Research and Prioritize Prospects with Apollo

Overview

Finding prospects who match your ideal customer profile is a starting point. If you haven't built a prospect list yet, start with Use Apollo to Find New Customers.

Before you reach out, research your prospects to understand their business, identify who to contact first, and find a relevant reason to start a conversation. Use Apollo to connect what you learn about a prospect with the problem your product or service solves.

Check out the following sections to learn how to research and prioritize prospects, then turn your findings into an outreach plan.

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Start with a Focused Group

You don't need an existing customer list or a sales background to start. Apollo helps you find people and companies that might need what you offer, then helps you learn enough about them to decide whether to reach out. If you already have records and a sales process, you can use Apollo to fill gaps in what you know about those potential buyers.

If you're starting without a list: Begin with the problem your product solves and the person who experiences it. For example, if you built an app that makes employee onboarding easier, someone responsible for hiring or HR could be a potential buyer. You don't need to know their name or company yet—just what they might look like.

In Apollo, go to People and search for a relevant job title, such as HR manager, or a location, revenue size, or other attribute. Add criteria you already know matter, such as the country you serve or the size of company you support. Open a few results to see who these people are and where they work. You're looking for plausible people to learn about. You haven't committed to contacting them. For help building that first search, see Use Apollo to Find New Customers.

If you're bringing an existing list or workflow: Start with a few records and a specific question you need Apollo to help answer. Do you need to identify the right person at each company? Do you need to fill in missing contact information, or research whether a company meets your requirements? Choose one outcome to evaluate before applying the research process more broadly.

You can import a CSV of contacts or work with records already available in your Apollo workspace. Keep your sample together in a list so you can compare what you started with against what you learn.

Whichever starting point you choose, you should now have a few people or companies to explore and a question to answer.

Next, use Apollo to investigate whether these prospects are truly relevant to your business and dig in to what might make a conversation worthwhile.

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Research What Matters

Choose one person from your search results or list and open their profile on Apollo. You can see their role and information about the company they work for. Start with a practical question: Could this person use what I sell?

Consider whether their role involves the work your product or service helps with. Next, look at their company. What does it do? How large is its team? Where does it operate? These details help you understand whether what you offer could be relevant to this person's work.

If you need help understanding what you find, ask the AI assistant. It's a conversational way to explore a person or company: ask a question, review the answer, and ask follow-up questions. Start with one company and explain what you offer:

I sell [product or service] that helps customers [solve a problem or achieve a result]. What does [company name] do, and what about its business suggests it could benefit from what I offer? Include the sources for what you find.

Review the answer and any sources provided. If something looks relevant, ask a follow-up question to learn more. For example, if the company is expanding, you could ask where it's opening new locations and when. Focus on finding one useful reason to contact someone at that company.

Start small before repeating the research. Whether you review profiles yourself or work with the assistant, research a few prospects first. Notice which information helps you decide whether you could help them. You might discover that operating multiple locations matters to your offer, while company size alone tells you very little.

When you know what you need to learn about every prospect, use AI research. Unlike a conversation with the assistant, AI research allows you to answer a consistent question about people or companies and store the results in a reusable field on their profile. For example, you could ask whether each company operates multiple locations in a certain region, then compare the answers across your list.

Test your question on a few people or companies and check whether the answers help you decide who might need what you sell. If the answers are too broad or miss what matters, adjust the question and try again. Once the answers are useful, run the same research on the rest of your list. If you only need to research a few prospects, reviewing their profiles and asking the AI assistant may be enough.

You should now know something relevant about each prospect and how it connects to what you sell. This is far more powerful than a traditional prospect list. You connected what's happening in a prospect's business to how you could help. That's the foundation of a conversation worth having—a real person, a relevant need, and a reason to reach out.

Want to find more prospects like the ones you've researched? Explore similar companies next, or skip ahead to decide who to contact first.

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Find Similar Prospects

As you research, you may notice that certain types of companies are a stronger fit than others. When you need more prospects, use those findings to guide your search. If you already have enough people to contact, move on to prioritizing prospects and return to this step when you're ready to expand.

