So you’ve built a list of target accounts you want to sell into.
What’s next? Put them all into a sales and marketing campaign?
That can work, depending on your industry, but in many cases, a generic sales strategy will often fail.
To really cut through the noise, you need to know who you’re selling to. You need to do a bit of research.
In this guide, we’ll discuss how to research a company for sales outreach. Specifically, we’ll look at nine places where you can get intel on the person and company you’re selling into.
Starting with... 👇
When you gear up to launch a new outreach campaign, there’s one place where you’ll find timely intel on your target customers:
Cognism is one of the best European data providers around. We give our customers phone-verified mobile numbers and B2B email addresses, firmographic data, and third-party buying intent signals that highlight what your prospects really care about.
With Sales Companion, you have instant access to the most important data points about your prospects, with a centralised prospecting dashboard that delivers insights like:
For example:
If you’re selling to a VP of Sales at a Series B SaaS company, you can use Cognism to confirm their tech stack, recent hiring trends, and region. You can then tailor your sales pitch to reflect scale-up pains.
Or, if you’re targeting a manufacturing firm, you can turn to Cognism to confirm firmographic data, cross-reference with your ICP criteria, and validate fit.
Our AI Search feature makes it even easier to access the intel you’re after. No more messing around with clunky spreadsheet filters!
Just type or say what you’re looking for in plain English (or any other language) to instantly surface results. For instance, you can search for:
Then, you can:
See how Sales Companion works - take an interactive tour 👇
Once you’ve defined and built your prospecting strategy with Cognism’s Sales Companion, the next place you should head is to the company’s website.
This step is about familiarising yourself with the brand you’re about to call and giving yourself a stronger idea of what the business actually does.
Why is that important?
Because it helps you refine your pitch further.
Knowing what industry the prospect is in is certainly helpful, but what really personalises your outreach efforts is:
The company’s About page is usually a good place to learn about the company’s mission, values, history, and leadership.
How does this help a sales rep?
If their About page emphasises a mission to “democratise access to AI,” you can tailor your pitch to align with that value-driven positioning. You could mention similar customers you’ve worked with who share a similar value set.
You should also spend some time on their Company News or Media page. Look for press releases, partnerships, funding news, or major client wins.
Funding announcements are generally a good sign that the company has budget to spend (more on that later).
Press releases about new product launches are a good signal that the business is shifting focus or expanding into new markets.
The company’s website gives you the official story. It’s polished and controlled and reflects how the company wants to position itself in the market.
It’s a good place to start, but you should also hit their socials! This will give you a better idea of what they’re actively thinking and talking about right now.
You can do this at the company level (like reviewing the company’s LinkedIn page), but your main focus should be on the social profiles of the specific buyers you’re targeting.
In the B2B world, LinkedIn and X tend to be where potential buyers are most active. For each prospect, review the last few months of activity and look for:
Crunchbase, PitchBook, and AngelList are all fantastic places to learn about recent funding announcements.
Use them to discover when your target company got their most recent funding round and how much it raised.
This will give you some idea of the budget they have for a tool like yours. It doesn’t mean they’ll want to use that cash to buy your thing, but it’s good to know they have it.
You can also see what stage they’re at (Seed, Series A, etc.), which gives clues about their priorities. A Seed-stage startup may need help finding product-market fit, while a Series B company might be focused on improving sales and scaling customer success.
A good additional use for these sites is competitor analysis. For example:
If a new market entrant has recently received a new investment, this could introduce additional competition. Therefore, your tool might be able to help your prospect win here.
Industry-relevant news sites are another smart place to get some intel on potential customers.
Dig into publications like Google News, TechCrunch, and Business Insider to learn about:
Your own sales and marketing tech stack can be a powerful place to find insights on a prospect, especially if you’re deeper in the funnel or have a history with that company.
Start with your CRM. Check for past conversations, closed-lost reasons, or existing connections across your team. You can uncover details like past objections or internal champions to leverage.
In your marketing automation platform, see if they’ve downloaded content, opened emails, or visited high-intent pages, like pricing or product tours. This shows you what they care about and how far along they are.
Your sales engagement tool might reveal what messaging they’ve responded to or ignored. Use that to adjust tone, timing, or topics in your next outreach.
Many platforms today have AI functionality built in, allowing you to rapidly surface key insights rather than manually wading through pages of sales conversations.
If your tools include AI, take advantage here. If not, you can always export call and email transcripts and ask ChatGPT to give you a quick summary of key points.
Listening to a company’s leadership on podcasts, webinars, or in interviews can give you unfiltered insight into their strategy, priorities, and personality.
These are things you won’t find in a press release or from a third-party data provider!
In these conversations, founders and execs often reveal:
In your outreach, you can make a real impact by pulling specific quotes or mentioning these key themes. Like this:
This is super-personalised outreach; it’s a great way to impress your prospect and start a meaningful conversation.
A company’s careers or hiring page, as well as its listings on job boards like Indeed, are great places to find buying signals.
Understanding the roles the company is hiring for gives you a sneak peek into its priorities, growth stage, and current challenges, all of which help you craft a more relevant pitch.
This is especially important when the company is hiring for roles relevant to your tool. For example:
If you’re selling an ABM platform, it’s a good sign if a target account is hiring for a RevOps leader or Head of ABM.
Here’s what to hunt for on hiring pages:
Pro tip:
If the job description mentions specific tools, you can tailor your pitch around integration or sales process improvement.
For example:
Review platforms like G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius can be powerful tools for sales research, so much so that many of them even sell their insights as a second-party data source.
For instance, G2’s second-party intent data can give you intel like:
For example:
If a prospect is looking at your tool and a direct competitor, that’s a clear buying signal and a great chance to differentiate.
But even without paying for a data subscription, you can browse sites like G2 to find some pretty interesting information about what similar companies to the one you’re targeting think about your tool, such as what features they get the most value out of or why they switched from a competitor.
You can then use those insights to fuel more relevant outreach. Like so:
If you know from your technographic data that the account you’re going after is using a competitor tool, you can find and pull a quote from a G2 review posted by one of your customers who made the switch.
Here, you’re using social proof to speak for your product’s value props.
If you want your outreach to stand out, you need more than a list of people to email. You need intel!
And not just any intel - high-quality, compliant intel that connects you with the decision-makers who matter.
There are plenty of ways to research a company for sales, but only Cognism gives you:
Find out why Cognism’s data is different - click 👇 to get started!