How to Get Prospecting Lists for Cold Outreach (The 2025 Guide)

Imagine trying to sell winter coats in the middle of summer. You’d probably get crickets. That’s what happens when you reach out to people who aren’t the right fit for your business in the first place. This goes down to one list — your prospecting list. 

A good prospecting list isn’t one you randomly guess. It’s the foundation for any successful cold outreach. It’s the one you build around people who match your ideal customer profile and are more likely to say “yes.” In this article, you will learn:

• What a prospecting list means
• The tools to use
• A step-by-step guide to building a prospecting list
• Common mistakes to avoid. 

Let’s get started. 

What is a prospecting list?

A prospecting list is a compilation of potential buyers who fit your ideal customer profile (ICP), organized in a database. Think of it as a key to unlocking your cold outreach efforts. Without it, you don’t know who to reach and how to contact them. 

A prospecting list houses all the vital information about your prospects, including their names, contact information, job titles, and other relevant details. But there is more to storing details. 

A prospecting list keeps your communication tailored and well-personalized. When you create a list that fits your ICP, you know the exact kind of message that addresses their specific needs and pain points, capturing their interests and keeping your outreach more relevant. 

The result? You drive higher engagement, which you can leverage to build stronger relationships and ultimately, drive revenue. In short, a prospecting list helps you:

• Organizes prospect’s details
• Target the right people 
• Prompts you to personalize your messages
• Drive more engagement
• Improve conversions

What information should be in your prospect’s list?

A prospect’s list contains different key elements, such as:

• Prospect’s name: Their first and last name let you know who you’re contacting. It keeps your messages direct and personal to the recipient. 
• Company name: This guides your messaging approach, allowing your intent to align with their goals and objectives. 
• Industry: Knowing your prospect’s industry lets you understand the specific challenges or trends happening there. You can leverage this to your advantage.
• Job title: A person’s role in a company determines how you approach them. The message you send to a CEO is different from what you send to a growth strategist. One has the power to influence the sales process, while the other doesn’t. 
• Email address: This is what you leverage for communication, especially in a formal setting.
• Phone number: You can also use this to reach your prospects, especially if you want a faster, personal conversation. 
• Sales triggers: This signals a prospect may be interested in your products or services. Examples include funding rounds, relocation or expansion, hiring trends, and so on.
• Technographics: The tools or technologies your prospects use are also critical. You can leverage this information to offer your products or services that fit their tech stack and make their workflow better.

Other information you can include in a prospecting list is firmographic details (company size, annual revenue, headcount), pain points, behavior history, and much more. This information shows you’ve done your homework and contains helpful insights that you can use to forge meaningful relationships with your prospects. 

Where do you find prospects?

You can find prospects from a plethora of platforms — LinkedIn, company websites, industry directories, etc. But if your option is surfing these platforms one by one to build a prospecting list, you will waste time, make errors, and reduce productivity. 

Put into context, let’s say you spend two hours every day surfing through LinkedIn to find prospects. That’s 14 hours/week, which you can spend on other vital business activities. In one sentence, manual research isn’t your best shot. 

Now, what’s the solution? Ditch the manual process and opt for the automated one. AI-powered and automation tools like Apollo, Clay, Lemlist, or Outreach comb through these data sources (LinkedIn, company websites, etc.) to find and compile prospects’ information at lightning speed.

Rather than spending 14 hours a week to find relevant prospect information, you can spend 10 hours or less instead. We are not just saying this. The stat backs it up, with 64% of salespeople attesting that AI saves 1-5 hours per week. 

So, what tools would we recommend? Here are the top 5 tools we use at ColdIQ to build a targeted prospecting list:

1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

The business hub for millions of working professionals across the globe. If your goal is to find key decision makers that can advance your sales prospecting efforts, hop on LinkedIn Sales Navigator. 

You will not only find the top titles, but also the influencers who are part of the deal. With advanced search filters, you can build a prospecting list filled with the right leads.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s Pricing

LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s pricing plan starts at $99 per month. 

