If you’re sending cold emails, running LinkedIn outreach, or making cold calls every day AND still not booking qualified meetings, the problem usually isn’t your message.
It’s your lead list.
Most sales teams think they have an ICP, but in reality, their lists are so broad that they’re set up to fail before outreach even begins.
The result?
Low reply rates. Endless follow-ups. Wasted time. And a growing sense that “outbound just doesn’t work anymore.”
Here’s what that typically looks like:
“We sell to healthcare, so let’s target all hospitals in North America and reach out to the CEOs.”
On paper, it sounds logical. In practice, it’s a fast way to burn budget.
Even with strong copy, solid personalization, and the best outreach tools, a vague prospecting list will always underperform.
You can’t convert people who don’t need what you sell, can’t afford it, or don’t have the authority to say yes.
To consistently book qualified meetings, your prospect list must be built around real buying pain, not just firmographics.
That means targeting prospects who:
- Who are actively searching for your service to solve their pain points
- Have the budget to invest in your solution
- Have the authority for purchasing decisions
When you get this right, outbound stops feeling like guesswork. You’re no longer “spraying and praying.”
You’re reaching out to people who are already 80–90% aligned with your offer.
Unfortunately, many sales professionals never get to this level. They chase volume, hoping that enough outreach will eventually produce a few meetings.
That approach is risky.
In this article, we’ll show you exactly how to build ultra-refined sales prospecting lists that consistently generate at least one qualified lead per day.
You’ll be able to apply this list-building strategy to your own outreach immediately.
(And if you’d rather have us walk you through it or build the list with you, you can book a free 15-minute strategy call with the CEO of SalesBread, Jack Reamer.)
What is a sales prospecting list?
A sales prospecting list is a targeted list of companies or people that your sales team plans to reach out to for your product offering.
It usually includes:
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Company name
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Contact name
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Job title
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Email address or phone number
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Relevant details like industry, company size, or tools they use
The goal of a prospecting list isn’t volume. Less is more. 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
Not all leads are worth going after. 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 resources.
A targeted prospecting list ensures 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:
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You can personalize your outreach messages even more
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Response rates increase
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Sales reps waste less time
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Meetings are easier to book
On the other hand, poorly targeted lists lead to low replies, high bounce rates, and frustrated sales teams.
A targeted prospecting list gives structure to your outbound efforts. It tells your team who to contact, why they’re a good fit, and how to approach them.
Simply put, better lists lead to better conversations.
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 in order for list building to work, you have to look at data.
Take a look at who has purchased from you within the past 6 months…
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 get a clear view of whom to target:
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Which kind of healthcare company has purchased from you? (Hospitals? Clinics? Psychologists? Vets? Health insurance? Non-profit?)
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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?)
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What services do these companies offer? (Day clinics? Psychiatric? Emergency?)
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Where are these companies located? (USA? Europe? Africa? 50 miles from New York?)
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Which departments are on their payroll? (Marketing? HR? CNO?)
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Which job title is 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.
This is time-consuming, and 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:
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People (company size, department size, job title)
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Money (Revenue, funding)
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Time (When was the company founded? Are companies start-ups?)
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Intent data (Which companies are looking to buy your product/service?)
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Hiring (Are they busy hiring new job titles?)
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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.
Consider 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:
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They are hiring for a new position
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They have just gone through a PR disaster/ and have had a recent press release on the issue.
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They have just done a round of funding
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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:
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The size of the company
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The location
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Their revenue
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The technology that they are using
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Their unique monthly visits to a specific website
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It could even be their podcast downloads
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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.
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 identify 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.
Where to find attributes for prospect data
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Company size: LinkedIn, Wellfound.com, Crunchbase
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Company revenue: LinkedIn
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Office location: LinkedIn, Google Maps, Yelp, Foursquare
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The same CEO for 5 years in a row: LinkedIn.
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Technology used: BuiltWith , Datanyze , NerdyData , LinkedIn Sales Navigator
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Website is not optimized for mobile ( NerdyData )
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More than $30k/month spent on ads: SpyFu.com
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Twitter followers: FollowerWonk
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Webinar attendees: just join one in the middle and see the number of people showing up
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Podcast downloads: iTunes, iTunescharts.net
Where to find “events” for your lead list
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Raised money: Wellfound.com, Crunchbase
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Acquired: TechCrunch, Wellfound.com
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Hiring: Indeed.com
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Nominated or won an award: Google Alerts, industry website/directory, company website
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PR disaster: Google alert for keywords (“Company” AND “Disaster”) OR (“Customer” AND “Outraged”)
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Just started a new ad campaign: SpyFu.com
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Just hired a new role: LinkedIn Sales Navigator, company website
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Entered a new market (they don’t know everything): SpyFu.com, LinkedIn News, TechCrunch, Google Alert (“Enters New Market”)
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Holidays (4th July, Anzac Day), Google Calendar
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Seasons – winter/summer: Google Calendar (for cyclical sales events)
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Company anniversary: LinkedIn, Who. is to see when the website domain was 1st acquired.
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Featured on Product Hunt: Product Hunt
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Just got a really bad employee rating: glassdoor.com
Build a look-alike list 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.
use these prospecting tools:
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 who are ready to buy what you’re selling.
It can also help us prioritize leads and reach out to those who are a sure win sale.
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 browse over 260 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 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
Segmenting Your Prospecting List for a Successful Outreach Strategy
A prospecting list only works if the right people receive the right message. That’s where segmentation comes in.
Segmentation means breaking your list into smaller, more relevant groups so your outreach feels more targeted.
Obviously, you would want to go after hot leads first and put warmer leads in a nurture campaign.
Why Segmentation Matters
Segmentation helps you:
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Personalize your outreach
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Improve reply and booking rates
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Focus on prospects that are most likely to convert
The more relevant your message is, the better your results.
How to Segment a Prospecting List
Segment by Company Type
Start with the basics:
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Industry
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Company size
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Location
This ensures you’re only targeting companies that actually fit your ideal customer profile.
Segment by Role
Different roles care about different outcomes. Segment prospects by:
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Job title
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Department
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Seniority level
This allows you to speak directly to what matters to them, whether that’s revenue growth or even fixing a PR issue.
Segment by Buying Signals
Some prospects are more ready to buy than others. Look for signals such as:
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Recent funding or growth
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Hiring activity
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Technology changes
Prospects showing these signals should be prioritized in your outreach.
Segment by Use Case or Pain Point
Group prospects based on the problem your solution solves for them. For example:
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Struggling with lead generation
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Inconsistent pipeline
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Low outbound performance
This makes your messaging more specific and more effective.
Segment by Priority
Not all prospects deserve the same amount of effort. Rank your list based on:
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ICP fit
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Deal size potential
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Buying signals
This helps sales teams focus on high-value opportunities first.
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.
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:
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Bed count
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Phone numbers
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Address
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Hospital count
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Organizational control (Whether it’s non-profit or not)
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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: Begin your outreach campaign by writing personalized outreach messages (Mention pain points and how you can help. Read this article for connection request templates .)
Step 5: Follow up and use a clear low-commitment CTA (Don’t use automation for follow-ups; have a real person reply.)
Frequently asked questions about building a sales prospecting list
Sales Prospecting List FAQs
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 your 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 outbound efforts aren’t delivering consistent meetings, the issue usually isn’t your offer; it’s your list.
At SalesBread, we help teams build super targeted prospecting lists that convert into real conversations.
Book a free 15-minute strategy session, and show you how to find high-quality leads that actually respond.
No pressure. Just clarity on what’s holding your outbound back and how to fix it.
