Lead enrichment is an easy and effective way to up your A-game in sales. Many leads have the potential to become customers, but it often comes down to having the right data to strategize and personalize your approach. In other words, lead enrichment helps you get the insights you need to achieve the conversions you want. But how do you get the best info for the job?
What is lead enrichment?
Lead data enrichment is where two important sales concepts come together: lead generation and data enrichment. To understand how it works, first let’s break them down:
Lead generation
Prospecting and lead generation are two basic sales strategies. For prospecting, a salesperson essentially contacts people who have been qualified based on how well they fit the ideal customer profile. They are known as “prospects”.
In contrast, a lead is a person who takes the first step in connecting with your company through one of your digital properties. Lead generation is the steps that your team takes to get them to make that connection (hopefully more than once as they proceed through the sales funnel).
Data enrichment
Data enrichment is the process where incomplete information on both leads and prospects gets filled in, either manually or through an automated platform. Usually, the data that you’ll get from leads is limited to what they fill in as part of your lead capture method, which is typically an online form. Lead enrichment is how you add more information to your lists of leads.
Why should you enrich your leads?
Encouraging a lead to fill in a lot of information about themselves is an art. There are many types of lead generation forms, but the best ones strike a balance between volume of information and hassle for the lead. The people out there searching for the kind of product that you sell probably don’t have the patience to fill in long forms – even though you’d really like them to.
Ideally, every lead form could be filled with data points to provide exactly the kind of data that you want so that you can easily personalize your pitch. But few leads would ever fill all of them in. That seems like bad news for salespeople, because personalization is critical for converting leads. Personalization is like a secret sauce in sales: it lets you use detailed information about the person you are talking to (or their organization) to make the conversation more interesting and relevant. A Lusha survey showed that:
- 96% of salespeople want a method of finding the right information to start a meaningful conversation with a lead or prospect.
- 77% have trouble starting a sales cycle, citing lack of data for creating a personalized pitch as the main barrier.
So personalization is powerful. But how do you make up for the information that’s often missing from lead forms? Data enrichment can provide those missing data points.
But even beyond that, enrichment delivers many benefits for inbound sales teams:
Qualification
With more data beyond simple contact information, your team can figure out which leads are most likely to convert. With a lead scoring method, top leads can go to the front of the line for outreach, while lower scoring ones can be added to a nurture campaign or addressed later.
Time saving
Enriched data is updated regularly. This avoids wasting time on dead-end phone calls or waiting for emails that won’t be answered. It also enables a salesperson to go straight for a decision-maker instead of wasting effort trying to get past gatekeepers, because high-quality enriched data will provide direct contact information instead of a general email like info@company.com or a secretary’s phone number.
Cost saving
Paying for contact data that is not enriched means that you are investing in a resource that often doesn’t pay off. With enriched data, you are paying for high-quality information that empowers an efficient sales process.
Organization
Sales team members will have varying levels of experience and talent. Similarly, you might need to assign leads according to sales territory or a salesperson’s product specialty. With lead enrichment, you’ll get those extra details that enable you to allocate leads to the most appropriate people on the team.
How should you focus your lead enrichment?
When it comes to collecting information about leads, there are all kinds of categories to consider. But here again, a balance is needed. An efficient lead qualification process should include the kinds of data that result in the highest number of conversions, while avoiding too much data that just makes it confusing to understand what counts.
A good starting point for deciding which data points you need is an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). An ICP is a sort of checklist that describes what kind of person or company has the greatest likelihood of becoming a customer. For example, if you are selling an upmarket CRM system product, your ICP might look something like this:
- Revenue – $1-10 million per year
- Industry – Software
- Location – International
- Pain point – Needs a scalable CRM due to rapid growth
The first three categories seem straightforward. But what about “pain point”? How do you know when a company uses a CRM, or has grown rapidly? That kind of information will be found through data enrichment that includes:
- Technographics – covers what technologies a company uses
- Firmographics – a set of descriptors for an organization that includes data points like industry, number of employees and financial data (changes over time can be used to analyze growth rates), and information about the executive team (names, titles, seniority, etc.)