2. Clay

Clay is an all-in-one prospecting solution infused with dedicated features to curate the perfect lead list. From TAM sourcing to waterfall enrichment, intent signals, and an AI research agent, you can identify the right prospects that fit your ICP. 

One outstanding feature of Clay is its AI research agent, which you can leverage it to create a prospect list. View it as the search engine you use to scan various online platforms and extract the right details relating to your prospects.

Clay’s pricing

Clay offers a free trial, but its monthly plan starts at $149.

3. Ocean.io

Ocean.io lets you find potential customers similar to yours. With its lookalike search algorithm, you can find people or companies that have similar traits to your current customers. All you need is a URL and a detailed description of your ICP to do its job.

Ocean.io’s pricing

Ocean.io offers a free trial, but its paid plan starts at $79 per month 

4. Lemlist

Lemlist is an all-in-one cold email outreach tool designed to help you curate an enriched lead list. It’s got sophisticated features to help you find and engage your potential buyers. 

Starting with its lead database, you can find the right leads that align with your objective. Next is its email finder and verifier that lets you validate a prospect’s contact information, enabling you to reach them. 

On top of this, Lemlist offers personalization and multichannel features that create hyper-personalized messages and distribute them across multiple channels to expand your reach. Lemlist also features an email deliverability tool, Lemwarm, which you can leverage to make sure your cold emails land in the prospect’s inbox. 

Lemlist’s pricing

Lemlist offers a free trial, but its paid plan starts at $69 per month.

5. Expandi

Source: Expandi

Expandi is perfect for automating LinkedIn lead generation efforts. It’s got built-in scraping features to extract leads’ data and build a targeted list. What makes it more unique is its safety feature that makes sure you don’t go beyond limits, preventing your LinkedIn account from being blacklisted. 

Expandi stands out for its ease of use. You don’t need a technical background to find targeted potential customers. 

Expandi’s pricing

Expandi offers a free trial, but its paid plan starts at $99 per month.

Step-by-step guide to building a prospect list

Now that you know where to get prospects, let’s explore how to prepare and manage prospecting lists. This is a guideline to help you get started with cold email on a budget. 

1. Define your potential customers 

Before you start anything, you need to know who you’re selling to. Ask yourself these questions:

• What should my prospects pick my products or services — what’s in it for them?
• What problems do they solve?

Understanding these key factors lets you know how your products or services can benefit your prospects. To define your potential customers, consider two main components:

A. Ideal customer profile

Your ideal customer profile is a detailed description of a company that is the perfect fit for your product or service. It’s not just anyone who can buy from you. 

Instead, it’s the kind of customers who get the most value from your offerings and bring huge returns for your business. Think of them as your dream customers with all the necessary details spelled out, so you know who to focus on.

Here is a template you can use to create your ICP  👇

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B. Develop your buyer persona

A buyer persona is the detailed description of your ideal customers, particularly the targeted decision-makers within the organization. They’ve got names, jobs, goals, struggles, and so on. 

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To be clear, your buyer persona isn’t “We sell to a small business owner.” That’s too broad. Instead, try going a bit deeper. You could say, “Meet Jane Doe, a 45-year-old sales manager at an enterprise company. She is juggling multiple projects, intends to get a more positive response rate, and speed up the sales cycle.” That’s precise and more defined. 

Knowing who you want to reach in an organization guides your outreach efforts, ensuring you’re not wasting time on the wrong individuals.

Here is what your buyer persona looks like

2. Collect the prospect’s data

Once you’ve known who to reach, you’ve got to find them. You can collect your prospect’s data through different platforms, such as:

• Company website
• Industry directories
• Lead database
• Email and phone number verifier
• Social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter
• Niche publications across industries.

Now, how exactly can you create a dect list? The answer varies by prospect’s needs and your business objectives. But on average, you should include details such as:

• Their full name
• Job title
• Work email
• Phone number
• Intent signals to personalize the message (optional)

Tools like Clay can find targeted people and companies’ information and enrich your lead list. We will walk you through this step below. 

