With growing competition and a challenging macroeconomic climate, B2B deals have become increasingly difficult to close. Sellers need more than just CRM data—which often becomes stale and incomplete—to make strategic decisions that keep the sales cycle moving. The key to making better data-driven decisions? Data enrichment.
Data enrichment surfaces actionable data and relationship insights to increase the information available to generate pipelines and close deals.
In this guide, you’ll discover the impact that CRM data enrichment can have on sales teams, and explore 10 tools that enhance data insights and elevate the sales prospecting process.
What is CRM data enrichment?
Customer relationship management data enrichment, or CRM data enrichment, is the process of elevating the quality of your existing customer data.
There are two ways you can approach data enrichment:
- Data appending, which brings together multiple data sources, including third-party data, and appends them to your existing CRM database. The result is a unified dataset with additional data points and attributes that offer a more complete customer profile.
- Data cleansing, which removes incorrect and obsolete data to reduce customer profile errors and identify incomplete data points. This increase in data hygiene reduces informational gaps that delay or can block the sales process altogether.
A CRM with enriched data consolidates all available relationship insights, contact information, and business intelligence to surface a complete dataset that sales teams can use to drive deals forward.
How incomplete data can affect your CRM efficiency
A CRM system is only as useful as the data it houses. Without data enrichment, sellers often face fragmented, incorrect, or even absent records. This forces them to spend valuable time tracking down and validating information—instead of doing deals.
Dirty data not only hinders your team’s ability to nurture relationships and string together successful deals; it can render your CRM unusable.
Incomplete customer data risks harming your company’s reputation
Successful B2B deals are built on relationships. Incomplete datasets make it challenging for sales teams to easily understand the full picture of their customer relationships, particularly in collaborative pipelines.
When wires get crossed, sellers risk sounding ill-informed and out of touch with the deals at play. This compromises carefully built customer relationships, tarnishes your company’s reputation, and puts prospective deals in jeopardy.
Incomplete data leads to bad decisions
Data requires context in order to be useful.
A CRM with siloed and raw data is unusable until it’s processed into actionable insights that sellers can use to make data-driven deal decisions. When sellers attempt to parse out this fragmented and unorganized data without additional context or fail to recognize the missing pieces, it can create a distorted view of business and sales performance. Deal decisions made with misleading information often lead to inefficient prospecting and pursuing deals with a low likelihood of success. This wastes resources and causes missed opportunities.
Incomplete data costs your business time and money
Visibility into customer profiles, current pipelines, and prospective deals is critical for closing deals as efficiently as possible.
Inconsistent and incomplete information makes it difficult—if not impossible—to create effective workflows. Limited data sets force sellers to spend valuable time threading together various sources of information to move deals forward. The process of sourcing and validating customer information creates delays in the sales pipeline while simultaneously pulling sales teams away from sourcing more high-quality deals.
What are the benefits of enriching your CRM data?
All organizations collect data. However, enriching that data is what makes the insights valuable to a sales team. When sellers have access to clean and richer customer profiles, it becomes a powerful tool they can use throughout the entire sales process.
Data enrichment helps sellers manage and close deals faster
Unified data removes the need for compiling and sourcing accurate information. It frees up sellers so they can focus on finding and closing deals.
Enriched data also elevates decision-making. Comprehensive datasets offer context on customer intent and previous interactions, empowering sellers to better understand who they’re talking to. Robust customer and relationship insights give sellers the confidence to shortlist prospects quickly and identify new opportunities with ease.
Automated data enrichment boosts adoption of CRM tools
Improve CRM adoption, close more deals. It’s simple in theory.
However, a recent Affinity survey found that 73% of B2B sales leaders believe that record creation and updates take too much of their team’s time. When sellers are burdened with manual entry, maintaining accurate records quickly becomes a neglected task—particularly in today’s high-velocity sales environment.
Incomplete and inaccurate records make it difficult for sellers to rely on CRM data in the sales process, causing further data deterioration and even lower adoption rates.
Automating the enrichment of data takes the administrative work out of the deal process, turning CRM records into usable customer data. Data collection and automations give sellers easy access to the data they need to source and close more high-quality deals.
Data enrichment unlocks relationship intelligence
Data enrichment extends beyond appending missing customer contact information and business insights through external data sources. Traditional CRMs often neglect to draw out valuable first-party relationship insights. These data points are trapped in inboxes, calendars, notes, customer interactions, and beyond.
Data exhaust is already created by teams in the platforms and tools they use every day. Instead of leaving salespeople to navigate through LinkedIn and existing correspondence, data enriched with this ‘exhaust’ unlocks hidden relationships that can be used to uncover the warmest paths of introduction—what's called relationship intelligence.
