Define the target
Agree market, location, business type, fit indicators, exclusions and the reasons a company may care.
← Applied work & examples
Applied work · Sales intelligence & prospecting
Give salespeople the research they need.
A B2B sales workflow designed to reduce repetitive research, improve consistency and help capable salespeople focus their judgement on the right opportunities.
- Context
- B2B industrial business
- Function
- Sales & prospecting
- Constraint
- Manual research at scale
- Response
- Repeatable prospect research
Applied experienceAn example from the founders’ work in an operating business. Names are withheld. This is their experience, not a FUSED client case study.
The management problem
Salespeople were spending too much time preparing to sell.
Finding relevant businesses, understanding what they did, identifying likely fit, categorising them and preparing useful context consumed attention before a commercial conversation could begin.
The work mattered: poor research leads to poor outreach. But when the research varies by person and disappears into private notes, the business pays repeatedly for the same preparation.
THE DESIGN INSIGHT
The bottleneck was not effort. It was turning raw market information into usable sales intelligence.
Automate the repetitive preparation while leaving market judgement, messaging, trust and commercial conversation with people.
What changed
Give each prospect the same useful preparation.
The same questions, evidence and prioritisation logic could be applied across a target market.
Find and understand
Review relevant public sources and organise what each business does, who it serves and why it may fit.
Categorise consistently
Produce comparable summaries, segments and fit reasoning rather than a pile of differently written notes.
Prioritise human attention
Prepare context and next actions so sales effort begins with the opportunities most worth considering.
Quality over volume
A relevant conversation starts with good research.
A larger list is not automatically a better pipeline. The system supported better decisions before outreach: which businesses were relevant, what context mattered and why a conversation might be worthwhile.
Prospecting depended on individual habits.
- Research depth varied by salesperson
- Categorisation and notes were inconsistent
- Prioritisation was difficult to compare
- Useful research was hard to reuse
- Selling time was consumed by preparation
Research became easier to compare and reuse.
- Prospects followed a repeatable research path
- Summaries used a consistent structure
- Segments and fit logic were easier to review
- Preparation became reusable business knowledge
- People could focus on better-informed conversations
What remained human
People kept strategy, brand and relationship-building.
Leadership set the market and commercial rules. People approved messaging, handled genuine conversations, interpreted unusual context and changed direction when the evidence warranted it.
See the sales capability
System contribution
Discovery, research, summaries, categorisation, preparation and follow-up coordination.
Human authority
Market choice, brand, promises, relationships and commercial judgement.
Management visibility
Comparable segments, reasons for fit, current status and useful learning.
FUSED responsibility
Research design, workflow, integrations, monitoring and continuous refinement.
What this demonstrates
Help salespeople spend their time where it matters.
The work separated repeatable preparation from the parts of sales that require judgement, trust and conversation. It created a system the business could direct and improve rather than another source of unstructured leads.
A cloud colleague with research and follow-up skills can support this work. Your team sets the direction and leads the commercial conversations.
One useful conversation
Start with one
cloud colleague.
Tell us about your business. We’ll help you find a first role, explain the service and give you a clear proposal before you decide.