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Lead Generation Software FLS: Top Tools for Fire, Life, and Safety Companies to Find Qualified Leads and Grow Sales
Erika Carmichael
Imagine that you’re a sales rep at a Fire, Life, and Safety (FLS) company wearing too many hats. The one thing you need more of is qualified leads.
You know the feeling of chasing down leads that go nowhere, spending hours on the phone, or sending out emails that get no response. It’s a time-consuming process that leaves you feeling like you’re getting nowhere fast – and your sales manager is starting to “breathe down your neck.”
But what if I told you there’s a way to simplify this process? A way to attract and engage potential customers already interested in your services?
With the right lead generation tools, you can. These tools take the guesswork out of finding leads and make the whole process easier, faster, and more efficient.
In this article, we’ll discuss the best lead generation software used by Fire, Life, and Safety companies. We’ll cover the tools, tactics, and strategies for attracting a steady stream of new customers so you can focus on what really matters—closing deals and growing your business. We will also explore different lead generation software to help you choose the most suitable one for your specific needs.
What is Lead Generation?
Lead generation is the process of attracting and engaging with your target market to the point where they want to give you their information—whether it’s signing up for a newsletter, downloading a white paper, filling out a form, or contacting your sales team.
In general, we refer to “lead generation” as the process of attracting inbound leads (or people trying to find your products and services) and then qualifying those leads to determine if they are a good fit for your business.
One effective tool for gathering leads through landing pages is the use of lead capture forms. These forms help businesses capture visitor information, integrate with marketing and CRM systems, and boost conversions.
For FLS companies, we’d recommend an outbound lead generation approach. Outbound lead generation involves targeting and engaging (through prospecting and outreach) potential customers who have already shown an interest in FLS products and services.
This could include building tenants, commercial property owners, building managers, facility directors, or any other decision-makers responsible for the safety of their property.
But whether your messages generate a response or not will greatly depend on who you message, what you say, and when you reach-out to them.
The Benefits of Lead Generation Software
B2B marketing and sales processes are different from B2C options in that they necessitate longer sales cycles and require more consideration from a larger pool of decision-makers. However, one thing that always stays the same, whether it’s B2B or B2C, is that you’re still selling to people. And people tend to make their buying decisions based on emotion.
For fire, life, and safety sales reps, this means reaching out when they’re in the market and ready to buy. B2B lead generation in this space is more about timing than almost anything else because you know someone constructing a building will need FLS systems installed; you just don’t know when.
This is where lead generation, sales intelligence, or property intelligence solutions can deliver “buying signals” to show you when to reach out.
We’ll get into each of these platforms in the next section, but intent data and buying signals let you know when to make contact with a decision-maker by analyzing what they’ve been looking for online. These signals allow you to:
- Identify Prospective Customers: Identify prospective customers who are interested in your services.
- Engage with Prospects: Connect with your prospects genuinely by understanding what they want, which will boost your chances of converting them into sales.
- Build Relationships: Build relationships is about establishing trust and credibility- with data and buying signals, you can serve as a timely “trusted advisor” rather than a sales person taking “shots in the dark.”
- Simplify Sales Processes: Every salesperson dreams of going directly to the decision-maker. This means getting past gatekeepers, navigating through endless voicemails, and trying to catch the prospect at the right time. With lead generation software, you can cut through all that red tape and get straight to the decision-maker.
So that’s how these tools can be beneficial, providing valuable insights to improve your marketing strategies and lead generation efforts. Now let’s dive into the tools themselves.
Types of Lead Generation Software
Sales Intelligence Software & Property Intelligence Software
When it comes to prospecting and lead generation, sales and property intelligence platforms stand out as the most accurate and fastest way to identify and contact decision-makers. These tools provide detailed insights and data to efficiently target the right prospects. Additionally, they can seamlessly integrate with customer relationship management systems to enhance lead generation, contact management, and overall sales process automation.
