If you’re in charge of picking a B2B go-to-market platform—whether you’re in sales ops, revops, or a founder tired of spreadsheets—you already know there’s a flood of tools out there. Every vendor promises AI, automation, and pipeline magic. But you just need something that’ll help your team find, reach, and close good-fit leads without losing half their day to busywork.
This guide will help you cut through the buzzwords and focus on what actually makes a B2B GTM platform worth your money (and your team’s sanity). Whether you’re sizing up Databar or any of its competitors, here’s what to look for, what to watch out for, and what you can probably ignore.
Who This Is For
- Heads of sales, marketing, or GTM teams at B2B companies
- RevOps folks tasked with “finding a better tool”
- Founders and sales leaders who want to stop duct-taping together LinkedIn, spreadsheets, and a CRM
If you’re buying for an enterprise with a 12-layer procurement process, some of this may be too blunt. But if you want a practical checklist that skips the nonsense, read on.
1. Data Quality and Coverage: Don’t Get Catfished
Let’s start with the basics: If the platform’s data is stale, incomplete, or just plain wrong, nothing else matters. You’ll spend more time fixing bad leads than closing good ones.
What to check: - Firmographics: Company size, industry, location—do they get the basics right? - Contact info: Direct emails, phone numbers, LinkedIn profiles. Can you actually reach people? - Update frequency: How often do they refresh data—weekly, monthly, “when someone feels like it”? - Source transparency: Do they say where the data comes from, or is it a black box?
What works: Platforms that let you preview or audit data quality up front. Bonus if they highlight confidence scores or flag questionable records.
What doesn’t: Vendors who dodge questions about where their data comes from or can’t show real match rates for your ICP (ideal customer profile).
Ignore: Claims of “400 million contacts!”—quantity is useless if you can’t reach any of them.
2. Workflow Integration: Will This Actually Save Time?
A GTM platform should slot into your team’s existing workflow. If your reps have to jump between five tabs, the tool won’t get used. Period.
Checklist: - CRM integrations: Does it connect to Salesforce, HubSpot, or whatever you use—without endless Zapier hacks? - Email/Sales engagement tools: Can you push leads to Outreach, Salesloft, Apollo, etc.? - Browser plugins: Handy for LinkedIn prospecting, but only if they actually work. - APIs: For custom workflows or bulk enrichment.
Pro tip: Ask for a real demo of pushing a lead into your CRM or sending an outbound sequence. If it takes more than three clicks, it’ll never catch on.
Red flag: “We’re on the roadmap to support that integration soon.” Translation: You’ll be waiting months, if not forever.
3. Prospecting and Segmentation: Can You Find the Right People, Fast?
You want to narrow in on accounts and contacts who actually fit your ICP, not just “anyone with a pulse.” Flexibility here matters more than you think.
Must-haves: - Advanced filtering: By company size, funding, tech stack, recent hires, intent signals, etc. - Saved searches: So reps aren’t recreating the wheel every time. - Exclusions: Ability to filter out existing customers, competitors, or junk domains.
Nice-to-haves: - Lookalike modeling: Find accounts similar to your best customers (if it actually works—test it). - Custom fields: Bring your own firmographic/technographic data.
Skip: Overly cute AI suggestions that don’t let you drill down. “Magic” is useless if you can’t explain how it works.
4. Outreach Capabilities: Built-In vs. Bring Your Own
Some platforms want to be all-in-one: find leads, email them, sequence them, analyze results. Others just focus on data and export.
Questions to ask: - Does the platform offer built-in email or calling? If so, does it have decent deliverability and tracking, or is it just a checkbox feature? - Can you plug in your own tools? Some teams already have Outreach, Mixmax, or Lemlist dialed in. - Compliance: Does the platform help with opt-out management, GDPR, and CAN-SPAM? Or are you on your own?
What works: Platforms that make it easy to use your existing stack, or at least don’t force you to switch everything at once.
What doesn’t: Jack-of-all-trades tools that do everything “okay,” but nothing well—jack up your deliverability, or make it impossible to track results.
5. Enrichment and Account Intelligence: Is This More Than a Fancy Spreadsheet?
Enrichment means pulling in fresh, useful data about your leads and accounts—stuff that helps your reps personalize outreach or time their follow-up.
