Lead generation

Lead Generation

Turn an Ideal Customer Profile into a clean, qualified, enriched, contactable lead list. This skill is the front of the outbound machine: it decides where the right prospects live, pulls them, proves each one actually fits, finds and verifies their contact details, researches them deeply enough to personalize later, and hands a finished list to outreach.

The whole point is that a lead list is only as good as the worst decision in it. A great scraper pointed at the wrong source, or a clean list nobody verified, both waste the campaign. So this skill is opinionated about sequence: resolve the ICP, route to the source that actually holds that ICP, confirm the tools work before spending money, then source → qualify → enrich → research → deliver.

The flow

0. Resolve the ICP        who, offer, where they live, how many, seniority, criteria
1. Route to the source    Maps vs Sales Nav/LinkedIn vs prospecting DB vs niche   -> references/source-routing.md
2. Preflight              confirm the chosen source + enrichment tools are connected -> references/connectors.md
3. Source                 keyword parse, test batch, pass-rate, volume, full pull  -> references/volume-and-batching.md
4. Qualify                parallel lead-qualifier subagents, 10 leads each
5. Enrich + verify        find + verify email and phone, only verified move on     -> references/enrichment.md
6. Research               parallel lead-researcher subagents, 5 each, depth by source
7. Deliver                CSV always, Google Sheet if gws is available

Read the referenced file when you reach that phase. The SKILL body is the map; the references hold the exact actor IDs, schemas, recovery patterns, and math.

Two operating modes

This skill runs both inside the BenAI Sales OS vault and standalone for any client. Detect which at the start and behave accordingly.

• Sales OS / vault mode. A Context/config.md (and Context/icp.md, offer.md) exists in or above the working directory, or the user is clearly working inside the Sales OS. Read those docs as ground truth instead of interviewing. This skill is Hybrid: it delivers a list (action) AND updates what the OS knows (brain). So it writes a campaign record under Lead-Gen/campaigns/<name>/ and logs every file it touches to Daily/logs/YYYY-MM-DD.md. Wikilink every entity. Never use em dashes.
• Standalone / client mode. No Sales OS context present. Interview the user for the same fields (Phase 0), deliver the list plus a short run summary, and skip the vault logging. This is the default for a fresh client install. The master-guide onboarder, when present, will have written the client's own Context/ docs; if so, prefer reading them over interviewing.

If you are unsure which mode you are in, ask once: "Are we working inside your Sales OS vault, or is this a standalone list build?"

Phase 0: Resolve the ICP

Lock these six things before sourcing anything. In vault/client-context mode, read them from Context/icp.md, Context/offer.md, and Context/config.md. Otherwise ask, concisely, in one or two grouped questions.

1. The offer. What is being sold, and why would these leads care. This propagates to every later phase: researchers focus on signals relevant to it, and outreach ties every line back to it.
2. Who the ICP is (company level). Industry/vertical, company size band, geography, and any hard disqualifiers.
3. Where the ICP resides. This is the single most important routing input. A plumber lives on Google Maps; a marketing-agency founder lives on LinkedIn; a SaaS RevOps lead lives in a prospecting database. See references/source-routing.md.
4. How many leads. The target count. Drives the volume math (sourcing over-pulls to survive qualification) and the subagent counts.
5. The individual-level ICP. The decision-maker tier (C-suite, VP, director, manager) and the exact designations to target (e.g. "Founder / CEO / Owner", or "Head of Marketing / Marketing Director"). This becomes a seniority+title filter at the source and a check at qualification.
6. Qualification criteria. The concrete, testable rules a lead must pass. If the user does not supply them, derive them from the ICP and the offer, then show the derived criteria and the AND/OR logic for a quick confirm. Vague criteria produce a vague list.

Confirm the six back in two or three lines before moving on. Sourcing spends money; a 20-second confirm is cheap insurance.

