let web apps do the heavy lifting

“Web scraping doesn’t have to be a bad word when done responsibly, but responsibility needs to be defined,” says the Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative (EWDCI). EWDCI, an industry consortium of web data collectors, is on a mission to strengthen public trust, promote ethical guidelines, and help businesses make informed decisions about data aggregation. Today, even in a time of technological transformation, with Google’s dominance threatened by generative artificial intelligence, search engines are still useful for gathering company data and navigating the path to key leads. But these are not the only tools. Automated web applications can do much of the heavy lifting and allow sales teams to focus their efforts on creating the perfect pitch. However, if you find yourself scouring the internet for leads, it’s time to start over. Responsible selling keeps business relationships on track and reduces the number of unknowns that stand in the way of successful business.

Technical layoffs or musical chairs?

Lead Genius is a popular tool for generating personalized data sets and is used by a wide range of companies. The company stands at the intersection of B2B data, robotic process automation and data outsourcing. Clients include big names like Paypal (to understand your entire addressable market), Snowflake (to enrich your decision-making intelligence) and Salesforce (to improve your account-based marketing capabilities).

By running its data through Flourish, an online data visualization tool, Lead Genius shows how it’s possible to look beyond the headlines and shed light on events like the recent wave of tech layoffs. In this case, the analysis reveals how the top executives fired by Amazon, Meta, and Salesforce were snapped up by other large companies. And in some cases, the layoffs simply resulted in musical chairs — for example, Meta (which, according to Lead Genius , has cut its workforce by 1,257) hired 296 employees made available by layoffs in the tech industry. And Google took the opportunity to recruit 823 employees.

Of course, by keeping an eye on these staff movements, which, as Lead Genius points out, can be hidden behind the headlines, you can stay one step ahead of your sales competition when it comes to pitching your deals to the right prospects. And if you need more data, one option is to simply use more devices. Launched via a browser extension, RocketReach allows users to quickly discover potential customers on Google, AngelList, Crunchbase and LinkedIn. According to the company, RocketReach can provide real-time verified data to 700 million professionals across 35 million companies. Fields include not only name and title, but also years of experience, social connections, and company revenue and number of employees.

RocketReach has an email automation and outreach tool that can help you schedule and plan your email correspondence. And if you doubted the power of email in the age of social media, here are some statistics from RocketReach’s Staci Cretu to convince you otherwise, especially when it comes to retargeting campaigns, which can increase lead engagement rates by 400%. Remarketing can also be extremely effective. Have you ever received an email saying you left something in your online shopping cart? Cretu points out that nudging potential buyers can convert 60% of abandoned cars into sales. Personalization is a big thing. When you make customers feel that their needs are recognized, your sales manager will thank you.

Another option for sales research and market intelligence is Apollo.io, which claims to have a database of more than 250 million contacts across more than 60 million companies. The Apollo team emphasizes the need for good data management. Information becomes obsolete—especially during technology layoffs, as the Lead Genius study highlights. In fact, Apollo estimates that data corruption can be as high as 20% per quarter. Its platform has some useful features to fix stale connections, such as job change alerts that alert users to changes in target accounts.

Even after being given a whistle-stop tour of what’s available to help promote responsible sales, going back to using a regular search engine suddenly seems like hard work. And it doesn’t have built-in validation steps to save you wasted emails, calls, and research. Plus, when you combine contact automation with other sales enablement tools like email content optimizers and AI-driven writing tools, you really start to increase your chances of enabling responsible sales. And that’s not forgetting the benefits of using presentation metrics. There are responsible sales opportunities. Let web apps do the heavy lifting.