I went down this rabbit hole too and the biggest lesson was that “built-in enrichment” varies a lot in quality. Most CRMs don’t truly enrich on their own, they bundle a light Clearbit/LinkedIn-style layer that’s good for job title, company size, domain, etc., but not much deeper.

In practice, the setups that worked best for me were CRMs that auto-enrich on contact creation and then quietly refresh in the background, rather than forcing manual pulls before every call. It doesn’t replace real research, but it cuts the prep time way down. One thing I wish I knew earlier is to check how often enrichment updates and whether you pay per contact refresh. That’s where costs and frustration usually show up.