Find Real Prospects

What this step does

Now that you know who your ideal customer is, it's time to find real ones. In this lesson, you'll point AI at the web and ask it to come back with a list of actual companies (and the right person to contact at each), including names, roles, and the “buying signals” that suggest they might need what you offer right now.

What is “Deep Research” mode?

A normal AI chat answers from memory, everything it happened to read during training. That's perfectly fine for writing, but risky for finding real, current companies, because it can quietly fill any gaps by inventing plausible-sounding names. “Deep Research” is a special mode (available in Gemini and other tools) where the AI actually goes out, searches the live web, reads pages, and then reports back with links to where it found each fact. It's slower (it may think for several minutes) but it is far more trustworthy for this kind of task, and because it shows its sources, you can check its work.

Simple rule: use a normal chat for writing and brainstorming, and use Deep Research whenever you need real facts about the real world, like the prospects in this lesson.

Step by step

• •Start a fresh chat and switch on Deep Research mode in your AI tool.
• •Paste in your market analysis from the last lesson (especially your Ideal Customer Profile) so the AI knows exactly what to look for. This is “grounding” again, and it's what makes the results relevant instead of random.
• •Run the Deep Research Prospect Finder prompt below. Then be patient. Good research takes a few minutes.
• •When it returns a list, use the simple yes/no scorecard it provides (Industry match? Right size? Right decision-maker? Local? Any buying signal?) to keep only the strong matches.
• •Aim for 10 to 15 solid prospects this session. Don't pad the list with weak ones just to hit a number.

The most important habit in this course

This is the moment where “hallucination” matters most, so the prompt is deliberately strict: it tells the AI “I need REAL companies and REAL people, do not make up names,” and asks it to be honest if it can only find a few. It even says it's better to return 8 verified prospects than 20 invented ones. Take that to heart.

Deep Research is much safer than a plain chat, but it is not perfect. Before you contact anyone, do a 30-second check: search the company name, open the person's LinkedIn profile, and confirm they still work there. Mark anything the AI tagged [VERIFY] as “not confirmed yet.” A few minutes of checking here saves you from awkward mistakes later, like messaging someone about a role they left two years ago.

Set it up to repeat

The prompt also asks the AI to hand you a few search strategies that actually worked, specific Google searches and directories you can re-run yourself each month to find fresh prospects. Save that section. It's what turns this from a one-time scramble into a reliable monthly habit, which is exactly what the final lesson is about.