Prospecting Tools Comparison Guide

How does it compare to other major tools?

HubSpot’s prospecting dashboard is designed to replace point solutions like Outreach and Salesloft. Without even getting into the functionality, there are a couple of key benefits that HubSpot prospecting has over these solutions:

Ease of use

HubSpot’s industry-leading user experience carries over to the prospecting tools, resulting in faster onboarding, better adoption, and fewer resources required to maintain.

Seamless integration

Because prospecting is built into the CRM platform, there is no need to connect the platforms and no loss of data between them. This is especially attractive to companies that are keen on consolidating their tech stack for cost reasons or to remove complexity.

It also means your team doesn’t have to switch between different tools to complete simple tasks, saving them time and preventing manual errors.

HubSpot acquiring Clearbit gives it an edge on other prospecting tools.

HubSpot recently announced its acquisition of B2B intelligence leader, Clearbit. While HubSpot did not reveal details of how Clearbit functionality will be incorporated into HubSpot, here are some things that a seamless combination of rich customer data and prospecting tools could do:

Determine buying roles automatically
Monitor leads for buying intent beyond your website
Update email addresses when contacts change jobs
Proactively suggest personalized messaging by combining AI with rich customer data

Does HubSpot Prospecting have the same functionality as other tools?

While having an easy-to-use and well-integrated set of prospecting tools is nice, it doesn’t mean anything if your team can’t complete the tasks they need to.

In this section, we’ll compare 9 common SDR tasks across HubSpot, Outreach, and SalesLoft (both integrated with Salesforce) to ensure HubSpot’s functionality is on par with other solutions.

Before we start, it’s important to note the differences in terminology between the platforms. We will be using HubSpot terminology for simplicity’s sake, but here is a table showing HubSpot terms’ equivalents on other platforms:

HubSpot	Outreach	SalesLoft	Salesforce
Lead	Prospect	Person	Lead
Company	Account	Account	Account
Deal	Opportunity	Opportunity	Opportunity
Sequence	Sequence	Cadence	Engagement

HubSpot didn’t repeat Salesforce’s mistakes with Leads.

When Salesforce created its Leads object, the idea was that a lead was a person record that didn’t have enough information to be considered a contact. SDRs would work leads and eventually convert them into full contacts. In practice, however, the Leads object is a dumping ground for bad data that companies don’t want to delete, but don’t know what to do with.

HubSpot’s Leads object works differently. It’s a subset of a contact that operates similarly to a deal. It shows a single journey through the SDR funnel from lead to opportunity. A contact can have multiple lead records associated with it as they reconvert and enter the funnel again. This allows you to track reconversions more accurately than using lifecycle stage or lead status alone.