Sales Strategy

How to revolutionize your lead gen with a sales lead database

lemlist team
LAST UPDATED
April 9, 2024
READING TIME
7 min.

Prospecting at scale can take hours out of your day - not to mention the number of tools you have to use to find and verify leads’ contact information.

That’s why one of the most effective tools in the modern salesperson's arsenal is a sales lead database.

This powerful resource streamlines the process of finding, contacting, and converting potential customers, which means more revenue and business growth.

Here’s everything you need to know about sales lead databases, and how to use lemlist's biggest B2B lead database to streamline your lead generation! 👇


What is a sales lead database?

A sales lead database is essentially a centralized collection of data about potential customers or clients. It’s based on leads’ contact details, industry, company size, and more.

However, a sales lead database is more than just lists of data. It's a dynamic tool that can help you find and contact potential customers, thereby streamlining the sales process and driving business growth.

You can use this data to:

→ generate more leads
→ close more sales
→ save time & money

What are the benefits and functions of sales lead databases?

At its core, a sales lead database is a digital repository of data about potential customers.

Here are some of the benefits of using one, and how it can boost the effectiveness of your cold outreach efforts:

1. Streamline your sales process

Instead of hopping from one tool to another in order to find leads’ personal and company data, verify their contact information, contact them, and convert them into paying customers - you can use a sales lead database that has millions of verified contacts ready to go.

2. Improve your targeting

B2B sales lead databases come with filters that allow you to narrow down your prospects based on the personas that are most likely to buy your product or services.

3. Increase conversions

With better-targeted leads and more time to email them, you can tailor your outreach efforts to meet their specific pain points. This leads to more replies, more meetings, and more sales.

How to choose the best B2B sales lead database

Keep these in mind to make sure you’re picking a database that meets your specific needs:

1. Data Quality:  The database should contain accurate, up-to-date, and comprehensive information about potential leads. This includes contact data such as email addresses and phone numbers, as well as company details and industry information.

2. Database Size: A larger database typically means a wider pool of potential leads, increasing your chances of finding the right prospects for your business.

3. Pricing: It's important to consider your budget and understand what features and capabilities are included in the pricing before you purchase. Keep in mind the money you’ll be saving by being able to unsubscribe from other lead-generation tools that will no longer be necessary.

4. User-Friendliness: The platform should be easy to navigate and use. Advanced search capabilities, filtering options, and intuitive interfaces will make it easier for you to sift through the lists of contacts and generate more leads.

5. Advanced features: These may include targeted filtering options, comprehensive search capabilities, and the ability to integrate with other tools such as your CRM or marketing automation platform. It should also provide reliable contact data, including email addresses and phone numbers, to facilitate your outreach efforts.

Now, let’s take a look at how you can save time, access millions of potential buyers, and get verified emails with a B2B sales lead database.

How to use a sales lead database to find, contact, and convert your ideal buyers in 1 place

Here’s how to use a B2B lead database to start converting more leads.

By focusing on defining your target audience, creating ideal customer profiles, using verified lead data, and personalizing your outreach, you can maximize the potential of your leads database.

We’ll give you examples using the lemlist B2B leads database.

1. Define your target audience

One of the first steps in using a sales lead database is defining your target audience.

This process involves identifying the demographic, geographic, and psychographic characteristics of your potential customers and their industry. This helps you tailor your marketing efforts to the specific needs, intent, and preferences of your product’s users.

This is what makes them convert.

Once you have your target audience set out (use this guide to buyer personas if you need more help), use your B2B leads database to filter for the persona you’re looking for 👇

To get as specific as possible, filter your search by targeted criteria, such as technology, company size, industry, or location. This helps you target prospects that are aligned with your ideal customer profile.

2. Find and verify your lead data

Without a leads database, you’d need anywhere from two to five different tools to collect your leads, find their emails, verify their emails, and then ultimately contact them.

With your leads database, you can complete this step within the lemlist app.

