Salesloft Setup Checklist: What Data You Actually Need to Verify Emails

Let’s be honest: buying Salesloft is the easy part. The platform does a lot—sales engagement, dialer, conversation intelligence, forecasting. But if your data is dirty, none of it matters. This checklist is for the person who ends up managing the tools—not necessarily the sales expert. I’m the one who handles software purchases and vendor management for our team. When I took this over in 2021, we had four different sales tools and no single source of truth. I report to both operations and finance, so I’ve learned to look at total cost, not just the monthly license. If you’re setting up Salesloft for the first time, or wondering why your reply rates are low, follow these seven steps in order.

Before You Start

You need three things: Salesloft admin access, a LinkedIn Sales Navigator seat, and a verification tool. If you don’t have the last one, budget for it. In the long run, a bounced-heavy list costs more than any verification tool.

Step 1: Pull Your Prospects From LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator filters to build the prospect list you actually want. Then use a sales navigator extractor to pull profile data into a spreadsheet. Think of an extractor as kind of a scraper: it grabs names, titles, companies, LinkedIn URLs, and sometimes an email field.

Here’s the thing: a sales navigator extractor is a data puller, not a verifier. If it shows an email address, treat it as a guess. I’ve seen tools generate patterns like [email protected] even when the real address was different. The numbers said the extractor’s coverage was fine. My gut said those addresses were too clean. My gut was right.

At minimum, extract: first name, last name, company name, company domain, job title, LinkedIn URL, and any phone number. Don’t rely on the extractor’s email field as your source of truth.

Step 2: Understand What Data Is Required to Verify Email

This is the step most people miss. “What data is required to verify email?” isn’t a trick question. The short answer: the email address itself, the domain, and enough name context to catch typos. Most verification services check:

• Syntax – is the format [email protected]?
• Domain – does the domain have valid MX records?
• Mailbox – does the server accept mail for that specific address?
• Catch-all risk – does the domain accept everything? If so, “valid” doesn’t mean the person exists.

What I mean by “enough name context” is this: if you have two contacts named John Smith at the same company, the verifier needs to know which one you’re sending to. Without a name, an email can be syntactically valid and still land in the wrong inbox.

According to FTC guidance (ftc.gov), commercial email headers must not be misleading. That’s a compliance reason to verify. The practical reason is simpler: unverified email hurts your domain reputation.

Checkpoint: you know which fields your verification tool actually needs before you pay for it.

Step 3: Run Verification Before You Import

Now that you have the data, run it through a verification service. Upload the CSV, let it check each address, and review the output. Don’t import “risky” or “catch-all” addresses unless you have a good reason.

I know this sounds basic. Then you clean 3,000 records and understand why it matters. I made the rookie mistake in our first rollout: imported a list straight from the extractor without verifying anything. We had an 18% bounce rate. I said “we need verified emails.” One of our team members heard “we need enough emails to upload.” We discovered the disconnect when the bounce report came back. That was a fun conversation with my VP.

Also—watching for this is important—a catch-all domain can accept any address, so the verifier might mark it “valid” even when the person doesn’t exist. Understand the tool’s output before you trust it.

Checkpoint: the invalid rate is low enough that you’re not ruining your domain reputation. I use a rough 3% threshold; your number might differ.

Step 4: Map Your Data to the Salesloft CRM Sync

If you’re looking for a “Salesloft CRM,” let’s clear that up: Salesloft is a sales engagement platform with native CRM integrations. It syncs with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Microsoft Dynamics. The “CRM” part matters when you map your fields.

Open Salesloft’s import template and map: first name, last name, email, company, title, LinkedIn URL, and phone. If you’re using the Salesloft CRM sync, make sure the company domain and account fields match your CRM records. Otherwise you’ll create duplicates.

If I remember correctly, the current template uses something like “email_address” as the column header. But don’t quote me on that—check the docs. The template changes, and the import preview is your best friend.

Step 5: Set Up the Salesloft Multi-Line Dialer

If calling is part of your process, set up the Salesloft multi-line dialer. This gives you a pool of caller IDs instead of one. From the user’s perspective, it’s fairly simple: add numbers, assign them to a calling step, and Salesloft rotates through them.

The hidden cost is the numbers themselves. Depending on your plan, multi-line dialing might be an add-on or require a higher tier. That’s a true TCO item. The $50/month savings from going single-line might not be worth the lower answer rates.

I went back and forth between a multi-line setup and a single-line setup for two weeks. On paper, single-line was cheaper. But our SDRs were dialing the same area code all day, and the single caller ID felt spammy. We went with multi-line. It didn’t magically double our connect rate, but it was noticeably better than one number.

Step 6: Build a Small Test Cadence and Send to 20-30 People

Before you launch your 1,000-person sequence, create a test group. Send to 20-30 verified records. Check deliverability, open rate, and replies. Look for broken personalization fields, wrong names, and emails going to the wrong people.

This is the simplest step, and the one people skip because they’re excited to “start.” Worse than the delay? Loading 5,000 records and discovering half have empty company names. Or finding out your test email landed in spam because the domain wasn’t authenticated. Not ideal, but workable? No. A test cadence takes an hour. Cleanup takes a week.

Step 7: Review Your Data Monthly

Once Salesloft is running, don’t stop. Set a recurring calendar reminder to review your data. Pull bounce reports, negative replies, and call connect rates. Re-verify contacts who bounced. Update job titles and companies for active prospects.

This is the step I almost never skipped in our vendor consolidation project. We cut from six tools to three, and Salesloft was the one we kept—because we had a process, not because the software was magic. In my experience, the tool doesn’t fix bad data. The process does.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Relying on a sales navigator extractor for verified emails. The extractor pulls data. It doesn’t verify. Always verify separately.
• Ignoring catch-all domains. A “valid” catch-all can still mean nobody’s in the inbox.
• Skipping the test cadence. Do not upload 5,000 records before you’ve sent 30.
• Forgetting the multi-line dialer’s ongoing cost. That’s part of TCO.

My experience is based on a dozen or so mid-market implementations, mostly 20-100 person companies. If you’re in an enterprise with complex Salesforce orgs and multiple business units, this checklist will feel incomplete. The principle still holds: verify before you upload, and review after you launch.

Put another way: setup is the easy part. Keeping the data clean is the job.