Looking for an Apollo or Lusha alternative? How Bread & Butter builds B2B prospect lists that keep improving

Who this is for: sales and marketing teams who use, or are thinking about, a contact database such as Apollo, Lusha, ZoomInfo, Cognism or Seamless.AI to build prospect lists and lead lists for outreach. That includes ecommerce brands on Shopify or Squarespace that sell to businesses: wholesale accounts, stockists, trade programmes and corporate orders.

What you'll learn: how Bread & Butter gets you the same thing, new B2B prospects with email addresses and the context to reach out, and why it works differently: an ongoing process that learns from your own customers, not a one-time export.

Most B2B prospecting starts the same way. You open a contact database, set the filters for your ideal customer profile (job title, industry, company size, location), export a few thousand leads with email addresses, and load them into a sequence. It works well enough that almost every sales team does it.

Bread & Butter gets you to the same place, a steady supply of new prospects with emails and the context to write to them, by a different route.

In short: Instead of you describing your ideal customer to a database, Bread & Butter learns it from the people who actually convert on your website or online store, and from the deals you close and the orders they place. It then finds new people who look like them, researches each one and their company, drafts a first email, and delivers them into your CRM a few at a time, every other day. It doesn't stop: as people change jobs, get promoted or move into roles that match your buyers, they're found too. You pay per prospect as they arrive, not for a pool of export credits up front. And because it keeps learning from your wins, the prospects you get in month six are better than the ones you got in month one. A list you export is at its best on the day you export it, and when you've worked through it, it's done.

How list tools work

Tools like Apollo, Lusha and ZoomInfo are large contact databases. You search them with filters, and you spend credits to reveal each email address or phone number. Plans are typically sold per seat, often on an annual contract, and on many plans unused credits expire at the end of the billing period rather than rolling over.

That model is good at one thing: getting a lot of contacts, fast. It has three weaknesses that show up after the export.

Your filters are a guess. Job title, headcount and industry describe who you think buys. They aren't taken from who did. If your best customers turn out to be operations leads at forty-person companies, the database keeps giving you whatever your filters say until someone notices and rewrites them.

The list doesn't learn. A database doesn't know which of last quarter's leads became customers. The next export is as good as your next set of filters, no better.

The data ages from the day you export it. People change jobs, get promoted and switch companies. HubSpot's benchmark puts the decay of B2B contact data at 22.5% a year. The same records are also sold to every other company in your category, so the people on your list often hear from all of you in the same month.

How Bread & Butter finds new prospects

It learns your ideal customer from your own results

Bread & Butter runs on your website or online store, including Shopify and Squarespace stores. Every visitor who fills in a form, subscribes, uses a social login or completes a purchase becomes an Engaged Lead, and each one is researched: their role, their career, their company, its industry and size, its recent news. That research, together with what the person did on your site before converting, is the first version of your ideal customer profile.

It sharpens as your team moves leads up the funnel, and most of all when you mark a deal won. On a store, every completed order is recorded against the buyer's whole journey, so the people who actually placed orders are right there to mark Won/Closed. Nobody writes the filters. The profile is a description of the people who have actually bought from you.

It finds new people who match

From that profile, Bread & Butter searches the open web and professional and business sources for new people whose career path, company and network look like your best customers. These are people who haven't visited your site yet.

Each prospect arrives researched, with a first email drafted

A prospect from Bread & Butter isn't a row in a spreadsheet. Each one arrives with:

  • their name, role and email address
  • their LinkedIn profile, so your rep can connect there too
  • a phone number, where one is found
  • a researched summary of the person and their company, including recent news and buying triggers
  • why they resemble your best customers
  • a suggested first email, written from that research

They sync into Salesforce, HubSpot or Pipedrive as a prospect with the full write-up attached, so your reps work them in the CRM they already use.

They arrive steadily, not all at once

New prospects arrive a few at a time, every other day, from a process that runs overnight. A handful of well-researched people is something a rep can actually work. A list of five thousand is something a rep works the top of and forgets.

It keeps going

A list is a snapshot. The day after you export it, people start leaving the companies on it, and the people who replace them aren't on it. Bread & Butter keeps looking. When someone is promoted into a role that matches your buyers, joins a company that looks like your customers, or moves into your market, they're found as it happens, not at your next export.

It keeps getting better

When a prospect visits your website or store, their visit is tracked like anyone else's, and when they raise their hand they become an Engaged Lead. When they become a customer, that win feeds back into the profile, and the next prospects are found against it. If a new kind of buyer starts closing, the targeting moves toward them on its own.

The difference in cost

With a list tool, you commit to seats and a pool of credits before you know whether the targeting works, and you pay the same for a contact whether they turn out to fit or not.

With Bread & Butter, you pay per prospect as they arrive, researched and with a first email drafted. The cost is spread across the months, follows what you actually receive, and each month's prospects are found against a sharper profile than the last. See How do credits work?

List tool or Bread & Butter?

Contact database Bread & Butter

Who decides the ideal customer You, with filters Your own conversions, closed deals and orders

How prospects arrive One big export when you run it A few at a time, every other day, without stopping

When people change jobs Your list goes out of date New people in matching roles are found

What you get per contact Contact details Email, LinkedIn, phone where found, research on the person and company, and a drafted first email

Does it learn from your wins? No Yes, every closed deal or order sharpens it

How you pay Seats plus credits, often annual Per prospect, as they arrive

Where your reps work Export to your CRM or sequencer Synced into Salesforce, HubSpot or Pipedrive

One list, or a pipeline that keeps filling

A list tool is built to give you a long list, today. Your team works through it, and when it's done, it's done, until you buy and export the next one.

Bread & Butter is built to keep going. New prospects keep arriving as the market changes, each one researched and matched against a profile that's sharper than it was last month. The work doesn't stop at the bottom of a spreadsheet.

Common questions

Do I get email addresses and phone numbers?

Every prospect arrives with their email address and LinkedIn profile, plus a phone number where one is found, alongside the research on them and their company. Most teams now start with email and LinkedIn, and that's where the research and the drafted first email do the most work.

Is this a database I can search?

No. There's no search box for job titles and headcounts. Bread & Butter decides who to find from your own results, which is what keeps the targeting improving.

Does it send emails for me?

Only if you want it to, and never on its own. Your reps can send the drafted email from the CRM, rewrite it, or pick up the phone. Teams that want to send from inside Bread & Butter can use Nurture, where a person reviews every email and it goes out from their own Gmail or Outlook.

Either way, these are people who haven't asked to hear from you yet, just like a list you'd export from a database. Before your team reaches out, make sure contacting people who haven't opted in fits your company's own policies and the email and privacy laws in the places you sell.

How soon do prospects start arriving?

Bread & Butter spends the first 15 days after installation learning your traffic and building your profile. Prospects start after that, and improve as you close deals.

Does it work for an online store?

Yes, on Shopify and Squarespace as well as any other website. Your buyers become Engaged Leads with the journey that led to each order, and they teach Bread & Butter who your customers are. Matched prospects work best for the business side of a store: wholesale buyers, stockists, interior designers and other trade accounts, and companies placing corporate orders. If you only sell to consumers, the value is in knowing your buyers and the visitors who behave like them, more than in prospect lists. See Bread & Butter for Ecommerce Brands

Can I use it alongside Apollo or Lusha?

Yes. Contacts you upload are researched and scored the same way, and nothing stops you using both.

Sources

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