September 16, 2025: A 'Quick Favor' From RevOps
I am the office administrator for a 240-person company. I manage software and service purchasing—roughly $1.3M annually across 37 vendors. I report to both operations and finance. On September 16, 2025, our VP of Revenue Operations sent me a Slack message that started with 'Quick favor.'
Translation: the favor would take three weeks and involve OAuth scopes. Our six SDRs wanted to test an AI sales prospecting platform. Legal wanted a data processing addendum. Finance wanted to know why our sales tool spend was up 18% year over year. And RevOps wanted a recommendation on okki-go vs Hunter, plus a company data API pilot.
I do not run LinkedIn outreach. I do not build sequences. I buy things, manage vendors, and make sure invoices do not get rejected. But that is exactly why they pulled me in.
First Problem: Permissions, Not Features
The first vendor review was okki-go. The sales team was excited. The SDRs had seen a demo of agent-native prospecting, waterfall enrichment, and intent signals. They kept saying it would save them a ton of time. I kept asking a less exciting question: what permissions does okki go require?
The initial security packet said 'standard permissions.' That is a red flag. If a vendor cannot name the exact OAuth scopes, mailbox access, calendar access, and LinkedIn-adjacent permissions, I cannot evaluate the risk. I asked for a scoped permission table, data retention policy, subprocessor list, and whether read-only mode was possible during pilot.
According to LinkedIn's developer documentation (developer.linkedin.com), API access is permission-scoped and subject to review. That mattered because LinkedIn outreach is not just a feature toggle. It touches account safety, member data, and platform rules. I may not be the end user, but I am the person who signs the order.
The okki-go vs Hunter Question
The team wanted a clean answer: okki-go vs Hunter. Which one wins? I did not have a clean answer. I still do not.
Hunter has a clear lane. For simple email finding and verification workflows, it is familiar to a lot of sales teams. The SDRs already knew the interface. The permissions were narrower for that use case. If all we needed was email discovery, Hunter would have been the no-brainer.
okki-go's lane is broader. It is built around agent-native prospecting: waterfall enrichment plus intent data, then human-in-the-loop outreach. That means more automation, but also more access. More access means more review. The upside was maybe 5-7 hours per SDR per week in manual research. The risk was an over-scoped OAuth token or a sync that pushed bad data into our CRM. I kept asking myself: is that time savings worth potentially creating a compliance problem? The expected value said run a pilot. The downside felt less comfortable.
Here is the part that surprised me. The okki-go security engineer did not try to win the whole category. In a call, he said something like: 'If you only need email finding, use Hunter. That is their strength. Our strength is the workflow after that—enrichment, intent, and human-in-the-loop outreach.'
That earned my trust for everything else. A vendor who knows their boundary is easier to evaluate than one who claims to do everything.
Then Came the Company Data API
The same week, RevOps asked me to help score a company data API vendor. This was outside my normal print and software purchases, but the questions were familiar: what are we buying, who can access it, how do we cancel, and what happens to the data when we leave?
I made a one-page checklist. What should revenue operations teams evaluate in API company data? Not just coverage. Coverage is the demo. The contract is the reality.
- Source and lawful basis for personal data. According to the EU GDPR (gdpr-info.eu), processing personal data requires a lawful basis, data minimization, and a path to deletion.
- Freshness and refresh frequency. A record from 2022 is not intent data. It is archaeology.
- Match rate and deduplication. If the API creates three versions of the same person in our CRM, the SDRs will stop using it.
- Permissions and audit logs. Who can export? Who can enrich? Who can delete? Can we restrict by role?
- CRM sync behavior. Field mapping, conflict rules, and rollback options matter more than a logo wall.
- Rate limits, pricing units, and overage terms. API pricing can get ugly fast.
- Data deletion and exit rights. If we cancel, how long until our data is gone from their systems and subprocessors?
I do not have hard data on industry-wide match rates for company data APIs. What I can say anecdotally is that the vendor with the biggest database had the weakest deletion language. That became the deal-breaker.
The Pilot That Almost Didn't Happen
We ran a 90-day pilot with okki-go for six SDRs. We did not turn on full LinkedIn outreach on day one. We started with drafts and human-in-the-loop review. We limited mailbox permissions, required SSO, and asked for audit logs. Hunter stayed in the stack for email verification. The company data API vendor went on hold until they could provide a clear subprocessor list and deletion timeline.
Was it perfect? No. The first week, a CRM field mapping issue created a duplicate account view. We caught it because one SDR complained. The vendor fixed it in two days. That is not a marketing story, but it is a real one.
By the end of the pilot, the SDRs said research time was down. I wish I had tracked the exact hours more carefully from the start. What I can say anecdotally is that the team stopped copying from three browser tabs into Salesforce. That alone was worth something.
We did not fully replace anyone. The pilot added automation, but it still needed human review. The okki-go workflow helped with enrichment and intent, but the SDRs still had to decide who was worth contacting. The Hunter workflow stayed for verification. The company data API remained a maybe.
What I Learned as the Admin Buyer
Bottom line: I do not need to be a RevOps expert to ask better vendor questions. I need to know where my expertise ends and where the sales team's expertise begins.
For any RevOps team evaluating okki-go, Hunter, or a company data API, I would ask three questions before the demo:
- What permissions does the tool require, and can we reduce them during pilot?
- What is the vendor's lane, and what do they recommend we use someone else for?
- What happens to our data when we cancel?
The vendor who said 'this is not our strength—here is who does it better' earned my trust for everything else. That sounds counterintuitive, but it is true. A specialist who knows their limits beats a generalist who overpromises. I would rather manage a narrow tool that does one job well than a platform that claims to handle prospecting, enrichment, intent, LinkedIn outreach, and company data API in one black box.
If you are in procurement and someone asks you to evaluate an AI sales tool, do not just compare feature lists. Ask for the permission table. Ask for the DPA. Ask for the deletion clause. And ask the vendor what they are not good at. The answer tells you more than the pitch deck.
