Cognism Sales Acceleration and Prospect Data Generation Software Review
Cold calls are critical for businesses that aim to clinch new deals. However, cold calls can be challenging to execute correctly. A major hurdle is getting the right contacts for business prospects, a process often fraught with trial and error. According to Crunchbase, top sellers have to spend an average of six hours each week researching their prospects.
Getting the right contacts for B2B calls can be smoother when you have the appropriate tool. This is where Cognism comes in. The software is designed to help representatives obtain accurate phone numbers and contacts so that their B2B cold calls are more effective.
In this article, we’ll dissect Cognism’s features, subscription plans, customer support options, and policies so you can understand how it works and if it’s the right choice for your business.
Cognism Overview
Cognism is a software solutions provider targeted at helping B2B companies and their sales reps reach business prospects more frequently and efficiently. The software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform uses patented AI technology to provide a blend of real-time company, people, and event data to help businesses prospect, find, and deliver new revenue.
The company was established in 2015 by James Isilay and Stjepan Buljat, both experienced software and business professionals. Cognism was designed to be a boxed sales acceleration solution that makes business prospecting easier.
Cognism’s SaaS data asset manually verifies decision-makers’ phone numbers. The software provider generates prospect data at scale, helps cleans and enriches it, providing information that businesses can input into their sales process.
In addition, their services reach across the world, with international coverage into local and global markets, including Europe, the Middle East, Africa), and Asia. Cognism provides access to person and company-level data, helping businesses break geographical and data-access restrictions. In addition, the platform integrates with various CRM tools, including Salesforce, Hubspot, SalesLoft, and Outreach.
- Established: 2015
- Founders: James Isilay and Stjepan Buljat
- Offices: London (Head Office), USA, Macedonia, Croatia
5 Core Features of Cognism
Expert Opinion
Rating: 4.5/5
From our look at Cognism, it’s clear that they are passionate about streamlining business prospecting with accurate data about potential clients. The company has over 400 staff with expertise in lead generation, sales management, scalable microservices, data engineering, and machine learning. We were impressed by the quality of the platform’s interface.
New customers can read their blog and resources to find out more about the platform or reach out to one of their representatives to chat about the platform. Coggy the Cat, the AI chatbot on Cognism’s homepage, is particularly helpful for new entrants, directing potential customers to visit the blog or schedule a platform demo. When we tried to chat with a representative of Cognism, though, we were directed to schedule a meeting. Providing an option to chat with a human agent will be a helpful addition to the platform’s features.
As for its integrations, we were impressed with the range of sales platforms that Cognism integrates with, which will be helpful for B2B firms who wish to integrate accelerated lead generation into their CRM. Additionally, the solution’s accessibility across the web app and Chrome extension is quite helpful and seamless, which we loved.
Overall, Cognism provides excellent solutions for small and large B2B firms to accelerate business prospecting and generate revenue.
Notable Features of Cognism
Cognism has an excellent suite of features to ensure that reaching business prospects efficiently is seamless, contributing to a good user experience. Below, we will look at these core features and show how they contribute to a smooth experience meeting goals on the platform.
1. Accurate DNC-cleaned mobile phone numbers to reach decision-makers
Cognism’s go-to product offering, access to accurate phone numbers of decision-makers at client companies, is top on our list of most notable features. Cognism builds a database of crucial persons at these companies, and goes extra to manually verify their phone numbers and emails so that sales reps can access decision-makers with little stress.
They also take a step further by ensuring compliance with EU general data protection regulation (GDPR) laws, which guide international privacy. Cognism ensures compliance by checking Do Not Call (DNC) lists in various European countries and notifying clients about which prospects are on them. This way, you can avoid calling contacts on global DNC registries and avoid putting your business at risk.
Their screening includes DNC lists in the UK, US, Australia, Germany, France, Ireland, Canada, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Sweden, and Belgium. Additionally, the data generated, processed, and shared by Cognism is lawful, complying with Section 6.1(f) of the GDPR.
2. Access to person and company-level data without geographical restrictions
An exciting feature of Cognism is its global reach. Cognism creates and maintains records of B2B prospects worldwide, from Europe to Australia to the US. This is particularly helpful for businesses dealing with clients across the globe, ensuring that clients can make and verify international connections easily. While it can be challenging to pitch to international clients, Cognism removes a major hurdle out of the way, increasing your chances of making valuable global connections and conversions.
