How to prospect and enrich leads with AI.

I use this when I have an ideal customer in mind but no list, or when I have one name and need the full contact card before I write to them. It is the top of the funnel: turn a plain-English description of who I want into a ranked table of real decision-makers with verified emails and phone numbers, or turn a single name into everything I need to reach out. I reach for it when building a target list, qualifying an inbound, or right before sending an email and I need the person's real address and title first.

How I use this, and what for

I use this when I have an ideal customer in mind but no list, or when I have one name and need the full contact card before I write to them. It is the top of the funnel: turn a plain-English description of who I want into a ranked table of real decision-makers with verified emails and phone numbers, or turn a single name into everything I need to reach out. I reach for it when building a target list, qualifying an inbound, or right before sending an email and I need the person's real address and title first.

What the AI actually does

You describe the customer in a sentence. The AI turns that into the search filters, runs them, ranks the matches, reveals the contact details, and tells you why each person is on the list. The manual version is an afternoon in Apollo and LinkedIn with a spreadsheet. This is one prompt.

The research backs the split: Apollo holds a large B2B contact and company database with built-in enrichment and verification, while Common Room aggregates first, second and third-party buying signals (community activity, hiring, product usage, web visits) into one record per account. Used together, you get reach and warmth in the same pass.

The tools and APIs you need

• Apollo
• Common Room
• Claude
• LinkedIn

The right prompts

Build a list from an ICP

```
/apollo-prospect
Build me a lead list:

• Who: Heads of Sales or VP Sales at UK B2B SaaS companies
• Size: 50-200 employees
• Signal: actively hiring SDRs or AEs right now
• Give me: ranked table - name, title, company, verified email, phone, one-line why-them
  Then flag which already show up in Common Room as warm.
  ```

Enrich a single name before reaching out

```
/apollo-enrich-lead
Jane Doe, VP Sales at Acme (or paste her LinkedIn URL).
I want her verified work email, direct phone, exact title, and a two-line
company snapshot I can use to open a cold email.
```

How to do it

Describe the customer in plain English

Role, company type, size, region. Invoke `apollo-prospect` with that sentence.

Let it build the ICP query

It turns your sentence into Apollo filters, runs the search, and ranks the people.

Enrich the shortlist

It reveals emails and phones and pulls company intel for the top matches. One person instead of a list? Use `apollo-enrich-lead` with a name, company, LinkedIn URL, or email.

Cross-check against warm signals

Run the names through [Common Room](https://www.commonroom.io/) to see who is already in your orbit. Those go to the top.

Decide the next step

Straight into [outbound](02-outbound-email-sequence.md), or bulk-load into an Apollo sequence with `apollo-sequence-load`, which handles dedup and enrollment.

See the difference

Let AI carry the heavy lifting; you keep the judgement and the final say.

How you'll know it's working

• A ranked table you could act on today, not a raw dump.
• Emails are verified, not guessed.
• Each lead has a one-line reason it is on the list, so you know the angle before you open the email.
• Warm contacts are marked, so you start with the people most likely to reply.

Questions people ask