Choose a company that represents the kind of customer you can help. An existing customer with a clear success story is a useful starting point. You can also use a promising account you've researched, while keeping in mind that you haven't yet confirmed its needs.

In Apollo, use lookalikes from a saved account's profile or in a company search to find similar businesses. Narrow the results with criteria that matter to you, such as company size or the locations you serve.

Lookalikes can help you discover similar companies, but you still need to investigate deeper. Apply the same research and prioritization questions to these new companies before adding their contacts to your outreach group.

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Decide Who to Contact First

Now compare what you learned. If you only had time to contact five people today, who would you choose?

Choosing at random could be wildly inefficient. Instead, give priority to prospects where you can explain how you could help, why a conversation makes sense now, and how the person could influence a purchase.

Use your findings to sort prospects into three groups:

• Contact now: The company fits the customers you can serve, you found a timely reason to reach out, and the person can approve a purchase, control the budget, or influence the decision.
• Find the buying contact: The company looks promising, but you haven't identified someone with buying influence. A person who would use your product or service may help you understand how purchases are decided and introduce you to the right person.
• Revisit later: The company could benefit from what you offer, but you found less reason to prioritize it now. Keep it for future outreach while you focus on stronger opportunities.

For example, two companies may both fit your market. One has announced a change your service could support, and you've identified the person responsible for the budget. For the other, you only know that it fits your target industry. Start with the first: you have a clearer reason for the conversation and a path toward a buying decision.

In Apollo, scores can also help you narrow your search to promising people and companies. Review the criteria behind a prospect's rating to understand why they scored well.

To assess timing, combine your research with buying intent when available. This can show that a company is researching relevant topics related to your product or service. Buying intent doesn't identify which person is doing the research, so use a contact's role to decide who might be appropriate to approach.

Choose a small group for your first outreach and keep them together in an Apollo list.

For each person, you should be able to explain: "This company fits because ___. This person can influence the purchase because ___. I'm reaching out now because ___." If an answer is missing, backtrack and use it to guide further research or give another prospect priority.

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Turn Research into Action

You now have a focused, prioritized group of prospects and a reason to contact each one. Use what you've learned to start a conversation about something relevant to their work. Choose the finding that best connects their situation to a problem you can help solve.

If your list has 200 contacts, you don't need to write 200 emails from scratch. Apollo can help you create an outreach sequence: a series of emails and follow-up tasks for the people you want to contact. You decide what you want to communicate, and AI can help draft and personalize the messages.

Start with your highest-priority contacts. From your list, select those contacts and open the AI assistant. Explain what you offer, what you learned about this group, and what you want the outreach to achieve. For example:

Help me create an email sequence for these contacts. I offer [product or service] to help with [problem]. My research shows [relevant findings about this group]. The goal is to [start a conversation or book a meeting]. Draft a short introduction and two follow-ups. Use a direct, helpful tone and don't assume they have a problem we haven't confirmed.

Give the assistant your research findings or specify which research fields it should use.

To personalize messages across your list, bring the research you've already done into the sequence. Apollo's AI writing assistant can generate emails, subject lines, or snippets. You can also insert AI research as an AI variable in an email step, using the results for each prospect to generate relevant messaging. This connects your research to the emails people receive.

Before enrolling the full group, preview the messages for a few contacts. Check that the personalization is accurate, the offer fits, and the next step is clear. If the messages sound generic or draw the wrong conclusion, adjust the instructions or research question before expanding the outreach.

You can build on this approach wherever you work. In Apollo, explore sequences to coordinate outreach and follow-ups, or workflows to automate recurring tasks. If you prefer working in ChatGPT or Claude, connect Apollo to find and research prospects and develop outreach through conversation. If you're connecting tools for your team, explore Apollo's CRM integrations and API to bring its data into your existing process.

As people respond, use what they tell you to improve your targeting and messages. Each conversation gives you a clearer picture of who needs what you offer, what matters to them, and when to reach out.

You have now turned a list of possible buyers into a starting point for real business conversations, with a process you can improve and repeat as you grow.

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Next Steps

Build on your research with tools to sharpen your questions, personalize outreach, and keep your team moving forward.

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