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Prospect Researcher

Prospect Researcher


What this agent does

The Prospect Research agent turns a prospect's name into a structured, outreach-ready intelligence brief in under 60 seconds. Instead of spending 10–15 minutes manually scanning LinkedIn profiles and piecing together who someone is, this agent does the research for you — surfacing who the person is, what they likely care about right now, and exactly how to approach them based on what you sell. It's built for salespeople, SDRs, account executives, and anyone who needs to personalize outreach at scale.

When to use this agent

Use this agent when you need to quickly understand a prospect before reaching out. It's especially useful when:

  • You're preparing for a cold outreach and want personalized hooks instead of generic messaging
  • You've identified a contact at a target account and need to understand their role, priorities, and communication style
  • You want to connect your prospect research to downstream actions like lead qualification or drafting outreach emails
  • You've already run the Company Research agent on a prospect's company and want to go deeper at the contact level

This agent is part of the Sales Prospecting collection and works best when combined with the Company Research, Lead Qualifier, and Outreach Drafter agents.

Setup

  1. Open the Prospect Research agent.
  2. Enter the prospect's name and their company website.
  3. Optionally, add their LinkedIn profile URL and any additional context you have (e.g., "Met them at SaaStr" or "Referred by Jane Smith").
  4. If this is your first time using the agent, you'll be asked a couple of quick questions about what you sell and who you sell to. These answers are saved to your seller profile so you won't need to enter them again.
  5. Click Run to generate the prospect intelligence brief.

Inputs

About the Prospect (entered each run):

  • Prospect's name (required) — The full name of the person you want to research.
  • Prospect's company website (required) — The domain of the company the prospect works at. This is the target company, not your own.
  • LinkedIn profile URL (optional but recommended) — The prospect's LinkedIn profile URL. Adding this significantly enriches the output with career history, public activity, and communication style cues. If you don't provide it, the agent will prompt you for it.
  • Anything else you know about this person? (optional) — Freeform context like how you met, who referred them, or anything relevant. For example: "They commented on our blog post" or "Referred by Jane Smith."

About You (entered once, reused across agents):

  • Your company website (optional) — Helps the agent analyze mutual context between your company and the prospect's.
  • What do you sell or offer? (optional) — Enables the agent to tie prospect signals to your specific value proposition when generating outreach angles.
  • Who is your ideal customer? (optional) — Enables the ICP Fit Signals section in the output, mapping the prospect's role and company to your target buyer profile.

If you've already filled in your seller profile through collection onboarding or a previous agent run, these fields will be pre-filled automatically.

Tips for better inputs: Providing a LinkedIn URL makes a noticeable difference in output quality — career history, public posts, and communication style cues all come from LinkedIn data. The more seller context you provide (what you sell, your ICP), the more personalized and actionable the outreach angles will be.

How It Works

  1. Identity resolution — The agent takes the prospect's name and company website and begins building a profile. If a LinkedIn URL is provided, it pulls career history, public activity, and other profile details.
  2. Company context loading — If you previously ran the Company Research agent on this prospect's company, that intelligence (funding rounds, hiring signals, competitive dynamics) is automatically loaded to enrich the research. If not, the agent uses publicly available company information.
  3. Signal analysis — The agent scans public activity — LinkedIn posts, articles, podcast appearances, talks, and quotes — to identify what topics the prospect engages with and what their current priorities might be.
  4. Seller-specific analysis — Using your seller profile (what you sell, your ICP), the agent maps the prospect's signals to your value proposition, generating personalized outreach angles rather than generic talking points.
  5. Brief generation — All findings are assembled into a structured Prospect Intelligence Brief with eight sections.
  6. Next steps — After the brief is delivered, you'll see options to continue your workflow: qualify the lead or draft outreach to the prospect.

