Finding is fast. The day goes to screening
Most people use AI to bring in more companies. The afternoon goes to the opposite: cutting the ones that don't fit.
Doing the work backwards
Five steps to go from a long list to a short list with proof. **Manual method**: Claude and your LinkedIn account, and with Sales Navigator step 2 goes faster. No downloading an entire database.
What you need: **Claude and your LinkedIn account**; with Sales Navigator step 2 goes faster. It isn't free: Sales Navigator is paid, and so is Claude used this way. What you save is the database and the fight with its columns.
01 · Who you sell to, in plain language
No filters, no industry codes: you explain it to Claude **the way you'd explain it to a new colleague** on their first day. This description is the yardstick for the other four steps: everything that comes after gets measured against it. Fill in the blanks and paste it in.
02 · The candidates, without downloading a database
You already have the source: a LinkedIn or Sales Navigator search, the exhibitor list from a trade show in your industry, an association's directory. You give it to Claude **in small batches**, not all at once, so you can check what it does with each one.
03 · The sentence that proves it, with its link
This is where screening stops being an opinion. For each candidate, Claude has to bring **the verbatim sentence from their website** that proves they fit your step 1, plus the link so you can check it. A summary in its own words doesn't count: either there's a quote, or there's no proof.
04 · No proof, out. Even if it fits on paper
The hard step, because you have to let go of companies that looked perfect. Right size, right industry, and not one sentence on their website to prove it: out. Not because they're bad, but because **without proof you have nothing to say to them** in the first message.
05 · The short list, and going in only there
What's left is a short list where every name has its proof next to it. That's where screening ends and selling begins: **the first call doesn't start cold**, it starts with what that company publishes about itself.
Screening on 1 page
Screenshot it: this is the whole method.
All 5 back to back, on an industrial list
The whole method on a real industrial list. Everything stated about each company comes from its public website, with the source cited.
What this screening won't give you
Who wrote this
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