Every lead list I've bought had every column filled in for every row. Industry, size, tech, email. Looked tidy. A lot of it was guessed.
I'd rather see "unknown" than a confident wrong value. Unknown tells me to check it myself or skip it. Wrong, I find out after the bounce, or after a reply saying "we don't use that".
So when I build a prospect list now, every claim needs a source and a date. No source, the cell stays empty.
How do you handle guessed fields? Clean them out, or live with them?
Top comments (2)
Clean them out — or at least flag them. A confident wrong value poisons everything downstream, while "unknown" is honest and tells you exactly where to verify. Good framing.
Flagging is usually enough. Deleting a wrong value also hides the fact that someone got it wrong once, and that's worth knowing.