Why prospecting is the first task to hand to an agent#
Ask a small business owner what they put off most often and the answer comes fast: “prospecting.” Not because they don't know how, but because prospecting is a pile of small, thankless tasks. You have to find companies that fit your target, dig up a public phone number or email, check the business is still active, write a first message that doesn't read like a mass mailing, log it all somewhere, then remember to follow up ten days later.
Each of these steps takes a few minutes. Together, they take half a day a week, and that half-day is precisely what gets dropped as soon as a project, a client or an emergency comes along. The result: a prospect list that goes stale, forgotten follow-ups and sales activity that swings up and down.
An AI agent doesn't replace your sales talent. It takes care of consistency: every morning, the same routine, nothing forgotten. You keep what requires judgment: choosing which prospects to call, leading the conversation, closing the deal.
What a prospecting agent actually does#
A well-designed prospecting agent chains four steps, which you can turn on separately or together.
1. Find companies that match your target#
The agent searches the web and online maps for businesses in your target market and area: restaurants in a neighborhood, accounting firms in a county, tradespeople in a city, agencies in a region. It records public information (name, address, phone, website, listed email, social profiles) and discards businesses marked as closed.
2. Qualify and enrich#
A raw list isn't worth much. The agent can complete each row: approximate company size when it's public, whether there's a website, main line of business, recent news. It adds rows to your table without duplicates, comparing name and address.
3. Prepare the first contact#
Depending on your choice, the agent writes personalized message drafts for you to review before sending, or sends a first email itself from your address when the law allows it (see below). Either way, the message builds on what it found: a detail from the website, a recent opening, a specific service.
4. Follow up with those who didn't reply#
This is the step most often forgotten. The agent spots prospects contacted with no reply after a set delay, sends a short follow-up, then stops after a defined number of attempts. It doesn't pester anyone: the stop rule is part of its design.
Three ways to get started, depending on your situation#
| Your situation | Recommended template | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| You're starting from scratch and targeting local shops or businesses | Local prospector | New rows in your prospect list every weekday morning |
| You already have contacts in a CRM, but they're incomplete | Lead enricher | Every new contact completed (job title, size, website, LinkedIn) |
| You want the whole chain, from research to follow-up | Prospecting, outreach and follow-up | Three linked agents: find, contact, follow up |
| You mostly prospect on LinkedIn | Prepared LinkedIn messages | Ready-made messages that you send yourself |
The full chain relies on collaborating agents: the first agent fills a shared prospects table, the second only receives new rows and prepares the outreach, the third watches for replies. You can watch all three agents at work on the workflow map in your dashboard.
A sample brief to copy#
The brief is the description you write in the chat. The more precise it is, the fewer questions the architect will need to ask. Here's an example you can adapt:
Every weekday morning, find 15 new companies in my target market: independent real estate agencies (not national chains) in Greater Manchester. For each one, record the name, town, phone number, website, public email and the manager's name if it's listed. Add them without duplicates to my “Prospects 2026” Google Sheet. For each, draft an email of 5 lines max that mentions a specific detail from their website. Don't send anything: I'll review and send myself.
A few things make this brief effective:
- A clear target and an exclusion (“not national chains”): the agent knows what to leave out.
- A volume (15 a day): it avoids a list too long to work through.
- A named storage location: the list lands where you already work.
- An explicit sending rule: here, no automatic sending.
The architect will then ask you to connect Google Sheets and Gmail (one click each), show you a sample result with realistic dummy data, then quote a monthly price before anything runs.
Detailed scenario: a week with a prospecting agent#
Take a freelance graphic designer in Bristol who targets independent food shops (bakeries, wine shops, delis) with an outdated website or none at all.
Monday, 7 a.m. The agent searches for food shops in Bristol and the surrounding area. It finds about twenty that aren't on the list yet. For each, it checks whether there's a website and notes whether it looks dated (no mobile version, missing contact details). It adds twelve rows that match the target.
Monday, 8:30 a.m. The designer opens her Google Sheet. An “Opener” column holds an opening line for each shop: “Your ‘Our breads’ page doesn't display properly on mobile,” “You don't have opening hours online yet for the new shop on Gloucester Road.” She picks five shops to contact and ignores the rest.
Tuesday to Friday. The routine repeats. The list grows by a few rows each day, with no duplicates.
The following Monday. A second agent, linked to the first, spots prospects contacted more than seven days ago with no reply and drafts a three-line follow-up. The designer sends them in ten minutes.
There's nothing magical about this scenario: the agent does what she would do herself if she had the time, with the same method every day.
The legal framework#
Email prospecting is regulated, and an agent doesn't exempt you from the rules. They vary by country. In France, for example, the data protection authority (CNIL) distinguishes two cases:
- Prospecting businesses (B2B): sending an email without prior consent is allowed if the message relates to the recipient's profession, they're informed of how their address is used and they can easily opt out (an unsubscribe link or sentence).
- Prospecting consumers (B2C): prior consent is required in principle. An agent should therefore not send marketing emails to individuals found on the web.
Elsewhere, the logic is similar but the details differ: in the UK, emailing corporate addresses is generally allowed with a clear opt-out, while sole traders are treated more like individuals; in the US, CAN-SPAM requires an accurate sender, a working unsubscribe option and a postal address. Check the rules where your prospects are based.
In practice, you can build these rules into the agent's design:
- Collect only public business contact details.
- Add an opt-out sentence to every first message.
- Keep a “Do not contact” column that the agent always respects.
- Stop following up after two attempts.
These rules then appear on the agent's page, and you can change them at any time. If you're unsure about your particular situation, consult a legal adviser: this article is no substitute for tailored advice.
Drafts or automatic sending: how to choose#
| Criterion | Drafts to review | Automatic sending |
|---|---|---|
| Control over tone | Total, you approve every message | Set once in the agent's rules |
| Time spent | A few minutes a day | Almost none |
| Risk of a visible mistake | Low | Higher at the start |
| Best for | High-value sales, narrow target | Simple follow-ups, steady volume |
A practical tip: start with drafts for two or three weeks. You'll quickly see whether the prepared messages sound like you. Once you're hardly correcting anything, switch follow-ups to automatic sending and keep first contacts as drafts.
Mistakes that make a prospecting agent useless#
- A target that's too broad. “SMBs in the US” will produce an endless, unusable list. Better to pick one industry, one area, one company size.
- Nowhere to store results. If prospects arrive by email every morning without being saved, you'll lose the history. A table (Google Sheets, Airtable, your CRM) is essential.
- Messages that are too generic. Explicitly ask for an opener based on something verifiable about the prospect. If the agent finds nothing, it's better for it to say so than to make something up.
- No stop rule. Without a limit on follow-ups, you risk damaging your reputation.
How much it costs#
Each agent has a monthly price based on how demanding the task is, quoted before launch: from €3 for the simplest tasks, with most between €9 and €49 a month. An agent that finds and records prospects usually sits at the lower end of that range; a chain of three linked agents sits higher. The Pro plan includes five agents up to €9 each. Details are on the pricing page.
Going further#
Once prospecting is running, two agents naturally round out the setup: a quote follow-up agent to turn conversations into orders, and a competitive monitoring agent so you show up to meetings with fresh market information. You can also browse sales templates in the library or learn how AI agents work in general.