Lead Research Assistant

Use This Skill When

• Finding potential customers for your product or service
• Building B2B prospect lists for sales outreach
• Identifying companies for partnership opportunities
• Preparing target account list for sales campaigns
• Researching companies matching your ideal customer profile
• Discovering expansion opportunities in new markets

When NOT to Use

• Recruitment/hiring (different purpose)
• Consumer audience research (not B2B focused)
• Competitive analysis only (not lead-focused)
• Market research reports (broader scope)

Context: Lead Research Maturity

Undeveloped: Manual Google searches, unqualified leads, no strategy.

Target: Defined ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), prioritized company list, contact approaches.

Optimized: Automated prospecting, multi-channel contact data, engagement scoring, CRM integration.

Core Principle

Better leads = higher conversion. Defining your Ideal Customer Profile clearly and researching company fit systematically leads to higher-quality sales conversations and shorter sales cycles.

Instructions

Step 1: Define Your Product & Value Prop

Document your offering:

## Product Definition

**What**: [Brief product description]
**Problem Solved**: [Primary pain point]
**Ideal Customer**: [Type of company/buyer]
**Key Differentiator**: [Why you vs. competitors]

### Example (SaaS)
**What**: Cloud-based incident response platform
**Problem**: Teams waste hours on incident coordination during outages
**Ideal Customer**: DevOps/SRE teams at growth-stage tech companies
**Differentiator**: AI-suggested responses + Slack-first workflow

Step 2: Define Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Create comprehensive ICP criteria:

Criterion	Details	Weighting
Industry	SaaS, FinTech, Healthcare	Must-have
Company Size	50-500 employees (Series A-C)	Strong
Revenue	$5M-$50M ARR	Important
Growth Stage	Scaling (20%+ YoY growth)	Important
Tech Stack	Uses cloud infrastructure (AWS/Azure)	Nice-to-have
Pain Points	Frequent incidents, alert fatigue	Must-have

Calculate Lead Score:

• Meets all must-haves: 100 points
• Matches 80% of important criteria: 80 points
• Matches few criteria: 40 points

Step 3: Research Target Companies

Search approaches:

Method 1: Direct company databases

• G2 reviews (companies in adjacent solutions)
• Crunchbase (growth-stage companies)
• PitchBook (funded startups)
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Method 2: Market analysis

• Industry reports
• Funded startups in verticals
• Recent IPOs and public companies

Method 3: Referrals and warm intros

• Ask customers for similar companies
• Industry events and conferences
• Online communities (Reddit, Slack)

Build prospecting list:

## Target Companies List (Top 20)

| Company | Industry | Size | Score | Fit Rationale | Contact Info |
|---------|----------|------|-------|---------------|--------------|
| Company A | FinTech | 150 emp | 95 | Uses AWS, 40% growth, hiring engineers | [contacts] |
| Company B | SaaS | 300 emp | 88 | Series B, growing incident team | [contacts] |
| Company C | Healthcare | 75 emp | 82 | Cloud-first, struggling with alerts | [contacts] |

**Score 95-100**: Tier 1 (Hot prospects)
**Score 80-94**: Tier 2 (Good fits)
**Score 60-79**: Tier 3 (Long shots)

Step 4: Gather Contact Intelligence

For top 20 companies, collect:

• Decision-makers: VP Eng, Head of SRE, CTO
• Email formats (if detectable)
• LinkedIn profiles
• Recent news (funding, hiring, product launches)
• Company pain signals (Twitter/LinkedIn complaints)

Tools to use:

Tool	Purpose
RocketReach, Hunter.io, Clearbit	Email finding
LinkedIn Sales Navigator	Decision-maker research
Crunchbase, PitchBook	Company intelligence
G2, Capterra	Product/culture signals

Step 5: Develop Contact Strategies

Create personalized approach for each Tier 1 prospect:

## Company A — Contact Strategy

**Target Decision-Maker**: John Smith, VP Engineering

**Research Signals**:
- Recently hired 3 SRE engineers (LinkedIn update)
- Tweeted about "alert fatigue" last month
- Using PagerDuty (main competitor space)

**Contact Angle**: "I noticed you're hiring SRE talent — incident response tooling is often the bottleneck for growing teams like yours"

**Outreach Sequence**:
1. LinkedIn connection request (personalized)
2. Wait 3-5 days, then warm email
3. If no response in 1 week, try different contact
4. Follow up every 2 weeks (max 3 attempts)

**Email Template**:

Subject: Quick idea for [Company]'s incident response

Hi John,

I noticed you recently expanded your SRE team. Great to see!

We work with teams like [Competitor Company] on incident response automation — cut incident resolution time in half typically.

Worth a 15-minute call to explore if it's relevant?

[Link to calendar]

[Your name]

**Alternative Approach**:
- If LinkedIn connection fails, try Twitter/email
- If email bounces, research for direct team contact
- If cold outreach fails, look for warm intro via mutual connection

Step 6: Prioritize and Sequence

Create outreach plan:

## Outreach Campaign — Q2 2026

### Phase 1: Tier 1 (Week 1-2)
- [ ] Send to Top 5 prospects
- [ ] Track responses
- [ ] Book any interested calls

### Phase 2: Tier 2 (Week 3-4)
- [ ] Send to next 10 prospects
- [ ] Iterate messaging based on Phase 1 responses

### Phase 3: Tier 3 (Week 5+)
- [ ] Broader outreach or focus based on learnings

### Tracking
- Outreach rate: [Goal] emails/week
- Response rate target: [Goal] %
- Meeting booking rate: [Goal] %
- Win rate goal: [Goal] %

**Weekly check-in**:
- [ ] How many prospects reached?
- [ ] Response rate? (Iterate messaging if <10%)
- [ ] Meetings booked? (Target: 1-3/week)

Step 7: Refine Based on Feedback

After initial outreach:

## Learnings & Refinement

**What worked**:
- Response rate highest from [Approach]
- Best meetings from [Contact type]
- Strongest fit from [Industry/Size segment]

**What didn't**:
- Cold emails to [Title] got 0% response
- [Competitor name] messaging fell flat

**Refined ICP**:
- Upgrade from "50-500" to "100-300" employees (better fit)
- Add "Recent funding" as strong signal
- Remove "Nice-to-have" tech stack filters

**Next iteration**:
- Focus on [Top-performing segment]
- Adjust messaging to emphasize [Key benefit]
- Test new channel: [LinkedIn vs. Email vs. Community]

Output

Deliver:

1. ICP Definition (criteria, scoring model)
2. Target Company List (20-50 companies ranked by fit)
3. Contact Intelligence (decision-makers, emails, signals)
4. Personalized Outreach Strategy (approach for each Tier)
5. Campaign Plan (sequencing, tracking, goals)
6. Refinement Notes (based on results)