How to Build a High-Converting B2B Prospecting List [+Template]

Are you running multiple lead generation campaigns and trying different channels, and still not getting results? The chances are, you don’t have a messaging problem, but rather a B2B prospecting list problem.

If your list isn’t refined, it means that you’re reaching out to people who don’t need what you’re selling, who don’t have the buying power or the budget.

You need a small, refined list; if your list is too broad, you run the risk of failure.

At SalesBread, we’ve consistently found that having targeted lists doubles positive reply rates within the first campaign, which is why we spend a full week refining every list before a single message goes out.

At SalesBread, we only launch our campaigns if our lists are 99% accurate.

So if you want better replies, create better lists.

In this article, we’ll show you exactly how to build ultra-refined sales prospecting lists that actually convert.

You’ll be able to apply this list-building strategy to your own outreach immediately.

What is a sales prospecting list?

A sales prospecting list is a super targeted list of companies or people that your sales team will reach out to in order to sell your product or service.

It usually includes:

• Company name

• Contact name

• Job title

• Email address or phone number

• Relevant details like industry, company size, or tools they use

The goal of a prospecting list isn’t to have thousands of target accounts and just go after everyone and hope for the best.

The goal of your prospect list is to have a refined list that will help your sales teams reach out to people who are more likely to buy from you.

The more targeted your list, the better.

A good list helps sales teams focus on the right prospects instead of wasting time on people who will never buy.

Why having a targeted list matters

If you have a prospecting list that has 5000 prospects on it, but very few are a match for your product or service, you’re going to waste alot of time and money.

A targeted prospecting list ensures that your outreach is focused on prospects who actually need what you’re selling, who have the buying power and the budget.

When your list is targeted:

• You can personalize your outreach messages even more

• Reply rates improve

• Sales reps waste less time

• Meetings are easier to book

On the other hand, poorly targeted lists lead to low replies, high bounce rates, and frustrated sales teams.

It tells your team who to contact, why they’re a good fit, and how to approach them.

You want to make sure that you work with an agency that actually cares about your prospecting lists.

Why?

Because if they don’t, you’re going to burn through a list quickly that brings in little to no ROI. A refined list will save you money in the long run.

How to define your ICP

Look at your current buyers’ data – Who has been buying from you?

You might have an idea of who your ICP is, but if you want your list to truly work, you have to look at data.

At SalesBread, we always tell our customers and readers to take a look at WHO has purchased from you within the past 6 months…

Then look at your data and try to find patterns. What do these buyers all have in common?

When you build a list based on data, the chances of you reaching out to the right potential customers will be so much greater. 

So, for example, let’s say you are looking for leads in the healthcare space because you’re selling healthcare equipment. 

Ask yourself the following questions to help you build look-alike lists:

• Which types of healthcare companies have bought from you? (Hospitals? Clinics? Psychologists? Vets? Health insurance? Non-profit?)

•  What’s the company size? (400+ more hospital beds? 3000 employees? Revenue of over $30 billion dollars a year? Or is it only small clinics buying?)

• What services do these companies offer? (Day clinics? Psychiatric? Emergency?)

• Where are these companies located? (USA? Europe? Africa? 50 miles from New York?)

• Which departments are on their payroll? (Marketing? HR? CNO?)

• Which job titles are buying from you?

When you ask these kinds of questions and you start finding patterns, it helps you build a look-a-like list of your perfect target market.

And yes, it does take time. It takes us a week to build a list that’s 90% accurate. We actually analyze data by using 34 different types of filters.

Some of these filters include:

• People (company size, department size, job title)

• Money (Revenue, funding)

• Time (When was the company founded? Are companies start-ups?)

• Intent data (Which companies are looking to buy your product/service?)

• Hiring (Are they busy hiring new job titles?)

• Social media signals (How many followers do they have on Facebook etc?)

The video below shows how we analyze data to build a refined list of your ideal prospect.

Take a look at events and attributes

What does this mean?

An “event” is exactly what you think it would be.

It’s a company that’s gone through something that you can track, like:

• They are hiring for a new position

• They have just gone through a PR disaster/ and have had a recent press release on the issue.

