The CRM market is valued at $36 billion. With more than 350 customer relationship management (CRM) tools out there, it’s no wonder there are countless tools you can integrate with them.
A CRM integration can range from calendar management to customer messaging. Many companies offer integrations for your CRM. So, how do you know which one to choose?
Which tools are best for sales prospecting with CRM? Keep reading to understand more about integration tools. And learn how to use them to level your sales efforts up a notch.
What is CRM?
A CRM is a customer relationship management system. This is a cutting-edge technology that allows you to manage relationships and interactions. You can manage prospective and existing customers with a CRM.
A CRM helps companies to streamline their processes. It also helps them to save time, increase efficiency, and improve relationships. Having all connections and conversations in one location will increase your customer service.
CRM’s offer detailed analytics. This helps to better understand your customers, leading to increased retention and more targeted marketing. It also allows for more streamlined communications between team members.
What is CRM Integration?
CRM integration is when you connect an external tool to your existing CRM. This can help you have more capabilities and increase functionality. There are many tools available to integrate with your CRM.
One reason companies do this is because sales prospecting with CRM can get complicated. By connecting an external tool, you can streamline and improve the process.
Different Types of Sales Leads
A lead is anyone who could become a potential customer, whether they are a business or a person. Both B2B and B2C companies have sales leads. There are three different types of sales leads. They are:
- Warm
- Cold
- Hot
Each type of lead comes with its challenges. Companies can find leads online, at trade shows, and through their website. Marketing campaigns are designed to generate leads that convert to sales.
Learn more about each one below.
Warm Leads
Warm leads are people or businesses who have interacted with your company. They may have signed up for an email list or joined your Facebook community. These leads are prospects because they want to know more about your products or services.
Cold Leads
A cold lead is someone who has never interacted with your business. They have never shown any interest in what you have to offer. They are dead to your company, hence the term “cold lead.”
Cold leads must be approached carefully. And they generally require more work and attention than a warm or hot lead. With a cold lead, you will be waiting for a while to get the sale.
If it ever happens. There are ways to nurture cold sales and we’ll outline them below.
Hot Leads
A hot lead is someone who is actively looking for a solution to the problem your company solves. They are highly interested in your company. They’ve already started conversations and are on the path to finishing a sale.
Top CRM Integration for Cold Prospects
The number of tools available to help companies to increase prospects is significant. There are tons available to help you share content, increase productivity, and improve engagement. Each tool can be used as part of a bigger strategy to increase the successes with cold prospects.
With so many options available, it’s difficult to determine which are the best. Each company has different needs and each integration tool offers different solutions.
Keep reading to understand the types of tools available. And discover a few examples of the top ones.
Tools to Share Content
Getting your content in front of cold leads is a must. But you don’t want to overdo it, right? Or send them the same information more than once?
With the following integrations, you can share content with prospects in a variety of different ways. And track how and what you send. Sharing content not only increases your chances of engagement, but it boosts your brand awareness.
This is a key component of turning a cold lead into a sale.
1. Social Media Integrations
Did you know you can integrate many of your social media platforms into your CRM? Social media is a vital part of anyone’s sales strategy, so having the insights within your CRM is important.
You’ll gain information about how users engage with your page and what content resonates with audiences. This is invaluable and will help guide your decisions.
2. Video Integration
Is video a key component of your marketing strategy? Do you want to educate and inform leads through videos? You can integrate many video platforms with your existing CRM.
This can help you to turn cold leads into warm or hot leads. You’ll have access to valuable insights about what videos are most popular. This will help you to engage with cold leads better.
Tools to Increase Sales Productivity
Revenue only grows when you generate sales. And the more productive your sales teams are, the more revenue you’ll get.
By using the following types of tools with your CRM, you’ll increase productivity across several sales activities. From cold calling to payment transactions, there seems to be a tool for everything.
1. Calling Tools
Most sales representatives know you have to connect with prospects and clients through video or chat. By integrating a calling tool, you can streamline the function. It will allow the information to be tracked within the CRM, enabling more strategic execution of the process.
Top calling tools include:
- Zoom
- Uber Conference
- Aircall
There are many others. The best software for your company will depend on what you specifically need for your prospective and existing clients.
2. Ecommerce Platforms
You can integrate your online e-commerce stores with your CRM! This will give you valuable data about your customer’s habits. And track interactions with new and existing customers.
3. Payment Platforms
If you use PayPal, Stripe, or another payment tool, you can probably integrate it with your CRM. This will make checking out even easier for your customers. It will also allow your CRM to automatically update when you sell to new people.
