Day 2: AI for Prospecting — AI for Sales Professionals

What You'll Build Today

A repeatable AI prospecting system

By the end of Day 2 you will have:

A prompt for researching any prospect in under 3 minutes
A qualification framework powered by AI + your CRM data
A first-touch outreach template that gets above-average reply rates
A lead scoring prompt that mimics what enterprise AI tools cost $50K/year to do

The Old Way vs. the AI Way

Old prospecting workflow: spend 20 minutes researching a company on LinkedIn, their website, and news results. Write a custom intro by hand. Send. Repeat 15 times and call that a day's prospecting.

AI prospecting workflow: give Claude a company name and your ICP. Get a research brief in 90 seconds. Adjust the output, add your personal hook, send. Do that 60 times today.

The output quality is the same or better. The time per prospect drops from 20 minutes to 3.

Important: AI Research Has a Cutoff

Claude and ChatGPT don't have real-time internet access by default. For recent news, funding rounds, and job changes, still check LinkedIn and Google News. Use AI for the synthesis and framing, not the live data retrieval.

The Prospect Research Prompt

This is the single highest-leverage prompt in this course. Run it before every first call or email.

Prospect Research Brief Prompt

I'm a sales rep at [Your Company]. We sell [one sentence description of what you sell and who you sell it to]. I'm about to reach out to: - Name: [Prospect name + title] - Company: [Company name] - Industry: [Industry] - Company size: [Approx employees or revenue] Based on what you know about this type of company and role, give me: 1. The top 3 business challenges this person likely faces 2. How a solution like mine maps to each challenge 3. One specific hook I could use in a cold email that feels relevant, not generic 4. Two qualifying questions to ask on a discovery call 5. Red flags that might make this a bad fit Be specific. Avoid generic sales advice.

The output gives you enough to write a strong first email and run a tight discovery call — in 90 seconds of AI processing time.

AI-Powered Lead Scoring

Enterprise CRM platforms charge tens of thousands of dollars for AI lead scoring. You can replicate 80% of the value with a simple prompt and your existing data.

What lead scoring actually does

It assigns a score to each lead based on how closely they match your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) — the characteristics of your best customers.

Lead Scoring Prompt

I'm building a lead score for my pipeline. Here's my Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): Best-fit customer profile: - Industry: [e.g., SaaS, manufacturing, healthcare] - Company size: [e.g., 50-500 employees] - Title: [e.g., VP of Sales, Director of Operations] - Pain: [e.g., manual reporting, slow hiring, compliance risk] - Budget indicator: [e.g., recently raised Series B, over $10M revenue] Here are 5 leads I'm evaluating. For each one, give a score from 1-10 and a one-sentence explanation: Lead 1: [Paste the prospect's LinkedIn headline or a brief description] Lead 2: [...] Lead 3: [...] Lead 4: [...] Lead 5: [...] Rank them in order of priority and explain which two to focus on this week.

Pro Tip

Run this weekly on your full pipeline. Copy-paste the output into a note in your CRM. You now have a record of why you prioritized each deal — which makes forecast reviews and pipeline calls much sharper.

Writing First-Touch Outreach with AI

The most common mistake: asking AI to "write me a cold email to [Company]." You get a template. Templates don't get replies.

The right approach: give AI the specific context it needs to write something that sounds like you did your homework.

Cold Email Generation Prompt

Write a cold email for the following scenario. The email should be: - Under 100 words - No subject line yet (I'll write that separately) - Specific, not generic - End with a low-friction CTA (not "let's get on a call") Context: - I sell: [Your product/service in one sentence] - Prospect name: [Name] - Their company: [Company] - Their role: [Title] - Specific hook: [One thing you found in your research — recent news, a post they wrote, a challenge their industry faces] - What I want them to do: [e.g., reply to this email, click a link, agree to a 15-min chat] Write 2 variations — one direct, one curiosity-driven. I'll choose the better one.

Writing the subject line

Subject lines are often the difference between a 10% and a 35% open rate. Run them through a separate prompt:

Subject Line Prompt

Here is the cold email I'm sending: [Paste your email] Write 5 subject line options. Make them: - Under 50 characters - No click-bait or fake "Re:" tricks - Specific to the hook in the email - Varied in tone (direct, curious, name-drop, benefit-led, question)

Prospecting Tools Worth Knowing

Apollo.io

Largest B2B contact database with built-in sequence automation. Free tier available.

Data + Automation

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Advanced search + AI lead recommendations. Essential for enterprise sales.

Data

Clay

Enriches prospect lists with AI-generated research at scale. Power tool.

Enrichment

Lavender

AI email coach that scores your email in real-time and suggests improvements.

Writing

Perplexity

AI with real-time web search. Better than ChatGPT for current company news.

Research

Claude / ChatGPT

General-purpose AI. Best for synthesis, drafting, and strategy prompts.

Generation

Building Your Prospecting Workflow

The best AI prospecting workflows are simple. Complexity kills adoption.

Source leads — Apollo, LinkedIn, CRM, referrals
Score the list — Run the lead scoring prompt weekly, prioritize top 20%
Research each prospect — Run the research brief prompt, save output to CRM note
Write first touch — Run the cold email prompt with the hook from step 3
Optimize subject line — 5 options, pick one, A/B test when volume allows
Send and track — Use your email platform's tracking or Apollo sequences

Time Check

Steps 2-5 for one prospect should take under 5 minutes with AI. That means you can run 12 high-quality personalized outreach sequences in an hour — work that used to take a full day.

Day 2 Summary

AI compresses prospect research from 20 minutes to 3 — without reducing quality
Lead scoring with AI replicates expensive CRM features using simple prompts
Always feed AI specific context — generic prompts produce generic output
Best tools: Apollo (data), Clay (enrichment), Lavender (email coaching), Perplexity (live research)
Your workflow: Source → Score → Research → Draft → Optimize → Send

Day 2 Complete

Your prospecting is now AI-powered. Tomorrow: AI for communication — email sequences, follow-ups, and personalization at scale.

Day 3: AI for Communication →

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