How To Build A Sales Prospecting List In 5 Steps [+Tools]

Sales prospecting is finding and reaching out to potential clients who will likely buy your product or service. It is a crucial step in the sales process, as it helps you build a pipeline of qualified leads that you can nurture and convert into loyal customers. If you're short on time, here's how to build a prospect list quickly.

But how do you build a sales prospecting list that contains the right prospects for your business? Which tools can you use to make your lead generation more effective?

In this article, I will answer all the questions regarding perfect prospecting lists and how to find leads on LinkedIn. Here’s a detailed breakdown:

1. What is a Sales Prospecting List?
2. Benefits of Sales Prospecting Lists
3. How To Build a Prospecting List In 5 Steps?
4. 5 Best Tools To Build Sales Prospecting Lists
5. 2 B2B Prospecting List Excel Templates By the end of this article, you will clearly understand how to build a sales prospecting list that will help you generate more B2B sales leads and grow your customer base. Okay, let’s dive in!

What Is A Sales Prospecting List?

A sales prospecting list is a collection of potential customers that match your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer persona. You can use a sales prospecting list to reach out to potential prospects who are likely interested in your product or service and qualify them as leads for your sales funnel.

A sales prospecting list can help you generate more sales opportunities, increase your conversion rate, and grow your customer base. A good sales prospecting list should contain relevant and accurate prospect information, such as:

• Company name
• Company size
• Industry
• Company location
• Job title
• Contact name
• Email address (business and personal)
• Phone numbers
• Other notable information that can help you build rapport and address their pain points, such as company expansion plans, funding initiatives, technology stack, etc. A well-defined and organized list of prospects can help you save time and resources and improve your sales performance.

You can use a sales prospecting list to:

• Segment your prospects based on various criteria.
• Prioritize the most promising ones.
• Tailor your outreach and follow-up strategies accordingly.

Benefits Of Having Sales Prospecting Lists

Sales prospecting lists are essential to generate qualified leads that lead to meetings and, ultimately, conversions. By refining your strategy with your sales lists and prospect information, your team learns, grows, and develop Here are the benefits of having Sales Prospecting Lists:

1. More Customers: To reach a larger audience and attract more potential customers, resulting in more sales opportunities.
2. Better Targeting: Precise targeting, ensuring that marketing and sales efforts reach the right audience.
3. Higher Revenue and ROI: Higher conversion rates, resulting in increased revenue and return on investment (ROI).
4. Optimized Conversions: Higher conversion rates because leads are more likely to be interested in the offered product or service.
5. Better Insights: Maintaining a prospecting list provides valuable insight into customer behavior and preferences.
6. Channel Management: Management and optimization of sales and marketing outbound channels.

How To Build A Prospecting List?

Here is how to build a prospecting list in 5 easy steps:

1. Identify your Ideal Customer Profile
2. Build your prospect list on LinkedIn Sales Navigator
3. Export prospects with Evaboot
4. Find your prospects’ emails
5. Upload your prospect list in your CRM Let’s dive into each step in detail.

1. Identify your Ideal Customer Profile

The first step to building a prospecting list is to discover and define your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer persona. An ICP describes the type of company that fits the best to your product or service. A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of the individual decision-makers within your target companies.

By creating an ICP and buyer personas, you can narrow down your target market and focus on your business’s most relevant and qualified prospects. To create an ICP, you need to consider factors and demographics such as:

• Company size
• Industry
• Geographic location
• Revenue
• Growth stage
• Technology stack
• Pain points
• etc…

To create a buyer persona, you need to consider factors such as:

• Job title
• Goals
• Motivations
• Fears
• Preferred communication channels
• Decision-making process

You can easily create buyer personas with online tools like HubSpot’s Make My Persona or Xtensio’s User Persona Creator. You can also use surveys, interviews, or social media to gather prospect data and insights from your existing customers or contact lists.

To complete these steps, you must clearly understand what you are trying to sell. As a salesperson, you must grasp:

• What does your product or service do?
• The pain points it solves for your customers
• How do your existing customers like to use it?
• What outcomes can prospects expect from your product or service?
• How do these outcomes address the challenges and pain points of your users? Understanding your unique value proposition lets you identify which customers will benefit from your product or service.

2. Build your prospect list on LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Once your ICP and buyer personas are well-defined, you can look for them using LinkedIn Sales Navigator.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful tool for salespeople to quickly and easily identify and connect with potential customers. With Sales Navigator, sales reps can access an extensive database of prospects and leads, including detailed information about their job titles, company size, industry, and more.

The first step will be to build a list of companies matching your Ideal Customer profile. For that, you can use the account search filters:

• Headcount
• Location
• Industry
• Growth
• Etc… You can find other filters to find the companies that would be perfect clients for your business.