Sales Intelligence Software:
Sales Intelligence software is most notably used for selling into companies (or accounts). This type of marketing software often focuses on gathering and analyzing data about potential leads, including their company data, behaviors, and purchasing intent. Sales Intelligence helps sales teams understand their prospects better and tailor their outreach efforts accordingly.
Property Intelligence Software:
Property Intelligence software was only used by real estate professionals just a few years ago. Today, these tools have in-depth information about properties, including ownership details, tenant information, permit data, transaction history, and more that can be used to find new leads and close deals.
Convex: Bridging the Gap between Sales Intelligence and Property Intelligence
Convex is a hybrid platform that combines sales intelligence software with a property-focused interface, similar to the maps app on your phone. Specifically designed for modern commercial services sales teams, from FLS and HVAC to roofing and solar, Convex offers an all-in-one lead generation solution that simplifies the sales process.
Here’s How It Works:
- Log in to Convex and Check the Signals: Utilize Convex’s Signals (our proprietary buyer scoring system) to identify who is ready to buy in your market.
- Search and Identify: Look for specific accounts or contacts by searching for a type of building, contact name, job title, account name, property address, or tenants.
- Engage with Ease: With just two clicks, use Generative AI trained on the prospect’s buying signals and your company data to send emails or draft phone call scripts (or scripts for Loom Videos).
- Automate Follow-ups: Set up automated reminders or add prospects to your pipeline for seamless follow-up.
According to Salesforce, lead research and prospecting consume about 21% of a top sales rep’s time—almost 2 hours per day.
Convex can handle those same tasks in just 3 to 5 minutes. This means FLS sales teams can connect with 10 to 20 accounts in the same time period a rep using traditional tools would need to reach just one.
One of our real FLS customers, Jeff Scalise, Sales Manager at Koorsen, had this to say:
“Work life has improved for me and my team (using Convex) because it’s really cut down on the time that it takes to research customers and actually send our emails. I would recommend Convex’s Generative AI email product to other companies because it is superior and provides a tremendous solution to the industry’s issues.”
For more details, you can watch the full testimonial here.
Other Leading Sales and Property Intelligence Tools
In addition to Convex, several other noteworthy sales intelligence and property intelligence tools can enhance your lead generation efforts:
- Cognism: Known for its accurate B2B data, Cognism helps sales and marketing teams identify key accounts and build successful pipelines. It offers verified emails and phone numbers, ensuring you connect with the right people.
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator: This tool provides a robust database of leads, allowing you to filter, save, and contact prospects with ease. It’s a valuable resource for building relationships and expanding your network.
- Reonomy: Specializing in property intelligence, Reonomy offers extensive data coverage for commercial real estate properties. It provides ownership data, tenant information, and transaction history, making it a powerful tool for property-focused businesses.
Once you have what we’ll call our “front-end” or customer-facing lead gen tools, which help you identify and reach out to prospects, there are a myriad of other tools to choose from. The question is, what are you trying to achieve?
Feel free to skim through this next section since it’s going to be a bit lengthy. In fact, you can always come back to it if you notice any gaps in your lead generation process.
Website Visitor Identification Tools
Knowing who’s visiting your website is the first step to understanding your customers. Tools like Leadfeeder help you track visitor behavior, giving you insights into their interests and how they’re interacting with your content. By identifying companies that visit your site Leadfeeder lets you engage with high potential prospects and optimise your outreach and conversion.
Lead Data Collection Tools
To build relationships with prospects, you need to know who they are and what they need. Overloop (formerly Prospect.io) is a great tool for finding email addresses and running multi-channel outbound marketing campaigns together. D & B Hoovers accelerate sales by using data and analytics to help you build your list and connect with prospects faster. Both tools give you the data you need to refine your lead generation.