4. Gain Actionable Insights
Outreach.io is a tool used to automate the sales process. It manages workflows and allows you to manage sales cycles effectively.
You can build pipelines while discovering key insights needed to take immediate action.
Tools to Generate Leads
Generating leads is vital. And turning cold prospects into leads is just as important. The following tools help you to engage with cold prospects to turn them into leads.
Most of these tools will also work with warm or hot leads. Streamlining your lead generation efforts can only benefit your company.
1. Cold Emailing Software
Most companies are familiar with email marketing and newsletters. But there is another option and that is cold emailing. This is where you email cold prospects that you haven’t previously interacted with to sell your product or service.
There are many types of this software available to allow you to reach out to cold leads via email, text, and voice. A few companies include:
- Close
- Salesmate
- Salesflare
- Streak
- NetHunt
- Drag
Most of this software integrates with existing CRMs. And some come with a built-in CRM.
Reply.io
Reply.io is used to send cold emails through outreach and automation. It helps to convert cold leads to prospects. With it, you can also find new leads, engage with existing leads, and grow revenue.
Saleshandy
This tool is used as a way to save time by not sending emails to cold leads who will never turn into prospects. This intelligence tool measures the recipient’s behavior to filter which leads to engage with.
You can also increase conversions and personalize your engagement efforts. It even has a smart feature to know how to send emails to avoid spam filters.
2. Prospecting Software
If you have a third-party application that helps you to identify prospects, there’s a good chance you can integrate it with your CRM. And if you don’t have this type of software, why don’t you?
An example is LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You can use this tool to engage with leads through messages. You can integrate it with many CRMs to make it easier to manage your communications with prospects.
ZoomInfo
This software tracks your cold leads information. It also uses that information to recommend other potential prospects. It’s a great tool to help you better interact with potential leads who will buy from you.
Clearbit Prospector
This tool allows sales professionals to generate targeted leads from a database with 200 million contacts. There are several data filters you can include so you get your targeted audience narrowed down.
LeadIQ
This software saves sales professionals a ton of time. It’s a tool that allows users to capture leads from LinkedIn Sales Navigator or any website you use it on. LeadIQ helps sales professionals get in front of the right leads quicker.
Leadfeeder
Leadfeeder assesses your website visitors and their activities. It uses their activity to determine whether or not to qualify them as a lead.
3. Forms and Surveys
Another key integration for CRMs is the ability to question leads through forms and surveys. This can help you to get information about them to use for future marketing, sales initiatives, or prospecting.
4. Convert Cold Leads to Prospects
Mailshake is a top tool used in CRM integration. This is used to automate outreach for cold leads. This includes prospecting outreach via:
- Phone
- Social
The tool is designed to engage with cold prospects. And it has complex reporting so you can see what works and what doesn’t.
Tools to Increase Engagement
You want to try and engage all prospects, right? There are tools for that, too! The following software helps you to increase engagement for cold leads.
There are also tools to help you learn more about the impact of certain types of engagement, such as events. And some tools help you to create more personalized messages, increasing your chances of engaging cold prospects.
1. Live Chat
You can integrate a live chat feature to showcase on your website. This is a type of software that can serve as an assistant. Or it can communicate with visitors to get leads.
A common live chat tool is Intercom. With this tool, users engage with the software when they visit your website. And then you get a detailed report about the conversation and the customer’s information.
2. Event Tools
If your company participates in events, whether live or virtual, you may be able to integrate them with your CRM. This will give you insight into ticket sales, site visitors, and attendance. And help you understand the overall impact on your sales.
3. Messaging and Engagement Tools
There are many types of software available to send personalized messages to prospective clients. This increases your chances of a response because prospective customers will feel more valued and important.
These tools offer a variety of other components. One tool, Engage, allows you to automate and personalize the entire sales process. And has alerts to let you know when someone replies.
With Engage, you can also see when someone opens an attachment. You can build your team and use the given templates to level your sales communications up.
Reply
This tool allows users to automate emails to prospects. You can create a campaign that connects with your prospects over a few days. The artificial intelligence feature filters leads based on how interested they are in the messages.
It also suggests emails you should send for those leads that are most likely to convert.
Insidesales.com and Predictive Playbooks
This tool assesses your lead’s previous behavior to recommend outreach strategies. It also has a feature to allow your emails to never bounce and calls to go through.
TextMagic
TextMagic is a tool that allows you to interact with prospects via text messages. It allows you to send alerts, reminders, and confirmations once you have engaged with the prospect.