It’s time to save all these companies into a list:

1. Tick the checkboxes
2. Click “Save to list”
3. Click “Create New list”

Now, let’s find your buyer personas in these ICP companies.

1. Go to “Lead” search category
2. Go to the Workflow filter
3. Click “Account Lists”
4. Pick the list you just created All the people working in these companies will appear on the right.

Obviously, we don’t want to reach out to everybody. We must find our buyer persona inside that list. For that, we are going to use lead filters like:

• job title
• years in current position
• keywords search

Here, I added “CEO” to the job title filter, and LinkedIn gave me all the CEOs of the companies on my list. This is an easy and efficient way to identify the right buyer persona inside ICP companies quickly.

Once you are happy with a search, you can even save it. LinkedIn will alert new leads matching your search criteria every week. And here’s a useful tip: You can create a Persona in Sales Navigator by function, seniority, job title, and geography to quickly find the right leads and stop wasting time rebuilding searches. Great! Now that you have a list of qualified prospects, the next step is to export the data with a LinkedIn scraping tool.

3. Export prospects with Evaboot

To export your leads from LinkedIn Sales Navigator to a CSV file, you can use the Evaboot Chrome Extension. You can see a demo of the tool here:

Once installed, the Chrome Extension will add a new button on your Sales Navigator.

This button will allow you to export up to 2500 leads per day from LinkedIn Sales Navigator with all the data on their profiles on company pages:

• LinkedIn Profile URL
• Job title
• Job description
• Company Website
• Company LinkedIn URL
• First name, Last name
• Lead Location
• Company Location
• Company Industry
• Company Size
• Exact number of employees in the company
• Years in position
• Number of connections
• and more…

Evaboot is also a great tool for:

1. Cleaning the data (emojis, uppercases, typos)
2. Detect false positives in your search results
3. Scrape RGPD-compliant email lists and phone numbers

4. Find your prospects’ emails

Once you export the lead list into a CSV file, you can click on “Find emails” to find the professional emails of your prospects.

Evaboot will also verify these emails so you can control your bounce rate and protect your email reputation. Here is what the file will look like:

Safe means that we are 99% sure that the email exists. Riskier shows that the company’s email server is a catch-all, so we can’t say if the email exists.

If you also want phone numbers, you can use Evaboot with Datagma. That being said, lead data is not static. B2B data decays by 2.1% per month, meaning 22.5% of your exported leads could be outdated within a year. Job titles change, companies evolve, and outdated information leads to wasted outreach efforts. To solve this, Evaboot offers LinkedIn profile URL Enrichment: a tool allowing you to upload Linkedin URLs stored in your CRM to enrich your LinkedIn contacts with Sales Navigator data. How it works:

1. Log in to your Evaboot account and go to the “URL Enrichment” feature.
2. Upload an old list of LinkedIn or Sales Navigator URLs.
3. Name your CSV file
4. Launch enrichment.
5. Wait a few minutes while the data updates, then download your refreshed list as a CSV file.

And here you go! We recommend updating your lead lists every 3-6 months to maintain accuracy. This ensures your database stays fresh, relevant, and effective, so your sales efforts never go to waste.

For a visual step-by-step guide, check out the video tutorial:

5. Upload your prospect lists in your CRM

You got leads. You got emails. Now you have to store them somewhere. For that, you can use a CRM line:

• Pipedrive
• Hubspot
• Salesforce Pipedrive is a good fit if you are just getting started.

If you are a small marketing team you can go with Hubspot. If you are an enterprise with a really big sales team, you can go with Salesforce.

Once your leads are uploaded into your CRM, you can start doing manual outreach to these leads and keep track of your interactions with them by taking notes. If you want to save time, you can also use email and LinkedIn automation tools like:

• LaGrowthMachine
• Lemlist
• Expandi They allow you to automate email and LinkedIn messages and follow-ups so you can focus on building relationships with people who replied to you.

Since your prospecting list has LinkedIn profiles and emails, use both channels to contact your leads.

Here is a video showing how to use LaGrowthMachine to reach your prospects. Multichannel outreach will increase your chances of reaching out to your new prospects in all possible ways.

6 Best Tools To Build Sales Prospecting Lists

Building a sales prospecting list can be daunting, especially if you lack the right sales prospecting tools. Here, I will introduce you to 6 of the best tools to build a sales prospecting list building.

Let’s look at these tools and how they can help you create and manage your prospecting lists.

№ 1

Evaboot

Evaboot turns a Sales Navigator search into a clean prospecting list with verified emails in one click, which makes it the fastest way to go from search to CRM.