Email Address Lookup Tools
Finding the right person at the right company can be a winner. Tools like Hunter.io and Voila Norbert let you find email addresses and contact details by simply typing in a person’s name and company. Reply.io and Skrapp take it a step further by integrating with LinkedIn so you can keep your pipeline full of accurate contact information. Datanyze adds even more value by giving you contact information and company details so you can warm up cold outreach with personalization.
Email Follow-up Tools
Follow up is key to converting leads into customers. Boomerang for Gmail lets you schedule emails and get reminders if you don’t get a response. HubSpot Sales and Yet Another Mail Merge do similar and let you track email opens and follow up with prospects. These tools make sure no lead falls through the cracks and increase your chances of sale.
Lead Generation Tools for Email Marketing and Landing Pages
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the best ways to engage with potential customers. ActiveCampaign, MailChimp and Brevo (formerly SendinBlue) are all powerful platforms that offer email automation and a suite of email marketing tools together. These tools not only track leads but also nurture them with targeted personalization and move them down the sales funnel.
Landing Page Creation and Lead Capture Tools
Your landing page is often the first interaction a potential customer has with your business so it needs to make a good impression. Tools like Unbounce, Instapage and Leadpages offer drag-and-drop builders to create custom, landing page builder and pages to capture leads. ClickFunnels and SeedProd take it further by integrating sales funnel features and WPForms lets you create lead gen forms on your WordPress site.
Marketing Automation and CRM Tools
If you want to integrate lead gen into a broader marketing strategy all-in-one solutions like HubSpot, Adobe Marketo Engage and Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) offer a lead generation tool, management, email automation and analytics. Keap and SharpSpring do similar and cater to small to medium sized businesses looking to streamline their sales and marketing.
These tools facilitate the lead generation process by ensuring efficient management of activities like webinar registrations and follow-ups.
Sales Process Automation and Live Chat Tools
Sales Process Automation Tools
Automation can save you hours of time on mundane tasks so your sales team can focus on closing deals. Make.com (formerly Integromat), IFTTT, and Zapier are platforms that automate specific actions based on triggers. OnePageCRM and Nimble keep it simple with streamlined CRM. Pipedrive and HubSpot Sales offer more advanced tools to manage your sales pipeline and keep your team on track.
Live Chat Software and Live Chat Tools
Instant communication is key to capturing leads in real time. Intercom, Tawk.to, Zendesk, Drift and CallPage offer live chat tools to engage with website visitors instantly, answer questions, and guide them through the sales process. These tools capture leads at the moment of interest and increase your conversion rates.
Social Media and Customer Insights Tools
Social Media and Forum Software Tools
Social media is a goldmine for lead gen if you know how to use it. Twitter Search and Quora let you find and engage with people interested in your services. Vyper, Gleam, and Rafflecopter let you create viral contests that drive engagement. RafflePress is a WordPress plugin for managing giveaways, allowing you to capture and generate leads and boost your online presence.
Customer Insights and Customer Satisfaction Survey Tools
Understanding your customer’s needs is key to refining your lead gen strategy. Tools like ProProfs Survey Maker, Crystal, Qualaroo, Survicate, and Google Forms will help you gather feedback and identify pain points. Extole and Survey Monkey let you turn happy customers into advocates and drive new leads through referrals and word of mouth.
Calendar Scheduling and Implementation Tools
Calendar Scheduling Tools
Scheduling meetings with potential clients shouldn’t be a pain. Calendly, Doodle and Limecall make it easy for prospects to book a meeting with your sales team at their convenience. These tools reduce the back and forth of scheduling so you can connect with more leads faster.
How to Choose the Best Lead-Gen Tool For Your Needs
Not to be “Captain Obvious,” but there are a lot of tools on that list. Many of them offer similar features, and that can make it overwhelming to choose the right ones for your business.
Here’s a systematic approach to finding the right tools:
1. Understand Your Specific Needs
Before you start evaluating tools, take a step back and consider your specific needs. Are you looking to improve lead generation, streamline your outreach process, or analyze data to gain better insights into your sales pipeline? Understanding your priorities will help you focus on the features that matter most.