Simply find the leads you want out of 450+ million contacts, and use lemlist's Email Finder and Verifier to get 80%+ of their valid email addresses.

If you’d like to go even further, you can combine social media and website data with the information from your database, and add steps like LinkedIn messages and contacts to your campaigns.

3. Send personalized outreach campaigns

Once you've defined your target audience and verified their contact info, it’s time to craft customized outreach campaigns.

Using the email addresses and phone numbers from your leads database, create personalized emails and phone calls that resonate with your potential users.

When you combine your leads database with a tool like lemlist, you can directly import your leads into highly converting multichannel sequences that are powered by AI.

If you want to take your campaign to the next level and boost reply chances

→ add advanced conditions that will auto-adjust your sequence steps based on your leads' interactions with your message

send your campaign from multiple sending accounts to reach 4x more leads without a risk of landing in the spam folder

Sales outreach pros can use tools like lemlist to define their target audience, create ideal customer profiles, use social media as an extension of lead data, and launch customized outreach campaigns.

Next, let’s discuss how to keep your data up to date:

Keeping your lead data relevant, updated, and reliable

The accuracy of your data can greatly influence the success of your lead generation and conversion efforts. Let's go through the best way to keep everything up to date, and how you can combine your lead data with your automation tools.

The importance of frequent lead data validation and updates

As time passes, the data in your leads database can become outdated or irrelevant. Contact details change, companies evolve, and customer preferences shift.

So, if you’ve created the database yourself or are using a tool that does not do this for you, you’ll need to regularly check the data for accuracy, remove duplicates, and update any outdated information. This helps you maintain the accuracy of your database.

If you’re using the lemlist's b2b lead database, each lead has already been verified by lemlist - so you won’t have to worry about this step!

Synergy between lead databases and CRM/marketing automation tools

Another key aspect of maintaining relevant and reliable lead data is the integration of your leads database with CRM and marketing automation tools. These tools can help streamline the process of updating and validating your data, saving you time and resources.

If you weren’t already aware, CRM and marketing automation tools can automatically update contact details, track interactions with leads, and provide insights into customer behavior.

By integrating these tools with your lead database, you can ensure your data remains accurate and relevant, which enhances your lead generation and conversion efforts.

With lemlist’s lead database, you can already reach out to leads directly from the database and scale your outreach without an entire operations team!


The Key Takeaways

In 2024, cold outreach requires:

1. Finding verified contacts that will reply to you
2. Sending them hyper-personalized campaigns

But, traditionally, this involves:

❌ wasting hours switching between tools
❌ spending money on costly tech hires
❌ outdated & unverified leads’ information

Luckily, lemlist just dropped the biggest & most accurate B2B lead database! 🎉

→ Access pool of 450M+ potential buyers
→ Use 25+ advanced filters to find your ICP
→ Get their verified emails with a single click
→ Send AI-powered multichannel campaigns
→ Accelerate your sales process like never before

P.S. With each lemlist plan you'll get free tokens to find leads! Sign up for lemlist now to get your first 100 free leads:

lemlist team
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G2 Rating
Price
Best for
Standout feature
Con
4.9
star
star
star
star
star
$30/mo
$75/mo
$2,999/mo
Large, distributed sales teams
AI evaluation precision, gamified KPIs
Lack of tracking system
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Sales operations and finance teams
Powerful configurability
Limited training resources and complex to navigate
4.4
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Mid-market and enterprise businesses
Comprehensive incentive management
Potentially high cost and steep learning curve
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
$15/user/mo
$40/user/mo
Enterprise: custom price
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Steep learning curve
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Collaborative teams
Connected planning
Complexity and steep learning curve
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with complex sales structures
Complex incentive compensation management (ICM) with high efficiency and accuracy
Complexity for smaller teams and potentially high costs
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies who want to automate commission calculations and payouts
Simplicity and ease of use
Lack of features like redirection
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
$30/user/mo
$35/user/mo
Custom: upon request
Businesses that need a comprehensive and user-friendly sales compensation management software
Ease of use and adoption
Lack of ability to configure the product based on user needs
4.8
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with modern sales culture and businesses who want real-time insights
A built-in dispute management and real-time visibility
Users say it works slowly, customer support is slow
4.9
star
star
star
star
star
$30/user/mo
$50/user/mo
Smaller sales teams
Powerful automation
Lesser user base and average user interface
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with scalable needs
Automated Commission Calculations
Lack of filtering by date, no mobile app
ERP vs. CRM
ERP
CRM
Summary
Backbone of a business's internal operations.
Backbone of customer-centric interactions and operations.
Goal
To centralize and streamline core business processes in a company.
To increase customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty, and boost sales.
Focus
Internal operations and processes across departments (finance, accounting, inventory, supply chain, HR, and sales).
All interactions with leads and customers.
Manages
Internal business data like financial data, inventory levels, production details, supply chain, HR info.
All customer data like contact info, purchase history, communication history, customer preferences and more.
Users
Finance, accounting, operations, supply chain, and HR departments.
Customer-facing teams like sales, marketing, and customer service.
Benefits
Streamlines operations, improves data accuracy, enhances decision-making, boosts collaboration, increases productivity.
Improves customer relationships, increases sales, strengthens customer service, personalizes marketing campaigns, provides insights.
Price
$150 per user per year on average.
$10 to $30 per user per month on average.
PRM Tool
Rating
Feature
Pro
Con
Mobile App
Integrations
Free Plan
Pricing
4.65
star
star
star
star
star-half
Org-wide alignment
User-friendly layout and database
Suboptimal as a personal CRM
square-check
Lack of tracking system
square-check
Team: $20/month
Business: $45/month
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Social Media Integration
Easy contact data collection
No marketing/sales features
square-check
Lack of tracking system
square-xmark
7-day trial
$12/month
4.75
star
star
star
star
star-half
Block Functions
High customization capability
Not a dedicated CRM
square-check
Limited
square-check
Plus: €7.50/month
Business: €14/month
N/A
Open-source
Open-source flexibility
Requires extensive manual input
square-xmark
Limited
square-check
Self-hosted
$9/month or
$90/year
3.1
star
star
star
Simple iOS app
Ideal for non-tech-savvy users
iPhone only
square-check
iOS only
Limited
square-xmark
1-month trial
$1.49/month or
$14.99/month
3.6
star
star
star
star-half
Smart Contact Management
Feature-rich and flexible
Reported bugs
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
7-day trial
Premium: $13.99/month
Teams: $17.99/month
4.4
star
star
star
star
star-half
Customizable Interface
Customizable for teamwork
Pricey for personal use
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
Standard: $24/member
Premium: $39/member
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Integrated Calling
Integrated Calling
Too sales-oriented & pricey
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
14-day trial
Startup: $59/user/month
Professional: $329/user/month
4.8
star
star
star
star
star
Business Card Scanning
Business Card Scanning
Mobile only
square-check
Limited
square-check
$9.99/month
4.45
star
star
star
star
star-half
160+ app integrations
Comprehensive integrations
No free app version
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
14-day trial
$29.90/month or
