Agency biz dev tools.
Get the right tools and resources to get to the next level.
Sales engagement (outbound)
Tools for engaging cold prospects. Typically these are NOT for inbound marketing and will NOT replace your CRM.
Email-based sales engagement.
SmartLead is the cold email platform for 2025 and beyond - it's built to help users be successful in a world where deliverability is the primary challenge.
Pros
Best in-class for optimizing deliverability.
Integrates seamlessly with Clay.
Easy to use, simple interface.
Awesome support and community.
Add many users without additional investment.
Cons
No LinkedIn automation.
Not built for big-ish sales teams.
Fewer direct integrations than other platforms.
Pricing
$94/mo to do most of the stuff you need to do;
add'l add-ons for deliverability management and dedicated IPs.
Multi-channel sales engagement.
Apollo is both a robust data provider and sales engagement platform. It does everything for better, faster, cheaper than weightier competitors like ZoomInfo or Outreach.io.
For more on Apollo, check out my interview with Principal Product Manager Matt Lincoln.
Pros
Data and sending in one place.
Robust features, including LinkedIn automation and phone-based tasks.
Many integrations.
Built for to accomodate teams large and small.
Cons
Complex interface and learning curve.
Interface changes often.
Dynamic pricing and lack of price transparency.
Gets expensive to add multiple users.
Pricing
$99/mo per user to get enough data to make a dent
(but again, dynamic pricing can affect this).
LinkedIn sales engagement.
PhantomBuster is our favorite platform for scraping LinkedIn data and automatically engaging prospects on LI. We trust them most because they know how to stay within recommend activity limits and avoid getting your account banned.
Pros
LinkedIn focus
Clean, easy interface
Pre-built use cases
Cons
Not a full-on engagement platform, so have to couple with another product.
Pricing
$59/mo
Data
In the age of AI and rapid change, our advice:
Be agile + draw from many wells > long-term contracts...
AI-driven data sourcing and enrichment.
Not really a data vendor, but platform for sourcing, enriching, transforming, and using data from a multitude of possible sources. Instead of hammers or nails, Clay is a worktable.
Pros
Innovational agentic AI capabilities.
Replaces an army of VAs and human data scrapers for data enrichment.
Build almost any campaign via publicly available data.
Cons
Big learning curve.
Can get expensive if you don't tread carefully.
Pricing
$134/mo... but you want the $314/mo plan to do cool stuff (ie. enough credits to make a dent, integration with platforms like SmartLead, etc.)
Data based on your relationships and connections.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is pretty much the only game in town if you want to build campaigns to the people you know, might know, or have loose connections to.
Pros
Required for relationship-based campaigns.
Get data from where it originates - most B2B data vendors are scraping LinkedIn.
Cons
Need other tools (see PhantomBuster) for making data useable for anything other than LinkedIn paid InMail or ad campaigns.
Pricing
Advanced Plan @ $149/mo per user
Pros
Robust data spanning business emails, phones, addresses and more.
Great value - provides 80% of what heavier-weight providers do for a fraction of the investment.
Very low bounce rates on valid emails.
Cons
Data accuracy may vary depending on vertical.
Dynamic pricing means that some Apollo plans make it harder to export data, depending on when you join.
Summary
As a data provider, Apollo is sufficient and great value for most agency outreach needs. If you use Clay, piping in Apollo data via API will ultimately save a lot of credits / money.
Pricing
Advanced Plan @ $149/mo per user
LinkedIn data scraping
PhantomBuster is our favorite tool for getting data out of LinkedIn. As a data scraper, we typically use it for:
A. Sourcing account data for use in Clay to enrich further, or Apollo to find people data and run campaigns.
B. Getting data for building relationship-driven campaigns. ie. contacting 1st and degree connections.
Pros
Make LinkedIn data useable in campaigns.
Complies with best practices to keep account safe.
Cons
Not a full-on sales engagement platform, so have to couple with other tool(s) for multi-channel campaigns.
Pricing
$59/mo
Email Domains and Deliverability.
Getting emails to land in the right place is a bigger part of the game than it once was. For most of our agency clients, sending volume isn't massive, which makes things easier.
Set up sending domains quickly and easily.
InfraForge is a service that allows you to register domains and set up mailboxes for individual users quickly and easily. They also give you a dedicated IP across your account (ie. multiple domains sit on the same IP).
We typically set up 5-10 InfraForge domains ahead of launching new campaigns. We continuously warm up all of them, and leave five on the back burner and use the remaining for outreach.