PriceFrom $9/month for 100 credits (emails included)

PlatformChrome Extension, Web (LinkedIn Sales Navigator)

Evaboot is the Chrome extension used in steps 3 and 4 above. It exports your Sales Navigator searches and lists to a CSV file, then finds and verifies the professional email of every prospect.

It also cleans the data and flags the leads that don’t match your search filters, so the list you upload to your CRM is ready to use.

Evaboot’s pricing is credit-based: plans start at $9/month for 100 credits. One credit covers one exported lead, verified email included, and unused credits roll over.

Export Sales Navigator leads with Evaboot

Features

• Lead and Account Export: export lead lists, account lists and searches from LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• Email Finder: find the professional email of every exported prospect
• Email Verifier: mark every email safe or riskier so you control your bounce rate
• Data Cleaning: removes emojis, fixes uppercases and corrects typos
• False Positive Detection: flags leads that don’t match your search filters
• URL Enrichment: upload LinkedIn URLs stored in your CRM to refresh them with Sales Navigator data

Pros

• Export up to 2,500 leads per day from Sales Navigator
• Email finder and verifier included in every plan
• Keeps old lists fresh with URL Enrichment
• Unused credits roll over

Cons

• Requires an active LinkedIn Sales Navigator subscription

№ 2

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

A must-have prospecting tool for leveraging LinkedIn, with advanced search filters, lead recommendations, and real-time alerts.

PlatformLinkedIn

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful sales intelligence tool that allows you to find and connect with prospects on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a must-have tool for any sales professional looking to leverage the power of LinkedIn for prospecting. You can start a free trial or request a demo on their website.

Features

• Advanced search filters: target ideal prospects by industry, location, company size, job title, and more
• Personalized lead recommendations: surfaced based on your preferences and sales goals
• Custom lead lists: save and organize prospects, then sync them with your CRM
• Verified contact data: access verified email addresses and phone numbers via Lusha integration
• InMail & personalized messaging: engage prospects directly within LinkedIn
• Real-time alerts: track job changes, content posts, and company news for timely outreach

Pros

• Built on the world's largest professional network
• Highly granular search filters make it easy to pinpoint your exact ideal customer profile
• Real-time activity alerts create natural, timely reasons to reach out
• Custom lead lists sync with your CRM

Cons

• Verified emails and phone numbers come through the Lusha integration

№ 3

Zoominfo

A comprehensive go-to-market intelligence platform that delivers high-quality B2B data to help you generate more leads, increase conversions, and grow revenue.

Zoominfo is a go-to-market intelligence platform that provides high-quality B2B data and insights.

Zoominfo is a comprehensive sales prospecting solution that can help you generate more leads, increase conversions, and grow your revenue.

Features

• Lead generation: Find new contacts, strong relationships, and quality leads.
• Customer engagement: Interact with customers through sales calls, email, phone outreach, and your company website.
• Chrome Extension: Easy company insight access directly from your contact's LinkedIn profile.
• Website visitor tracking: Engage with decision-makers who explore your business website.

Pros

• High-quality, comprehensive B2B data and insights.
• Multi-channel customer engagement tools covering calls, email, phone, and web.
• Convenient Chrome Extension for LinkedIn-based prospecting.
• Website visitor tracking helps identify and engage warm prospects.

№ 4

Wappalyzer

A web technology profiler that lets you find and qualify prospects based on their tech stack so you can tailor your pitch.

Wappalyzer is a powerful web technology profiler that helps you explore the technologies used by any website.

Wappalyzer is a useful tool for sales prospecting that can help you find and qualify prospects based on their web technology stack. Use it to tailor your sales pitch and demonstrate how your product or service can complement or improve their existing solutions.

Features

• Technology identification: detects web frameworks, CMS, e-commerce platforms, analytics tools, and more
• Technology filters: find websites using specific technologies or combinations
• Detailed tech profiles: get in-depth information about each technology a site uses
• CSV/JSON export: export results for further analysis or integration with other tools
• Browser extension: get instant technology insights on any website you visit

Pros

• Profiles the technologies used by any website
• Technology filters make it easy to build targeted prospect lists
• Browser extension enables on-the-fly research during browsing
• Flexible export options (CSV and JSON) simplify integration with other workflows

№ 5

Crunchbase

Crunchbase is a leading platform for researching private and public companies, giving you rich data and advanced filters to build highly targeted prospect lists.

Crunchbase is a leading platform for finding business information about private and public companies.

Crunchbase is a valuable tool for sales prospecting: it helps you find and research relevant, attractive companies and monitor the market to identify new opportunities or threats.