$24.90/month (billed annually)
Capterra Rating
Free Trial
Free Plan
Starting Price (excluding the free plan)
Maximum Price (for the most expensive plan)
Best for
4.5
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-check
14-day
square-check
€15/month/seat billed annually
€792/month/3 seats billed annually + €45/month for each extra seat
Versatility and free plan
4.2
star
star
star
star
square-check
30-day
square-xmark
But it offers reduced price to authorised nonprofit organisations
€25/user/month
€500/user/month billed annually (includes Einstein AI)
Best overall operational CRM
4.3
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-xmark
square-check
Limited to 3 users
Comprehensive incentive management
€52/user/month billed annually
Small-medium businesses and automation
4.5
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-check
14-day
square-xmark
€14/seat/month billed annually
€99/seat/month billed annually
Sales teams and ease of use
4.1
star
star
star
star
square-xmark
square-check
Limited 10 users
$9.99/user/month billed annually
$64.99/user/month billed annually
Free plan for very small teams up to 10
CRM goal
Increase the sales conversion rate for qualified leads from marketing automation campaigns by 10% in the next 6 months.
SMART Breakdown
1. Specific: It targets a specific area (conversion rate) for a defined segment (qualified leads from marketing automation).
2. Measurable: The desired increase (10%) is a clear metric, and the timeframe (6 months) allows for progress tracking.
3. Achievable: A 10% increase is possible based on historical data and potential improvements.
4. Relevant: Boosting sales from marketing efforts aligns with overall business objectives.
5. Time-bound: The 6-month timeframe creates urgency and a clear target date.
Actions
Step 1: Refine lead qualification criteria to ensure high-quality leads are nurtured through marketing automation.
Step 2: Personalize marketing automation campaigns based on lead demographics, interests, and behavior.
Step 3: Develop targeted landing pages with clear calls to action for qualified leads.
Step 4: Implement lead scoring to prioritize high-potential leads for sales follow-up.
Step 5: Track and analyze campaign performance to identify areas for optimization.
Outcomes
Increased sales and revenue
Improved marketing automation ROI
Marketing and sales alignment
Data-driven marketing optimization
Table
CDP Software
CRM Software
Approach
Data-centric
Customer-centric
Focus
Interactions across various channels and touchpoints, both online and offline.
Sales, marketing, and customer service interactions.
Functionality
Automatically collects, organizes, tags, and makes data available in real-time.
Helps businesses track customer interactions, sales pipelines, prospects, and service requests.
Goals
Personalized customer experiences across all channels.
Better customer relationships, streamlined processes, and improved profitability.
Benefits
Data integration, management, and accessibility, allowing for detailed analysis and segmentation.
Better communication within teams and with customers by organizing information about customer interactions and history.
Data Handling
Handles both identified and anonymous data, stitches together various data points.
Deals primarily with identified customer data.
Use Cases
Personalized marketing campaigns, targeted advertising, content customization across multiple channels.
Managing campaigns and leads, enhancing customer service, providing better customer support, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Examples
Insider, Bloomreach, Salesforce Marketing Cloud CDP
HubSpot, Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional, and Zoho CRM
CRM
Free plan
Best feature
Best for
Con
1. HubSpot CRM
square-check
Sales automation
Sales teams
Up to 1,000 contacts
2. Insightly
square-check
Custom fields
Basic needs
Not enough info about the free plan
3. Agile CRM
square-check
Deal and sales pipeline tracking
Small teams
Up to 10 users
4. Zoho CRM
square-check
Lead and contact management
Businesses of all sizes
Limited to 3 users
5. ClickUp
square-check
Unlimited tasks and unlimited members
Personal use
Up to 100MB storage
6. EngageBay
square-check
Live chat
Small and midsize enterprises
Up to 1,000 branded emails per month
7. Bitrix24
square-check
Unlimited users and 5 scrum teams
Big teams
Up to 5GB of cloud storage
8. FreshSales
square-check
Easy to use and simple setup
Beginners
Up to 3 users
9. Mailchimp
square-check
Very beginner friendly
Marketing teams
Send up to 500 branded emails per month
Type of Affiliate Marketing
Unattached
Related
Involved
Format
Paid advertising
Social media or YouTube channels
Dedicated website or blog
Focus
Quick income
Your niche
Your audience
Engagement with your audience
square-xmark
square-check
square-check
square-check
square-check
Very close connection with your audience
Pro
Little effort
Higher credibility thanks to your niche
Long-lasting and scalable
Con
Paid ads cost a lot
Potential for bias since you don’t use the thing you promote
Require time, effort, and dedication

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