Waterfall Enrichment: The GTM Operator's Secret to Golden-Record Data

Did you ever dream about getting 100% lead enrichment coverage?

Finding anyone’s email every single time?

Or looking at your CRM without feeling like it’s a Gruyère cheese—full of holes and inconsistent data?

If you said yes to any of these… this one’s for you.

As Guillaume Cabane says:

And he’s right, waterfall enrichment is the new status quo.

What the heck is waterfall enrichment? #

flowchart TD
    Lead[Lead Record]
    Lead --> Vendor1[Vendor 1<br/>e.g. Cognism]
    Vendor1 -- Match found --> Enriched[Enriched Record]
    Vendor1 -- No match --> Vendor2[Vendor 2<br/>e.g. Clearbit]
    Vendor2 -- Match found --> Enriched
    Vendor2 -- No match --> Vendor3[Vendor 3<br/>e.g. ZoomInfo]
    Vendor3 -- Match found --> Enriched
    Vendor3 -- No match --> NoMatch[No Match]

This is not total enrichment, where every record gets sent to every vendor (and you pay multiple times for the same data).

With waterfall enrichment:

• Vendor A tries first
• If they miss something, Vendor B takes over
• If B misses it, Vendor C steps in
• You stop when you have what you need

It’s simple logic that can save you time and headaches, while maximizing your enrichment coverage.

Why most enrichment setups are broken #

I talk to SaaS scale-ups every week. They’ve got strong tech stacks: ZoomInfo, Apollo, Lusha, you name it, but no process behind them.

Ask how they manage enrichment and you hear:

Translation:

• Reps spend 5 minutes per profile
• Data lives in browser extensions, not harmonized in all your systems
• Verification is manual (and often skipped)

Worse, if your enrichment tool is wired directly into your CRM, you’re enriching everything—including non-ICP personas who downloaded an ebook and will never buy from you.

Waterfall enrichment done right #

1. Benchmark your vendors (by region and field)

Vendors don’t perform equally everywhere, or on every field. You need to pick best in class for each attribute type.

Examples:

• Europe: Cognism + Lusha for overall enrichment.
• US: ZoomInfo + LeadIQ for overall enrichment
• Some vendors nail technographics (TheirStack, HG Insights, Sumble is my personal fav recently), others are better at financials (Pitchbook, Crunchbase, Dealroom)
• Account hierarchy: ZoomInfo or D&B are pretty solid (even if now, a well structured LLM can outperform any vendor, Hello ChatGPT-5 API)

If you want to build your own waterfall enrichment, run a sample test:

• Take 100 verified records from your CRM (ground truth)
• Enrich with each provider
• Measure:
  1. Coverage – % of fields they return
  2. Accuracy – match rate vs. your verified data

This logic works for any attribute (phone, email, tech stack, you name it)

Start your waterfall with the most accurate vendor, then move down the chain for coverage.

2. Go beyond email & phone: Field-level fallback logic

Yes, emails and phone numbers are the most common use case. But any critical field should have a fallback logic:

• Annual revenue
• Employee count
• Technographics
• HQ locations
• Any custom attribute

Rules for each field:

• Accept only above-confidence-threshold results (especially if data comes from LLM)
• Verify (SMTP, phone validation, business registry)
• Tag each field with provenance metadata so GTM, ops, and compliance teams know where it came from

3. Build it once - use it everywhere

Building amazing waterfall enrichment workflows without making it available in a self-serve way for your reps is just ego-boost.

The first customer for any given company are the people you work with. In that case, we’re talking about reps.

Once your waterfall logic is dialed in, make it omnipresent:

• Chrome extension – enrich while prospecting on LinkedIn
• CRM button – one-click enrich on a contact or account record
• Slack agent – /enrich [email] to get data instantly in Slack
• Inbound plays – auto-enrich high-intent form fills before routing
• AI assistants – feed waterfall-enriched data into your meeting prep or account research agents

The goal: enriched data is wherever your GTM team works, without context-switching or manual requests.

Why this matters for GTM operators #

• Every field can have a waterfall. Email, phone, revenue, industry… even custom attributes. Contact data coverage isn’t the goal, golden records (= on any attribute) are: Complete, verified, trusted data for your reps.
• Your team should never enrich manually again. Data should meet them where they work. Or even if you maximize enrichment, you’re still creating latency.

Key Takeaways #

• Accuracy beats coverage in waterfall order: Start with the most accurate vendor first (even if coverage is lower), then cascade to high-coverage vendors for gaps—false positives cost more than missing data
• Regional optimization is critical: Cognism + Lusha dominate Europe (GDPR-compliant), ZoomInfo + LeadIQ lead in US, TheirStack for technographics—vendors perform differently by geography and data type
• 5-6x coverage uplift possible: Single vendor delivers 10-15% email coverage; proper 3-vendor waterfall achieves 70%+ coverage—Descript proved this with 2x coverage boost
• Distribution unlocks adoption: Build waterfall once, deploy everywhere (Chrome extension, CRM buttons, Slack agents)—enriched data must meet reps where they work, not in a separate tool
• Every field deserves a waterfall: Not just email/phone—apply waterfall logic to revenue, industry, technographics, any critical attribute for true “golden record” data quality

Frequently Asked Questions #