Finding companies’ information with Clay

To find targeted companies, create a workbook or a table. A workbook is a collection of tables that keep your data organized.

1. In your home dashboard in Clay, click on “New workbook.” 
2. Navigate to “Find Companies” to open the search modal. 
3. Then, you can filter your search with different criteria like industry, headcount, location, and more
4. Preview your list and iterate your selections before importing. 

Enrich companies’ data with Clay

Clay offers waterfall enrichment to source prospects’ additional information. It runs through the database of multiple vendors sequentially to obtain accurate details that can help you make informed decisions. 

If you want to enrich companies’ information, make sure to have a company list with the right domain names and LinkedIn profiles. Here is how to enrich company details with Clay. 

1. In your Clay table, select “Add Enrichment” in the top right corner. 
2. Then, select “enrich company info.” It will deliver a variety of ways you can enrich targeted companies, such as company address, funding stage, industry, and so on. 
3. Select your desired input (e.g,. company address)
4. Run a test to validate results. 

Finding people’s data with Clay

Finding an individual’s details is similar. In your workbook or table in your home dashboard, take the following steps:

1. Click “Find People” to open the search modal. 
2. Filter the search modal with pre-defined criteria such as job title, experience, location, profiles, certification, education, and more. 
3. Preview the list of contacts that match your criteria.
4. Import your list to broaden your search.

Enriching people’s data with Clay

As mentioned earlier, waterfall enrichment involves pulling data from multiple providers in a sequential order, eliminating manual research. To maximize coverage, Clay pulls data from over 10 providers to find your lead’s contact information (work email and phone number) to contact your leads.

Here is how to enrich your lead list with work email:

1. In your Clay table or workbook, click on the “Add Enrichment” button.
2. Search “Work email” or “Phone number” in the displayed options. You will see a pre-arranged order of email and phone number providers
3. Add or reorder the providers as you like. 
4. Select input columns, especially full name and company domain..
5. Choose your validation provider. Clay’s default validator is ZeroBounce.
6. Set catch-all emails as invalid
7. Run the test and review the results. 

With this information, you can create a list of targeted decision makers you can reach to boost your outreach efforts. 

2. Normalize and clean your data

When your data has a different format, scale, or structure, your analysis can turn out confusing. Normalizing data means organizing and cleaning everything into a standard format to improve consistency. For instance, turning “NYC” into “New York” across all columns and rows in your lead list. 

A great tool you can use to normalize data is Clay. With its normalize company name function, you can simply convert “Bluelight Ltd.” into “Bluelight” or “Senses, a manufacturing company” into “Senses.”

But how do you do this? Clay makes it simple.

• Navigate to the “Add Enrichment” panel
• Select the “Normalize” function in the “Discover” sub-field to the left.
• Select “Normalize Company name” from the listed options.
• Choose the appropriate column (e.g., company name from your table)
• Run the action to generate results. 

Aside from company names, you can also normalize:

• Locations: to represent addresses or locations appropriately, avoiding mistakes
• Phone numbers: To remove or add elements like parentheses or dashes where necessary
• Whitespace: Include consistent spacing appropriately across all texts 

Once you’ve normalized and cleaned your data, proceed with segmenting for your leads for targeted outreach.

3. Segment and organize your list

Imagine your leads are guests at a party. Not everyone will like the same meal, right? Some will prefer vegan dishes, others are there for desserts, and some came for the drinks. If you were to serve one big dish for everyone, many would probably be turned off. Why? It doesn’t suit their preference. 

That’s what happens when you treat all your leads in the same way. When you segment leads, you’re grouping your prospects based on their specific needs — pain points, buying behaviors, industry, and more. This prevents you from sending generic messages to everyone in the list. 

Once you’ve segmented your leads, organizing is the next step. Spreadsheets (Google Sheets or Excel) work best for a low volume of leads. But if you’re operating on a larger scale, you may make errors or waste time editing deals. 

