The Prospecting Checklist: 7 Criteria to Score Vendors Before You Sign

Ask any RevOps leader or sales manager where deals stall, and you’ll usually hear the same culprits: bad data, wasted outreach, and missed signals.

When your prospecting tool isn’t pulling its weight, the ripple effects show up everywhere, such as emails bounce, SDRs burn time chasing ghosts, and pipeline coverage starts to look more like wishful thinking than reality.

Choosing the right vendor isn’t just about finding more contacts; it’s about protecting SDR productivity, safeguarding deliverability, and ensuring your reps are spending their time where it matters most.

In a fragmented buying landscape, where every decision maker has three tools open at once, the quality of your data partner can either accelerate revenue or quietly cap your growth.

How to use this checklist (and when to replace a tool)

The framework below is built to give RevOps teams and frontline sales leaders a practical way to evaluate prospecting vendors. Each of the seven criteria can be scored on a simple 1–5 scale, so you can benchmark your current provider against the market.

If you’ve noticed warning signs, like shrinking match rates in your CRM, rising bounce rates, or reps spending more time cleaning lists than building pipelines, it may be time to run your current tool through this checklist. You’ll have a clearer sense of whether to double down with your existing vendor or start evaluating other players in the space, including some top Apollo alternatives.

Criterion 1: Coverage & Depth

The first question every RevOps leader should ask about a vendor is simple: Does this platform actually cover the markets and personas we need?

Too many teams sign on with a data provider only to realize six months later that critical gaps exist. Maybe the database is strong in North America but thin in EMEA. Maybe it’s stacked with mid-level managers but offers little visibility into VP or C-suite decision makers. Or perhaps the firmographic and technographic layers are shallow, leaving reps blind to the tools or company size of their prospects.

When you’re evaluating coverage and depth, look for these dimensions:

• Geographic reach: Does the database reliably cover all the regions where you’re selling today and where you plan to expand?
• Seniority and role accuracy: Are there verified decision makers at the levels your sales team needs (director, VP, CMO, CIO, etc.)?
• Firmographics and technographics: Can you segment by company size, revenue, industry, or tech stack without hitting dead ends?
• Market gaps: What blind spots remain? (For example, startups, niche industries, or emerging markets.)

A strong vendor should provide both breadth (millions of records across global markets) and depth (granular filters and verified insights that map to your ICP). Without both, SDRs waste time spinning through partial lists or struggling to break into new segments.

Pro tip: Ask vendors for a “coverage overlap report” against your CRM. This shows exactly how well their database maps to your existing pipeline, highlighting both strengths and blind spots before you commit.

Criterion 2: Accuracy, Recency & Match Rate

If coverage tells you what’s in the database, accuracy tells you whether you can trust it. The most common frustration sales teams report isn’t “not enough leads”, it’s wasting hours on outdated or incorrect data. Every bad phone number or bounced email chips away at SDR productivity and damages your sender reputation.

When you’re scoring accuracy, think about three key levers:

• Update cycles: How often does the vendor refresh its database? Weekly? Monthly? Quarterly? The faster and more frequent the refresh, the less risk you carry.
• Verification methods: Does the provider rely solely on AI/web scraping, or do they layer in human validation and third-party checks? The best vendors blend machine scale with human QA.
• Match rate to your CRM: How often does their data actually align with and enrich what’s already in your system? A low match rate is a red flag that you’ll be paying for lots of noise.

One useful benchmark is enrichment lift. It’s the percentage improvement in data completeness when you run your CRM through the vendor’s enrichment engine. Top providers should deliver a meaningful bump in firmographics, direct dials, or validated emails without introducing duplicates or bad records.

Pro tip: Always test a sample list before signing. A pilot program can reveal your true CRM hit rate and whether enrichment adds value—or just extra work.

Criterion 3: Compliance & Risk Controls

Prospecting data is only an asset if it’s safe to use. In today’s regulatory environment, the wrong vendor can expose your team to legal, financial, and reputational risks.

For RevOps leaders, compliance should be just as important as coverage or accuracy. Because one GDPR complaint or CCPA violation can undo years of pipeline building.

When assessing a vendor’s compliance posture, look for these safeguards:

• Regulatory alignment: Do they explicitly document how their data collection and processing complies with GDPR, CCPA, and other regional laws?
• Consent lineage: Can they demonstrate where each contact record came from, how it was obtained, and whether proper consent was captured?
• Suppression and opt-outs: Does the platform make it easy to respect do-not-contact lists, unsubscribe requests, or suppression requirements?
• Auditability: Can you generate clear compliance reports if legal or IT requests them?

The strongest providers treat compliance as a core feature, not a side note. They’ll have privacy officers on staff, detailed security certifications (ISO, SOC 2), and transparent documentation of how they handle data.

Ignoring this criterion can be costly: fines for GDPR violations alone can reach up to €20M or 4% of annual global turnover. Beyond fines, using non-compliant data can also damage trust with prospects, making it harder for reps to start conversations on the right foot.

Pro tip: Ask vendors how they respond to a “right to be forgotten” request under GDPR. If they can’t explain it in plain language, that’s a red flag.

Criterion 4: Signal Quality (Intent & Events)

Great coverage and accurate contact data are table stakes. What separates a good vendor from a strategic partner is the quality of the buying signals they provide. With buying committees growing and sales cycles stretching, intent data helps your reps prioritize the right accounts at the right time.