• They have just done a round of funding

• They’ve just started a new ad campaign

An “attribute” is when you are looking for specific characteristics in a company. This would include things like:

• The size of the company

• The location

• Their revenue

• The technology that they are using

• Their unique monthly visits to a specific website

• It could even be their podcast downloads

• Job title

When it comes to building your list, look at both “events” and “attributes.”

It’s important to note that most data tools are set up for searching for companies’ “attributes” rather than events.

Below is a list of where you can find attributes and events for different companies.

Prospect Attributes (How to Find Them)

Here is an example:

You are selling HR software to tech companies to help them with employee retention problems.

The first thing that you would need to do is to find companies that you would like to target. Your absolute best accounts are in the tech industry, with between 50 and 200 employees.

Some people might stop here and send messages to these accounts.

But you should take this research a bit further when it comes to building your list so that you can have an even more targeted list of accounts.

How do you do this with list building? Here are 3 ways:

Number 1:

Look at companies that have one HR person in the department. This means that one person is dealing with all the HR issues.  Therefore, they would be open to seeing how your HR tool would help them.

Number 2.

The next step would be to look at which tech companies are hiring employees at the moment.

This shows that there is churn at their companies and that they will be looking to hire employees and keep them around longer.

Number 3.

You could also look at tech companies that have poor Glassdoor ratings.

This will indicate that employees are not happy, suggesting that their HR managers might need your software to help them out.

You could then target all of these companies, as they would be an excellent fit for your product.

You could even set up a Google alert to help you find who you want to track, or you could use sites like Indeed.com and Wellfound.com.

Build look-alike lists of current buying customers & find contact information

Once you have found a pattern between buyers, you can then build a look-alike list of prospects using certain tools. 

At SalesBread, we make use of prospecting tools such as:

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

If you don’t have LinkedIn Sales Navigator, it’s time to invest in it for your sales team.

Sales Nav offers various search filters that you can utilize to find the right target accounts. 

But it’s also important to know how to use the tool correctly.

Read this article; It will show you the most common mistakes sales reps make when using it. 

In the image below, you can see how many search filters there are, but we also always use third-party data providers to double-check the information we find in Sales Nav. 

Bombora

“Bombora measures prospects’ digital journey across 5,000+ premium B2B websites, so you know exactly what prospects are in the market for, letting you guide them to your solution.” 

By using Bombora, we can find companies based on data that are ready to buy what you’re selling.

Intent data also helps us prioritize leads and reach out to those who are currently searching for a specific tool or solution.

Data Miner.io

Data Miner is a web scraping tool that we use to scrape data.

It can help you find contact information, product information, profile pages, and even real estate listings. 

PhantomBuster

PhantomBuster helps you to find email addresses and contact information. You can even scrape social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn.

Crunchbase

Crunchbase is a great sales intelligence tool and has in-depth filters that can help you find the right potential prospects. 

Contact data, funding, investors, and events are some of the filters included. 

Clutch

Clutch is a database where you can find over 350 K service providers. It’s a great tool for refining your list because it has various filters, such as budget, industry, and location. 

At SalesBread, we pay thousands of dollars each month for these prospecting tools. We do this, so you don’t have to. 

The pricing of these tools varies. 

Some are not as expensive as others, so in order to find the right tool for your needs, you’re going to have to do a bit of research. 

But this article discusses prospecting tools we can’t live without. 

The most important thing to remember…

A lot of times, Zoominfo, Apollo, Crunchbase, etc, are not always the best places to start your list-building efforts based on your vertical. 

Why?

Because you want to find the most accurate data. And sometimes the best place to go for this kind of data is directly to the source. 

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you’re looking for hospitals with a certain number of hospital beds.

Sure, you can get this info off Zoominfo, but it won’t be as accurate as the American Hospital Association. 

That’s where you would want to go for accurate data. 

Refine your list even further – Plug it into LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Once you have your list, you can then plug it into LinkedIn Sales Navigator and filter it by your 2nd-degree network and by recently posted. 

Why do we do this?

Because stats and experience have shown us that, when a prospect is in your second-degree network, they are more likely to accept your connection request. 

