3
9 Comments

What tools do you suggest for prospecting?

What is the sales tooling stack you would recommend to an early stage startup founder?

posted to Icon for group Sales
Sales
on February 13, 2024
  1. 1

    The advice to not over-tool is right. But the real problem isn't the number of tools — it's that they don't coordinate. Snov.io finds the lead, but it doesn't know what your sequencer did. Your sequencer doesn't know if the person visited your pricing page. So you're still the coordinator.

    We ended up building PitchGale to close that loop — lead finding + verification + AI-written emails + behavior-based follow-up in one place. Still in private beta but happy to share more if useful.

  2. 1

    The pairing of 'runs locally' + 'no API keys' is undervalued positioning. It speaks to the technical buyer who has already been burned by SaaS tools that changed pricing, added rate limits, or went down at the wrong moment.

    The one-time purchase model makes sense when the tool does a defined job well. What's the job this tool does?

  3. 1

    Hey

    I built outbound lists for startups for 4+ years and the process was tedious and expensive. I'm sure you'll face the same struggles.

    We had to:

    1. Scrape Sales Navigator or Apollo with one tool
    2. Find the emails with another tool
    3. Verify the email deliverability with another tool
    4. Find the phone numbers with another tool
      (...)
    5. Clean and segment the list in Excel

    Having a license with all these tools was expensive and wrangling CSVs between them was time consuming.

    I built a tool where you can do all of these steps (sourcing your leads, finding the emails/phones and company information, cleaning your list, creating your personalized outbount content with AI...) in one single platform. You would get access to a lot of B2B data providers without having a license with them.

    Let me know if you'd be interested in trying the tool. It's called Airscale. Theres a free trial and I'd be happy to add additional credits to your account if that helps a fellow Indie hacker out. I launched 2 weeks ago and will write a post tonight here in IH to give additional insights!

    Some additional tips:

    If you're on a budget, Sales Navigator offer a 1 month free trial. Microsoft also have a startup plan that allow you to have 4 months of Sales Navigator at -75%. It's the best B2B database by far. This is where the data is the freshest.

  4. 1

    Don't over-tool.

    If you're <$50k MRR all you need:

    • Snov.io
    • Sales Navigator (optional, only if you sell B2B high ticket or if your buyer is Enterprise)

    Don't bother with cold calling via phone. Unless you've done it for years, chances are you'll suck at it and it'll depress you.

    More than tooling, you should be thinking about a framework and how to ace this. Tooling is easier. Think email copies, structuring your sequence, A/B testing, and how to target the right ICP - these are the real deal breaker.

    Past $50k MRR you can be far more surgical.

    But for now, keep it simple.

  5. 1

    Crunchbase if you're targeting B2B startups. Also heard great things about Clay.

  6. 1

    Doesn't take much IMO. Here are some free tools I've used when doing sales for my startup:

    • Yesware for emails
    • Attio for CRM
    • phone to make calls
    • Linkedin to prospect
    • Hunter.io to validate emails before sending
    • Zoominfo / Lusha ( if you have funding )
    • Outreach.io ( If you have funding)

    Hope this helps!

    1. 1

      Thank @jesus_ That's a quite a list, do we need all of those tools? Could we use just one tool instead?

      1. 1

        Yeah, if you're starting out from zero and you're just trying to see if you get a sale, you can use Google Sheets for your CRM and LinkedIn for prospecting.

        If you're scaling things up you might want a CRM like HubSpot or Attio and an Email automation tool to send email campaigns.

Trending on Indie Hackers
Your build-in-public audience is not your market. I learned the difference the slow way. User Avatar 230 comments Built a "stocks as football cards" thing. 5 days in, my launch tweet got 7 views. What am I missing? User Avatar 33 comments How to automatically turn customer feedback into high-converting testimonials User Avatar 27 comments Why Claude Skills Are Becoming Important for Tech Careers User Avatar 25 comments Spent months building LazyEats AI. Spent 1 day realizing I have no idea how to get users. User Avatar 21 comments Week 10+11: PDF cluster, blog launch, 143 indexed, and a new compression feature User Avatar 19 comments