Sales · Account research
WorkflowOutbound salesOne-page account briefs for SDRs, with a person on every first touch
SDRs spend more time researching accounts than writing to them, and the research rarely survives past the first email. This playbook builds a sourced one-page brief per account and keeps a person on every first touch.
Valnora & Elric team5 min read
- Format
- Playbook
- Steps
- 7
- Solution
- Workflow
- Parts used
- 6
An SDR with 40 target accounts this week has two bad options. Research each one properly and send ten emails, or skip the research and send forty that read like a template. Most teams settle somewhere in the middle, and the research they do lives in browser tabs and is gone by Friday.
This playbook builds a workflow that writes a one-page account brief with a source on every line, drafts an opening line, and stops for the SDR to approve it. Sequences stay where they are, in Lemlist or Instantly. Nothing reaches a prospect without a person reading it first.
From a target account to an approved first touch
Workflow · Research
- 01Account addedA new row in the target accounts table, or a request in Chat.
- 02Search and newsExa finds recent news, hiring posts, launches and public LinkedIn pages.
- 03Company siteFirecrawl maps and scrapes the product, pricing, careers and customer pages.
- 04Brief writerAn Agent block writes a one-page brief from the sources, citing each line.
Workflow · First touch
- 05Opening lineA short, sourced opening line and a reason to talk now.
- 06SDR approvesA Human in the loop block pauses the run until the SDR approves or edits.
- 07Sequence toolApproved leads go to an Instantly campaign or are sent through the Lemlist inbox.
1. Set the research rules
Write the rules into the workflow’s notes and the brief writer’s instructions before anything runs:
- Public pages only. The company site, press, public talks and posts anyone can see without signing in.
- Respect each site’s terms. If a site says no automated access, take it off the list. LinkedIn restricts automated collection, so the workflow does not scrape it. Public LinkedIn pages that Exa search returns can be read, and SDRs can add links they have looked at.
- No personal digging. Nothing about a person’s private life, family or home. Work role, public talks and published posts only.
- No sourced line, no claim. Anything the writer infers is labelled as inference.
2. Build the accounts table
Create a target accounts table in Tables: domain, owner, status, and a link to the brief once it exists. Add a suppression check before research starts. If the domain belongs to an existing customer or an open deal, or is on an opt-out list, the run ends and writes why. A Table trigger starts the workflow when an SDR adds a row; they can also ask for a brief in Chat.
3. Gather sources
A Parallel block runs two collectors and writes each finding to a sources table with the URL, the tool and the date.
- Exa searches for recent news, launches, hiring posts, conference talks and public LinkedIn company pages, and returns their contents. Ask it for the last 90 days so the brief is current.
- Firecrawl maps the company site and scrapes the pages that matter for outbound: product, pricing, careers and customer stories. Careers pages are a strong signal: three open support roles say more about a company’s priorities than its homepage does.
Keep the list of pages short. A brief is useful because it is one page.
4. Write the one-page brief
An Agent block writes the brief from the sources table, following a template in the Knowledge Base alongside your ICP and messaging guide. Five sections, each with a source:
- What they sell and to whom.
- Recent signals: launches, hiring, new markets, leadership changes.
- Likely pain, clearly marked as inference.
- Who to approach, from public pages only.
- What not to mention, such as figures no public source supports.
What the solution produces
One-page account brief (illustrative)
Record- Account
- A 600-person D2C home goods brand selling in India and the Gulf
- What they sell
- Furniture and decor online, COD available, two warehouses. Source: company site, S1.
- Recent signals
- Hiring three customer support leads; launched a UAE store in August. Sources: careers page S4, news S6.
- Likely pain
- Support volume rising with a new market; COD orders add confirmation calls. Inference, not sourced.
- Who to approach
- Head of CX, named on a public conference talk page. Source: S8.
- Opening line draft
- Saw the UAE launch and the support roles on your careers page. How are you handling order questions across both markets?
- Do not mention
- Funding or revenue figures. None found in a public source.
The brief is saved to Files and linked on the account row, so the AE who takes the meeting later reads the same page.
5. Draft the opening line, then stop
The same Agent block drafts a short opening line built on one sourced signal, and a reason to talk now. Then a Human in the loop block pauses the run. The SDR sees the brief, the sources and the line, and can approve, edit or decline it. An edited line replaces the draft; a declined account is marked and skipped.
This is the step that keeps quality up. The workflow does the reading; the SDR decides whether the angle is right and whether this person should hear from you at all.
6. Hand off to the sequence tool
Only approved accounts move on.
- Instantly. The workflow creates the lead in the chosen campaign, with the approved line as the lead’s personalisation text. The sequence runs from Instantly as usual.
- Lemlist. The workflow sends the approved email through the Lemlist inbox, or the SDR pastes the line into their Lemlist sequence.
Follow-ups, reply handling and unsubscribe links stay in the sequence tool, which already manages them. Follow the rules for cold email in each market you write to, such as the FTC’s CAN-SPAM guide in the US.
Controls and governance
Approvals before action
Relays never send email or book meetings without an approval, under any autonomy setting. An approval covers the exact payload the reviewer saw and expires if nobody decides.
Run logs
Every workflow run records each block’s inputs, outputs and errors, so a reviewer can trace how a result was reached.
Deployed versions
Workflows run from a deployed version, so a change is reviewed before it reaches production runs.
PII detection
A Guardrails block detects personal data and blocks or masks it before text reaches the next step.
Audit trail
Proposals, approvals, declines and executed actions are written to the workspace audit log, which admins can export.
Roles and permission groups
Admin, write and read roles per workspace, plus permission groups that limit which models, blocks and integrations a team can use.
More on how Agent Serve handles access, data and audit on the security page.
7. Review a week of briefs
For the first week, have the SDR manager read ten briefs against their sources. Look for three things: claims without a source, inferences presented as fact, and opening lines that would embarrass you if the prospect forwarded them. Fix the template, not each brief. Logs record every run block by block, so a bad line can be traced to the source that caused it.
For inbound leads that arrive through your own forms, see qualifying and routing inbound leads.
Questions teams ask
Does the workflow scrape LinkedIn?
No. LinkedIn’s terms restrict automated collection, and the LinkedIn block in Agent Serve shares posts and reads your own profile only. The brief uses public pages that Exa search returns, and SDRs can add links they have looked at themselves.
Can the workflow add leads to a sequence without a person?
It can technically, but this playbook does not. The Human in the loop block pauses every run until the SDR approves the opening line, so nothing reaches a sequence unseen.
Which sequence tool should we use?
Whichever your team already runs. Instantly takes the approved line as personalisation text on a new lead in a campaign. With Lemlist, the workflow sends the approved email through the Lemlist inbox, or the SDR pastes the line into their sequence.