Learn more: Discover how Sam Nelson, Founder of SDR Leader, uses relationships to increase B2B sales outreach success in this webinar.
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The 10 best CRM data enrichment tools
The need for enhanced decision-making has pushed many B2B sales teams and organizations to adopt innovative CRM tools that offer data enrichment services.
Below are some of the most popular CRM data enrichment tools for enterprise sales teams.
1. Affinity for Salesforce
Affinity for Salesforce is a CRM data enrichment solution that helps sellers make relationship-driven decisions when managing deals. In addition to automatically creating and updating Salesforce records, Affinity goes beyond basic enrichment capabilities by delivering network and relationship insights to help uncover warm intros and new opportunities
Top features
- Automatic data enrichment to enable better deal sourcing. Affinity’s automatic data enrichment process augments Salesforce records with relevant data, including biographic and firmographic data.
- Enriched relationship data to find and close more deals. Affinity’s AI-powered relationship intelligence insights help sellers understand the strength of every relationship within your organization’s shared network. Access engagement history and relationship scores right within Salesforce to find warm introductions to leads, identify opportunities, and close deals up to 25% faster.
- Automated data entry makes sourcing deals more efficient. Automated Salesforce record creation and engagement activity updates save sales teams 200+ hours every year while keeping data clean and accessible.
- Browser and inbox extensions improve CRM adoption. View prospect and deal insights and create new Salesforce records throughout the deals process—from wherever sellers are working, whether it’s LinkedIn, their browser, or their inbox.
Pros
- Full view of every relationship across your organization right within your existing Salesforce CRM—no additional tools needed.
- Salesforce and Affinity insights and automations are available directly in your inbox and browser, enabling teams to access and update records seamlessly without having to open Salesforce or any additional tools.
- User-friendly experience makes accessing clean, enriched data seamless for sales teams.
- Offers more advanced capabilities than native solutions like Salesforce for Outlook.
Cons
- Unique relationship intelligence insights can be a learning curve for sales teams who are new to relationship-driven deal management.
- Currently limited to Salesforce CRM. Sales teams working outside of Salesforce can access similar relationship insights directly within the Affinity CRM.
2. Clearbit
Clearbit helps B2B organizations access more complete CRM data records by providing real-time data enrichment and data sourcing services through public, proprietary data, and language learning models (LLMs).
Top features
- Data sourcing for more comprehensive CRM data. Clearbit accesses over 250 public and private data sources to update CRM records and customer contact information.
- Lead scores and intent data to find opportunities. Identify high-fit leads and route them to the right reps for efficient deal management.
Pros
- Access global data with 100+ firmographic, demographic, and technographic attributes.
Cons
- Users have reported limited accuracy and availability of certain data points and contact information.
- Limited to no relationship insights for sellers to find warm leads and identify opportunities.
3. Demandbase
Demandbase Account Intelligence, previously known as InsideView, is a CRM cleansing and enrichment tool that helps B2B sales and marketing teams keep their data accurate and up-to-date.
Top features
- Prospect and customer watch lists to monitor opportunities. Keep prospective companies and contacts on your radar with daily or weekly email alerts.
- Family connections to help identify decision-makers. Access key professional connections and understand dynamics in your network that can help find and close deals.
Pros
- Deep insights, including firmographics, technographics, and segmentation to help sales reps understand prospects and reach the right customers.
Cons
- Users have reported that insights and data can be difficult to navigate.
- Limited insights regarding relationship strength to pinpoint the best connections to generate pipeline.
4. FullContact
FullContact is a CRM platform designed to support individuals and companies with unified contact management. The FullContact Enrich product provides sales and marketing teams access to a data ecosystem that fills the gaps in their existing CRM data.
Top features
- Individual and company-level insights: Access to thousands of personal and professional data attributes to target sales prospects based on buyer personas.
Pros
- Improve sales and marketing efforts with detailed prospect data ranging from the consumer to the company level.
- Teams can call insights into existing CRM platforms with FullContact API integrations.
Cons
- Users have reported limited matches for certain types of data reducing the quality of data.
- Consumer-level data may have limited usefulness for B2B sales teams.
5. Openprise
Openprise is a no-code data orchestration tool designed to help RevOps, sales, and marketing teams organize, filter, and sort through data. Openprise data enrichment synthesizes data across multiple sources to improve data standardization.
Top features
- Open Data Catalog to augment first-party data. Get immediate access to clean and robust data to enrich lead data and customer records to find and source new opportunities.
