Data-Driven - a phrase we hear often in the B2B Cloud industry - but often as an output from sales activity versus as a primary input to outbound sales activity. Bob Scarperi, has built a company that focuses on ensuring the right and complete account and contact data are in the sales resource hands before they being the outreach and lead generation process. The amount of data available to revenue leaders is very deep and wide, however being able to figure out which data to acquire,  deploy and use effectively has never been more complex and thus difficult. 40% of the time, the most junior sales resources, sales development resources are responsible for building and prioritizing the lists they use to conduct sales outreach.  Often this results in low probability account being elevated in priority to those most likely to buy? Why are we doing this to early-career sales professionals?  Sources like ZoomInfo, D&B, Lattice Engines provide great data, but most organizations have not built a "playbook" on how sales development and account executives should use the data. Often, the first step is at the corporate level, building an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) that defines the highest priority accounts to contact.  Unfortunately, far too many companies have not defined the ICP(s) in enough detail that an xDR or AE is confident who they should be prioritizing in their outbound outreach and multi-channel cadences. Procure a list source that allows sales resources to understand the firmographics of each account in their outreach list, which includes variables including revenue, number of employees, industry, and descriptive details about the company.   Once  you have a conversation with the target account, seek to understand their buying mode, decision-making process, etc.  Then, develop an "account score" that uses the firmographic and discovery information to highlight the priority of investing more time into that account. Next, we discussed how intent data can add additional context to the account outreach prioritization process.  First, use "technographic" information to see if their existing tech stack is favorable to your solution architecture.  Intent data can often provide "false positives" if you do not compliment intent data with firmographic and buyer profile that aligns with your defined ICP and Buyer Persona(s). Quality of account signal, complete account, and contact (buyer persona) data is the winning combo to optimize and maximize the return on investment for outbound activity.   When selling to larger enterprises, understanding the decision process and the roles of the multiple members on the buying committee, which on average exceeds 10 people. This makes the holy grail of understanding the buying process even more difficult,  and yet today, even more critical to the probability of success. CAUTION: data-driven can lead to data overload.  Sales leadership needs to define the specific account information that is critical to make the initial outreach relevant.   Identify and define the highest priority leading indicators, such as MQL to SQL conversion rate, SQL to Opportunity conversion, and Opportunity to Close rates.  Having too many, or non causal metrics to the ultimate outcomes can lead to data saturation versus metrics-informed decisions. Each company's environment is unique, so ensure your data driven culture is established, continously  evaluated and then used to drive metrics informed decisions while eliminating the noise of too much or irrelevant data!