That’s why we recommend using CRMs such as HubSpot, Salesforce, and Pipedrive to streamline the process and create an efficient workflow.

4. Score and prioritize leads

Not all leads are equal. Scoring your leads lets you know who is more likely to convert and needs more nurturing. 

But how exactly can you do this? Here are five key factors to watch:

• Fit (Do they match your ICP?): Look at factors like industry, company size, job title, annual revenue, and so on. If they are the kind of customer you want, they should receive a higher score.
• Engagement: Have they opened an email or downloaded a piece of content? Someone who is actively engaging with your content is warmer than someone who doesn’t do anything. 
• Buying intent: Are there signals that show their readiness to buy? Did they visit your pricing page or fill out a form? If yes, they should be on top of the list. 
• Source: Are they inbound leads or someone you cold emailed? A referral may receive a higher score than someone you’ve had no previous connection with. 

Once you weigh each lead against these criteria, set a criterion based on where they fit. 

Clay also simplifies the lead scoring process with its workflow. First, you must define three main criteria — headcount, industry, and seniority. Upon having this necessary data in place, create a final lead column that combines scores for each criteria. 

For instance, scores assigned can look like this:

Once you’ve input the details in the Clay table, run the model and it will generate a result which you can leverage for your sales efforts. 

You can follow this framework to prioritize leads who are most likely to convert.

✅High-scoring leads (5-6 points): Reach out immediately

‼️Medium scoring leads: Nurture with more relevant content 

❌Low-scoring leads: Reduce efforts, but don’t ignore completely. 

5. Personalize your outreach 

Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Would you respond to a message that looks like it’s copied and pasted from somewhere else? Probably not, right? That’s the point of personalization. 

Personalization isn’t just meant to prompt your readers to open your message. It hooks them and entices them to consume all the lines. But be careful. You also need to make it relevant by solving your prospect’s needs. 

Alex Vacca, COO and Co-founder at ColdIQ, says, “We don’t repeat it enough - Personalization without relevancy is useless. You can build the most sophisticated Clay table, pulling every data point imaginable to personalize your emails. 

Suppose you’re not solving a real problem for your prospect. No amount of personalization will get you results. Personalization grabs attention. Relevance book meetings.”

6. Invest in a CRM to create an efficient workflow

Using spreadsheets to sort and manage 10,000 leads doesn’t cut it. But here’s the kicker: you can use a CRM instead. 

A customer management relationship software centralizes all your prospects’ data in one place, including contact details, buying behavior, and purchase history. You can see where each lead is in your pipeline, spot patterns that are most likely to convert, or set alerts so no one slips through the cracks. 

8. Stay compliant with regulations

Abiding by data privacy laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) protects your potential customers and legal status. It shows you respect their privacy and increases the trust they have in you. Similarly, you don’t have to pay hefty fines as long as you keep to these rules.

What are common mistakes to avoid?

Building a prospecting list comes with lots of processes, thereby resulting in mistakes. This section covers some common mistakes you can avoid when you intend to prepare and manage your prospecting list. 

• Purchasing bad lists: While this looks like a shortcut, it is bound to backfire. That’s because a bad list is filled with outdated, irrelevant data that could get your messages bounced and hurt your sender reputation. 

• Lack of research: Every prospect has its specific needs. Generalizing these needs will only result in irrelevant content that isn’t well-tailored to your potential customers, reducing engagement.

• Non-qualification of leads: If you treat all leads equally, you would waste time and burn out. Rather than wasting time on those who are less likely to convert, tailor the efforts to those who have shown interest, increasing their likelihood of purchasing your products or services. 

Where can you get help with the prospecting list?

A sales prospecting list isn’t just a list. It’s the gateway to unlocking future sales opportunities. If you find the process to be long and tedious, we recommend partnering with ColdIQ. 

Our sales experts leverage AI sales tools and implement unique prospecting strategies to build a targeted prospecting list that floods your business with sales opportunities. 

Book a call today!