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Business development is a critical function in any company. Whether you’re connecting with new potential partners or identifying the perfect sales lead, it involves multiple steps and carefully crafted outreach to get results.
In this guide, we’ll show you some of the best business development tools and software to help you improve your prospecting, outreach, and pipeline management processes.
Let’s dive straight in.
What is Business Development Software?
Business development software is designed to optimize how you identify, reach out to, and close new business.
At each stage of your business development process, you’ll have different tools to help with different tasks.
The software we’ll look at in this guide will be categorized based on the main part of your workflow that it can help with.
Features to Look for in Business Development Software
1. Helps With a Repetitive Task
There are hundreds of business development tools on the market that can help with different parts of your role. Despite that, the most significant improvements to your daily workflow will usually come from two or three tools.
These tools will help you eliminate or automate repetitive tasks that have low value to your business and deal outcomes.
For example, it doesn’t make sense for you to spend hours manually sending emails to a list of 200 prospects from your Gmail inbox. Instead, it would make more sense for you to spend that time personalizing each email, then sending them at once.
Similarly, it wouldn’t make sense to spend hours on data entry when you could pay a small fee every month to have a tool automate that for you.
Automating repetitive tasks means you can spend more of your day on tasks that help you hit your business development goals, like starting conversations, building relationships, and moving prospects through your pipeline.
2. Ability to Add Team Members
Business development reps rarely work in a silo. So when choosing between tools, always consider if they let you work efficiently with your team or bring on freelancers your business is working with.
If you use tools that can scale with your business, you won’t need to upgrade or switch tools every six months.
You may also want to consider the price per seat. Some tools will let you add team members for free. Others will charge you for every seat you use. Consider the financial side early on, and you won’t need to bring new requests to your finance department every time you need to add a new user.
3. Integrations with Other Sales and Business Development Software
When choosing business development software, consider what you’ll need it to integrate with.
For example, you can’t use a CRM that doesn’t integrate with any other tools because it’s going to leave you having to manually update it every day, and inevitably, you’ll miss details.
One integration to look out for is Zapier. Zapier is a tool that lets you connect almost any two tools together, so if the tool you’re considering includes that integration, you know you’ll be fine building workflows that incorporate it.
Most business development tools offer a free trial or will run you through the product on a demo, so always take up those offers to ensure the tool you’re about to sign up for is going to offer real benefits to your business.
Business Development Software for Prospecting
1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator - Build Lists on LinkedIn
Build prospect lists and export them as you’re prospecting for leads on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is one of the first subscriptions a BDR needs in their toolbox. It upgrades your entire LinkedIn experience and makes it a better fit for prospecting and outreach.
Business development reps can use it to run advanced searches (with more filters than are available in standard LinkedIn searches) and quickly build lists of qualified prospects – either for sales purposes or partnership building – for your outreach.
Sales Navigator also enables you to get alerts for prospect or company profile updates, so if you’re monitoring a company and notice something changes, you can reach out with all of the context you need.
Another benefit of upgrading your LinkedIn account to Sales Navigator is that if you’re using LinkedIn more than the average user, it reduces the likelihood of your account getting restricted for exceeding any limits.
Pricing: From $79.99 per month per user
Pros:
Adds new prospecting tools to your account, such as the ability to save lead lists
Send InMail messages and have them prioritized on LinkedIn
The platform is used by decision-makers in almost every industry
Cons:
Doesn’t deliver verified prospect email addresses
Doesn’t fully remove search or activity limits
2. ZoomInfo - Powerful Way to Identify Prospects
B2B database platform with robust search filters and verified contact details for decision-makers.
ZoomInfo is a B2B database platform made for BDRs and sales teams that need to identify decision-makers relevant to their business and quickly build prospect lists.
The user interface makes it easy to run searches based on almost any requirement you’re looking for, from company size to revenue numbers, to the technology a company uses on their website. Within minutes you’ll have a qualified list of prospects, complete with contact data for each one.
ZoomInfo also has a buyer intent data tool that shows you buying signals that companies are making, which can help you time your sales outreach based on where someone is in their buying cycle.
Pros:
A fast and effective way to source prospects and leads at scale
Buyer intent signals help you reach out at the perfect time
Cons:
Expect a portion of the database records to become outdated every year
An expensive solution, but ideal for teams with multiple business development reps
3. BuiltWith - Identify Leads Based on Technology Profiles
Find the best people to reach out to based on the software used on their company website.
BuiltWith is a platform that helps you find the right person to reach out to by analyzing the technographic profile of their company.
For example, if you run an agency that sells services to e-commerce brands using Shopify, you can run a search for any website using Shopify as their e-commerce platform, and BuiltWith will show you a list of websites that match it. You can then reach out to those companies knowing they’re pre-qualified.
BuiltWith doesn’t always provide contact details, but once you know a company domain or the name of a decision-maker you want to reach out to and have a conversation with, you can use other email-finding tools to source a verified contact email.