Phase 1: Route to the source

Pick the data source from where the ICP resides. The full decision tree, with exact Apify actor IDs, data-richness notes, and the downstream research-depth rule for each source, is in references/source-routing.md. Read it now. The short version:

ICP lives on...	Primary source	Data richness	What's missing
Local / brick-and-mortar (Google Maps)	Apify Google Maps scraper	Thin (name, site, phone, category, reviews)	Decision-maker name + email; research goes hard
LinkedIn (agencies, B2B roles, professional services)	Sales Navigator search scraped, or Apify LinkedIn lead/search scrapers	Rich (name, title, company)	Email almost always; needs enrichment
A targetable B2B database	Vibe Prospecting (match-prospects → enrich-prospects → export-to-csv)	Rich, often with contact data	Usually little; built-in enrichment
A niche directory or marketplace	Custom scrape pattern (see the Webflow example in the reference)	Varies	Varies
Warm: people who engaged with LinkedIn posts	The linkedin-post-engagers skill, then resume here at Phase 4	Medium, plus an engagement signal	Email; but warmer than cold

When more than one source could work, prefer the one that returns the richest data for the least cost and manual effort, and say which you picked and why.

Phase 2: Preflight, confirm the tools are connected

Before spending a credit, confirm the chosen source and the enrichment providers are actually reachable. Nothing is worse than sourcing 400 leads and discovering the email finder is not connected. The per-tool checks and what to do when something is missing are in references/connectors.md. If a required tool is missing, stop and tell the user exactly what to connect, do not silently fall back to a worse path.

Phase 3: Source the leads

Read references/volume-and-batching.md for the sourcing patterns. The key moves:

• Parse the ICP into source parameters. Map the free-text ICP to the source's actual filters: industry enums, size bands, location strings, seniority levels, job titles, and 3 to 5 search keywords. Show the mapping before a large run.
• Test batch first. Pull a small batch (about 50), run it through a lightweight ICP check, and measure the pass-rate. This tells you the real yield before you commit budget.
• Size the full pull from the pass-rate. raw_needed = ceil(target / pass_rate * 1.1), capped at a sane safety limit. Pulling exactly target leads always under-delivers because qualification removes some.
• Persist immediately. Write raw results to disk (raw_leads.json or .csv) the moment they land. Large datasets overflow the conversation and are lost on context compaction. Every later phase reads from disk, not from memory.

Phase 4: Qualify

Never trust scraped data alone. Sources (Sales Navigator, Apollo, Maps) are frequently wrong about what a company actually does. Every lead is verified against the criteria with live research.

• Batch the leads into groups of 10. Spawn one sales:lead-qualifier subagent per batch, and spawn them all in a single message so they run concurrently. Sequential spawning defeats the whole design.
• Each subagent receives: the verbatim qualification criteria, the AND/OR logic, its 10-lead JSON batch, its output path, and the instruction to use WebSearch (2 to 3 searches per lead, across the company site plus third-party sources) and never qualify on the CSV alone.
• Each returns JSON: qualified (bool), reason, confidence, plus the identifying fields.
• Merge results back by email (primary key), add Qualified, Qualification_Reason, Confidence, and split a qualified-only file. The merge runs as a small script, not inline, and tolerates the JSON key variations subagents produce (see the reference). Borderline leads qualify; let the user make the final call.

If the sales:lead-qualifier agent type is not available (skill used outside the plugin), spawn general-purpose subagents with the same instructions.

Phase 5: Enrich and verify

Now find and verify the contact data the source did not give you. Read references/enrichment.md for providers, order, and rules. The essentials:

• Email via an email finder (AnyMailFinder by default, Apollo or Prospeo as configured) using full name plus company domain.
• Phone via Prospeo or Apollo when phone is wanted.
• Verify, then gate. Only verified emails move forward. An unverified list torches sender reputation, and deliverability is the campaign's lifeblood. Drop or quarantine the unverifiable.
• Casualize company names (strip Inc/LLC/Ltd and location noise) so later personalization reads human.

Phase 6: Lead research

Depth is proportional to how thin the source was. This is the rule that makes the skill work across sources. The exact depth-by-source guidance lives in references/source-routing.md; the batching lives in references/volume-and-batching.md.