- Data standardization across multiple external sources. Teams can use Openprise to manage, clean, and unify data across multiple providers simultaneously.
Pros
- Additional data is available for purchase from third-party data providers through Openprise Data Marketplace.
Cons
- New users may find the platform and interface to navigate. Additional training may be required.
6. Leadspace
By unifying data across multiple sources, Leadspace’s B2B customer data platform simplifies the sales cycle by better matching, scoring, and routing leads.
Top features
- Unify and enrich sales and marketing data on demand. Discover closeable opportunities by leveraging multiple sources of internal and external data with Leadspace’s The Graph. Sellers can validate and enrich records on-demand with access to 30 third-party B2B data sources.
Pros
- Data management tools shape and segment customer insights according to standard or personalized buyer profiles and personas.
- APIs make it easy to integrate first-party data and update records into your existing CRM system.
Cons
- Data sourcing and enrichment services rely on directly available third-party B2B data sources, such as ZoomInfo.
- Engagement and intent data fail to consider the dynamics of the people involved. This impacts how effectively sellers can use existing relationships in their network.
7. LeadGenius
LeadGenius is a lead generation platform that helps outbound B2B sales teams connect with the right prospects through data enrichment and personalized data sets.
Top features
- Personalized datasets designed to reach sales targets and revenue goals: LeadGenius generates unique datasets based on custom parameters—enriching existing data while reducing data overlap with competitors.
Pros
- Improve workflows by integrating LeadGenius directly with existing CRM and engagement platforms.
Cons
- Users have reported receiving outdated or irrelevant leads.
- Fewer use cases for broad lead generation and sales strategies.
8. UpLead
Build better prospecting lists with Uplead’s B2B database. UpLead puts sales teams in front of their ideal customers by providing verified and accurate data for over 140 million B2B contacts.
Top features
- Extensive data enrichment. Append over 50 data points to your existing contact data.
- Real-time email verification to secure real leads. Avoid dead contacts with a verification process that helps ensure you’re connecting with real leads.
Pros
- Only pay for verified data matches to reduce resource waste.
Cons
- Users have reported lower-than-expected levels of accuracy with certain data attributes, particularly related to phone number data.
9. ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is a popular B2B sales intelligence database that helps sales teams get the data for outbound sales and marketing teams.
Top features
- Access a robust B2B database. Get access to an extensive database, including firmographics, technographics, including company size, job titles, and contact information for key decision-makers within organizations.
- An entire suite of prospecting tools in one platform. ZoomInfo has a suite of additional tools to support the sales process including conversation intelligence, sales engagement, and data orchestration.
Pros
- Various levels of data enrichment services to meet your company’s needs
Cons
- A lack of relationship intelligence insights limits sellers’ ability to prioritize and find deals within your organization’s shared network.
- Users have reported instances of inaccurate or obsolete data.
10. Leandata
Close deals faster with revenue and data orchestration from Leandata. Improve the buyer experience and generate pipeline faster by routing deals to the right people.
Top features
- Precision data matching. Automated lead-to-account matching closes deals faster while preventing duplicate records and providing immediate visibility of record matches—eliminating the need for additional research and data cleaning.
Pros
- Robust data cleansing that maintains data quality while accelerating the sales cycle.
Cons
- Services specific to data sourcing or data appending are limited. Comprehensive data enrichment requires layering on additional third-party tools.
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CRM data enrichment FAQs
What’s the importance of CRM data enrichment?
CRM data enrichment provides sales teams with a holistic view of their pipelines and prospects. Enriched data enhances the information and insights available to sellers, allowing them to close more high-quality deals faster.
Low-quality and incomplete data leaves sellers stuck sourcing and validating customer information. It creates wasted resources and hinders the ability of sales teams to generate the right pipelines and close deals effectively.
How does data enrichment impact your customer data?
Data enrichment impacts customer data by enhancing the accuracy and the number of data points you have for each customer and prospect. CRM data enrichment services can automatically update and append additional information, including:
- Flagging duplicate records
- Inputting missing customer contact fields
- Adding new data attributes
- Surfacing relationship history and context
Data enrichment improves the quality of data available to sellers so they can build better relationships and close deals efficiently.
Can data enrichment improve the customer experience?
Data enrichment improves the customer experience by equipping sellers with the insights to tailor messaging, products, and services based on the customer’s needs and pain points.
Comprehensive relationship, interaction, and deal insights reduce the likelihood of miscommunications within sales teams—eliminating redundancies and creating a seamless sales experience for the customer.
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