Output

A structured Prospect Intelligence Brief with the following sections:

  • Prospect Snapshot — Name, title, company, location, tenure in current role, and a one-sentence summary of who this person is and why they matter for your deal.
  • Role & Responsibilities — What this person likely owns based on their title, company size, and industry. Includes a buying authority assessment: are they a decision-maker, influencer, or champion?
  • Career Context — Career trajectory, previous companies and roles, and domain expertise. Highlights patterns that suggest what kind of pitch they respond to (e.g., enterprise background → values ROI framing; startup background → values speed and simplicity).
  • Public Activity & Signals — Recent LinkedIn posts, articles, talks, podcast appearances, or public quotes. Shows what topics they engage with and what this reveals about their current priorities.
  • Inferred Priorities & Pain Points — Based on their role, company context, and public activity: what are they likely focused on right now? What problems keep them up at night? Framed relative to what you sell.
  • Outreach Angles — 2–3 specific, personalized outreach hooks. Each angle ties a prospect signal (something they said, did, or care about) to your value proposition. These are designed to feel like you did real homework, not generic templates.
  • Communication Style Cues — Inferred communication preferences based on their public presence. Formal vs. casual? Data-driven vs. story-driven? Short and direct vs. detailed? Helps you (or the Outreach Drafter agent) calibrate tone.
  • ICP Fit Signals (when seller context is available) — How this contact maps to your ideal buyer persona. Includes role match, seniority match, and likely pain point alignment. Flags if the contact is outside your typical ICP and explains why it might still be worth pursuing.

Next Steps cards appear at the bottom of the output:

  • "Qualify this lead →" — Opens the Lead Qualifier agent with the prospect's details, ICP fit signals, and role/buying authority pre-filled.
  • "Draft outreach to [Prospect Name] →" — Opens the Outreach Drafter agent with the prospect's details, outreach angles, and communication style cues pre-filled.

These are optional — you can use either, both, or neither.

Tips & Best Practices

  1. Always include a LinkedIn URL if you have one. This is the single biggest factor in output quality. Career history, public posts, mutual connections, and communication style cues all depend on LinkedIn data. Without it, the agent relies on web research alone, which may produce thinner results.
  2. Fill in your seller profile for personalized angles. The outreach angles section goes from generic to highly specific when the agent knows what you sell and who your ideal customer is. This only takes a minute and applies to all future runs across every agent.
  3. Run Company Research first for richer results. If you run the Company Research agent on the prospect's company before running Prospect Research, the output is noticeably richer. Inferred priorities will incorporate company-level signals like recent funding, hiring trends, or expansion plans.
  4. Add any personal context you have. The "additional context" field is powerful. Details like "met them at a conference," "they liked our LinkedIn post," or "referred by a mutual contact" give the agent material to generate warmer, more relevant outreach hooks.
  5. Use the Next Steps cards to keep your workflow moving. After reviewing the brief, use the "Qualify this lead" or "Draft outreach" cards to continue your sales workflow without re-entering information. All relevant fields are pre-filled from the research output.

FAQ

Do I need a LinkedIn URL to use this agent?
No, the LinkedIn URL is optional. The agent will still produce a useful brief using the prospect's name and company website. However, the output will be significantly richer with a LinkedIn URL — especially the Career Context, Public Activity, and Communication Style Cues sections.

What if my prospect has very little public presence?
For prospects with minimal online footprints (common with SMB contacts), the agent falls back to role-based inference using company context. It will use the prospect's title, company size, and industry to infer likely responsibilities, priorities, and pain points. The output may be less detailed in some sections, but the outreach angles and role analysis will still be useful.

Do I need to re-enter my company information every time?
No. The first time you run the agent, it will ask what you sell and who your ideal customer is. These answers are saved to your seller profile and automatically pre-filled for all future runs — across this agent and every other agent in the Sales Prospecting collection.

How does this agent work with the rest of the Sales Prospecting collection?
Prospect Research sits at the "Research the contact" step in the sales workflow. It can receive company-level intelligence from the Company Research agent (if you've run it), and its output feeds directly into the Lead Qualifier (for scoring) and Outreach Drafter (for personalized messaging). When used together, each agent builds on the context from the previous one.

How many times can I run this agent?
Free users get 5 runs per week. For unlimited runs, you can subscribe to the agent at $10/month.

Questions about the Prospect Research agent? Reach out to our support team.