• Batch into groups of 5. Spawn one sales:lead-researcher subagent per batch, all in one message. Each visits the company site and third-party sources and returns the structured intelligence report (what they do, why, niches, services, case studies, positioning, the person's role, public mentions, content, achievements).
• Thin source (Google Maps, niche directory): go hard. There is almost no usable data yet, so research carries the entire personalization later. Find the website, find the decision-maker's LinkedIn (launch the LinkedIn scrapers if the profile is unknown), pull recent posts and signals, read reviews and services.
• Rich source (Sales Nav, LinkedIn, prospecting DB): lighter. The profile already exists. Confirm the website and LinkedIn, scrape the 2 most recent posts for a fresh hook, and fill gaps rather than re-deriving everything.
• For LinkedIn scraping, spawn a single sales:linkedin-scraper subagent (it handles all URLs in one Apify call) in the same message as the researchers. It follows the two-step call-actor pattern and the timeout-recovery pattern in the reference.
• Merge the research columns back with a script. Persist everything.

Phase 7: Deliver

The list is the product. Deliver it where the user can use it.

• Detect gws. Run a quick check for the gws CLI (command -v gws). If it is present, ask the user: CSV, or a Google Sheet. If gws is absent, deliver CSV only and say so.
• CSV always works: write the enriched, qualified, researched file with a clear column order (identity, company, contact, qualification, intelligence). Also keep a JSON copy for outreach.
• Google Sheet when chosen: create it with gws (sheets create), upload, and return the shareable link. Name it descriptively, e.g. <keywords>_<geo>_<date>.
• Vault mode extras. Write Lead-Gen/campaigns/<name>/campaign.md (the filters, source, list link, identifier, and a metrics stub the sales-os-campaign-metrics routine will fill) and log every file created or changed to Daily/logs/YYYY-MM-DD.md. Wikilink the prospects, companies, and tools. No em dashes.
• Final report. Counts at each stage (sourced, qualified with %, enriched, verified, researched), the pass-rate, time taken, the spend if known, and the link to the deliverable. End by offering to hand the list to outreach.

Subagents and batch sizes

These batch sizes are deliberate, not arbitrary: they keep each subagent's context small enough to do careful work, and let the fan-out stay parallel.

Subagent	Batch size	Job
sales:lead-qualifier	10 leads	Verify each lead against the ICP with live research
sales:lead-researcher	5 leads	Deep per-lead intelligence report
sales:linkedin-scraper	1 instance, all URLs	LinkedIn profiles + recent posts via Apify

The icebreaker writer belongs to outreach, not here.

Operating rules that always apply

• Parallelism. Every subagent in a phase is spawned in one message. This is the single most important performance rule.
• Persist to disk immediately. Sourced data, subagent outputs, merges, all written to files as they are produced. Conversation memory is not storage.
• Never trust the source. Scraped fields are a starting point, verified against live research, never the final word.
• Apify discipline. Two-step call-actor (info, then call), expect the ~30s MCP timeout, recover via runId/datasetId. Full pattern in the references.
• Cost awareness. Before any large paid pull, state the rough cost and confirm. Dedup before paid enrichment so you never pay twice for the same record.
• Voice and format. No em dashes, ever. In vault mode, wikilink every entity and follow the Sales OS conventions.

What this skill replaced

This skill consolidates what used to be the separate lead-qualification and lead-intelligence skills and the outbound-pipeline command, and adds the sourcing front-end they never had. It reuses their proven subagents (lead-qualifier, lead-researcher, linkedin-scraper) unchanged. For the outreach half (copy, personalization, cadence, launch), hand off to the outreach skill.

Self-improvement

This skill is never finished. Improve it as you use it.

• When the user corrects how a step was done, update the relevant reference file (or this SKILL.md) so the correction sticks. Do not just fix it for this run.
• When a correction is a hard rule ("always do X", "never do Y"), add it as a permanent rule here.
• When the user says an output was genuinely good, save it to references/examples/ so it becomes a model for future runs.
• Keep the skill small while you do this: when you add something, run the deletion test and cut anything that no longer changes behavior.