Pricing: Starts at $295 per month
Pros:
Pre-qualify the people you reach out to by knowing the technology and tools they use
Download prospect lists in a CSV and easily import into other sales tools
Get notified if a company starts using a tool you’re monitoring
Cons:
Learning curve to get used to the UX
Reviewers on Capterra say that the lack of email addresses means you’ll still need other tools
Relatively expensive and other tools have competing features
Business Development Tools for Prospect Outreach
4. QuickMail - Start Conversations with Hard-to-Reach Decision Makers
QuickMail is a cold outreach platform that helps you start conversations with prospects and automatically follow up if someone doesn’t reply.
Cold outreach is a powerful way for BDRs to start conversations with prospects. Once you’ve created a prospect list, you can import them into QuickMail.
From there, you can write out personalized omnichannel campaigns with email, LinkedIn, call, and SMS steps fully personalized to each prospect.
Omni-channel campaigns drive higher response rates by creating multiple touchpoints with new connections.
Emails and calls don't seem so cold when they're a follow-up to a personalized LinkedIn connection request or message.
QuickMail also has free, native integration with a cold email warm-up tool called MailFlow, which shows you which folders your emails land in across the major email service providers.
Unlike most cold email tools, QuickMail was designed for teams. You can add multiple team members to your account so you can collaborate, and spread your sending volume across multiple accounts using inbox rotation.
Once you’re running a campaign you can easily track your cold email metrics in the QuickMail dashboard, and use those insights to improve any future campaigns you run.
It’s the best platform for BDRs who want to incorporate cold outreach in their workflow and start having more conversations with decision-makers.
Pricing: From $49 per month, free trial available - try QuickMail here
Key features:
Send personalized email and LinkedIn outreach at scale
Automatically follow up with people who don’t reply
Unlimited team members for your account
Unified inbox for easy oversight and shared reply-handling
Integrations with other business development tools like Aircall, NeverBounce, and Pipedrive
5. NeverBounce - Improve Email Deliverability
Verify that your email addresses are valid before reaching out to reduce the number of bounces in a campaign.
Running email addresses through NeverBounce is a mandatory step before you reach out to anyone in your business development campaigns.
The software will run checks to see if an email address is valid and can receive emails, and it has 98+% accuracy. It’s a simple but effective way to drastically reduce the number of email bounces in a campaign you send and improve your email deliverability.
NeverBounce also integrates with QuickMail, so you can verify your contact email addresses inside the platform as part of the cold email process. If an email can’t be verified, the prospect is automatically removed from your campaign.
Pros:
Reduce the number of email bounces in your outreach campaigns
Automatically formats your lead list and removes risky emails
Integrates with QuickMail to streamline your email verification workflow
Cons:
Users on Capterra say list processing times can take around 30 minutes
Accuracy isn’t 100% so you will still have bounces in your list
6. Aircall - Make Cold Calls Faster than Doing it Manually
Cold call platform to quickly work through large lists of prospects and measure cold call success rates.
Aircall is a cold calling platform that’s ideal for any business development rep that spends time on the phone every day talking to prospects and future partners.
You can upload a list of contacts into Aircall and then quickly work through your list with a power dialer. After each call, you can make notes in Aircall that you or your team members can later review.
Aircall also integrates directly with QuickMail, allowing you to add call steps to a cold outreach campaign. This means you can easily run multi-channel outreach without needing to jump between different tools. The integration also syncs your notes between the two platforms, so you don’t need to worry about missing any vital context for your calls.
It’s a powerful platform to improve your cold calling workflow and start more conversations.
Pricing: From $30 per month per user
Pros:
Direct integration with QuickMail to help you make calls and sync data between your lead generation tools
Power dialer helps you quickly call through a list of prospects without any hurdles
Integrations with CRM platforms so you can always have up-to-date prospect records
Cons:
Users on Capterra say the call quality isn’t perfect
Reporting is limited on the lower tier plans
Business Development Tools for Closing Deals
7. Sync - Close Deals Faster
Easily share files and securely manage the sales process with Sync.
Sync is a document collaboration tool that makes it easy to securely share and manage documents with colleagues, clients, contractors, and anyone else you need to send files to.
It comes with a range of features designed to simplify how you manage your files, including virtual data rooms, file portals with your logo, document collection and password protection, and enterprise-grade security features to keep your confidential data safe.
Sync also lets you control who has access to the documents you share, and you can revoke access anytime - even after sending.
Pricing: Get started for free. Pro plans with massive amounts of storage space and advanced file sharing features start at $6 per user per month.
Pros
Sharing files of any size is easier and more secure than email
Share documents and folders with groups of people
Control who has access and revoke anytime (even after you send)
Add your company logo when sharing
Cons
Limited sharing features on the free plan
Linux support limited to the web
8. Pipedrive - CRM to Manage Leads
Lightweight but powerful CRM to manage your relationships with customers, leads, and partners.
