AI prompt template
AI prompt to research a company before cold email
The step before every good cold email. The prompt makes the model work only from pages you paste, quote each fact and say “not found” where the pages are silent.
When to use it
- Before writing the first email to a company you have not researched.
- You have copied their homepage, careers page and one more page.
- You want notes you can check, not a summary you must trust.
The prompt
Paste it into the model you use, then replace each bracketed input.
You are researching [COMPANY] for a sales email. Use only the pages below. Do not use anything you remember about the company, and never invent a fact. We sell: [WHAT_WE_SELL] Pages: [PAGES] Return: 1. What the company does, in one sentence. 2. Up to four facts that matter to our offer. For each: the fact, a verbatim quote from the pages, and the page address. 3. Anything dated in the last year (hiring, launches, announcements), with the date and quote. 4. Who likely owns the problem we solve, only if a page names a role; otherwise write "not found". 5. What you could not find that we would want to know. If the pages do not support an item, write "not found". Quote exactly; do not paraphrase inside quotation marks.
| Input | What to put there |
|---|---|
[COMPANY] | The company name. |
[PAGES] | The text of two to five of their public pages, each headed by its address. |
[WHAT_WE_SELL] | One sentence on what you sell and to whom. |
Why it works
- Quotes and addresses make every fact checkable in seconds.
- The “not found” rule stops the model from filling gaps with plausible guesses.
- Item 5 turns gaps into the next page to read, not a hidden risk.
An example
Illustrative. The companies and pages below are invented.
Input
COMPANY: Larkspur Software (illustrative) PAGES: larkspursoftware.example/careers, larkspursoftware.example/engineering WHAT_WE_SELL: build-time monitoring for engineering teams
Output
1. Larkspur builds workflow software for field service teams. 2. Fact: moved services into a monorepo. Quote: "Last quarter we moved our services into a single monorepo." Page: larkspursoftware.example/engineering Fact: hiring a Platform Engineer. Quote: "Platform Engineer, build systems and CI" Page: larkspursoftware.example/careers 3. Monorepo move: "last quarter" (blog, undated post; date not found). 4. Owner: not found. The Platform Engineer posting does not name a manager. 5. Not found: CI vendor, team size. (Illustrative output on an invented company.)
Variants
Short version for a list of 50
Use only the page text below; never invent a fact. For [COMPANY] return one line: what they do, one dated fact with its verbatim quote and page address, or "not found" if none. [PAGES]
Only the buying signals
From the page text below, list only events dated in the last twelve months that would make [WHAT_WE_SELL] relevant. Each with a verbatim quote, the date and the page address. If there are none, write "not found". Never invent an event. [PAGES]
Limits
What are the limits of the research an account from its own pages prompt?
Related
Write a sourced first line
A prompt that writes a first line for a cold email from one quoted fact on the prospect’s page, refusing to flatter or guess when nothing is there.
Find buying signals on a company site
A prompt that reads a company’s careers, news and pricing pages and lists only dated, quotable signals relevant to your offer, with the page for each.
Qualify a company against your ICP
A prompt that scores a company against your written ICP from its pages only, with a quote per criterion and an explicit “unknown” where it cannot tell.
Cold email templates
Templates by situation and by role.
Research and writing, with a quote behind every fact
Outlevo runs these steps for each company it finds, and shows the page each fact came from.