Features

• Company Profiles: access millions of profiles covering every type of company information for both private and public companies
• Advanced Search Filters: target companies based on various criteria
• Market Intelligence: get insights into the latest trends and news in your industry or niche
• Custom List Export: create and export tailored company lists and sync them directly with your CRM
• Third-Party Enrichment: enrich your data via integrations with Zoominfo, Lusha, Clearbit, and others

Pros

• Millions of private and public company profiles
• Powerful filters make it easy to pinpoint ideal target accounts
• Market monitoring helps surface new opportunities and threats
• CRM sync and data enrichment integrations streamline the prospecting workflow

№ 6

Lusha

Lusha is a contact data provider that finds and verifies prospects' emails and phone numbers, making it easy to connect faster and keep your CRM clean.

Lusha is a contact data provider that helps you find and verify prospects' email addresses and phone numbers.

Lusha is an essential tool for sales prospecting. It can help you find and connect with your prospects faster and more easily. You can also use it to improve your data quality and reduce bounce rates.

Features

• Accurate data enrichment: Automatically updates your CRM with accurate and valuable data.
• Dashboard analytics: Streamlines your team's performance and credit management.
• Chrome Extension: Adds decision makers to sequences and lets you email them with one click.

Pros

• Quickly finds and verifies both email addresses and phone numbers.
• One-click outreach directly from the Chrome Extension saves time.
• Improves data quality and helps reduce bounce rates.

B2B Prospecting List Excel Templates

When it comes to sales prospecting, having a structured and organized approach is key. An Excel prospecting template can be a game-changer for sales teams. It allows them to track leads, manage follow-ups, and streamline sales. Here are my two Excel templates:

1. Prospect List Template
2. Account List Template

1. Prospect List Template

A prospect list should contain the following:

• First name
• Last name
• Job title
• Company
• Email
• Email verification status That is the minimum you must have for a prospect list.

If you are serious about prospecting and your export data from LinkedIn, you should aim for this:

• LinkedIn Profile URL
• Email
• Email validity
• Job title
• Job description
• Company Website
• Company LinkedIn URL
• First name
• Last name
• Lead Location
• Company Location
• Company Industry
• Company Size
• Exact number of employees in the company
• Years in position
• Number of connections
• Company Type
• Company creation date
• Company description
• Company Specialities (Keywords describing what the company is doing)
• If the profile is open or not
• Profile Picture
• Company Logo

The more data you get in the first, the more data you can choose from to build your prospect lists. So, getting a tool that gives you a lot of data and selecting which data is relevant to your specific prospecting use case is better.

2. Account List Template

LinkedIn is also a great source of data for building account lists. You can extract account lists and searches from LinkedIn Sales Navigator with Evaboot. Here is the data you will get:

• Company Website
• Company LinkedIn URL
• Company Location
• Company Industry
• Company Size
• Company Type
• Company creation date
• Company description
• Company Specialities (Keywords describing what the company is doing)
• Company Logo

These templates can save you time and help ensure you don’t miss any opportunities. With fields for all the necessary contact details and notes on follow-ups, these templates provide a clear roadmap as you build your first sales process.

Conclusion

Building a successful sales prospecting list is critical for any business looking to increase sales and improve outreach. Understanding your ideal customer profile, collecting accurate data, and using effective tools and templates can help create a powerful prospecting list that drives results. And remember, the key to successful prospecting is continuous improvement and adaptation.

FAQ

How do I get a prospecting list?

Here are the 5 basic steps you need to follow to build a prospecting list quickly:

1. Identify your Ideal Customer Profile
2. Build your prospect list on LinkedIn Sales Navigator
3. Export prospects with Evaboot
4. Find your prospects’ emails
5. Upload your prospect list in your CRM

What is a prospect list in sales?

A prospect list in sales is a datasheet with potential customers’ names and contact details. These lists can be mobile contact lists or email lists. B2B sales teams use these lists to contact customers who match their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

What is a prospect list of customers?

A prospect list lists potential clients who might benefit from your products or services. Marketers may also call this their email list, but it doesn’t have to be email-specific.

What is prospecting and examples?

Prospecting is the process of finding and contacting qualified leads to convert them into customers. Sales reps do this one-on-one through outbound activities. For example, SDRs make cold calls, send emails, or use LinkedIn InMails to reach people who fit their Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to pitch their product or service.

What do I need to create a prospect list?

A good prospecting lead list should contain relevant and accurate prospect information, such as:

• Company name
• Company size
• Industry
• Company location
• Job title
• Contact Name
• Email address (work and personal)
• Telephone numbers
• Other pertinent information that can help you build rapport and address their pain points, such as company expansion plans, funding initiatives, technology stack, etc. A well-defined and organized prospect list can help you save time and resources and improve your sales performance.