Grab the AI Prompt that Finds What Your CRM Can't Show You

For some people, out-of-the-box thinking comes naturally.

Carol Olona, Client Growth Strategist at LeadMinders, is one of them.

“The key to being successful in sales outreach is to go beyond the standard,” she says, “Figure out what you can use to be different to everyone else.”

Targeting newly funded businesses or contacts who’ve recently changed jobs is a good sales play, but it’s also a common one — Carol likes to stand out. 

She wants her prospects' product information. Its price points. Who they sell to; when and why and how. But collecting this level of detail takes time. 

When Carol heard about Apollo's AI prompting tool, a quicker way to gather the kinds of insights needed to create her highly-personalized campaigns, she knew she needed a piece of the action.

So she built one; a prompt that delivered in-depth information on prospects every seller needs to personalize outreach. Her prompt proved so useful for researching prospects that Carol won our Apollodays template contest.

Now, she’s sharing how to use her prompt, so you can get in on the action, too. 

👉 Grab Carol’s research prompt in Apollo here. Keep reading to learn how to use it.

How to reach contacts your competitors are missing

Sales campaigns that generate opportunities are deeply personalized and hyper-segmented. 

Finding information that's deeper than surface-level takes time — more time than most sales teams can spare. Which means, reps end up following the same, tired process.

“Everyone can pull data on which companies are newly funded or have got a new executive,” says Carol, “But you’ve got to go beyond that.” 

To stand out, Carol needed AI on her side.

Creating an AI prompt to hyper-segment email outreach 

Carol’s prompt uncovers eye-grabbing insights about prospects — details that other sales teams often miss.

“The prompt uses a list of companies I’ve mined, and looks for details like the product name, price, and industry. That data helps me hyper-segment my audience, so I can reach out to them in different ways,” she says. 

Can Carol’s AI prompt help you?

If you’re looking to:

• Quickly gather unique information on your leads

• Create hyper-segmented outreach emails

• Close more deals 

Carol’s AI prompt is what you need. Start using it in the Apollo platform here. 

First, let's break down why it works...

A closer look at Carol’s AI prompt

The prompt Carol created is long, and for good reason. It’s packed with specific instructions to get the most useful results. We broke down Carol’s entire prompt into smaller sections below. 

1. Set the scene 

Carol starts by giving the AI its identity.

“Act as a research analyst,” she tells it, before giving it the high-level overview of its mission.

Acting as a research analyst, your task is to find the name of the product that '{{account.name}}'  sells, the price of the product or the price range, and what industries '{{account.name}}' sells to. 

2. Specify the research search scope

She suggests adding a timeframe to your search scope to get the most relevant, up-to-date information on target companies. She prefers using a 6-month timeframe.  

During earlier prompting iterations, Carol only asked for content like blog posts and press releases. But she wanted more in-depth information. So she expanded her scope to podcasts and product releases or updates, which proved helpful.  

Find news and internet posts about the company '{{account.name}}' with the website '{{account.website_url}}' from the last 6 months. Today's date is {{now_day}}-{{now_month}}-{{now_year}}.

Search Scope:

• Company websites, blog posts, press releases, news or update pages

External Sources:

• Financial reports or earnings announcements
• News articles from major publications
• Podcasts focused on the company or their industry
• Product releases or updates
• New customers or partnerships announced
• Mergers & acquisitions involving the company
• Industry or market trends relevant to the company and its sector.

3. Detail the desired output 

Carol suggests getting really specific about how you want AI to format the results and findings. The more specific, the better. 

And don't forget to specific what you want AI to do in the case that it finds no relevant information...

Provide the output in the following numbered format:

1) A list containing the names of the product or services

2) A list with the price or price range of the products or services cost

3) A list with a brief description of the industries '{{account.name}}' sells to

If no recent and relevant information is found, respond ONLY and EXACTLY with "No information" without any markdown formatting.

4. Set limitations 

After some experimenting, Carol found that these detailed instructions below saved her time because they eliminated the need for her to review irrelevant information or lengthy explanations. 

• Do not provide any introductory text, explanations, or conclusions.
• Only include results that are confirmed to be about the company mentioned, by cross-referencing with the given company's website url to avoid confusion with other companies with similar names.
• If unsure about the relevance or accuracy of the information, do not include it.
• Limit your response to a maximum of 5 product names.
• If no relevant news is found, respond only and exactly with plain text "No information." without any additional explanation.

✨ Carol’s bonus tip: Keep a human touch. Even with AI, you still need critical thinking and common sense. Take the foundation of AI-generated research, then get creative and add your own touch of personality during outreach. 

The positive impact of Carol’s AI prompt

Carol only created her prompt a matter of weeks before this interview and she's already seeing the impact.

“We recently saved at least two hours on a very small campaign. For us, as a small business, that’s huge.” 

These time savings mean Carol can iterate fast. Now, she's launching new campaigns in an hour instead of a day. “I like to adjust rapidly. Not in weeks or months, but in hours or days, so we get the best results as quickly as possible,” she explains. 

But time savings aren’t the only benefit. 

Carol’s prompt has improved the confidence of her sales team because they know they’re reaching out to the right people — and now it's got them thinking bigger...

 And as someone who’s always moving fast, that means she’s already thinking about the next iteration.

Try Apollo's AI prompting for free.