Crystal
This tool allows you to learn key details about your prospective leads to take your messages and personalization to the next level. This tool lets you know which communication style leads respond to best based on certain traits. And enables you to respond accordingly.
4. Interactive Conversations
Lemlist is an outreach software that lets you do a few different things. With it, you can:
- Cold call
- Generate automated follow-up
- Customize tasks
- Dial prospects
With the automated processes it allows, you can have interactive conversations through artificial intelligence.
Tools to Automate Processes
With automated processes, sales and marketing professionals can focus on key aspects of nurturing and converting leads. Building relationships with cold leads is a lengthy process that requires a lot of patience.
By automating a lot of the process, you are reducing the workload of your team members. This allows them to focus on warm and hot leads. Some key tools you can integrate are detailed below.
1. Connector Integrations
Some tools enable you to automate a lot of tasks. A top contender for this type of tool is called Automate.io. It allows you to automate more than 100 tasks within your CRM.
If that doesn’t save you time and money, what will?
2. Email Integrations
By integrating your email with your CRM, you’ll be able to follow up and see if a potential lead responds. This will also allow you to track any contact with cold leads.
3. Calendar Tools
Another key tool you can integrate with your CRM is a calendar management tool. These tools allow your prospects to book a meeting and they will directly update your calendar. This helps to avoid double booking.
Most of these tools allow you to take notes and send invites, too.
4. Team Communication Apps
Connecting your existing team communication applications, such as Slack, with your CRM can save you time. You’ll be able to access everything from one location. This will save time and energy during the day.
5. Customer Success Integrations
Do you offer a product or service that has problem tickets that arise often? This type of integration will help you track issues reported by your customers. Not only does this give you insight into areas of improvement, but it helps you to understand what issues other customers may encounter.
6. Document Integrations
Do you send contracts to your customers? Or create proposals for them? With a document tool, you can do this directly from your CRM. It will save you time and help you to streamline the process.
The customer’s information and documents will all be in one place. You’ll be able to sync data and have a clear view of where each customer is at in the sales process.
7. Building Backlinks
Postaga is a tool that helps you build backlinks. It’s also a sales outreach and engagement tool that allows you to identify new opportunities and reach out to prospects without sounding spammy.
The tool uses artificial intelligence to create outreach campaigns that also build your backlinks. A few examples include:
- Podcasts
- Blog posts
- Guest posts
- Mentions
- Reviews
- Resources
The tool reviews the success of each campaign and uses the data to make future decisions. They have a free 14-day trial available to test the system with your CRM.
Benefits of CRM Integration Tools
There are many benefits to integrating tools with your CRM. A few include:
- Increased productivity
- More sales
- Centralized information
- Managed communication
The tools available for CRMs can integrate calendars, allow prospects to book calls, and provide them with more information. All it takes is a few simple steps and your system is ready to generate leads.
Increased Productivity
With streamlined processes and communications, it’s inevitable that productivity with increase. Sales and marketing professionals won’t have to spend so much time on getting and managing leads with proper integrations. They will be able to focus on more important aspects, like nurturing and converting those leads.
More Sales
If your CRM integration isn’t helping you to increase sales, you’re doing something wrong. There are tools available to automate processes and build pipelines with minimal effort. Sales growth is a given with key tools.
Centralized Information
When communicating with prospects outside of a CRM, it’s easy to lose information or pieces of the conversation. You can integrate tools to allow for specific messaging and to track various parts of the sales journey.
Managed Communications
With tools to automate prospecting, the ability to manage communications just got a whole lot easier. There are countless tools available to help your company track and manage internal and external communications. This not only saves you time but also gives your company clarity on prospects and cold leads.
Who is CRM Integration For?
Any company that has a sales and marketing team could benefit from having a CRM. And the CRM can only get better when you integrate tools to streamline the functionality.
If your business wants a streamlined, efficient, and successful CRM with integrated tools, by not the hassle of setting it up, check out our outbound marketing services.
Get Expert Help with Outbound Marketing
Integrating tools with your customer relationship management software can make all the difference with your outbound marketing efforts.
At Thumbstop Media, we offer a comprehensive package that includes research and data to increase your opportunities. Our CRM integration will boost your leads and make it easier than ever to manage your contacts.
We’ll handle inbox replies, reporting, and copywriting. You won’t have to worry about dedicating hours to generating leads any longer.
If you are ready to streamline your outbound marketing efforts with CRM integration and get fast results, get in contact with us today.