Half of a BDRs job is staying organized. If you always know where every contact and lead in your pipeline stands, what next steps you need to take, and what your previous conversations have been about, you can move them through your pipeline with ease. Pipedrive is an affordable but powerful CRM with all of the functionality you’ll need in your day-to-day workflow.
You can segment leads by pipeline stage, save notes, and collaborate with team members on the platform.
There’s also a direct integration with QuickMail, which means that when you add a new prospect to QuickMail, a new contact is automatically created in Pipedrive (and vice versa). If you make edits to a prospect record, it will update in both places.
Pricing: Starts at $14.90 per user per month
Pros:
Always know where your contacts are in your pipeline
Send emails to existing contacts without leaving Pipedrive
Integrates with Zapier to connect it with other tools used in your business development process
Cons:
Relatively standard CRM, so there are other CRM options on the market that offer similar features
9. Calendly - Schedule Meetings with Prospects
Easily book meetings with prospects and avoid no-shows with automated meeting reminders.
Calendly is a tool that lets BDRs easily schedule meetings with prospects. You send them a link, and they can book at a time that works best for you, and them.
The best thing about Calendly is that it streamlines a process that sometimes takes multiple emails to confirm and risks slowing down a deal-making process.
If you include your Calendly link in your email signature, prospects you reach out to with cold email can book a slot on your calendar without even needing to reply, assuming they like your value proposition. When they do, they’ll be automatically removed from any campaigns you’re running.
Pricing: From $8 per user per month
Pros:
Integrations with all major calendar providers
Automatically emails prospects to remind them of your scheduled meeting
Gives prospects control over when they schedule an appointment with you
Cons:
Including a meeting link in emails can affect email deliverability
Can feel impersonal if you send a scheduling link without context
10. Gong - Analyze and Improve Your Demo Calls
Conversation intelligence to help you make the most of every call with a sales lead or customer.
Gong is a revenue intelligence platform that helps BDRs record and analyze calls and conversations then surface track engagement signals and get feedback on them.
The platform automatically transcribes your call, which makes it easy for you to ensure you don’t miss any details in your follow-ups. As well as that, after you’ve had a call, Gong will make suggestions like asking more questions, giving them more details about pricing, or sending a follow-up email to keep the prospect engaged.
You’ll be able to consistently improve how you approach calls and work through deals.
Pricing: Custom based on your business development team size
Pros:
Automatic call transcription so you can focus on your prospect rather than taking notes
Tracks questions, sales objections, and prospect feedback so you can improve future calls
Call recordings that you can share with team members
Cons:
Not made for small teams, all plans require you to have multiple seats
Can be overkill for some businesses
11. Beaconstac - Networking Tool For Sales Teams
Beaconstac's digital business card solution offers a way to connect and network with prospects and clients. By creating personalized digital business cards, one can effortlessly share their contact information while showcasing their brand identity through customizable features.
With the ability to include a wealth of information and tailor the design to match their brand's aesthetics, this solution is a valuable asset for simplifying the contact-sharing process.
Beaconstac integrates with over 4000+ applications, including Google Analytics, making it easy to track the card's performance from the dashboard. Using this analytical data, you can tweak the information on the card to gain better results without any delay.
Pricing: The Solo plan is priced at $6 per month per user.
Pros:
In-depth card analytics provide valuable insights on scan counts and saved contacts.
Efficient bulk creation functionality for improved productivity.
Seamless integration with sales Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, enabling client journey tracking.
Compliance with industry-leading standards, including SOC-2 Type II and GDPR.
Cons:
The base doesn't offer bulk creation or template creation. The user has to choose an advanced plan for this.
12. Loom - Record Personalized Videos to Send Prospects
Easily share key information, product demos, or answers to questions with personalized videos.
Loom is a helpful tool for improving communication as a business development representative. You can record short videos and record your screen, then instantly share a link with your prospect for them to view your video in their browser.
It’s perfect for those times you need to record a short product demonstration or highlight a feature your prospect is asking about in their emails to you.
You can even test sending personalized video recordings to prospects in your opening cold email to improve engagement, as prospects will instantly see you’ve personalized your outreach to their specific company.
Pricing: From $8 per user per month
Pros:
Use video to show off product features in an engaging way
Avoid sending multiple paragraph-long emails and condense key information in a personalized video
Edit recordings in a simple browser interface and share them with a link
Cons:
Prospects may still want you to share information in text form so they can forward it to their team
Links in emails could affect deliverability
Wrapping Up - Best Business Development Tools
The tools in this guide are going to be a good addition to any business development tool stack.
They’ll help you automate repetitive and usually time-consuming tasks, freeing you up to spend more time talking to your leads and generating new opportunities for your company.
Before signing up for these tools, always try them out with a free trial first to see if they’re a good fit.
You can sign up for your free trial of QuickMail today and see how it can help you automate your cold outreach and start more conversations.
