plan and three paid plans: Basic, Pro, and Enterprise. To know the pricing of paid plans, you must contact the sales team.
10. Regie.ai
Best AI sales tool for making the prospecting process easy.
Regie.ai is a sales engagement platform that helps streamline sales processes. It offers features like personalized sales messaging, AI-driven content creation, and automated prospecting tasks, making it a must-use tool for your sales team.
The platform’s generative AI feature lets your sales reps create custom sales sequences and personalized one-to-one sales emails.
Best for
Regie.ai is best for streamlining the sales process via generative AI and automating prospecting for sales teams.
What you’ll like
The software leverages AI to make prospecting decisions for you, making the process more scalable.
How it helps sales teams
Regie.ai automates the process of autonomously booking sales team meetings by integrating core RevTech systems like sales engagement platforms, CRMs, and intent providers.
This automation allows Regie.ai to handle the repetitive parts of prospecting, like audience building, content creation, and sequence management to show sellers the most engaged leads.
Pricing
Regie.ai's AI agents are $50k per use case regardless of the size of your sales team.
11. Champify
Best AI sales tool for monitoring prospect's job changes.
Champify monitors your former customers’ job changes and notifies you as soon as someone switches jobs or gets a promotion. The platform helps you surface new leads when former relationships move to ICP accounts.
Best for
Champify AI is best for generating new opportunities from your former customers. It comes with several AI features that let you predict and prioritize former customers based on their likelihood of buying from you again.
What you’ll like
By targeting former customers, Champify significantly increases the possibility of getting a reply from your cold outreach. That’s because former customers already trust your brand and are more likely to reply to your cold emails than a cold prospect.
How it helps sales teams
Champify can automate the manual task of tracking job changes and turning existing relationships into new business opportunities for sellers.
Before Champify, sellers used to spend a significant amount of time manually monitoring job changes and contacting former buyers.
Pricing
Champify has three paid plans to choose from that start at $1,250 per month.
12. Gong
Best AI sales tool for analyzing prospect conversations.
Gong is an AI-fueled revenue intelligence platform that gives you the most accurate understanding of prospect and customer interactions.
The platform captures the most comprehensive set of customer interactions in the industry: video calls, phone calls, emails, and more. It then uses gen AI to give you the complete context of these interactions.
Best for
Gong's AI helps businesses deliver accurate sales forecasts, enabling them to make informed decisions and plan for the future.
What you’ll like
Gong has its own AI that's been trained on billions of high-quality sales interactions. The AI doesn’t just summarize calls; it provides critical insights into customer interactions, like pain points, outcomes, and potential next steps.
How it helps sales teams
Gong automates activity tracking for sellers.
In the past, sales managers would have to manually track sales activity, which could be time-consuming and prone to error.
However, with Gong, all interactions, including phone calls, web conferences, and emails, are automatically captured and tied to customer records in the CRM platform.
Pricing
Gong doesn’t reveal its pricing on its website.
The right way to use AI for sales prospecting
AI tools are getting increasingly proficient at sales prospecting. They can nurture leads, gather customer intelligence, and even analyze sales reps’ performance for areas of improvement. This helps companies squeeze every last cent out of each opportunity.
That being said, there’s no replacement for a real, human connection. As more and more sales processes become AI-driven, it’s important to remember that.
