The Best B2B Databases For Sales

It’s probably fair to say that B2B sales are never easy. And many would argue that it’s only getting harder.

But fortunately some parts of the job ARE getting easier – specifically, finding potential buyers to contact. That’s right! Finding B2B data is getting easier and easier – so lack of list isn’t an excuse

In this article we’ll look at the best B2B database providers. And explore some ways to find the company data you need to grow quickly, at the lowest possible cost.

Let’s get started!

 

Contact a Virtual Sales Assistant Instead

Before you jump straight into B2B contact databases, consider all your options first. A professional virtual sales assistant does a better job, with a lot less effort on your end. Here are some reasons this is a better method to find new customers.

Remote Sales Assistants Are Cheaper

Some data providers are insanely expensive – unconscionably so. Virtual sales assistants have already invested in dozens of B2B tools and databases. So you’ll get access to ALL the resources you need, instead of just one. And the cost can be MUCH

lower than some of the higher priced data enrichment tools.

Accurate Data Requires Humans

Even the absolute best b2b databases providers aren’t perfect. Some of the data is ALWAYS outdated, or otherwise inaccurate. And as a business looking to make a good impression, you can’t afford to have anything less than perfect data quality.

B2B data providers seldom check whether the decision maker left the company in the past few weeks. Or do email verification to check their contact is still accurate since they last checked.

The point is, to get strong data accuracy you need someone to MANUALLY review your data. Which is a time consuming process. So it’s better to hire a complete B2B data services solution than spending hours wading through a b2b dataset on your own.

The Government Is Your Friend

Even if you aren’t a huge fan of the government, sometimes they’re exceedingly helpful. Many industries are regulated in some way. So with some governmental help you can make a prospect list that perfectly matches your ideal customer profile in minutes, not hours.

A few months ago a client asked us to build a list of cannabis companies across Canada & the US. You won’t be surprised to learn the preliminary research only took a few minutes. Every legal store is already registered with various state and provicial governments, so the hard work is already done.

Linkedin Sales Navigator

It’s hard to discuss b2b databases without Linkedin’s Sales Navigator tool being a big part of the conversation. Linkedin boasts 875 million business professionals. And Sales Navigator gives you instant access to all of their users,expertly sorted as firmographic data.

Sales Navigator’s massive popularity stems from the size of the database. And your ability to find the right people using advanced filters.

Say you wanted to find CEO’s, who have been in the role for less than 90 days. Who work at firms with fewer than 10 staff, in Austin Texas. And are in the financial services industry. No problem! Sales Navigator has filters that will find those exact prospects for you.

It’s worth pointing out that many B2B data providers use Linkedin profiles as their ‘seed’ data. They use Linkedin to find people, track job changes,a nd then enrich their contact information from there. So if you only need basic contact details then it makes sense to start at the source.

Sales Navigator Chrome Extensions

OK, Sales Navigator is awesome. But there are some platform limitations that limit effective use of the data. For example, Linkedin doesn’t allow native CSV export. So if you wanted to transfer your prospects to a small business CRM, then that’ll be difficult.

Fortunately, there are 3rd party Chrome extensions that fill the gaps in Sales Navigator’s functionality. Using these extensions you can export your contacts for CRM. And if you want to send cold emails they’ll help you find email addresses, too

There are literally hundreds of Chrome extensions for Linkedin and Sales Navigator – far too many to list. And many of them are very, very good.

If you need a recommendation for an extension that’ll help you capture business contacts, here are 2 of our favorities.

EvaBoot: Many tools require you to click on multiple pages of profiles to select the ones you want. EvaBoot does a 1-click download to capture your entire Sales Navigator search.

Evaboot also stands out because they automatically verify your list to ensure your search results match your search criteria. And guess what? On a typical search, about 50% of your search results don’t perfectly match what you were looking for. Above I stressed the necessity of human checks for your data – now you know why.

Evaboot also does a very good job of finding email addresses that are almost always accurate.

