Artem Smirnov

    Prospecting

    When a founder tells me cold email does not work for them, I ask for the spreadsheet of names before I read a single message. The list decides who is able to say yes, and no copy rescues a list full of people who cannot buy. This section is about building that list properly.

    My method starts from your own history, not from a lead tool. Who signed your last deals, and what was their exact title? Those titles go into the search, and the vague ones come out: a bare Manager, Assistant or Associate rarely approves anything. Then I check the arithmetic. Each booked call, in my planning, needs 150 to 300 people reached, so a yearly call target sets the minimum size of the market you need. Every address gets verified before use, and a list that pushes bounces past 0.5% comes out of the campaign. Intent data comes last, once the list is verified and someone owns the signals each week.

    Four mistakes repeat: a bought file nobody can explain, titles chosen because they sound senior, everyone at one company contacted on day one, and a niche that runs out of names because nobody counted it first.

    The articles below follow the order I work in. Sizing: counting your market, small markets, and named accounts against a broad list. Choosing people: the CEO or the department head, how many contacts per company, CEO lists and lookalikes. Getting the data: what contacts cost, buying lists, data decay, construction project databases and finding distributors abroad. Timing and structure: free signals, intent data, visitor identification and segmenting one list into tracks.

    Start by counting your target market, then decide between the CEO and the department head, then read whether buying a list is worth it.

    Start here

    All articles in Prospecting