Account Research for Outreach
Research before outreach has one job: find a true, specific reason this account should care right now, and the person who owns that problem. Dossiers on companies you compete with belong to the competitor-profiling skill.
How much research each tier gets
| Tier | Time per account | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | 10–20 minutes, or an agent run reviewed by a human | Full brief (below) |
| Tier 2 | 2–3 minutes per account, plus shared segment research | One sourced hook per contact + the segment brief |
| Tier 3 | None per account | The segment brief only |
Tiers are defined in signal-plays.md.
Where the useful facts are
In rough order of usefulness:
- Their job posts. They describe the problem in their own words, list the tools they use, and reveal priorities ("own our experimentation roadmap").
- Their own pages. Pricing, landing pages, changelog, careers, case studies. For a services pitch, the page you'd improve is the research.
- What leaders say publicly. LinkedIn posts, podcast appearances, conference talks, interviews.
- Company news. Funding, launches, acquisitions, leadership changes, new markets.
- Filings and reports. For public companies, the 10-K risk factors and earnings calls name priorities explicitly.
- Reviews of their product. What their customers complain about can show what they're under pressure to fix.
The brief (Tier 1)
B0
Rules for agent research
AI makes research cheap, and it also makes invented hooks cheap. These rules keep the research honest:
- Facts first, angle second. Run research as two steps. Step one collects facts, each with a source URL and date. Step two writes the angle using only those facts. Never let one step do both.
- "No hook found" is a valid result. If the sources don't support a specific angle, say so and drop the account to the segment-level message. A generic hook dressed up as personal research is worse than an honest segment message.
- Bound the angles. Give the agent your 3–5 value propositions and require the angle to map to one of them. Unbounded creativity produces promises you can't keep.
- Date everything. A fact without a date can't be judged for staleness. Discard anything older than its freshness window.
- Quote, don't paraphrase, when it matters. If the hook rests on something a leader said, keep the exact quote and link.
- Never use sensitive traits (health, finances, politics, religion, family) even when public. See compliance.md.
Segment briefs (Tier 2 and 3)
For a segment, research the shared situation instead of each account:
- What the accounts have in common (the segment definition)
- The pain that commonality creates, with 2–3 public examples
- The proof that speaks to it
- The one-line opener each contact will get, plus the slot for a per-contact detail (Tier 2)
A tight segment does the personalization work. "Series A SaaS companies that just posted their first growth marketer role" needs little per-account research, because the segment already explains why you're writing.