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Today's sales teams deal with several significant challenges that can slow their progress. One of the most significant issues is the time spent on manual research. Sales reps often spend around four hours daily just gathering information on prospects, meaning they only end up with 8-10 well-researched leads. This time-consuming process limits how much they can grow their pipeline. On top of that, creating personalized outreach takes even longer. Reps need a deep understanding of each prospect’s business and challenges and need to tailor messages effectively. For a list of 100 prospects, this could take weeks of effort.
Another major problem is managing outdated data. Contact details and company information can become irrelevant in a matter of weeks. Instead of focusing on reaching out to prospects, teams waste valuable time updating and verifying their records. On top of all this, sales teams often face a tough choice: send a few high-quality personalized messages or blast out generic ones to a larger audience. Neither option strikes the right balance between quality and quantity.
AI is changing the way sales teams handle these challenges. With automated research, AI can analyze company data, track growth indicators, and flag relevant updates in minutes instead of hours. This translates into sales reps spending less time researching and more time connecting. AI also enables scalable personalization by generating customized talking points and messages based on detailed prospect data. This allows teams to reach far more prospects without sacrificing quality.
This tutorial shows you how to build an AI-powered sales funnel in a few hours rather than days! Finding potential customers takes time and effort. You must invest time and resources in finding people who need your product or service.
It will combine AI with Apollo, a sales insights and engagement tool, to filter and identify customers who perfectly match our ideal profile.
You'll learn how to:
- Build detailed ideal customer profiles (ICPs) in ChatGPT
- Create ICPs and convert them into exact search filters to use in Apollo
- Use Apollo to search for and export prospect data.
Tools you’ll need:
- An Apollo account (Free plan for testing. Basic plan for full exports)
- A ChatGPT account (Plus is better)
Let’s get right into it!
Step 1 - Build detailed ideal customer profiles (ICPs) in ChatGPT
Sales prospecting is the backbone of a strong sales process. It’s a structured way of identifying potential customers who could benefit from your product or service. Think of it as the starting point for your sales pipeline. Without effective prospecting, even the most advanced sales strategies can fail.
In the sales process, prospecting plays a few key roles. First, it helps you build a reliable pipeline of potential clients. Instead of waiting for customers to come to you, prospecting allows you to seek out businesses that might need your solution actively.
Second, prospecting helps you target the right opportunities.
Ideal prospects usually share the following characteristics:
- A clear need: They have a specific need for your solution.
- The proper budget: They have the financial capacity to purchase your product or service.
- Decision-making authority: They hold the power to make purchasing decisions within their organization.
- Aligned timeline: Their timeline for solving their problem fits with your sales cycle.
- Target market fit: Their company size and structure align with your target audience.
We’ll start by using ChatGPT to define the ideal customer profile, ensuring we know exactly what kind of prospects to target. Then, we’ll use this profile to search Apollo’s database and identify companies that match our criteria.
Once we’ve identified the right companies, we’ll export their information and prepare it for the next tutorial in this collection, which will focus on effective outreach strategies. By following this step-by-step approach, you’ll be well-equipped to find and engage the best leads for your business.
For example, instead of just focusing on a company’s size, you might discover that businesses using specific technologies or dealing with particular challenges are more likely to benefit from your solution.
Here’s a quick way to get started:
Open up ChatGPT and use the following prompt. Fill the square brackets with your own information.
Prompt:
Please create an ideal customer profile using the following information:
1 - Ideal company size [annual revenue, number of employees]
2 - Industry focus [sector or niches within the industry]
3 - Operational needs [key pain points or goals]
4 - Unique selling points [standout features]
5 - Context [ Your business description]
Review your ChatGPT’s analysis carefully to ensure it matches your business goals. If the profile aligns with your successful customer relationships, refine it using your experience.
Quick Tip: We’ve created customer profiles by filling in business details where the square brackets are in the prompt. If you want a more precise profile tailored to your business, you can use ChatGPT to review your current customer data from your CRM system.
Step 2 - Create ICPs and convert them into exact search filters to use in Apollo
Now that we have our analysis let’s convert the customer profile into functional Apollo search parameters. Of course, we’ll use AI to help us make accurate translations. This way, we won’t miss important search parameters that could help us find our ideal prospects.
Use the following prompt to convert the profiles into accurate Apollo search parameters.
Prompt:
Use the ideal customer profile and convert it into Apollo search parameters for:
- Account location
- No. of Employees
- Industry and Keywords
- Technologies
- Revenue range
Provide precise filter values for Apollo’s interface.
Using AI to define your customer profile and set these filter parameters is a much smarter way to gather relevant lead data. That said, don’t hesitate to tweak, add, or adjust any search criteria ChatGPT suggests if you think it could improve the results.
Step 3 - Use Apollo to search for and export prospect data
Now comes the interesting part of this tutorial. Set up a free account on Apollo by clicking the signup button.
You’ll be asked about your role and company during the signup process. Provide accurate information because it helps Apollo customize your experience.
After signing up, you will land on Apollo’s main dashboard. In the left sidebar, locate the Companies tab and click it. This module provides access to Apollo’s search and filtering options.
On the Apollo search page, you’ll see a bunch of filter options on the left side. Look for the location filter and type in the areas you want to target based on the plan you made earlier.
Add your other filters, such as industry type, technologies used, and company size, one at a time. Double-check that each filter aligns with the details you outlined in your search plan.
We found 858 companies in our search, but we’ll narrow it down for better results. This tutorial will focus on just 25 companies to keep things simple. You can use this method with more companies later, but starting small is smart if you’re new to AI-powered sales. This way, you can test what works, tweak your approach, and scale up once you’re confident in the process.
Quick Tip: We’ve only set up some basic filters with AI so far, but you can explore more options to build a more targeted leads list in Apollo. Check out advanced filters like Buying Intent, Job Postings, Signals, and others to refine your search further.
Exporting Prospect Data
After applying your filters and reviewing the results, it’s time to export your prospect list. You'll see a checkbox where you can select all the prospects displayed at the top of the results page. If you’re using a paid Apollo plan, you can choose the “All Pages” option to export the entire filtered prospect list at once.
Click the Export button in the top right corner of the screen, and an "Export to CSV" window will pop up.
Click "Export records" to download your list.
Click the ‘Export’ button at the top of the results window again, then click' View export history.’ In the ensuing dialog window, click the download button. The entire selected list will be downloaded to your computer.
The next tutorial in this collection will be even more interesting. We will explore how to use Clay.ai to enrich the data from these companies ready for outreach.
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