← Back to blog

To research a sales prospect before a call, work through seven things in a fixed order: the person's role, the company's business, what changed recently, what the prospect has said publicly, what you have in common, what they are probably measured on, and whether they are a fit at all. Then turn what you found into five talking points. Done in that order, with a time limit on each step, the whole thing takes about fifteen minutes. Done without an order, it takes an hour, produces forty open tabs, and leaves you with no plan for the call. This guide is the fifteen-minute version.

Why research a prospect before the call at all?

Because the first thirty seconds of a first call decide whether the prospect leans in or starts looking for the exit. A rep who opens with "so, tell me about what you do" is asking the prospect to do the prep for them. A rep who opens with one specific, accurate observation about the prospect's situation earns the next ten minutes.

There is a second reason that matters more as you get better. Research tells you what to ask. The best discovery questions are the ones you could not answer from public information, and you only know which those are once you have looked.

What should you research before a sales call? The seven steps

Each step below has three parts: what you are looking for, where it usually lives, and the one line you write down. If a step takes more than three minutes, write "unknown" and move on. Unknowns become questions.

Step 1: Their role, and what they actually own

Look for: the title, then the scope behind it. A "Director of Sales" at a forty-person company runs the whole revenue function. The same title at a four-thousand-person company runs one region of one segment. Those are different jobs with different problems.

Where: the company's team or leadership page, the prospect's public professional profile, any bio attached to a talk or article.

Write down: one sentence describing what they own and who they report to, if you can tell.

Step 2: What the company does, and for whom

Look for: what they sell, to whom, at what price point, and how they sell it. Read the homepage the way a customer would. Then read the pricing page and the careers page, which tell you more about the business than the About page does.

Where: the company site, a recent press release, the job listings.

Write down: one sentence in your own words. If you cannot write it, you do not understand them yet, and that is the first thing to fix.

Step 3: What changed recently

Look for: a funding round, a new executive, a product launch, a layoff, an acquisition, a big customer win, a new office. This is your "why now." A company that just hired a VP of Sales has a mandate to change something. A company that just raised money has budget it did not have last quarter.

Where: the company's newsroom or blog, a news search on the company name limited to the last ninety days, the prospect's own recent posts.

Write down: the single most relevant change and its date. Not three. One.

Step 4: What the prospect has said publicly

Look for: recent posts, a podcast appearance, a conference talk, an article they wrote or were quoted in. You are looking for what they care about and how they talk about it. One genuine reference to something they actually said beats five generic compliments about the company.

Where: their public professional profile and posts, a search on their name plus the company name, the company blog if they write for it.

Write down: one thing they said, in their words, with where you found it.

Step 5: What you have in common

Look for: a shared school, an overlapping former employer, the same city, a mutual connection, a customer you both know. This is the opening line you will actually use, so it has to be real. A strained connection reads as strained.

Where: the prospect's background from step 1, your own network, your customer list.

Write down: the strongest genuine overlap, or "none" if there is not one. "None" is fine. Use the step 3 trigger as your opener instead.

Step 6: What they are probably measured on

Look for: the number this person is accountable for. Revenue, pipeline, retention, cost, speed, headcount. You will rarely find it stated, so infer it from the role in step 1 and the company context in step 2. A VP of Sales at a company that just raised a Series B is measured on growth. A Head of Operations at a company that just did a layoff is measured on cost.

Where: inference, mostly. Job postings for the prospect's own team are the best public tell, because they describe the outcomes the team is hired to produce.

Write down: the one metric you think they own, marked as a guess. "Probably measured on new pipeline" is an honest note. "Measured on new pipeline" is a claim you cannot back up.

Step 7: Whether they are a fit, and what the objection will be

Look for: the link between what changed (step 3), what they are measured on (step 6), and what your product moves. If you cannot draw that line, this is a nurture, not a call. Then write the objection you would raise if you were them: budget, timing, an incumbent vendor, "we do this in-house."

Where: your own head. This step is judgment applied to the six lines above it.

Write down: fit or no fit, the one-sentence reason, and the likely objection.

How do you turn prospect research into talking points?

Everything above is input. The prospect never sees it. What the prospect hears is five lines, and this is the step most reps skip because the research ate the time.

1. The opening line. One sentence, built from the common ground in step 5 or the trigger in step 3. Not "how's your week going."
2. Three talking points. Each one connects something you learned about them to something you do. "You just added a second SDR team" plus "we cut first-call prep from an hour to a few minutes" is a talking point. "We save reps time" on its own is not.
3. One question you genuinely could not answer from research. Ask it early. It proves you did the work, and it gets the prospect talking about the thing they know best.
4. One proof point. The existing customer that looks most like this company, with a number if you have one.
5. The ask. What you want to happen at the end of the call: a second meeting, a trial, an introduction to the person who owns the budget. Decide before you dial.

If you want this as a fill-in-the-blanks template, the sales call prep checklist is the same structure, laid out as a one-page list you can keep next to your dialer, or download the one-page PDF.

How long should prospect research take?

Fifteen minutes for a call that matters, and less for one that does not. The seven steps above are roughly two minutes each, plus a minute to write the talking points.

Two rules make the budget hold. First, the three-minute cap per step is a hard stop, not a suggestion. The research you cannot find in three minutes is usually research the prospect will tell you in thirty seconds if you ask. Second, write as you go. A rep who reads for fifteen minutes and then tries to remember what mattered ends up with an impression instead of a plan.

What are the most common prospect research mistakes?

Researching the company and forgetting the person. The company does not take the call. A human with a role, a boss, and a number takes the call. Steps 1, 4, 5 and 6 are about that person, and they are the steps that get skipped.

Reading everything and writing nothing. Forty tabs is not preparation. Seven lines is.

Confusing title with tenure. Someone six weeks into a role has no attachment to the current vendor and a mandate to show results. Someone ten years in has the opposite. The title is the same on both profiles.

Treating inference as fact. Most of what you find is public information, and most of what you conclude from it is inference. Keep the hedge in your notes and in your mouth. "It looks like you're building out the mid-market team" invites a correction. "You're building out the mid-market team" invites a "no, actually," and now you are wrong in the first minute.

Leading with the research. "I saw that you..." is a fine way to open once. Three times in a row and the prospect feels studied rather than understood. The research should shape your questions, not narrate them.

Or skip the fifteen minutes: let the research come to you

Everything in the seven steps is what SalesBriefAI researches for you. You give it a first name, a last name, and a company website. It reads what is publicly available about the person and the company, works out the role, the recent changes, the likely priorities, and the fit, and hands back a pre-call brief written around the sales methodology you use: an executive summary, the prospect's likely fit, an engagement plan with the common ground, the value proposition, and three icebreakers, the objections to expect, and a briefing on the company behind the buyer. It arrives in your inbox in minutes. The fifteen minutes of research becomes a five-minute read, and the hour it used to be becomes something you do not miss.

See what a brief looks like, check what one costs, or try it free. Free credits to start, no card, enough to run briefs on a few accounts you already know well and judge the research for yourself.