Start with a decision, not a dossier
Start with the company, confirm the person’s role, record the relevant facts, and decide whether there is a credible reason to reach out. Is this business a plausible customer? Is this person a reasonable contact? Is there a specific question worth putting in front of them? A long biography will not necessarily answer any of those questions.
A useful brief is short enough to review and specific enough to challenge. Write down who you are considering, why your offering could be relevant, what evidence supports that idea, and what you still do not know. Research is useful when it changes your next action, including the decision not to reach out.
- Who: the person, their current role, and the company.
- Fit: the connection between the business and your offering.
- Evidence: the source behind each meaningful observation.
- Uncertainty: the assumptions you would need to test.
- Next action: ask a focused question, research further, or move on.
Research the company before personalizing the opening
A company announcement establishes what the company publicly says it is doing. A job listing shows the responsibilities and skills it is recruiting for. Neither establishes a budget for your product or an intention to buy it. Start with the company’s own description of its work. What does it sell, to whom, and in which markets? Look for developments related to the work you actually do. Expansion might matter to a hiring service; an acquisition might matter to a business that helps combine operations. Neither development proves a need for the seller.
For the worked example in this guide, imagine Northstar Field Services announcing an acquisition that adds two regional service teams. You sell custom reporting software. The possible fit is the work of bringing information together across teams. Your research question is whether reporting is being reviewed, not how much the company must be suffering.
Northstar and Maya Ellis, its operations leader, are fictional. All source descriptions in this example are illustrative, not live citations or claims about a real business.
Understand the role without assigning priorities
A job title helps you frame an initial hypothesis about responsibilities. It does not tell you who owns a project, whether there is budget, or whether that person wants to hear from you. Check that the role is current and distinguish a general job description from a stated responsibility.
Maya’s operations role makes a reporting question plausible in our example. It does not establish that she buys software. A message can leave space for that distinction: ‘Are you reviewing how those teams report their work, or is that already covered?’ That is more useful than announcing that she needs your solution.
Keep the fact, interpretation, and open question separate
Use a small research table rather than mixing everything into one narrative. Record the source and, for real research, its publication date and the date you checked it. If a detail cannot be traced back to a source, label it as a note or an assumption rather than quietly presenting it as evidence.
Here is the whole chain for our fictional example. Notice how little the observation establishes by itself. The relevance depends on your offering, and the uncertainty belongs in the brief because it shapes what you ask.
- Observation
- Northstar adds two regional teams through an acquisition.
- Illustrative source
- Company acquisition announcement. In real work: record the actual URL and dates.
- Possible relevance
- The combined teams may need a consistent reporting workflow.
- Unknown
- Existing systems, integration progress, ownership, budget, and need for help.
- Outreach implication
- Ask whether reporting is being reviewed. Do not assert that systems are broken.
Decide whether the reason is strong enough
Now test the connection. Can you explain why the observation relates to your offer without adding an unsupported problem? Would your message still make sense if the company already had an effective solution? If the whole pitch depends on assuming a crisis, the research is not yet supporting the message.
You may discover that the acquisition is old, the person has moved roles, or the relevant work is already complete. Those findings are useful. Update the record and change your next action. There is no requirement to force every researched prospect into an outreach sequence.
Stop researching when you have enough context for the next decision. If the remaining uncertainty can only be resolved by a conversation, turn it into a respectful question. If you cannot find a connection to your offer, move on rather than decorating a generic pitch with unrelated trivia.
Carry one angle into the first message
Reduce the brief to one observation, one relevant capability, and one answerable question. The first message should not reproduce every fact you found. Keep the richer notes available so you can respond thoughtfully if the prospect engages.
For Northstar, that means mentioning the regional teams, explaining your reporting work, and asking whether the workflow is under review. You are opening a conversation, not writing a verdict on their operations. The next guide shows how to turn that brief into a more useful draft.