Reader,

If you’re still manually sourcing talent and building sales call sheets in 2026...you’re behind.

Not because you’re bad at your job.​
But because tech is changing options for better operations.

I see this every week with staffing leaders who are trying to grow revenue using workflows built for 2021. Now is the time to assess.

Example:

Last week I met with a CEO of a consulting firm focused on engineering hiring.
Sharp guy. Strong foundation. Great delivery instincts.

His goal?

We were talking about tech solutions for their sales and delivery teams and trying to decide what to do. The leaders are engineers, so technically they could build anything custom they wanted.
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But as we reviewed their tech stack we realized the real issue:

• No clear sales/delivery infrastructure
• No defined workflows for inbound and outbound sales
• No system behind how work actually moves through the business

So before we even talked about tools, we had to talk about operations.

Because tools don’t fix broken workflows.
They just automate them.

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Together, we mapped out workflows that tied directly into sales, delivery and marketing functions.

The mistake I see everywhere

Most leaders start here:

But the better starting point is:

Until you understand:

• Where time is being wasted
• Where revenue is leaking
• Where reps get stuck
• What actually drives placements and deals

…you’ll keep buying shiny tech that never really moves the needle.

So it was only after we mapped out the processes, that we were able to assess the tech stack.

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One of the first questions became: do we buy product or build custom?

This CEO could build everything himself.

But here’s the tradeoff:

• Custom = flexible, but time-heavy
• Product = fast, but not perfect

The real question isn’t

It’s

If it takes two weeks to build something that a product can do at 80% effectiveness today...
That’s two weeks you’re not driving revenue.

Smart operators don’t chase perfection.
They chase speed + leverage.

We decided based on what he needs immediately for outbound activity that we wanted to buy a product.

Choosing the right tool for the job

Now, which product fits our needs? This is important. I’m not buying a Ferrari just to go get groceries 🙄

We knew we needed to pick a tool for data enrichment. Ideally we wanted a platform that scrapes for accurate contact information and includes AI/automated workflows for sourcing and biz dev functions (signals, personalization messages etc).

We got two demos on the board for business development:

• ZoomInfo
• a modern AI powered product from BenAI’s recruiting suite

ZoomInfo has many functions, but at their core they promise quality contact information. That is most important.

However, just for unlimited enrichment alone Zoominfo was charging: 660/month with a 12-month lock in.

Demos

After looking at a few options we took a demo from the BenAI team, reviewing a modern solution that leverages Clay for contact enrichment as well as specific sourcing, signaling and outbound messages.

Clay operates off tokens. For half the price of ZoomInfo we could enrich over 800 contacts per month:

I can cancel clay anytime.

Ben AI appeared to be the more cost effective, all in one tool:

Although we want additional sourcing and signaling features, the primary question is two-fold:

A) Who has the better data? Where is each tool pulling data from?

and

B) How many profiles do we expect to enrich per month?

A lot of tools are overkill if you don’t know exactly what problem you’re solving (like ZoomInfo I’m ultimately paying them 8K just for data 😒).

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Understanding how to think about decision making around technology is important.

Stay tuned for part two where we dive deeper into:

• types of questions you should ask during these demos
• how to weigh options
• hot AI powered sourcing and business development tools, and...

...what this CEO ended up doing!

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-Jaclyn

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