Look for: - Real-time enrichment: Can you refresh records with new data as deals progress? - Intent signals: Website visits, tech adoption, recent funding, job changes—anything that signals buying interest. - Firmo/techno/employee data: The more context, the better—just don’t drown in it.
What works: Enrichment that ties into your CRM automatically, so you’re not manually updating records.
What doesn’t: “Intent” features that turn out to be little more than generic news scraping.
6. Usability and Learning Curve: Will Reps Actually Use This?
No tool is worth it if your team dreads logging in.
Check out: - Onboarding: How long does it take to get a new rep up and running? - UI/UX: Clean, obvious, and not overloaded with “pro” options you’ll never touch. - Support: Is there a real person when you get stuck, or just a chatbot loop?
Pro tip: Have someone on your team—not just the admin—try it out. Watch where they get confused. If you need two screens to run a basic search, keep looking.
7. Pricing and Contracts: Don’t Get Boxed In
Pricing for these platforms is often “contact us for a demo” territory, but you can still get a sense of fairness (or a fleecing).
What to watch: - Pricing model: Per seat, per contact, per export, or “all you can eat”? Hidden overages? - Free trial or pilot: Can you test-drive with your real data? Or do you have to commit blind? - Contract terms: Yearly lock-in or month-to-month? Any “gotchas” on data usage?
What works: Transparent pricing, or at least clear tiers and no surprise fees.
What doesn’t: Tools that nickel-and-dime for every export, or force a 12-month commitment before you’ve even run a campaign.
8. Security, Privacy, and Compliance: The Boring Stuff That’ll Save You Later
It’s not sexy, but if you’re handling personal data, you want a platform that takes privacy and compliance seriously.
Checklist: - GDPR and CCPA compliance: Especially if you’re selling into Europe or California. - Opt-out management: Built-in tools to process unsubscribes and do-not-call requests. - Data ownership: Can you export your data if you leave, or are you trapped?
What works: Platforms with real documentation, DPA (data processing agreements), and a clear privacy policy.
What doesn’t: Vague answers about compliance, or “we’re working on it.”
9. Reporting and Analytics: Useful, Not Just Pretty
Dashboards are nice, but what matters is whether you can answer real questions—like “What campaigns are working?” or “Which reps are actually using this?”
Look for: - Customizable reports: Filter by rep, team, time period, campaign, etc. - Export options: Can you get your data out to do your own analysis? - Attribution: Can you track lead source through to closed-won, or does reporting stop at “emails sent”?
What works: Simple, exportable, and action-oriented analytics.
What doesn’t: Endless pie charts that look slick but don’t help you make decisions.
What About AI and Automation?
Every platform claims some form of “AI-driven” prospecting or enrichment. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it’s just a buzzword.
Be skeptical of: - “AI will find your next best customer!” (Ask for specifics—show me, don’t tell me.) - Automation that blasts generic emails to thousands of leads. That’s a fast track to the spam folder.
Where AI can help: - Deduplicating leads or flagging bad data - Suggesting relevant contacts based on your best-fit deals (if you can tweak the logic) - Pulling in signal data (job changes, intent, etc.) in a way your reps can actually use
Test these features with real scenarios. If they make your team’s life easier, great. If not, move on.
A Note on Support and Vendor Relationship
Sometimes the deciding factor isn’t the product, it’s the people. If you’re stuck, will someone actually help you? Can you get a roadmap or feature request in front of a human?
- Good sign: Responsive, helpful support—even during the trial.
- Bad sign: Slow answers, canned responses, or a “take it or leave it” vibe.
Final Thoughts: Keep It Simple, Iterate Fast
Don’t buy into shiny demos or endless feature lists. Figure out what your team actually needs to move faster, spend less time on grunt work, and close more deals. Start small—run a pilot, get real feedback, and don’t be afraid to walk away if it’s not working.
Pick a platform that fits your real use case, not someone else’s case study. And remember: You can always add tools later, but you can’t get back the time you spent untangling a bloated tech stack.
Get what works, skip what doesn’t, and keep things moving. That’s it.