You will also need to filter this list by those recently posted on LinkedIn. 

Once you have a refined list, you can then begin your outreach campaigns, whether it’s through cold email or LinkedIn. Read this article that shows you how to write personalized outreach messages.  a successful outreach strategy

B2B Sales Prospecting List Template

Copy this simple list-building template to get started…

Segment Your Prospecting List for a Successful Outreach Strategy

Segmented lists allow for surgical targeting.

There is no point blasting a random message when you can put the ideal value prop in front of the right people.

This could also be the difference between someone saying “let’s hop on a call” and “no thanks!”

Sometimes, different prospects are at different stages of the buying cycle and have different needs when it comes to a client’s offer/services.

You could have a list of 3 distinct groups that have varying pain points, so a single outreach sequence to all of them is pointless and a waste of time.

For example, instead of one generic “businesses that need Zoho” list, a segmented approach would look like:

1. Intent Data

a) A list created in Bombora for companies actively searching for Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, or Zoho Mail. They’re already researching, which means shorter sales cycles and higher conversion potential.

b) Followers of consultants who are offering the same service or similar CRM pages.

2. Tech List
A list of companies with websites that already have Zoho CRM or Zoho Books installed. They’re users, not newbies, which means the pitch is completely different. Here, you would focus on upselling, how to use the software, or other forms of support.

3. Growth-Stage
This list could be newly launched retail brands, newly funded startups, and scaling SMEs that are growing and need to get their ops sorted.

Messaging would focus on getting them started so they can have proper organization as they scale.

Sending the same sequence to all 3 might work, but a prospect who is just researching Zoho will turn down a CTA that mentions integrating Zoho Books or Zoho CRM because they’re not a user.

Segmenting also helps with more accurate campaign stats.

Blasting all 3 lists would lead to more “Nos,” which would incorrectly convey a lack of interest; but the reality is you’re just sending the right messaging to the wrong people.

Why Segmentation Helps

Segmentation helps you:

• Personalize your outreach

• Improve reply and booking rates

• Focus on prospects that are most likely to convert

The more relevant your message is, the better your results.

Use AI to help you build a prospect list

You can also use AI to help you with B2B prospect list building.

We always use the best list-building tools, but we always go a few layers deeper by consulting with Google AI.

Imagine your list is: Find me companies with distribution facilities in Europe and the U.S.

You can’t do this on pretty much any tool, but you can go ahead and take a second step and qualify them through Google. By doing this, we can pretty much build any list we want now with excellent accuracy.

We suggest leaning on Google to give you that final checkpoint to make a good sales prospecting list.

One tool we’ve been using a lot lately is GPT for Sheets and Docs. This is a Google Sheets add-on that brings AI directly into your spreadsheet workflow.

There are plenty of ways to use it, but for us, it’s become a secret weapon for list refinement.

Here’s a simple example of how it works in practice:

Say you’re building a list of B2B companies. Rather than manually vetting each one, you can run a prompt like:

“Is this a B2B company? Answer Yes or No.”

Run that across your entire sheet, and you’ve instantly removed the prospects that never belonged on the list in the first place, often around 10–15% of a raw import.

And you can go much further than that. If your target market is companies that sell to marketing agencies, most data tools won’t give you that level of detail out of the box.

The workaround? Build your initial list with your usual tools, then use AI to layer on the qualifiers.

Point it at each company’s website and start asking the questions that actually matter for your ICP:

• “Is this company SaaS or service-based?”

• “Does this company sell to marketers?”

• “Do they appear to run an outbound sales team?”

Here are some list-building examples across 4 different industries

1. Healthcare

Let’s say that you are selling hospital beds. As mentioned earlier, you can use different data providers, but it’s always best to go to the original source of data. 

Perhaps you’re looking to sell to hospitals, but they need to have a specific number of beds. 

So you wouldn’t start with a tool like Apollo, especially if you are looking for advanced hospital data.

At SalesBread, we would go directly to the AHA database.

We encourage you to start with the association for the industry that you’re targeting, if it’s possible.

Look at some of the details that are provided by the AHA.

