Finding Your Ideal Prospects

Overview: Transform Hours of Manual Searching into Seconds

Finding the right prospects is the foundation of successful sales, yet most sales reps spend 2-3 hours daily manually searching through Salesforce, LinkedIn, and other tools. This guide will teach you how to use Colby AI to find your ideal prospects in seconds, not hours.

What You'll Learn:

• How to structure prospect search prompts for maximum accuracy

• Why specific criteria dramatically improve your results

• Advanced techniques for complex prospect identification

• How to save and reuse your most successful prompts

Understanding How Colby Searches for Prospects

When you ask Colby to find prospects, it's doing several things simultaneously:

1. Parsing Your Natural Language: Colby understands sales terminology and context

2. Querying Multiple Data Points: It searches across accounts, contacts, activities, and custom fields

3. Applying Smart Filters: It interprets vague requests into specific database queries

4. Ranking Results: It prioritizes based on relevance and your past behavior

The Anatomy of a Perfect Prospect Search Prompt

Let's break down what makes a prospect search effective:

"Find [specific job titles] at [company type with characteristics] in [location] who [behavioral criteria] but not [exclusions]"

Why This Structure Works:

• Specific Job Titles: Eliminates irrelevant contacts

• Company Characteristics: Ensures fit with your ICP

• Location: Manages territory and timezone considerations

• Behavioral Criteria: Identifies engaged prospects

• Exclusions: Prevents wasting time on poor fits

Examples: From Poor to Powerful

❌ Poor Prompt:

Why It Fails:

• Too vague - could return thousands of irrelevant results

• No context about what makes a lead qualified

• Doesn't specify your target market

• Wastes time sorting through useless data

✅ Good Prompt:

Why It's Better:

• Specifies exact job title

• Identifies industry

• Sets geographic boundary

• Returns manageable, relevant results

✅✅ Excellent Prompt:

Why It's Excellent:

• Multiple relevant job titles

• Specific company type (B2B software)

• Clear size parameters (100-500 employees)

• Timing element (last 90 days)

• Action qualifier (haven't been contacted)

• Gives you fresh prospects ready for outreach

Building Your Prospect Search Step-by-Step

Step 1: Define Your Job Title Targets

Be Specific About Seniority:

• Instead of: "sales people"

• Use: "VP of Sales, Sales Director, Head of Sales"

Include Variations:

• "Chief Revenue Officer, CRO"

• "VP Sales, Vice President of Sales, VP of Sales"

• "Director of Business Development, BD Director"

Why This Matters: Different companies use different titles for the same role. Including variations ensures you don't miss qualified prospects.

Step 2: Specify Company Characteristics

Industry Classification:

Company Size Parameters:

• Employee count: "50-200 employees" or "mid-market"

• Revenue: "companies over $10M ARR"

• Growth indicators: "raised Series A in last 12 months"

Technology Stack:

Step 3: Add Behavioral and Timing Qualifiers

Engagement Signals:

• "Visited our website in last 30 days"

• "Downloaded our whitepaper"

• "Attended our webinar"

• "Opened 3+ marketing emails"

Timing Indicators:

• "Added to CRM this month"

• "No contact in 60+ days"

• "Contract renewal in next quarter"

• "Recently changed jobs"

Step 4: Include Smart Exclusions

Common Exclusions:

• "Not in government or education" (if you can't sell there)

• "Exclude current customers"

• "Not in active opportunities"

• "Remove competitors"

• "No companies under 50 employees"

Advanced Prospect Search Techniques

Technique 1: Layered Filtering

"Find decision makers at companies that:
- Industry: Financial Services or Insurance
- Size: 500-2000 employees
- Location: East Coast
- Technology: Uses Salesforce but not [Competitor]
- Engagement: Visited pricing page
- Timing: No contact in 45 days
- Exclude: Current customers and active opportunities"

Technique 2: Account-Based Targeting

"Show me all Director-level and above contacts at these specific accounts: 
[Company A, Company B, Company C] 
who haven't been contacted by our team 
and work in Sales, Marketing, or Operations

Technique 3: Lookalike Searching

"Find companies similar to our customer TechCorp:
- Same industry (B2B SaaS)
- Similar size (200-400 employees)
- Same geography (West Coast)
- But not already in our pipeline"

Technique 4: Buying Signal Detection

"Identify prospects showing buying signals:
- Changed jobs in last 90 days (new budget)
- Company raised funding recently
- Posted jobs for roles we help with
- Leadership mentioned digital transformation
- Visited our website multiple times

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Mistake 1: Being Too Broad

❌ "Find all companies in tech" ✅ "Find B2B software companies with 100-500 employees using outdated CRM systems"

Why It Matters: Broad searches waste time and return irrelevant results

Mistake 2: Missing Key Qualifiers

❌ "Show me VPs of Sales" ✅ "Show me VPs of Sales at target accounts who haven't been contacted in 30 days"

Why It Matters: Without qualifiers, you might get contacts you've already pursued

Mistake 3: Forgetting Exclusions

❌ "Find all SaaS companies in California" ✅ "Find all SaaS companies in California, excluding current customers and competitors"

Why It Matters: Exclusions prevent embarrassing mistakes and wasted effort

Measuring Success

Track These Metrics:

• Time saved per search (target: 90% reduction)

• Relevance of results (target: 80%+ usable)

• Contact-to-meeting rate from Colby-found prospects

• Pipeline generated from these searches

Expected Outcomes:

• Find 50+ qualified prospects in under 1 minute

• Increase connect rates by 40% due to better targeting

• Reduce research time from 2 hours to 10 minutes daily

• Never miss prospects in your territory again

Pro Tips for Power Users

1. Save Your Best Prompts Keep a document with prompts that consistently deliver great results

2. Create Prompt Templates

3. Use Industry-Specific Language

4. Time-Based Searches Run different searches for different sales cycles:

Practice Exercises

Try these prompts and see the difference:

1. Basic Territory Search: "Find all companies in my territory that match our ICP but aren't in Salesforce yet"

2. Event Follow-Up: "Show me attendees from [Event Name] who are Director level or above at companies over $50M revenue"

3. Competitive Displacement: "Find users of [Competitor Product] who have grown over 50% this year and might need to upgrade"

Quick Start Formula

"Find [job titles] at [company type] with [company size] in [location] who [specific criteria]"

Effective Prompt Examples

❌ Poor Prompts:

• "Find leads"

• "Show me some contacts"

• "Get prospects"

✅ Great Prompts:

Basic Search:

"Find all VPs of Sales at software companies with 100-500 employees in California"

Advanced Search:

"Show me decision makers at healthcare companies that:

- Have 200+ employees

- Located in my territory

- No contact in last 60 days

- Use Salesforce

- Not in an active opportunity"

Prompting Best Practices

1. Specify Job Titles Precisely

• ✅ "VP of Sales, Head of Sales, Sales Director"

• ❌ "Sales people"

2. Define Company Characteristics

• Industry: Use standard terms (SaaS, Healthcare, Financial Services)

• Size: Employee count or revenue ranges

• Location: City, state, region, or "my territory"

• Technology: Tools they use (Salesforce, AWS, etc.)

3. Include Time-Based Criteria

• "Contacted in last 30 days"

• "No activity since Q3"

• "Added to CRM this month"

4. Use Buying Signals

"Find prospects who:

- Visited our website recently

- Downloaded our content

- Have expiring contracts

- Recently got funding"

Power User Tips

1. Combine 3-5 criteria for best results

2. Use "but not" for exclusions

3. Ask for specific output: "with email addresses" or "sorted by company size"

4. Save successful prompts for reuse