Enriching your CRM with quality data is key to a successful sales performance. But how do you find the right data, what’s the best way to exploit it, and how do you measure the cost of all this? So many questions. 🤔

As experts in data extraction and automation, it’s no surprise that at Captain Data we’ve got our lead scoring and data enrichment down to a fine art.

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to visualize what a good B2B enrichment workflow looks like.

That’s why, in this article, we’re sharing our process from A-Z so you have a concrete example and can get ideas for your own sales funnel. ‍

Step 1. Studying the Funnel & Setting up a Tracking Plan

What is a tracking plan?‍

A tracking plan refers to how you track leads as they pass through the sales funnel. To set up a tracking plan, you need to be able to identify and define the steps a user takes to become a customer. 

For us, the buyer journey is divided into three levels:

• Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL): Before creating an account, the visitor spends time browsing the website. He shows interest in the product. At this stage, we don’t know anything about the visitor so we rely on the signup process to create context by giving us the name and a professional email address.
• Sales Qualified Lead (SQL): Once signed up, we score the lead according to initial platform usage and company information. To determine the lead’s “data maturity”, we look at which Captain Data integrations are being used. Depending on the score, our sales team will reach out to engage with the lead directly, in order to understand more deeply his needs and his budget. This is the sales qualification stage.
• Product Qualified Lead (PQL): This last step consists of qualifying the leads according to platform usage and needs. It’s also a good indicator of a user’s LTV (Lifetime Value).
  

The way you score and track leads depends on your business activity and is likely to evolve over time. ‍

Why you need a tracking plan for leads‍

Having a tracking plan helps create an organized framework for internal data and allows you to identify key moments in the buyer journey. 

It sets the foundation for successful data enrichment, i.e. the process of enriching your contact and customer databases with external data.

A tracking plan also ensures consistency. Indeed, before analyzing your data, you need to work on your product’s offer, in order to have a concrete process for you and your sales team to work towards.‍

Step 2. Building a lead scoring system

Determine your scoring criteria‍

So how do you actually build a lead scoring system?

First, you need to determine the scoring criteria in your CRM. This makes lead qualification a lot more efficient. At Captain Data, we use the following criteria to score leads:

• Company data: This can be basic information such as company size and industry. It’s stored in the CRM software where it can be accessed by sales and marketing teams. A lead can’t progress to MQL status without this information. 
• Lead requirements: Next, we score the lead based on their needs. Let's say we get a company that signs up to our platform and we discover it uses LinkedIn, Salesforce, and Dropcontact. This demonstrates a real need for data retrieval and automation — something we can definitely cater to. This increases the lead score.
• Use cases: While some leads are beginners in data automation, others sign up with very specific use cases in mind. As mentioned above, a company’s tool stack is a good indication of a lead’s “maturity”. These leads score higher and get moved from MQL to SQL faster because we know exactly what to offer them.
  

Creating a data enrichment model‍

Building an enrichment model for your CRM is an iterative process. You find new data points to add to your database, use that new data to leverage sales, then assess its importance depending on the results.

This can take a lot of time and money, especially when working with multiple data points. So instead of testing every possible data point, it's best to put some thought into which ones are actually valuable.

Here are a few tips to guide you.

1. Source contact and company data separately‍

From a sales or marketing point of view, company and contact data go hand in hand. 

A company that meets the criteria but lacks the resources to use the product will not work out. Similarly, if you find the right person but they don’t have the budget, there’s no point — this lead won’t become a customer.

But from a data sourcing point of view, you shouldn’t mix the two too early.

The reason for this is that the sources for people data and company data can tell different stories. You need to get enough insights on each to be able to paint a complete picture of the situation. Mixing them too early can lead to weaker results.

2. Reconcile contact and company data‍

It’s easy to make the link between a person and a company. Once you have an enriched list of contacts and an enriched list of companies, all you have to do is cross-reference them.

In our case, this happens quickly. As soon as someone creates an account on Captain Data, they give their email. The contact is created and information is requested about the company.

Enrichment starts right after.

3. Limit bad matching ‍

Despite its many advantages, automation is not without fault. Missing a line because your automation didn’t find a match is pretty annoying, but it’s not a big deal either.

False positives, however, cause a lot more frustration because they’re "silent", i.e. you don't actually know that an error has occurred.

To limit false positives, it’s best to start enriching the company data first. There’s less risk of error because company information tends to remain stable over time and is well documented. 

People, on the other hand, change jobs, go on parental leave, switch offices, and are harder to keep up with.‍

In summary

Enriching your CRM involves retrieving and analyzing relevant data. A lead scoring system lets you classify prospects and focus on the ICPs (Ideal Customer Profiles) that represent the best opportunity for your business.‍

Determine where enrichment sits in the pipeline‍

Deciding how to enrich your CRM is one thing, but enrichment has to be integrated into the sales funnel to start seeing results. At Captain Data, we’ve identified 9 steps in our sales funnel:

• 1 - MQL - Account creation
• 2 - MQL - Project creation
• 3 - MQL - Prospect qualification
• 4 - SQL - Start trial
• 5 - SQL - User becomes "active”
• 6 - PQL - User reaches the free trial limit
• 7 - PQL - End of trial
• 8 - PQL - User feedback
• 9 - PQL - Onboarding

Steps 1 to 3 refer to the Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) phase. Steps 3 to 5 refer to the Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), the lead being in the sales phase. From the 6th to the last step, we’re in the Product Qualified Lead (PQL) phase, with a focus on the product and closing the deal.