You will find information such as:

• Bed count

• Phone numbers

• Address

• Hospital count

• Organizational control (Whether it’s non-profit or not)

• The hospital’s URL, which you can use to discern the hospital’s LinkedIn page. 

It’s as simple as clicking on the hospital’s URL and finding extra information.

If you go to the association’s database, you can even find things such as affiliate hospitals. 

These databases can even give you information such as the head nurse at these hospitals.

So whenever building a list, remember to go to the main source of information. 

2. Finance 

Let’s say that you would like to target hedge funds, for example, by AUM (assets under management). This is quite a common prospecting filter.

We won’t go to Zoominfo for that information because it’s not the best data. 

At SalesBread, we would go straight to the source.

You could pay for a service like PitchBooks, but it’s really expensive; Instead, we found this site called Whale Wisdom. 

And they sell data for a whole lot less than PitchBook or ZoomInfo. 

But it’s dedicated to tracking funds and stocks.

You can just see that they have this incredible database of rich information.

It’s an excellent resource that a lot of salespeople in the finance space need to be using.

As you can see, there are various filters you can use. So you can get really specific with the data that you want.

You can choose the state or country you would like to target, whether it’s a hedge fund or venture capital, and the AUM range. 

This will then give you accurate prospect information. 

You can also have a look at the U.S. government database because all hedge funds in America have to be registered with the FCC.

Just by using various filters, you can see that we have a result of 10 000, but you can even refine this list more.

You can even find contact details.

You can then enrich the data by using tools such as Zoominfo or Apollo to ensure that these companies are the right size that you’re looking for, for example.

You would usually need to refine this list a second way to make it super accurate. 

3. Agencies

If you want to target specific agencies, we suggest going to Clutch.

Clutch would be the go to database for finding agencies in different industries. Let’s say your looking for SEO agencies to target. 

There are 44 000 agencies that come up. You can then use the various filters in Clutch to refine your list. 

And if you want to find “brick and mortar” companies, like Plumbers, just go to Yelp. 

4. Tech & Software 

For tech and software companies your going to want to go to Crunchbase. 

We feel Crunchbase is one of the better data providers for pulling together a list of tech and software companies. 

For example, if you were going after Saas, Crunchbase makes it easy to search for Saas companies, has rich prospect data. 

Then from there, you can keep on refining your list.

Here’s the takeaway…

Step 1: Go straight to the source for the best data, if possible.

Step 2: Use data enrichment tools to refine your list

Step 3: Refine it further by plugging the list into Sales Nav and filtering by your second-degree network and recently posted

Step 4: Use segmentation

Frequently asked questions about building a sales prospecting list

What makes a good sales prospecting list?

If you want a good prospecting list, make sure that quality trumps volume every time. If your prospecting list is accurate, targeted, and built around a clear ideal customer profile, you’re already winning.

It includes only prospects who are a realistic fit for your offer.

Is it better to build or buy a prospecting list?

Building a list gives you more control and better targeting. We don’t recommend buying a list of prospects, as often times the information is outdated and inaccurate.

What information should be included in a prospecting list?

At a minimum, a prospecting list should include company name, contact name, job title, and contact details.

You can also add in their replies to your messages and whether they are interested in a call or not.

How many prospects should be on a list?

There’s no fixed number. A smaller, highly targeted list will almost always outperform a large, generic one. Focus on relevance rather than volume.

Why do prospecting lists fail?

Most prospecting lists fail due to poor targeting and outdated data.

Want Help With Your Sales Prospecting Lists?

If your lead generation isn’t hitting the mark and you need qualified sales leads, the issue usually isn’t your offer; it’s your list.

At SalesBread, we help teams build super targeted prospecting lists that book appointments.

 Interested in seeing some of our list building case studies? 

Read this:

IT Lead Generation Case Study – 294 Leads Generated, 41% Average Reply Rate

Lead Generation for Higher Education – Strategy & Case Study

Outbound Lead Generation For Law Firms Case Study

Book a free 15-minute strategy session, and show you how to find high-quality leads that actually respond.

No pressure, just expert advice on how to fix your list for better results.