Pros
Quickly set up sending domains.
Easy to use interface.
Dedicated IP (one across account).
Attentive support.
Cons
Possibly worse deliverability than Google and MS Office.
Have to manually add domains in many engagement platforms.
Pricing
$4 per mailbox per month + registration costs
Domain warming (standalone)
Continuous warming is a key part of maintaining positive deliverability. Even if you're not using SmartLead for sending, you can use it a standalone warming tool.
Pros
Our favorite warming tool
Warm many domains at once without additional investment.
Attentive support.
Cons
Pricier than some lighter-weight warming tools.
Pricing
Basic Plan @ $39/mo + SmartDelivery @ $39/mo
CRMs
Where you maket to your audience and progress deals.
Best-in-class marketing automation.
Hubspot is great, but many agencies feel obligated to get it.
Getting value from Hubspot means fueling it with content and traffic. If your audience is small, Hubspot can be like renting an 18-wheeler to move your one-bedroom apartment.
When you're ready for it, you won't be learning "Hubspot" as much as you will be learning marketing automation as a skillset.
With that in mind, a simpler solution might make sense...
Pros
Clean interface.
Advanced marketing automation.
Cons
Big investment.
Learning curve.
Pricing
$1,300 per month (for full stack)
Track dealflow.
Pipedrive is a solid platform for tracking deal stages and re-engaging prospects.
Pros
Simple pipeline manager for progressing deals.
Plays well with others - lots of integrations.
Cons
Not built for advanced marketing automation.
Pricing
$69/user/month
Proposal Optimization
Save time on proposals and close more deals.
Scope out projects fast and enlarge budgets by letting clients up-sell themselves.
Pros
Designed specifically for marketing agencies and professional services.
Saves time with reusable proposal templates and productized service components.
Seamlessly integrates with CRMs like HubSpot, Pipedrive, and Zoho.
Cons
Requires a shift in mindset from static PDFs to interactive proposals.
Some agencies may need to adjust their sales process to maximize its benefits.
Pricing
$99/month
Sales calls and follow-ups.
Tools for 1:1, "deep funnel" sales engagement.
Detailed follow up emails
(and much much more...)
Claude has nearly infinite uses, but in a biz dev context, we use it to create detailed follow up emails for prospects after sales conversations, which is a game changer.
Our process:
1. Record call via Fathom (see below)
2. Copy/paste transcript into Claude
3. Input prompt asking for a bullet pointed recap that specifically addresses all objections and concerns
4. Return email draft.
5. Edit and send (5 min or less).
We also use Claude inside of Clay to enrich data and create dynamic email copy.
Pros
Better for business stuff than OpenAI.
Cons
Worse for fun stuff than OpenAI.
Like other AI tools, data is not realtime.
Pricing
$18/user/month
Recording calls to fuel AI use cases (per above)
Our preferred tool for recording calls over Zoom and other teleconference platforms.
Pros
Record calls.
Cons
Interface is kind of messy.
Pricing
$15/mo/user
Automate 1:1 follow ups to prospects in pipeline.
Rebump is a simple tool we've used for years within Gmail. You BCC a custom address and Rebump will continue with a sequence if the recipient does NOT reply. It's a great tool for "hey, did you get this" follow-ups on a 1:1 basis.
Pros
Automated follow ups for 1:1 prospects.
Cons
Simple tool, doesn't integrate easily with CRMs.
Pricing
$10/mo/user
Screenshare videos in sales process.
We're using Loom more and more in our sales process because it's quicker and easier than writing emails, and videos offer an emotional context and build a connection.
A few uses cases:
-Answering questions and objections received via email.
-Creating welcome videos for new clients.
-Providing feedback to salespeople.
Pros
Create screenshare videos quickly and easily.
Cons
Glitches slightly more than similar platforms.
Pricing
$10/mo/user
Want help choosing the right tools for your agency?
In a short diagnostic call we will:
1. Assess your unique situation, including target market, service, and team resources.
2. Recommend specific software tools based on your situation.
3. Give you all of the details on our training program, designed to help agencies land appointments through outbound.
Affiliate disclosure:
For certain tools we may receive a small commission. Some context: 1. Since most tools have affiliate programs we have our pick of the litter and we only rec the ones we know and use everyday. 2. There is no additional cost to you and often there are exclusive deals. 3. Sometimes partnerships give us direct lines into these companies so we can help our clients when needed.