The prospect record
A prospect record holds three kinds of thing that look alike on screen and behave completely differently: what somebody supplied, what research proved with a source attached, and what Connect recalculates from those two. Knowing which is which tells you what an edit will survive, what a re-research pass will overwrite, and which claim you may safely repeat to a stranger.
Three origins, not one#
- Supplied
- Typed by a person or read from a file you uploaded. Attributed to you, never promoted, never treated as proof of anything.
- Researched
- Read from a public source by the research pass and stored with that source. A claim with nothing behind it does not reach the record at all — that rule is enforced in
prospect_evidence, not applied by taste. - Derived
- Calculated from the other two: the qualification score, contactability, the next action, the freshness state. Nobody edits a derived field, because the next recalculation would discard the edit.
The screen shows all three together because that is how a human reads a prospect. The record keeps them apart because that is the only way a claim can still be defended six months later.
What is on the record#
| Part | Origin | Changed by |
|---|---|---|
| Organisation or person name | Supplied or researched | A person; research, when the supplied name proves wrong |
| Location | Supplied or researched | Research, within the discovery brief's scope |
| Discovery origin — the brief or the import that produced it | Derived at creation | Never; it is a fact about history |
| Claims about the business | Researched | A re-research pass, which replaces a claim together with its source |
| Evidence behind each claim | Researched | Only alongside the claim it supports |
| Fit reason | Derived from claims | Recalculated when the claims under it change |
| Qualification score | Derived | Recalculated by prospect_scoring |
| Contact addresses | Supplied or researched, each with provenance | Never invented — see below |
| Contactability | Derived from addresses plus compliance state | Recalculated |
| Suppression or do-not-contact state | Compliance | Only through the suppression records themselves |
| Identity match to an existing Person | Derived | Re-evaluated whenever an address changes |
| Next action | Derived | Recalculated on nearly every change above |
| Freshness | Derived from when each claim was proved | Time, and re-research |
| Workspace stamp | Set at creation | Never; a row without one is invisible rather than missing |
Reading a record somebody else created#
Start with the fit reason and open the evidence under it. If the evidence is thin, the score is thin, whatever the number says — the score is a summary of the claims, and a summary of two claims is not a strong signal. Then read the address provenance: an address you supplied in a spreadsheet and an address found on a company's own contact page are both usable and are not equally strong.
Last, read freshness. A record can be complete, well-evidenced and out of date at the same time, and that combination is the one most likely to produce an embarrassing first message.
Edits, and what happens to them#
Correct a supplied field — a misspelt name, the wrong town.
Result The correction stands. Research will not silently revert it, though a contradicting source will show up as a claim against it.
Try to correct a derived field.
Result Change what it is derived from instead. Editing a score or a next action directly does not hold, and the record is better for it.
Add a note of your own.
Result It is kept as your claim, attributed to you, and is not laundered into an evidence-backed statement.
Questions#
Why does a claim on the record have a link next to it?
That is the evidence it was proved from. Every researched claim carries one, and a claim that could not be sourced was dropped rather than kept with a hedge. If a link is missing, what you are reading is supplied, not proved.
Can I delete part of a prospect record?
You can remove supplied values and you can remove the prospect. Removing one piece of evidence while keeping the claim it supports is not offered, because the result would be a claim that looks proved and is not.
Does the record show which discovery run found it?
Yes. Discovery origin is set once at creation and never changes, which is how you tell a prospect that came from a brief you no longer use from one you imported last week.