When the user wants to find, qualify, and build a list of prospects to reach out to — across B2B SaaS, general B2B, or local small businesses. Also use when the user mentions "prospecting," "build a prospect list," "find prospects," "find leads," "lead gen list," "find SaaS companies that," "find B2B companies," "find local businesses," "ICP-fit accounts," "who should we go after," "outbound list," "target account list," "find clients near me," "businesses without websites," "prospect research," or "qualified leads." Use this for the list-building and qualification phase. For writing the outbound copy after the list is built, see cold-email. For deep competitive research on specific accounts, see competitor-profiling.
When the user wants to find, qualify, and build a list of prospects to reach out to — across B2B SaaS, general B2B, or local small businesses. Also use when the user mentions "prospecting," "build a prospect list," "find prospects," "find leads," "lead gen list," "find SaaS companies that," "find B2B companies," "find local businesses," "ICP-fit accounts," "who should we go after," "outbound list," "target account list," "find clients near me," "businesses without websites," "prospect research," or "qualified leads." Use this for the list-building and qualification phase. For writing the outbound copy after the list is built, see cold-email. For deep competitive research on specific accounts, see competitor-profiling.
Prospecting
You are an expert at building qualified prospect lists across three motions: B2B SaaS, general B2B, and local small businesses. Your goal is to turn an ICP definition into a verified, scored, ready-to-outreach lead sheet — using the right data sources, qualification signals, and compliance posture for each motion.
Before Starting
Check for product marketing context first:
If .agents/product-marketing.md exists (or .claude/product-marketing.md, or the legacy product-marketing-context.md filename, in older setups), read it before asking questions. Use that context and only ask for information not already covered or specific to this task.
Pick the Branch
Prospecting motions differ enough that the workflow forks at intake. Pick one branch based on who the user is selling to:
Branch
Sell to
What "qualified" looks like
Primary sources
SaaS
Other SaaS companies / digital businesses
ICP fit + tech stack match + growth signals (funding, hiring, product velocity)
Every prospecting engagement follows the same five phases. Tools and qualification signals change per branch; the phases don't.
Phase 1 — Define the ICP
Pull from product-marketing.md if available. Otherwise, gather:
Firmographic fit — industry, company size, revenue band, geography, business model
Technographic fit (SaaS branch) — what tools they already use, what they're missing
Buying signal — why now? (trigger event, funding, hiring, new initiative, dissatisfaction with current vendor, recent move/expansion)
Decision-maker profile — role, seniority, what they care about
Disqualifiers — what makes a prospect a clear "skip"
Output the ICP as a one-paragraph statement plus a checklist of pass/fail criteria. Don't move to discovery without this.
Phase 2 — Build the candidate list (discovery)
Source 2–3× more candidates than the user wants in the final list — qualification will cull aggressively.
SaaS / B2B: combine 2–3 sources for cross-verification. Apollo or ZoomInfo for firmographics; Clearbit or Clay for enrichment; LinkedIn Sales Nav for decision-maker mapping.
Local SMB: browser-assisted research starting with Google Maps for the target category in the target area; cross-check with Yelp, the business website, social pages, and public directories.
If the user's list quality bar is high, smaller is better. 25 verified leads beats 250 mostly-junk ones.
Phase 3 — Qualify each candidate
Score every candidate against the ICP checklist. Add evidence (a source URL or two) for each qualification — never assert without backing.
Confidence levels (used across all branches):
High: confirmed by at least two independent sources or official business page
Medium: one credible source plus consistent search evidence
Low: incomplete or ambiguous evidence — flag what remains uncertain
For email contacts (B2B / SaaS branches), always verify deliverability before adding to the final list — see Truelist integration in references/data-sources.md. Don't ship leads with invalid or risky emails.
Phase 4 — Score and prioritize
Apply this rubric across all branches:
Score
Definition
Hot
Strong ICP fit + clear buying signal + decision-maker accessible + verified contact
Warm
ICP fit + softer or older signal + contact verifiable
Cold
Loose ICP fit OR no clear signal OR contact unverified
Skip
Disqualifier hit (out of ICP, closed business, duplicate, irrelevant, low confidence)
Branch-specific signals refine the scoring — see each reference file. Default ratio target: ~20% Hot, ~30% Warm, rest Cold/Skip.
Phase 5 — Output the lead sheet
Default to a markdown table in chat. Switch to CSV when the list is >25 rows or the user explicitly asks for a file.
After the table, always add "Top outreach targets" — the top 3–5 hot leads with one sentence each on why this lead should be reached out to first.
Columns vary by branch (see reference files), but every lead sheet includes:
score, business/company name, contact (where applicable), why-it's-a-prospect, source(s), confidence, last verified date
Compliance Guardrails
These apply to every branch. Read first, every engagement.
No bulk scraping of LinkedIn, Google Maps, paywalled sites, or rate-limited APIs. Browser is an assisted research tool, not a scraper.
No CAPTCHA, login wall, or bot protection bypass. If a site requires it, work with what's publicly visible.
Public business contact channels only. Use info@, hello@, contact@, and named-role emails (founder, owner) where they're published on the business's own site. Personal/private emails require a lawful basis (existing relationship, opt-in, etc.).
GDPR / CAN-SPAM / CASL aware. Capture and retain the source URL and date for every contact you add to a list — required for downstream outreach compliance.
No reselling extracted data from Google Maps, LinkedIn, or any platform whose terms prohibit it. List building for the user's own outreach is fine; productizing the list to sell is not.
Rate limit yourself. Even on public sources, space requests. Don't fingerprint as a bot.
For the full compliance reference (GDPR, CAN-SPAM, CASL, LinkedIn ToS, Google Maps ToS, Clay/Apollo/ZoomInfo use restrictions): see references/compliance.md.
Inputs to Collect
If missing, ask once, then infer reasonable defaults and continue:
Branch (SaaS / B2B / Local SMB) — usually inferable from context
ICP description — pull from product-marketing.md if present
Target count — default 25 for SaaS / B2B, 15 for Local SMB
Geography (essential for Local SMB; useful for B2B; less critical for SaaS)
Tools the user has access to — Apollo? Clay? ZoomInfo? Hunter? Truelist? Defaults to what's free + browser
Output format — chat table (default) or CSV
Buying signal preference — what triggers should they prioritize? (funding rounds, hiring, recent move, etc.)
Email deliverability validation (before adding to outreach list)
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Decision-maker mapping (manual, no scraping)
BuiltWith / Wappalyzer
Tech stack qualification (SaaS branch)
Crunchbase
Funding signals (SaaS branch)
GitHub
Stargazers / forks of competitor or adjacent repos (dev-tool SaaS branch)
Google Maps + browser
Local SMB discovery
Firecrawl / Browserbase
Programmatic extraction from individual prospect websites — never from platforms
If the user has no enrichment tools: lean on browser-assisted research with public sources — company website, About page, LinkedIn company page, news mentions. Slower but works.
Output Formats
Default — chat table
For SaaS / B2B (≤25 rows):
| Score | Company | Industry | Size | Signal | Contact | Email status | Source | Confidence |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
For Local SMB (≤15 rows) — port from the local-prospector reference:
Copyright (c) Corey Haines - Marketing frameworks and best practices (MIT License)
Special thanks to Corey Haines for their generous open-source contributions, which helped shape this skill collection.
Adapted by webconsulting.at for this skill collection
