What's Really Inside a D&B Contact List? We Checked.
We took a sample of a company's Dun & Bradstreet list and checked every single record by hand. Out of 155 contacts, only 5 were completely right.
First, a simple way to think about it
Imagine you find your school's class list from a few years ago. You want to invite everyone to a party, so you start calling the numbers.
Some kids have moved away. Some phone numbers don't work anymore. A few kids switched schools. And for some names, you can't even tell if they were ever in the class.
The list looks full and neat. But when you actually try to use it, most of it doesn't work.
That's what happened when we checked this D&B file.
What we did
A company that had been buying data from D&B asked us to check it. We took a first sample of 150 companies and 155 people from their list and ran every record through the LeadGenius Precision process. That means we checked each one against live, real-world sources to see if it was still true.
Problem #1: A lot of the companies weren't really there
Before you can reach a person, the company they work at has to exist. More than a third of the companies on the list didn't pass that test.
Why the 53 companies were invalid
| Reason | Companies |
|---|---|
| Out of business | 20 |
| Website down | 20 |
| Bought by another company | 8 |
| Couldn't confirm it exists | 5 |
Even the companies that were still open usually had something wrong. Think of it like having a friend's name right but their address wrong. You still can't mail them anything.
What we had to fix at the 97 real companies
| Field | Fixes |
|---|---|
| Street address | 39 |
| Main phone number | 37 |
| Company LinkedIn page | 25 |
| Website | 16 |
Problem #2: Most of the people were gone
This is where it got worse. Of the 155 people on the list, only 29 still worked where the list said they did.
Where the 155 contacts actually stood
- Still at the company 29 · 19%
- Left the company 48 · 31%
- Couldn't confirm 20 · 13%
- At a company that wasn't valid 58 · 37%
And the 29 people who were still there? 19 of them had the wrong job title. That matters. If you think someone runs HR but they actually work in finance, your message lands with the wrong person.
After checking titles, phones and addresses, just 5 people out of 155 were right in every way.
Why does this happen?
People and companies change all the time. It's like a sandcastle at the beach: it looks great when you build it, but the tide keeps washing parts of it away.
- People change jobs. Workers switch roles and employers every few years.
- Companies change. They close, get bought, move offices or change phone numbers.
- Big databases are built to be wide, not fresh. They try to cover everyone, and keeping every record up to date is really hard.
The tricky part is that bad data doesn't look bad. It sits in your CRM looking complete. You only find out when your team starts calling and emailing.
What bad data really costs you
- Sales reps spend their day calling people who left long ago.
- Emails bounce, which can hurt your ability to reach inboxes later.
- Territory and account plans get built around companies that are closed or were bought.
- Pipeline forecasts start from the wrong numbers.
What changed after we fixed it
The D&B list showed about 1 contact per company (1.03). That sounds fine until you check it. Once you remove the bad records, there were only 0.30 valid contacts per valid company.
After our process found the right people, that number went up to 0.87. We added 55 new contacts who actually work at these companies today.
Try this yourself
You don't need to take our word for it. Pull 100 random records from any list you've bought and check them one by one. Is the company still open? Does the person still work there? Is their title right?
If your results look anything like ours, it's time to stop trusting the list just because it looks full.
Source: LeadGenius Precision process review of a D&B data sample (150 accounts, 155 contacts), September 2026. Results reflect this sample and may differ for other lists.
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