To put it simply, the path is as follows:‍

MQL > "To be qualified" > SQL > "Active user" > PQL

We use Integromat to feed the account creation information to Pipedrive, our CRM software, which automatically creates the deal. Our goal at this point is to know what’s happening on the platform and get a first insight into the maturity of lead.

We use a platform-driven pipeline to automatically score and qualify new users. This means scoring depends on how the lead uses our platform. The opportunities with the highest potential will be contacted directly by the sales team.

Finally, this data can be enhanced with information related to the company’s strategy and positioning. Examples include:

• How fast the company is growing (using Sales Navigator filters to track the number of employees)
• Key functions it’s hiring for (checking job vacancies on Indeed or LinkedIn) 

Example: A company creates an account with Captain Data and we discover that it’s expanding its Growth team. We can assume this company will need tools adapted to that team. This is an interesting opportunity for us, which gives it a higher lead score.‍

In summary

To optimize your strategy and sell more, CRM enrichment is essential. To learn how to find relevant data points, check out our article on ‘How to build a B2B prospect list’.‍

How we automate CRM enrichment at Captain Data‍

Now for the tricky part. Let's start with enriching company data. This process works automatically, with each new account creation.‍

Signup: the prospect registers for a trial‍

At this stage, the only data we have is a lead’s name, surname, and email address.

Integromat feeds this data to Pipedrive and a new deal is automatically created, or if the lead already exists, we update its information.‍

The user fills in company information‍

We ask the new user to provide some company information during the onboarding. We then verify the company data to confirm that it’s a legit organization.

Then we link the company to the individual in our CRM software so the enrichment process can begin.‍

Enriching domain names with LinkedIn

As an input to this Integromat scenario, Pipedrive transmits a list of data to be enriched, such as:

• "pipedrive_person_id": an ID given by Pipedrive to the lead
• "pipedrive_deal_id" : an ID given by Pipedrive to the current deal/project
• "pipedrive_company_id" : an ID given by Pipedrive to the company the lead works for
• full name : the first and last name of the lead
• email : the lead’s professional email
  

We need to make sure to put the correct input and output IDs. The process works because it’s based on these ids that are unique to the CRM.

• Step 1 & 2: Extracting LinkedIn company profiles from websites: Captain Data software extracts the company website and searches for a Linkedin company profile URL.
• Step 3 & 4: Google search: If a Linkedin company URL wasn’t found on the website, Captain Data does a Google search to find the Linkedin URL of the company. Otherwise, we skip this step.
• Step 5: Extracting the LinkedIn page: The data from the LinkedIn page is extracted and saved.

Further reading: 6 game-changing benefits of web scraping for sales teams‍

Importing the new data into the CRM‍

Once the LinkedIn page has been located and scraped, we need to identify this data to link it to a person or a company.

One of the big challenges in data enrichment is being able to correctly link data to the right people and companies.

Once Captain Data retrieves the company data, a webhook is triggered to update everything in Pipedrive via Integromat. The metadata (pipedrive_id, etc.) is present so Integromat knows which company (id) to enrich.

Output: the Sales team enters the game

Whether it’s information related to the company or the person, the marketing team now has enough data to score the lead.

Depending on the score, the sales team takes care of the rest. This can be done through email follow-ups or by sending an invitation link to a trial period. 

The lead discovers the platform and launches their first automation workflow. The sales team follows their progress carefully. This way they can tailor their sales pitch to move the lead through the funnel and close the sale.‍

Continuously update your CRM‍

One of the biggest challenges is ensuring the data quality of your CRM. After all, a user can easily enter false information upon signup.

While using Captain Data, users import data directly from their CRM. This data is then associated with LinkedIn data to automatically update the CRM. The information generated by enrichment can then be compared with existing data.

If the metadata of the input matches that of the output, then the information is correct. If not, you have to check it manually. The next update will be done much faster.

As a reminder, the URLs of people and company profiles on LinkedIn do not change. When they do change, they’re redirected. As a result, the CRM update has a 98% success rate.‍

Important‍

Take time to check user information. “Test" accounts don’t provide any value and will have a negative impact on statistics. Although time-consuming, manual verification allows you to see things more clearly whenever there’s doubt.

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And that’s a wrap. We hope this article has given you a clearer idea of what a successful data enrichment process looks like in B2B.

Ready to set up your own lead scoring and enrichment process? Get started with a 14-day free trial of Captain Data today.‍

Test-drive Captain Data for free

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This article was first published in French by our friends at Salesdorado. You can read the original publication here.

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