- Hiring – can show that a company is increasing its workforce, and in what areas (for example, more salespeople mean a greater need for a CRM)
- Research – reports the kinds of information that a company is looking up, which may indicate that they are shopping for certain products
Every ICP is, in a way, an assumption. Over time, as you make more sales, you’ll notice additional details about the kinds of companies that buy your product. This will help you finetune your ICP and the kinds of specific details that strengthen your sales approach. Somewhat ironically, the only way to even be aware of such characteristics is by using data enrichment. But here, instead of analyzing comprehensive info about leads, you are applying the process to existing customers.
Why automate your lead enrichment?
Before data enrichment technology came along, the way to enrich lead lists was to work off the basic data provided by the lead – company name, personal name, and perhaps email. In essence, this required looking at a reference book of business information such as Hoover’s or D&B, finding the company, and manually inputting whatever data was available. To save money, there are still teams that use this method. Obviously, it’s cumbersome and slow, and the results quickly become obsolete.
Modern platforms completely eliminate the need for manual enrichment. There are different levels of quality among data enrichment services, but they all allow you to choose from the various types of information they provide. Their systems then leverage whatever sources they have and automatically render that data in your CRM or contact file.
What are the best lead enrichment tools?
In light of the advantages of lead enrichment, it should be an easy decision for sales teams to sign up for one. But which? There are many platforms on the market, and they serve different purposes. Here is a quick and dirty overview of the top lead enrichment platforms:
Lusha
With about 100 million global contacts in its database, Lusha delivers direct and mobile numbers as well as emails and key firmographics, and updates its data every month. Lusha integrates directly with Salesforce but offers an API system to connect with any CRM and can enrich a CSV document as well. Lusha supplies a wide range of data types including intent data, technographics, and firmographics.
Clearbit
Clearbit is a dedicated data enrichment tool that combines with a Salesforce CRM system and a Chrome extension. Clearbit focuses on the US market and is known for high-quality firmographics, but some users want more verified contact phone numbers and emails. Clearbit does not provide third-party data and relies on intent signals derived from website visitors.
ZoomInfo
ZoomInfo is a business data company that supplies mostly US-based information (global data available at an extra charge). They have access to a large number of contacts, but often contact details for specific individuals are lacking. ZoomInfo can enrich both CRM and CSV systems.
RocketReach
This company claims to have a database of approximately 700 million contacts. However, RocketReach only supplies contact data, so important info fields such as technographics and firmographics will require a separate vendor.
How to enrich lead data with Lusha
One of the many advantages that Lusha provides is its flexibility for enriching leads. Different sales organizations use different technologies that range from spreadsheets to high-end CRM systems. Lusha can handle them all. In addition, Lusha’s updating process is continuous, so that data is always expansive and up to date.
CSVs
Even if the start of your lead generation process is just a simple CSV file and a couple of data fields, Lusha (and LinkedIn) can provide loads of information. All the CSV file needs is the LinkedIn URL of the contact you want to enrich, or the contact’s full name and email (or company name). Lusha will fill in direct contact data and firmographics.
Salesforce
Lusha integrates easily with Salesforce CRM. Setting up access requires only activating this feature in your Lusha account and having a platform demo. From then on, all you need to do is select CRM enrichment when using Lusha, and choose from a number of recommended enrichments that are shown as clickable templates.
API enrichment for CRMs
If you are working with a different CRM, Lusha helps you there as well. With the One-Click API, you get a selection of APIs and can choose the one that is the best match for your system. With an ICP in hand, you can adjust Lusha’s filters to provide the contact and company data that you want.
Key takeaways
- Lead enrichment is the process of applying data enrichment to sales lead generation.
- By enriching lead information, you can build a personalized outreach approach while also benefiting from time and cost savings, plus improved abilities for lead qualification and team organization.
- An ideal customer profile is a recommended place to start. Your ICP will become refined over time as you learn about who buys your product, which in turn enables you to understand which of your data points are the most important to enrich.
See how Lusha can speed up your workflow
