GTM Data Enrichment and Hygiene System
2024, ongoingObjective
I own data hygiene and enrichment across the GTM database at my company: Accounts, Leads, and Contacts. It started in 2024 as a single enrichment waterfall for new accounts, partial ZoomInfo coverage, applied manually in places, no ongoing upkeep. It has since grown into a system I actively maintain. Enrichment fires the moment a record is created, a scheduled refresh catches what goes stale in between, and a set of maintenance automations keep ownership, duplicates, and key fields clean without anyone having to chase them down.
Two triggers keep the system running, not just the day it shipped. On creation, every new Account, Lead, or Contact, from any source, kicks off enrichment within hours. On a schedule, records that haven't been touched recently get swept and refreshed every three months, so quality doesn't quietly decay between creation events.
Ownership and orchestration
Not every field carries the same weight, and not every gap gets fixed the same way. Industry and Employee Count are mine to guarantee. If a data point isn't there, I keep working the record until it is. Phone and Email are a shared responsibility, BDRs and AEs can supply them on individual records too, but I build and maintain the fallback enrichment and validation layer underneath both.
When the system hits a gap it can't close on its own, it doesn't skip the record, it escalates. Internally to RevOps for hygiene follow-up, externally to AEs and BDRs when a record needs their input to move forward. Notifications go out as Salesforce tasks, Outlook emails, or Teams channel messages, depending on urgency and who needs to act.
Two examples of the decision logic underneath that:
- Ownership conflicts. If a Lead comes in owned by an AE and its matched Account is owned by a BDR, the account ownership updates automatically. The signal is clear. If both sides are already owned by sellers with conflicting signals, it gets flagged for manual review instead.
- Distribution exceptions. Leads can enter through several different intake points, and each one has its own way of getting stuck before reaching an AE. Any lead caught in that gap triggers an immediate notification rather than waiting to be found.
The build: enrichment waterfall
When a new Account is created, RingLead detects it and kicks off the waterfall. Each provider is called in sequence, if the previous one returns partial data or fails, the next one picks up. Clay is triggered via a Salesforce field update and runs its own internal waterfall: first searching its native database, then a sequence of fallback providers, and finally an AI step that searches for a matching LinkedIn profile when everything else comes up short.
The maintenance layer
Twenty automations run continuously underneath the build, split across four groups. Most replace a manual check that used to sit on my desk or someone else's; a few are still in beta.
- Ownership and routing integrity: keeping Account, Contact, Lead, and Opportunity ownership consistent with each other as records move between BDRs, AEs, and Marketing.
- Enrichment and completeness: filling specific gaps a standard provider waterfall misses, phone numbers, government contracting codes, tech stack signals.
- Exception catching: surfacing records that are stuck, invalid, or going stale before they turn into a bigger problem.
- Operational cleanup: smaller housekeeping jobs (task consolidation, campaign bucket population, commission tracking) that keep reporting and prospecting lists trustworthy.