This is critical as geographic restrictions can limit the extent of access that companies may have to personal and public data. Data privacy laws for personal and company data vary from country to country, and it can be challenging to keep up with these regulations, even for global companies. By ensuring that companies can access this data without hassle, Cognism makes reaching key personnel easier.
3. Align market strategies with up-to-date data
Go-to-market strategies are the plans and strategies that new companies employ to generate hype and attention as they break into an industry for the first time. Cognism’s features benefit new companies that require up-to-date data to get a slice of market share. Among its other features, Cognism offers buyer intent signals that help companies know when prospects need a solution, so they can pitch them while they are still making purchase decisions.
Most SaaS sales reps know that the best time to convert a B2B is before they invest in an alternative solution, as it can be challenging to get a company to change a part of its stack. Therefore, this adds value to new companies, as well as older companies seeking new clients. However, a crucial issue with its AI-driven data scraping is the risk of inaccuracies, which requires careful monitoring to minimize error.
4. International coverage across local and global markets
Cognism’s global coverage is one of the most appealing aspects of its features, reaching multiple continents and serving nearly 2,000 customers.
The solution offers access to the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and several European countries, with a high business concentration. It also provides opportunities to connect to the Asia-Pacific, Middle East, North Africa, and other regional businesses – anywhere sales prospects exist. This may prove essential for businesses looking to expand globally into new markets, providing crucial opportunities to break cultural and geographic barriers to drive revenue.
Cognism maintains a global database of customer profiles and domains of target accounts, which can help businesses rapidly find suitable customers. Cognism’s geolocation detection might need some improvement, however.
5. Seamless access through web app and browser extension
A great feature of Cognism is its accessibility through multiple avenues, primarily the web app and browser extension. This confers some flexibility, allowing users to maximize their preferred usability option. Of course, having a mobile app would be quite a delight. Still, most B2B personnel use PCs for business communications, making the existing options a good deal.
Cognism Integrations
Cognism offers several integrations to its users, particularly with sales and CRM tools. This is one of our favorite aspects of Cognism’s stack: it integrates seamlessly with CRM software such as Salesforce, Outreach, and Sales Navigator. B2B sales reps use CRM software just as much as B2C, so the integration suite is just as important as the rest of the stack of features.
With these integrations, B2B clients can export prospect data directly to their CRM in a few clicks, saving time, providing convenience, and driving revenue. To use integrations with Cognism, log-in, connect, and start exporting. Cognism also integrates with Zapier, further boosting its integration stack.
Plans and Pricing
Cognism does not offer a stack of pricing options associated with features like other solution providers in its niche. To get a quotation for your business, you’ll need to request a demo and discuss with the team to discuss a suitable price based on your workflow.
Cognism has a flat platform fee that gives access to its web app, Chrome extension, and integrations. The exact value of this fee is not stated on the website. However, it is good to note that users can access all data included in their package with no restrictions. You can schedule a meeting with their reps to get a custom quote for your business.
Terms and Policies
Cognism’s terms and conditions govern access and use of its websites and services, including other services and applications owned, offered, or controlled by Cognism Limited, which is based in the United Kingdom.
Cognism absolves itself of any liability relating to the use or non-use of the materials on its website, which may not extend to the user depending on location or jurisdiction. Users also agree not to reproduce or resell any data provided through Cognism, and are required to only use the product for internal business purposes.
Customer Support
Cognism has decent customer support options, including email, Facebook, and its ‘Contact Us’ page. Users can contact support through policy@cognism.com, where they can expect a pretty good response to challenges.
According to reviews, some users report fast responses to queries through email and other platforms. However, a few users would prefer the outcomes of their support requests to be a bit different. We also tested the ‘Contact Us’ page, which is a typical ticket generator page.
US residents can also call the support team on 1 833 829 1090. Overall, the customer support options available on Cognism seem pretty basic, but they thrive in most situations.
Wrapping Up
Cognism offers an attractive suite of features, which pair nicely with its integrations and easy-to-use interface.
Overall, we anticipate the average B2B sales rep will have a smooth experience surfing the platform. Cognism offers live demos for new users who want to understand how to integrate the platform with their sales pipeline. If you’d like a first-hand tour of Cognism’s features and product offering, you can request the live demo or tour their website to get an idea of the features.
Contributors: Victor Femi-Lawal (Technical Writer)
