Hoovers

What is D&B Hoovers

D&B Hoovers is a sales intelligence and prospecting platform developed by Dun & Bradstreet, a long-standing American company that provides commercial data, analytics, and insights for businesses. Founded in 1841, Dun & Bradstreet has a deep history in business information, and its headquarters are in Jacksonville, Florida. The core purpose of D&B Hoovers is to help sales and marketing teams accelerate their processes by providing access to a vast database of company and contact information. The platform allows users to identify potential customers, build targeted prospect lists, understand company structures, and receive timely alerts about key business events, ultimately helping them to engage with the right people at the right time.

D&B Hoovers Features

• Comprehensive Company & Contact Database: Access millions of detailed company profiles and contact information for key decision-makers. This helps you find the right people to talk to in your target accounts.
• Advanced Search & Filtering: Build highly specific prospect lists using dozens of criteria, including industry, company size, revenue, location, technologies used, and more. This ensures your outreach is highly relevant.
• Real-Time Sales Triggers: Receive alerts on important business events like leadership changes, mergers and acquisitions, funding announcements, or new office openings. These triggers provide timely reasons to connect with a prospect.
• Corporate Family Tree: Visualize complex corporate structures, including parent companies, subsidiaries, and branch locations. This is useful for strategic account planning and identifying cross-sell opportunities.
• List Building & Management: Create, save, and manage targeted lists of companies and contacts. You can easily export these lists for use in CRM or marketing campaigns.
• CRM Integration: Seamlessly connect with popular CRM systems like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics to enrich existing records and sync new prospect data, keeping your information accurate.
• Ideal Profile Analytics: The platform can analyze your best customers to create an ideal customer profile, then help you find more companies that fit that model.

D&B Hoovers Pricing Plans

D&B Hoovers offers customized pricing plans tailored to the specific needs of different businesses. Pricing is not publicly listed and is provided through a direct quote from their sales team. The plans are typically structured in tiers based on factors like the number of users, the volume of data access required, the level of detail in the data, and the specific features needed (such as CRM integration or API access). These tiers are designed to serve a range of customers, from small sales teams to large enterprise organizations, ensuring each gets a package that aligns with their sales goals and budget.

D&B Hoovers Free Plan

D&B Hoovers does not offer a permanent free plan. However, they provide a free trial for potential customers to evaluate the platform. To access the trial, you typically need to contact their sales department and schedule a demonstration. The free trial usually provides limited access to the database and features for a specific period, allowing teams to test its search capabilities, data quality, and overall usefulness for their prospecting efforts before making a purchase decision.

How to use D&B Hoovers

Getting started with D&B Hoovers involves a clear workflow for effective prospecting:

1. Define Your Target Audience: Begin by clearly identifying your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Think about the industry, company size, geographic location, and revenue of the companies you want to target.
2. Build a Prospect List: Use the 'Build a List' feature with the advanced search filters. Input your ICP criteria to generate a list of companies that match your requirements.
3. Identify Key Contacts: Once you have a list of target companies, dive into each profile to find the relevant decision-makers. You can filter contacts by job title, function, or seniority level.
4. Research and Qualify: Before reaching out, use the detailed company profiles, news, and sales triggers to understand the company's current situation and challenges. This helps you personalize your outreach.
5. Export and Engage: Export your finalized list of contacts and companies. You can then import this data into your CRM or marketing automation platform to begin your sales sequences and outreach campaigns.

Pros and Cons of D&B Hoovers

Pros:

• High-Quality Data: Backed by Dun & Bradstreet's extensive data collection and verification processes, the information is generally reliable and comprehensive.
• Deep Company Insights: The platform provides detailed information, including corporate family trees, which is excellent for strategic account mapping.
• Powerful Filtering: The search and filtering capabilities are robust, allowing for very precise list building.
• Helpful Sales Triggers: Real-time alerts on business events provide valuable context for timely outreach.

Cons:

• High Cost: It is generally considered a premium tool, and the pricing can be a significant investment, especially for smaller businesses.
• Complex Interface: The user interface can be overwhelming for new users due to the large number of features and data points.
• Contact Data Accuracy: While company data is strong, like all similar platforms, direct-dial phone numbers and email addresses can sometimes be outdated.
• Steep Learning Curve: It can take time for a team to learn how to use the platform to its full potential.

D&B Hoovers integrations

D&B Hoovers integrates with several key business applications to streamline sales and marketing workflows. These integrations help ensure data consistency across your technology stack.

• Salesforce: Integrate D&B Hoovers directly within Salesforce to enrich leads, accounts, and contacts with up-to-date company data without leaving your CRM.
• Microsoft Dynamics 365: Similar to the Salesforce integration, this allows users to sync and enrich data within their Microsoft CRM environment.
• Oracle CRM On Demand: Connect D&B Hoovers data with Oracle's CRM platform to support sales intelligence and data management.
• Marketing Automation Platforms: It can connect with platforms like Marketo, Pardot, and Eloqua to improve lead scoring, segmentation, and campaign targeting.

D&B Hoovers Alternatives

• ZoomInfo: A leading competitor known for its vast B2B contact database and strong intent data features, helping users identify companies actively researching their solutions.
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator: An excellent tool for prospecting within the LinkedIn ecosystem. It is particularly strong for social selling and leveraging professional connections.
• Cognism: A sales intelligence platform with a focus on providing GDPR-compliant data, making it a popular choice for companies targeting European markets.
• Lusha: Known for its browser extension that helps users find contact details (emails and phone numbers) for prospects on websites and social media platforms.
• Seamless.AI: A real-time search engine for B2B contact information, often praised for its ease of use and speed in finding direct dials and emails.

D&B Hoovers API

Yes, Dun & Bradstreet provides extensive API access to its data through the D&B Direct+ API, which powers platforms like D&B Hoovers. This API allows developers to integrate Dun & Bradstreet's business data directly into their own applications, CRMs, or internal systems. Access to the API and the corresponding API keys are not available for free; they are part of an enterprise-level subscription. To get access, you must contact the Dun & Bradstreet sales team to discuss your specific data needs and purchase a plan that includes API access.

An example API call to fetch company data might look something like this (conceptual example):

{
  "method": "GET",
  "url": "https://api.dnb.com/v1/data/duns/123456789",
  "headers": {
    "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
  }
}

D&B Hoovers Affiliate Program

D&B Hoovers does not have a traditional public-facing affiliate program where individuals can sign up to earn commissions by promoting the service with a link. Instead, Dun & Bradstreet operates a more formal Partner Program. This program is designed for technology companies, consultants, and resellers who wish to integrate D&B data into their own products or sell D&B services to their clients. If you are interested in becoming a partner, you should visit the official Dun & Bradstreet website and look for their 'Partner' or 'Partnership' section to submit an application or contact their business development team directly.