Write a discovery brief that finds the right companies
A brief that works names four things: who the organisation is, where it operates, what would make it a fit that a public source could actually prove, and what disqualifies it. The third is the one most briefs skip, and it is the one that decides whether research produces evidence or adjectives.
Why a vague brief produces confident rubbish#
Discovery runs through collection, public-source research, evidence capture, scoring and a compliance check before anything is contacted. Every one of those stages needs something to test against. A brief that says 'growing manufacturers who need better customer service' gives the qualification stage nothing checkable, so it scores on impressions — and a claim without evidence behind it does not reach the record at all, which is how you end up with a long list and an empty pipeline.
The four parts#
- Who
- The kind of organisation, in the words a public source would use: the sector, the rough size, and where in it your buyer sits. 'Mid-size CNC machining shops' beats 'manufacturers'.
- Where
- The location scope, explicit. Research cost is routed to where it can change a decision, and an unbounded geography spends it everywhere.
- What makes it a fit
- A condition somebody could verify from a website, a filing, a listing or a public announcement. This is the test the qualification stage runs.
- What rules it out
- The disqualifiers. These are cheaper than they look: they stop deep research being spent on candidates that were never going to qualify.
A brief rewritten#
| Part | Weak | Rewritten |
|---|---|---|
| Who | Businesses that need our product | Independent equipment hire firms with their own workshop, roughly 10–80 staff |
| Where | Anywhere | Named cities and their surrounding districts, stated as a list |
| Fit | Growing and forward-thinking | Publishes a services page listing on-site repair, and has a contact route other than a form |
| Rules out | (not stated) | Franchise branches of a national chain; firms already in the workspace as customers |
The rewritten fit condition changes the whole run. It is checkable, so evidence attaches to it; it implies a research target, so cost routing knows what depth is worth buying; and it produces a reason for contact that a first message can be built on rather than a generic opener.
Running it and reading the result#
Enter the brief on Prospects and run a small discovery first.
Result A small run tells you whether the fit condition is finding evidence before a large one spends research budget proving that it does not.
Open three candidates and read the evidence attached to each claim.
Result If a claim has no evidence, it is not on the record — so a thin evidence list is a brief problem, not a data-source problem.
Check the contactability split.
Result Connect does not pattern-generate an address, so a prospect with no discoverable contact route stays a researched prospect with a different next action. This deliberately costs volume, and the split tells you how much.
Check how many were set aside as existing relationships.
Result Identity resolution stops an existing customer being prospected. A high number here means the brief is describing your current customers, which is useful information about the brief.
Questions#
How specific is too specific?
When a small run returns almost nothing, the brief has over-constrained. Widen the location before you widen the fit condition — geography usually costs less precision than loosening what qualifies.
Can I write the brief as a paragraph rather than as fields?
You can, but the four parts still have to be present and separable. A paragraph that never says what rules a company out leaves the disqualification stage with nothing, and every borderline candidate then gets the expensive research pass.
Why do some qualified prospects still have no email address?
Because no address was discoverable and none is invented. That prospect is kept with a different next action — a call, or a named person to research further — rather than being contacted at a guessed address that would damage your sending reputation.