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Prioritize In-Market Intent | Workflow Examples

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Effective Manual Outreach Using Signals

Use Company Intent to find the contacts most worth reaching out to right now, then send a personalized email with automatic follow-ups.

📑 Contents in this article - click to jump to section:

Overview

The Workflow: Person Search → Use Company Intent filter → Add one contact → Send personalized email with follow-ups

Why it works: Not every contact in your search is equally ready to hear from you. Company Intent highlights the companies where someone is actively researching a topic related to what you offer. This workflow helps you skip the guesswork and spend your manual outreach time on the people most likely to respond.

Best for: Reps doing manual, personalized outreach who want to prioritize their time on the best opportunities.

Before you start:

  • Company Intent requires an Ultimate or Custom plan.
  • Your Team Owner or Admin must set your Intent Topics in Account Settings before this filter will be available. (Learn More: Setting up Intent Topics)
  • Have at least one email template saved in Messages.

Video Demonstration

⏱️ Time: 3.5 min

We'll take a look at workflow two now. This one's going to be focused on intent. And we're going to start back on person search. Quick reminder, if you have a pro or essentials team plan, you won't have any access to intent. Intent's only available with our ultimate and custom plans. So just a heads up on that. And while that's loading, I'll also remind you that signals are all about timing. Right? So a smart way to use signals is to take a really big search and narrow it down. Trying to get over here to the people search. So if I had a really big search that was twenty thousand different contacts, well, there's no way that I'm going to be able to email even two thousand people in a week manually. But if I use a signal like intent, that gives me a way to drill down to a much smaller, more relevant audience. So let's see what that might look like. When you see an intent with a high score, that's really reflecting that somebody at the company has been researching or engaging with this topic. So if I reach out now, even if it's not that specific person, they're probably aware of the conversation that's been happening around the meeting rooms. My outreach isn't coming out of the blue. It has context and relevance to what they're doing right now in the moment. So it's more likely to get a response. It's not necessarily about reaching the exact person. It's about being relevant and having the right timing. So I don't know if you saw, but the previous results were somewhere around twenty thousand. With the intent filter added, it's only fifty. This is very feasible for me to add one contact at a time and open up the email option here. I can pull up a template that I have prepared, personalize a little bit of it if I need to. I can't do that right now with with you guys. It'll take too long, but I could take a moment to customize it and add in my follow-up emails with that. Oh, maybe I don't need to do two follow ups. We'll just do one. And I can send off that email personalized very easily without having to worry about trying to contact two thousand people. I only have this list of fifty. I could probably get this done in about an hour or two. So by adding the intent filter, we have a way to prioritize our work and focus in where the investment of manual effort is going to have a better impact. So we're increasing the quality, and we're really not sacrificing anything here. We can always take off that intent filter, look at the whole group of contacts, and do a larger scaled motion on those contacts if we wanted to. But intent gives us a way to really dial in with our manual effort.

 

*Tip: The video above is queued to play from the relevant point at 16:25

 

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Open Person Search and build your core search

Go to Person Search and add your standard filters first:

  • Role & Department or Job Title
  • Management Level
  • Industry, Employee Count, Revenue, or Location (whatever fits your ICP)

Don't add Company Intent yet. Get your base results looking right first.

💡 Pro Tip: If your search returns fewer than 50 results before adding Intent, the Intent filter may cut it down to almost nothing. Start broad enough to have room to narrow.

Step 2: Add the Company Intent filter

Scroll to the Signals section in the left-side filters and click Company Intent. Select the intent topic (or topics) that match what you sell.

Watch how the results change. The contacts still showing are at companies where someone has been actively researching that topic in the past week. These are your best bets.

Step 3: Review the results and pick your best contact

Scan the results. Look for someone at the right level, at a company that looks like a strong fit. Click their name to open their profile and review their background.

This is your manual outreach moment — take 2 minutes to note something specific about them or their company that you can reference in your email.

Step 4: Get their contact info

Click Get Contact Info to access their verified email address.

Step 5: Send a personalized email with follow-ups

Click the Send Email button on their profile.

In the compose window:

  • Select your template as a starting point.
  • Personalize it — add the specific detail you noted in Step 3. Even one sentence of personalization makes a big difference.
  • Before you click Send, scroll to the bottom of the compose window and set your follow-up schedule. The option to send 1 or 2 automatic follow-ups will appear there.

Click Send. Your first email goes out immediately. If they don't reply, your follow-ups will send automatically on the schedule you chose.

✅ Done! One great email sent, with two more already lined up.

FAQ & Troubleshooting Tips

❓ My results dropped to almost zero after adding Company Intent. What do I do?

Intent signals update weekly and are time-sensitive. A small result set isn't a problem with your search — it just means not many companies in your criteria have high intent right now. Try broadening your base filters (e.g., a wider industry or location range), or check back next week when signals refresh.

❓ Can I use Company Intent on a standard or Pro plan?

Company Intent is available on Ultimate and Custom plans only. If you're not sure which plan you're on, check Account Settings or contact your account manager.

❓ Do I need to write a new email from scratch each time?

No — that's what templates are for. Save a solid base email in Messages, then make small edits for each contact. The goal is personalized, not laborious. (Learn More: Email Templates)

❓ What if I want to send to multiple contacts at once instead of one at a time?

You can! Use the checkboxes to select multiple contacts, then click Email Contacts at the top of the results. You can still add follow-ups from there. Just know that bulk emails are harder to personalize — this workflow is designed for the high-value, high-touch approach.

Guidance from Mission Control

🚀 Intent is a prioritization tool, not a prospecting tool.

Don't replace your regular search with Intent alone. Use it to sort your existing results and decide who gets your best, most personalized message today.

🧑‍🚀 Match your message to the intent topic.

If a company is showing intent on "sales engagement software," your email can directly acknowledge that evaluation process. Something like: "A lot of sales leaders we talk to right now are rethinking their outreach stack. I'd be happy to share what's working." Provide a clear 'why' to get more replies.

📡 Combine with Job Postings or News for even stronger signals.

A company that has high intent AND is hiring sales reps AND just raised funding is about as warm as it gets. Layer signals to find those rare, high-confidence targets.

 

Additional Resources

More from this series:
 
 
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