Account research

Overview

Research is the raw material of relevance. The goal isn't a dossier - it's one
true, specific angle that makes a cold message land. The skill is knowing what
to look for and when to stop, so research doesn't eat the whole day.

Trigger-first: start by looking for a recent change (the "why now"), because
that's usually your opener. If you find one, you can often stop there.

Company research - the checklist

• What they do / positioning - read it in their words on their own site.
• Recent news - funding, launches, M&A, expansion, awards, press.
• Hiring - open roles signal priorities and pain (10 SRE roles = scaling pain).
• Tech stack - tools they use (from job posts, BuiltWith-style data, their blog).
• Size & segment - headcount, revenue band, geography (ties to ideal-customer-profile).
• Public pain - reviews, support forums, outages, compliance deadlines.

Person research - the checklist

• Role & tenure - are they the buyer, user, or gatekeeper? New in seat = open to change.
• Recent activity - LinkedIn posts/comments, talks, podcasts (their own words = best).
• Background - past companies, shared history, mutual connections.
• What they signal caring about - themes they post or engage on.

Time-box by tier

Match effort to account value (see ideal-customer-profile):

• A-tier: 5-15 min - find a trigger + their own words + a tailored angle.
• B-tier: ~1 min - one solid research line (recent post, role, company news).
• C-tier: 0 min of 1:1 - use role/industry/stack relevance instead.

Over-researching a C-account is as wrong as under-researching a whale.

Turn research into one angle

Pipe the single best finding into one opener line (handed to
outreach-personalization / cold-email-writing). Signal-to-noise matters: one
sharp, verified observation beats three generic facts. And verify before you
reference - a wrong detail is worse than no personalization.

The creepy line

Relevant-to-their-work = good ("you're hiring SREs → scaling pain"). Personal-but-
irrelevant = creepy ("saw your kid's soccer post"). Stay on the work side.

Do / Don't

• Do look for a trigger event first; it's usually the opener.
• Do time-box research to the account's tier.
• Don't reference anything you haven't verified.
• Don't mine personal details that have nothing to do with your value.

Common mistakes

• Research rabbit-holes that produce a dossier and zero sent emails.
• Facts that are true but irrelevant to why they'd buy.
• Referencing a stale or wrong detail (they changed jobs last month).
• Equal effort on every account regardless of fit.

Go live with Chronos (optional)

• geo_research - pull structured company/person facts and recent signals.
• geo_analyze_website - read a target's site for positioning and pain.
• geo_linkedin_get_prospect_profile / geo_linkedin_list_prospect_posts - their role and their own recent words.
• geo_enrich_contact - fill firmographic/technographic fields for scoring.

Connect in ~30s → `CONNECT-CHRONOS.md`. Free, no card.

See also: outreach-personalization, ideal-customer-profile, cold-email-writing.