If you’re tired of chasing stale leads or wasting time with outdated company info in your CRM, you’re not alone. Sales ops folks and revenue teams know the pain: your pipeline’s only as good as the data inside it. The good news? You don’t have to be a developer or a data scientist to automate a lot of this grunt work—especially if you’ve got access to external data providers like Coresignal.
This guide is for anyone who wants a clear, practical rundown on wiring up data updates in their sales pipeline with Coresignal integrations. I’ll walk through what works, what’s worth skipping, and how to avoid common headaches.
Why bother automating sales pipeline data updates?
Let’s be blunt: The average CRM is a graveyard of old emails and dead companies. Manual research is slow, error-prone, and—unless you secretly enjoy data entry—painful. Here’s what automation gets you:
- Fresh company and contact info: Fewer dead ends, less embarrassing outreach.
- Time saved: No more copy-pasting from LinkedIn or company websites.
- A real edge: Spot new funding rounds, hires, and company changes before your competitors do.
But automation isn’t magic. You’ve got to pick the right data, wire it into your systems, and keep an eye on quality. Let’s get into how.
Step 1: Decide what data actually matters
Before you fire up any integration, get clear on what you actually need to update. More data isn’t always better—it’s just more noise.
Focus on: - Firmographic data: Company size, industry, location, funding rounds. - Contact data: New decision-makers, role changes, work emails. - Signals: Recent hiring, layoffs, new offices, tech stack changes.
Skip fields your team never looks at. If nobody cares about a company’s fax number or founding date, don’t bother syncing it.
Pro tip: Talk to your reps. Find out what info actually helps them close deals or avoid dead ends.
Step 2: Understand what Coresignal offers (and what it doesn’t)
Coresignal is a B2B data provider—think of it as a firehose of fresh company and professional data scraped from public sources. It’s strong at:
- Company profiles (size, industry, funding, etc.)
- Employee profiles (public LinkedIn info, job titles, skills)
- Company signals (growth, layoffs, leadership changes)
What it doesn’t do: - Email enrichment (Coresignal has work emails sometimes, but not as consistently as a specialist like Hunter or Apollo) - Phone numbers (don’t expect much here) - Real-time data (updates are frequent, but not instantaneous)
Bottom line: Coresignal is great for keeping your CRM/company data fresh. It’s not an all-in-one enrichment tool.
Step 3: Pick your integration approach
There are a few ways to wire Coresignal data into your sales stack. Which one you choose depends on your technical comfort and how much maintenance you want.
Option 1: Native integrations (if you get lucky)
First, check if your CRM or sales tool already has a Coresignal integration. As of now, native options are rare. If you see a plug-and-play connector for Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, etc., use it—life’s too short to reinvent the wheel.
Pros: Fastest, usually easiest to maintain.
Cons: Limited customization. Usually expensive or only covers basic fields.
Option 2: Zapier or workflow automation tools
Coresignal isn’t on Zapier or Make out of the box, but you can use their APIs with these tools if you’re willing to get your hands dirty.
- Best for: Automating simple lookups or updates when you add a new company to your pipeline.
- Downsides: Workflow tools can choke on big data volumes. Good for small batches or triggers, but not bulk updates.
Option 3: Direct API integration
Coresignal has a pretty straightforward API. If you’ve got an ops person who can write basic Python or use a no-code API tool, you can set up scheduled enrichments.
- How it works: Pull company data from Coresignal’s API based on company domain or LinkedIn URL, then push updates into your CRM (via API, CSV import, or middleware).
- Best for: Teams that want control and need to update hundreds or thousands of records at once.
Reality check: If nobody on your team can code or run scripts, this isn’t your path. Don’t force it.
Option 4: Manual exports & imports
Not glamorous, but sometimes you just export the latest Coresignal dataset, clean it in Excel, and upload to your CRM. For quarterly updates or big one-off projects, this works fine.
- Pros: No dev work needed.
- Cons: Manual, and you’ll need to deduplicate carefully.
Step 4: Map your fields and clean your data
This is where most automations fall apart—data mapping. Make sure your field names in Coresignal match (or can be transformed to match) your CRM’s fields.
Checklist: - Review the Coresignal data dictionary and your CRM schema side-by-side. - Decide which Coresignal fields map to which CRM fields. - Watch out for mismatches—like “Company Size” as a number in one system, a range in another. - Always test on a handful of records before running a big update.
If you’re doing this via API, write a quick script to handle mapping and basic cleaning (trimming whitespace, standardizing formats, etc.). If you’re using CSVs, Excel’s “VLOOKUP” and “Text to Columns” are your friends.
Pro tip: Set up rules for what happens if fields are empty, or if the Coresignal data conflicts with what’s already in your CRM.
Step 5: Schedule your updates (but don’t overdo it)
How often should you sync? More isn’t always better.
- Weekly or bi-weekly: Good for fast-moving pipelines or if you’re tracking startups/tech companies.
- Monthly or quarterly: Fine for most B2B orgs where company data doesn’t change daily.
Avoid real-time syncs unless you really need them—they’re a pain to maintain and rarely worth the hassle.
Set a recurring task: - If you’re using the API, run a scheduled script or workflow. - For manual imports, block out calendar time and stick to it.
Step 6: Monitor for issues and keep humans in the loop
Automations break. APIs change. Data gets weird. Don’t set it and forget it.
- Spot-check your CRM for weird updates or fields that didn’t sync.
- Track error logs if you’re running scripts.
- Ask reps to flag bad data and keep a feedback loop open.
What to watch for: - Duplicate accounts (especially if your matching logic is weak) - Overwriting good data with blank or wrong data - Out-of-date signals (sometimes a “new” Coresignal update is already weeks old)
What works, what doesn’t, and what to ignore
Here’s the honest take:
- Works well: Updating company data (size, industry, funding, location) and basic contact info with Coresignal. Night-and-day difference for account research.
- Doesn’t work well: Getting direct dials, verified emails, or real-time alerts—Coresignal just isn’t built for that.
- Ignore for now: Fancy AI enrichment or predictive scoring based only on external data. Focus on getting the basics right first.
Keep it simple, iterate, and don’t chase shiny objects
Automating data updates can save you hours and prevent embarrassing mistakes, but only if you keep things straightforward. Start small—pick a single field or record type to automate. Once you see it working, add more.
Don’t get sucked into endless data enrichment for its own sake. The goal is a pipeline that’s accurate enough to help your reps win—not a perfect database. Test, tweak, and always keep humans in the loop.
Happy automating.