Recipe: Sales Prospecting
Department: Sales / Business Development Difficulty: Beginner Time to set up: 30–60 minutes
The problem
The average sales rep spends 2+ hours every morning on prospecting prep — Googling accounts, reading LinkedIn profiles, checking for news, trying to personalize emails that don't sound generic. By the time they're done researching, their energy is gone.
The agent's job
Define the target profile
You tell the agent: target company size, industry, job title, geography, and any trigger events (e.g., recently raised funding, hiring for specific roles, expanding to new markets).
Find prospects
The agent scans LinkedIn, company websites, news sources, job boards, and intent data platforms to find contacts that match your profile.
Enrich the CRM
For each prospect found, it updates your CRM with current contact details, role, company info, and recent relevant activity — no manual data entry.
Research each prospect
It pulls recent news about the company, the prospect's recent posts or activity, their company's job openings (which signal priorities), and any mutual connections.
Draft personalized outreach
Using all the gathered context, it writes a first draft of an outreach email that references something specific — not a template. "I saw your team just hired a VP of Operations and you're expanding into APAC — we help companies in exactly this transition..."
Sequence follow-ups
Based on opens, clicks, and replies, it schedules and sends follow-ups automatically. No manual tracking.
Update CRM after every interaction
Every email sent, every reply received, every conversation logged — without the rep typing anything.
Tools needed
- A CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive)
- An email platform (Gmail, Outlook)
- A web search tool
- An AI agent with access to the above
Expected results
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Prospecting prep time | 2 hours/day | 20 minutes/day |
| Cold outreach reply rate | 2–5% | 8–15% |
| CRM data accuracy | Inconsistent | Continuously updated |
| Pipeline generated | Baseline | +10–25% |
Real-world result: One enterprise sales team reduced outreach prep from 2 hours to 20 minutes per rep, saving 5 hours per week. Cold reply rates increased from 3% to 10% through personalization.
Getting started
- Connect your CRM — most CRMs have native AI integrations or APIs. This is the most important step.
- Define your ICP clearly — "mid-size tech companies" is not specific enough. "SaaS companies, 50–500 employees, VP of Finance, recently raised Series B" is actionable.
- Start with existing pipeline — use the agent to enrich and research contacts you're already working with before turning it loose on net-new prospecting.
- Review the first 20 drafts — spend time early correcting the agent's tone and style. It will calibrate to your voice quickly.