A source earns its place in your research when it helps answer a commercial question: does this account fit, what has changed, who owns the decision, or who could introduce you? Collecting more fields is useful only when they improve one of those answers.
The industry guides show where to look. This worksheet explains how to turn what you find into research a sales team can use.
Define the decision before the source
Write a question specific enough to investigate. “Find growing companies” leaves too much room for interpretation. “Which restaurant operators are adding locations in our service territory, and who oversees equipment decisions?” gives the research a purpose.
Then separate four things:
| What you need to know | What to record |
|---|---|
| The business | The operating company, its legal name where established, its website and any confirmed parent relationship. |
| The location | The specific plant, branch or outlet, including its address and source identifier. |
| The person | A name, current role, employer and evidence connecting that role to the decision. |
| The development | What changed, when it happened or was reported, and why it could matter to your offer. |
A location count belongs to a defined company and date. A permit belongs to a particular site and project. A person's job title belongs to a period of employment. Keeping those distinctions prevents several plausible facts from becoming one misleading account profile.
Use familiar sources for the questions they can answer
Google Maps can help locate a business. The Places API documents fields for address, business status, website and phone number. Google explains that Business Profiles combine information from businesses, users, public websites and other sources. A listing is a useful lead to check against the company's own information; it is not proof of legal ownership or purchasing authority. Available fields · Where profile information comes from
LinkedIn can help identify people and professional changes. Members can edit their employment history, so corroborate a consequential job change with a company announcement or another current professional source. Separate a person's stated title from your inference about their responsibilities. LinkedIn Experience documentation
Your team's relationship history can explain the best route in. Customer-provided CRM notes and introductions may add context that public research cannot supply. Where available, LinkedIn's TeamLink shows connections through colleagues; that depends on the participating team's access and network. “Three mutual connections” is therefore a fact about a particular relationship network, not a universal property of a prospect. Confirm who actually knows the person before proposing an introduction. TeamLink documentation
An authenticated connection, an event appearance and a company biography answer different questions. Keep those distinctions in the brief.
Assess a source before building around it
For each promising source, record the following. This is a proposed research template, not a claim that every source in the guides has been tested in an automated workflow.
| Assessment | Question to answer |
|---|---|
| Decision | Which customer decision would this information change? |
| Coverage | Which industries, places and business sizes appear? Who is missing? |
| Record type | Is a row a company, location, person, filing, permit or transaction? |
| Identification | Which names, addresses or stable identifiers let you match the record? |
| Useful facts | What exact fields or statements are actually present? |
| Dates | What is the event date, publication date and date you checked it? |
| Access | Is this a public document, downloadable dataset, authenticated product or licensed feed? |
| Permitted use | Can you retain, combine and deliver the fields needed for this job? |
| Reliability | Is the information first-party, reported, estimated or inferred? |
| Review | What must a researcher confirm before a salesperson acts? |
| Maintenance | How will you notice revisions, missing records and changes in access? |
Availability on a webpage does not establish the right workflow for retaining or redistributing its contents. For example, Google's Places policies limit storage and require attribution, with a specific storage exception for place IDs. LinkedIn prohibits unauthorized third-party scraping and automation. Evaluate the relevant access route before designing a recurring service around either source. Google Places policies · LinkedIn policies
Test the source on a small, varied sample
Choose a few accounts you understand and a few you do not. Include a parent with several locations, a small private business and a recently changed account. The purpose is to expose gaps before they become part of a larger list.
Record whether each source found the right entity, supplied the needed fact, was current enough for the decision and could be used in the intended deliverable. Note how long verification took. A source that looks comprehensive in a demo can still require too much correction for the question you need to answer.
Compare independent evidence where possible. Two websites repeating the same press release are two links to one underlying claim. If sources disagree, preserve the disagreement until it is resolved.
Turn the evidence into four or five useful bullets
A concise account brief should make the reasoning easy to inspect:
- Company and scale: who operates the business and which locations or size measure matter.
- Relevant person: the current role and why that role belongs in this conversation.
- What changed: the development, its source and its date.
- Relationship route: an introduction supported by the customer's actual network, if available.
- Next question: the one uncertainty to resolve before acting.
Keep sources and dates attached to each factual claim. Present “this could create a need for…” as interpretation, not as a confirmed purchase plan. A permit may justify asking about a project; it does not tell you that the budget is open or a supplier has not already been chosen.
A worked example: what to research next
IronUnits LLC · Toledo HBI facility · Toledo, Ohio
This early brief uses a public permit to decide the next research step. It does not establish a current sales opportunity.
- Site: The permit names IronUnits LLC at 2768 Front Street, facility ID 0448011992.
- Technical fit: It describes iron manufacturing and baghouse equipment, giving a filtration supplier a concrete process to investigate.
- Timing: The document was issued September 25, 2023. This record alone supplies no current buying signal.
- Person to identify: The plant's maintenance or engineering lead is a role hypothesis; no named buyer or introduction has been verified.
- Next action: Confirm current operations and permit revisions, then establish who manages filtration maintenance and supplier selection.
Source: Ohio EPA permit, authorization and equipment sections. Checked September 19, 2026.
The decision is to investigate technical fit before prioritizing outreach. Further research may establish a timely reason to contact someone—or show that the account should wait. The finished brief can be short because the research behind it is careful.