# Prospecting — Marketing Skill for AI Agents

Good prospecting forks by motion — B2B SaaS, general B2B, local SMB, or demand-signal discovery for finding your first customers — because "qualified" means something different in each. The workflow is the same five phases every time: define the ICP as pass/fail criteria, source 2-3x more candidates than you need, qualify each with at least one source URL of evidence, score Hot/Warm/Cold/Skip (aim for ~20% Hot, ~30% Warm), then ship a lead sheet. Every email gets deliverability-validated before it lands on the list, and every contact carries a captured source URL and date for GDPR/CAN-SPAM lineage. Twenty-five verified leads beat 250 mostly-junk ones.

> Maintained by Corey Haines · v1.1.0 · Updated 2026-07-13

Install: `npx skills add coreyhaines31/marketingskills`
Source: https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/tree/main/skills/prospecting

## When to use it

- "prospecting,"
- "build a prospect list,"
- "find prospects,"
- "find leads,"
- "lead gen list,"
- "find SaaS companies that,"
- "find B2B companies,"
- "find local businesses,"

## What's inside

**The playbook covers:** Before Starting, Pick the Branch, Shared Framework (all branches), Compliance Guardrails, Inputs to Collect, Tool Selection Quick Picks, Output Formats, Quality Checks (before finalizing), Common Mistakes, Task-Specific Questions, Tool Integrations

### Reference library

- [B2B Prospecting Reference](https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/blob/main/skills/prospecting/references/b2b-prospecting.md) — For when the user sells to non-SaaS B2B — services, agencies, manufacturers, mid-market and enterprise companies, professional services firms.
- [Prospecting Compliance Reference](https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/blob/main/skills/prospecting/references/compliance.md) — The legal and platform-ToS constraints that apply to prospect list building. Read first, every engagement.
- [Prospecting Data Sources](https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/blob/main/skills/prospecting/references/data-sources.md) — Tool selection guide for prospecting across all three branches.
- [Demand-Signal Discovery (Find Your First Customers)](https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/blob/main/skills/prospecting/references/demand-signals.md) — The other three branches build a list from who *fits* (firmographics, technographics, proximity). This branch builds a list from who is *already showing the pain* — the early-stage motion where you have a product and a hunch but no customer base yet, and you need your first ten real conversations. You are not filtering a database; you are mining recent public discourse for people describing the exact problem you solve, then linking every prospect to the evidence.
- [Local SMB Prospecting Reference](https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/blob/main/skills/prospecting/references/local-prospecting.md) — For when the user sells to local small businesses — shops, gyms, restaurants, salons, clinics, professional services, contractors, real estate, fitness studios, dental practices.
- [SaaS Prospecting Reference](https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills/blob/main/skills/prospecting/references/saas-prospecting.md) — For when the user sells SaaS or digital services to other SaaS companies / digital businesses.

## Key data

- 1. Treating B2B like SaaS — funding rounds matter less; PE ownership and acquisition activity matter more.
- RB2B / Clearbit Reveal**: visitor identification (warm anonymous traffic)
- G2 reviews mentioning competitor switches**: explicit dissatisfaction signal
- 2. Treating tech stack data as 100% accurate. BuiltWith and Wappalyzer miss things; Clay's waterfalls miss things. Cross-check.

## Example

**Prompt:** We're a B2B SaaS selling RevOps tooling at $30K ACV. Build me a list of 25 prospects.

**Lead sheet row (SaaS branch)**

| Score | Company | Industry | Size | Signal | Contact | Email status | Confidence |
| Hot | Northbeam | B2B SaaS / analytics | 51-200 | Raised Series B 24 days ago; hiring 3 RevOps roles | Dana Fitch, VP RevOps | ok (Truelist) | High (2 sources) |

**Top outreach target**

Northbeam — fresh funding plus active RevOps hiring means budget and an owner for the problem right now; VP-level contact is verified and deliverable.

## FAQ

### How do you find qualified prospects without scraping LinkedIn or Google Maps?

Use browser-assisted research and licensed data providers (Apollo, ZoomInfo, Clearbit, Clay) within their terms, plus public business pages, About pages, news mentions, and directories. Bulk scraping LinkedIn or Google Maps violates their terms and risks account suspension — the browser is an assisted research tool, not a scraper.

### Should I verify email deliverability before outreach?

Always. Apollo/ZoomInfo data is often out of date, and sending to invalid addresses spikes your bounce rate and tanks sender reputation — which is hard to recover. Run the list through a validator like Truelist first: keep the deliverable ones, exclude hard bounces, and include catch-all/risky addresses cautiously.

### How do I find my very first customers with no prospect database?

Use the demand-signal branch: mine public discourse (forums, communities, reviews, GitHub issues, job posts) for five buckets of evidence — explicit demand, pain, workarounds, switching, and timing. Score each prospect on demand-fit (0-100) rather than firmographic Hot/Warm/Cold, and require a cited public signal for every shortlisted name.

## Related skills

- **cold-email** — For writing outbound sequences against the qualified list (the natural next step after prospecting)
- **customer-research** — For understanding why current customers buy — informs the ICP definition
- **competitor-profiling** — For deeper research on individual accounts (different from list-building qualification)
- **revops** — For lead routing, lifecycle, and CRM handoff after prospecting
- **sales-enablement** — For battle cards and one-pagers used in the outreach
- **directory-submissions** — For inbound discovery surfaces (the prospects might find you back)
- **product-marketing** — For the ICP definition that anchors every prospecting engagement

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Canonical: https://marketing-skills.com/skills/prospecting