For example, Convex will be best for those who sell into properties, while Cognism will be best for those who sell into Europe and require GDPR compliance- this also leads to our next point.
2. Consider Your Target Market
Different platforms excel at different types of data. If you’re primarily targeting large enterprises, you might need a platform with robust firmographic data like LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Technographic data might be more important if you’re focused on software companies. Make sure the platforms you choose align with your target market (a.k.a., your ideal customer profile (ICP)) so that you reach out to the right people at the right time.
3. Evaluate Integration Capabilities
Your lead generation solutions should “play nice” with your existing tech stack- unless you’re looking to make a change. Look for platforms that integrate seamlessly with your CRM systems, marketing automation tools, and other key systems so you can build an efficient sales workflow.
4. Assess the User Experience and Ease of Use
The best platform in the world won’t do you any good if your team doesn’t use it. Look for platforms with intuitive interfaces and good user reviews (e.g., ease of use). Take advantage of demos or free trials (where available) to get a feel for the user experience, data quality, workflows, etc., that matter to your team.
5. Consider Your Budget
Lead-gen platforms, sales intelligence, and automated sales tools can vary widely in price. While investing in tools that can drive growth is important, make sure you choose a platform that fits your budget.
One thing people often forget when choosing a platform is to consider the potential return on investment (ROI). In other words, a more expensive platform might easily pay for itself if it significantly boosts your sales and decreases driving time, overtime, and other factors that can affect the bottom line.
6. Check for Customer Support and Training
Rolling out a new platform can be tough, especially when you’re trying to maximize a team’s utilization. People don’t like change until they know it’ll truly improve things.
Convex provides ongoing training and support because we know that revenue acceleration comes after team adoption. We know this is “mission critical” to our success and yours.
Choose vendors that provide excellent customer support and training resources to get the most bang for your buck.
7. Take a Look at Your Budget
“Budget” is one of the most misunderstood topics around purchasing sales and marketing tools. Many people only factor what they cost, without looking at the potential return on investment (ROI). Think about it this way- if a tool that’s twice the cost of another can double sales or streamline processes that decrease costs and save your staff time, what’s the potential ROI of those activities?
Ask yourself questions like:
“How much will this platform allow us to increase sales?”
“How much are we saving in:
- Staff Salaries
- Overtime?
- Driving time?
- Fuel and Fleet costs?
- The elimination of redundant tools
- Etc.
Finally, don’t allow “feature frenzy” to distract you from the primary goal, accelerating sales. Marketing pieces and salespeople will try to sell you on the idea that you need everything. They’ll try to get you with “shiny object syndrome,” making you think you need features that actually make these platforms more complex and cumbersome to use.
Prioritize what matters most to your business.
Tips for Implementing Lead Generation Tools
Implementing a lead generation and marketing tool is just as important as choosing the right one. Here are some tips to get you started:
- Set Clear Goals: Know what you want to achieve with the tool. Define specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals to ensure you are on the right track.
- Test Thoroughly: Make sure everything works before you go live. Conduct thorough testing to ensure that all features and functionalities are working as expected.
- Monitor Results: Keep an eye on how it’s performing and adjust as needed. Regularly monitor key metrics and KPIs to understand the performance of your lead generation tool.
- Refine Your Approach: Use what you learn to improve your lead generation strategy. Continuously refine your approach based on the data and insights you gather from your lead generation tool.
By following these tips, you can ensure a successful implementation of your lead generation and marketing tool.
Conclusion
This article explores over 50 tools (65 if I remember correctly) to help you identify leads and grow your business. Choosing the right tools for your FLS company is an ongoing journey as technology evolves and customer demands shift. You can accelerate revenue and boost sales by focusing on tools that integrate seamlessly, are user-friendly, and align with your business goals.Ready to elevate your lead generation strategy? Schedule a demo with Convex today and discover how the right tools can transform your sales process.