But not all intent signals are created equal. To evaluate signal quality, look at:

• Signal sources: Where does the data come from? First-party content engagement? Co-op networks? Publisher data? Direct vs. indirect sources matter for reliability.
• Taxonomy clarity: Does the vendor clearly define what each intent category means (e.g., “researching CRM software” vs. “reading generic sales blogs”)? Vague taxonomies often produce false positives.
• Noise filtering: How well does the platform filter out irrelevant signals and surface true buying intent? Overly broad or noisy signals can distract SDRs instead of guiding them.
• Reproducibility: Can signals be validated across multiple sessions or sources? Single-click “intent spikes” are less useful than consistent patterns.

The goal is to ensure that intent isn’t just another data feed, but a predictive layer that helps SDRs and AEs prioritize high-propensity accounts.

When done right, intent data can shorten sales cycles, improve targeting, and lift conversion rates. When done poorly, it just clutters your CRM with meaningless “activity” fields.

Pro tip: Ask vendors for a case study that shows how their intent signals directly improved opportunity creation or deal velocity. Look for measurable impact, not just “increased engagement.”

Criterion 5: Workflow & Integrations

Even the cleanest data is useless if it doesn’t flow seamlessly into your team’s daily tools. A prospecting vendor should reduce friction, not add it. That means tight integrations, simple list-building, and governance features that keep data clean across the stack.

When evaluating workflow fit, focus on:

• Native connectors: Does the vendor have pre-built integrations for your CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics), sales engagement platforms (Outreach, Salesloft), and marketing automation (Marketo, Pardot)?
• Admin governance: Can RevOps control permissions, sync rules, and field mappings—so enrichment doesn’t create duplicates or overwrite custom fields?
• Speed-to-list: How quickly can an SDR go from searching a segment to working a clean call/email list in their engagement tool?
• Dedupe & normalization: Does the system automatically catch duplicates, standardize company names, and normalize data (e.g., “VP of Sales” vs. “Vice President, Sales”)?

A strong workflow fit means less manual uploading, fewer CSV headaches, and more time for reps to focus on selling. It also means RevOps can trust the data layer without constant clean-up.

Always keep in mind that the integrations aren’t just about APIs. They’re about how data actually behaves once it lands in your CRM. A tool that overwrites custom fields or creates duplicates can quickly erode adoption and trust.

Pro tip: Ask for a demo of the end-to-end workflow: building a segment, exporting it into your CRM, and seeing how duplicates/permissions are handled. Don’t just trust the integration logo slide.

Criterion 6: Deliverability & Domain Health Safeguards

Your data vendor doesn’t just influence who your reps reach out to. It directly affects whether those emails ever land in an inbox. Deliverability is often overlooked during vendor evaluations, but it’s one of the biggest hidden risks in prospecting.

A database full of stale or risky addresses can tank your sender reputation, trigger spam filters, and cut campaign effectiveness in half.

When you’re scoring this criterion, consider:

• Email health tooling: Does the platform validate addresses in real time, flag risky accounts, and catch disposable domains before they ever hit your sequence?
• Sending guardrails: Are there built-in safeguards to prevent bulk sends to unverified contacts, or limits that protect your SDRs from burning domains?
• Spam trap avoidance: Does the vendor proactively scrub spam traps, honey pots, and known bad lists? Even one trap can blacklist your sending domain.
• Bounce rate thresholds: Can the vendor provide benchmarks or guarantees around average bounce rates? (Best-in-class providers keep this below 3%.)

Healthy deliverability isn’t just about protecting today’s campaigns, it’s about safeguarding the long-term reputation of your company’s sending domains. Once that reputation is damaged, recovery can take months and drag down every other marketing and sales initiative.

Pro tip: Ask vendors to share their domain health monitoring process. If they can’t show you how they protect customer sending reputations, you’ll be the one carrying the risk.

Criterion 7: Pricing Clarity, TCO & ROI Payback

Even the most feature-rich prospecting tool can turn into a liability if the pricing model isn’t transparent. Many teams underestimate the total cost of ownership (TCO) until renewal time, when hidden fees, overage charges, or seat minimums surface. A vendor’s pricing should be as predictable as the data quality it delivers.

Key areas to evaluate:

• Seat vs. usage pricing: Does the platform charge per user, per credit, or a mix of both? Watch out for models that look cheap upfront but penalize scale.
• Data credits: How are credits counted (per record, per export, per verified email)? Is there rollover for unused credits, or do they vanish at quarter’s end?
• Overage risk: What happens when your team exceeds its allotment? Are there automatic throttles, or does the meter just keep running?
• ROI targets: Can the vendor help you model payback e.g., how many net-new opportunities or deals should be expected within 90 days of launch?

The best vendors are confident enough in their pricing to make ROI projections part of the sales process. If they can’t clearly explain how and when you’ll see a return, assume you’re the one carrying the risk.

Pro tip: Before signing, run a quick ROI test: compare the cost of the platform against your team’s average deal value and win rates. If the math doesn’t show clear payback within the first two quarters, think twice.

Turn Your Vendor Evaluation Into a Revenue Strategy

Choosing a prospecting vendor isn’t just another procurement task. It’s a decision that directly shapes the health of your pipeline, the productivity of your reps, and the resilience of your go-to-market engine.

By running each provider through this 7-point checklist, you move beyond surface-level promises and into measurable, revenue-focused criteria.

For RevOps leaders, this framework isn’t about chasing the “shiniest” platform. It’s about ensuring your team has reliable data, scalable workflows, and clear ROI guardrails. When those pieces are in place, SDRs spend less time cleaning lists, AEs spend more time in qualified conversations, and your entire revenue motion runs with fewer leaks.

If your current tool falls short on more than a couple of these dimensions, that’s a signal in itself. It may be time to start exploring alternatives and other vendors that better align with your growth stage.

At the end of the day, the right vendor should feel less like a database and more like a partner, helping your team protect domain health, prioritize the right signals, and accelerate pipeline with confidence.