Use when you have an ICP and need to turn it into an actual list of accounts and contacts to put into a sequence. Trigger phrases include "build me a prospect list", "who should we target", "turn this ICP into a list", "find accounts that match", "build a target account list", "how many contacts per account", "tier these accounts", "pull a list for the SDRs", "clean this list before we send", "right-size the list for sending", "multi-thread the buying committee". Workflow: translate ICP criteria into concrete firmographic/technographic/title filters, decide account-first vs contact-first, tier accounts (T1 manual / T2-3 scaled), set contacts-per-account, suppress against CRM, QA, and size to deliverability limits. Do NOT use for filling in or verifying missing data on a list you already have - use [[lead-enrichment]] instead. Do NOT use for prioritizing the list by timing/intent - use [[buying-signal-tracker]] instead. The button-clicking inside a specific tool lives in [[apollo-prospecting]].
---
name: prospect-list-builder
description: Use when you have an ICP and need to turn it into an actual list of accounts and contacts to put into a sequence. Trigger phrases include "build me a prospect list", "who should we target", "turn this ICP into a list", "find accounts that match", "build a target account list", "how many contacts per account", "tier these accounts", "pull a list for the SDRs", "clean this list before we send", "right-size the list for sending", "multi-thread the buying committee". Workflow: translate ICP criteria into concrete firmographic/technographic/title filters, decide account-first vs contact-first, tier accounts (T1 manual / T2-3 scaled), set contacts-per-account, suppress against CRM, QA, and size to deliverability limits. Do NOT use for filling in or verifying missing data on a list you already have - use [[lead-enrichment]] instead. Do NOT use for prioritizing the list by timing/intent - use [[buying-signal-tracker]] instead. The button-clicking inside a specific tool lives in [[apollo-prospecting]].
---
# Build a Targeted Prospect List
A prospect list is where strategy meets reality. Your [[icp-persona-builder]] output is a hypothesis about who buys; the list is the first place that hypothesis touches the real world and either holds up or falls apart. The core insight: a list is not "everyone who matches the filters." It is a *tiered, deduplicated, suppression-checked, right-sized* set of accounts and contacts you can actually work this quarter. The most common trap is volume worship - pulling 12,000 "matches" because the tool says they exist, dumping them into a sequence, and burning your domain reputation and your ICP in the same week. A great list is usually smaller than the one you first want to build.
The second trap is single-threading: pulling one contact per account because it's easy. B2B deals are won across a buying committee. If you only have the champion, one job change or one "not a priority right now" kills the account. Build for the committee from the start.
## When to use this skill
- You have a defined ICP and persona(s) and need the actual accounts/contacts to work.
- You're standing up a new sequence or campaign and need clean fuel for it.
- You're handing SDRs a target account list and need it tiered and de-duped.
- You're re-pulling a segment and need to suppress current customers and open opps.
- You need to size a list to what your sending infrastructure can actually handle.
If your data is already gathered but dirty or incomplete, that's . If you need to rank an existing list by who's in-market *right now*, that's .
## The workflow
1. **Translate ICP criteria into hard filters - in three buckets.** Don't free-associate. Map every ICP attribute to a concrete, filterable field across: (a) **firmographic** - industry/SIC/NAICS, headcount band, revenue band, geo, funding stage; (b) **technographic** - installed tools that imply fit or pain (e.g., "uses Segment + Snowflake" = data maturity); (c) **person** - title, seniority, department, and *exclusions* (drop "intern", "student", "retired", "consultant" unless that's the play). Write filters down before you touch a tool so you can audit why each account is on the list.