Free account research checklist: what to check before outreach

Copy the five tables below into a document or spreadsheet, and fill in one copy per account. It is free, and no sign-up is needed. Work through the parts in order and stop at the first check that fails: there is no point mapping the committee of a company that was acquired last month.

Every answer needs a source and a date. “About 420 employees” is a guess; “about 420 employees (state business filing, Jul 2026)” is a fact a colleague can check. If a fact cannot be found, write “unknown” and decide, using your ideal customer profile, whether that rejects the account or only flags it.

Check the company facts your profile treats as must or exclude rules. Use the company’s own site for what it sells, and filings or the press for size and ownership. Industry codes and size ranges in records are a starting point, not an answer.

Find the newest dated event that your profile counts as a buying signal, such as a new executive, a new owner, an acquisition or a new plant. It counts only if it is inside its window, about this company and not its parent or a customer, and still true today. Routine results and contract news are context, not a signal, unless your profile lists them.

List the people in the roles your profile names, starting with the one who owns the problem you solve. Look on the company’s leadership page, its press releases, the owner’s team page, filings, and trade press or speaker pages. Count only current people: a newer release naming a successor means the person has left. A person whose only source is a professional-network profile, or whose newest source is more than 12 months old, is marked “check”, not counted.

Write two sentences: what changed, the problem it creates, and who owns it. Then name the one offering or proof point that fits. If you cannot write it from the facts above, the research is not finished.

Record one verdict. For a reject, write the first rule the account failed, in the same words every time, followed by the evidence. Consistent labels let you count reasons across many accounts and see which rule removes the most.

Here is one filled in for the site’s sample account. The company and people are fictional, and details are invented for the example.

S1 agents check every account in this order, against your structured ICP. In four production research runs in October 2026, all 802 rejected companies kept their reason, and 88% of those reasons cite dated evidence. Accounts kept had about four people each, 85% backed by sources beyond professional-network profiles. Client names are withheld; the method is on the S1 agents method page. S1 agents do the homework. Your team builds the relationship.