GetProspect: Another good all-round tool for extracting business profiles on Linkedin is GetProspect. They’ve been around since 2016, and their product keeps improving with every iteration. They have an internal database of contacts that you can access, and it’s fast and easy to capture your target companies.

Local Data On Google Maps

By definition, local businesses are targeting prospective buyers who live or work nearby. Which means that when people have a problem they can solve, they want to be found.

With this in mind, virtually every local business is on Google Maps (Google My Business), Yelp, or the YellowPages. Which makes these sites something of a goldmine for local data.

And good news – you can tap into this treasure-trove of local company data pretty easily. Just use a Yelp or Google Maps scraping tool.

Say you want to contact restaurants in the Los Angeles area. Well, there are an estimated 30,800 restaurants in the city. So you’re going to have lots of contacts! If that’s too many you can narrow your search by postal code. Or even search by specific types of food (Mexican food… yum).

Try Outscraper

To get the data, head over to Outscraper and create a free account. If you’re only looking for a few businesses, your search will probably be covered under the free plan. Outscraper has no recurring subscription fees and you only pay for what you use (it’s really inexpensive).

In the image above you can see that the tool is incredibly easy to use. All I did was enter a target location (zip code 90210). Followed by the target search – mexican restaurants. And finally I limited the search results to 250 lines of company data so I didn’t use too many credits at once.

The search takes about 10 minutes. And afterwards you can just download the results in CSV format. Easy!

Technographic Data From BuiltWith

Sometimes the best way to identify your ideal prospects is by looking at what technologies they are using.

For example, if you’re selling into companies that do ecommerce, it would be massively helpful to have a list of companies that use Shopify!

BuiltWith makes technology searches as easy as a few clicks of a button. Just enter the technology you want to find, and ‘poof’ you get a massive list of websites that are using that technology on their website.

Access to technology insights are also helpful during the sales process. After all, the more you know about them, the better you can tailor your conversations to their needs.

Explore Paid Tools

If you can’t find what you’re looking for in the tips above, here are a list of account data tools that may help you find your potential buyers. Here’s a brief list of some of the best sales tools for small teams that want to grow quickly.

Clutch: has a huge list of companies across a wide range of business services (everything from call centers to mobile app development). Search for the industry you’re looking for and then further narrow with advanced filters. And Clutch will provide you with a list of companies that match your ideal customer profile.

ZoomInfo: If you’re looking for data enrichment it’s hard to escape this ubiquitous tool. With roughly 3600 employees, ZoomInfo has the technology and customer support to create a great product with great data quality. It’s worth noting they also own DiscoverOrg and RingLead. Their pricing is ‘bespoke’ and depends on your requirements. But by all accounts t isn’t cheap. So ZoomInfo is better suited for larger companies with extensive marketing budgets.

Lead411 : is an affordable search platform with access to over 450 million profiles. And in many cases Lead411 can provide direct dials. They’ve enhanced their core b2b contact database by providing add-on tools like email outreach and lead scoring. Lead411’s data set seems particularly strong in North America so if that’s where your target companies are located, then it’s worth a look.

Bombora: is a provider of intent data. They aggregate ‘intent signals’ to find companies that are in the bottom of the funnel buying stage. The idea is you can contact these companies at the right time – before your competitors know they are even looking. The promise is amazing! But it comes with a hefty price tag, so you’ve got to be able to capitalize on their technology. Bombora offers a free version if you’d like to see whether intent data is right for you.

Adapt: boasts a database of over 100m business contacts. One nice thing about Adapt is they provide technology tracking solutions. Making it a potentially easier ‘all in one’ solution for technographic research. Unfortunately Adapt doesn’t provide their pricing on their website.

What B2B Databases For Sales Do You Use?

So, what b2b contact databases do you use for your research? Would you recommend them? How’s the accuracy of the key data? What about ease of use?

I’d love to hear what you find works best. You can message me on Linkedin or send a message on our contact page.

Look forward to hearing from you!