Build a list of 100 named humans

The list you are embarrassed to use is the list that converts first.

Pull them from people who described your problem in their own words in the last 90 days.

G2 and Capterra 2- and 3-star reviews are a list of people actively unhappy with the incumbent.

Hiring for the role, a new person in the seat that buys, a funding round, a migration announcement, a public complaint. Free places to watch: the Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby job feeds, SEC Form D filings, and the ad libraries. If what you sell replaces the role, one still open after two months is the strongest of all. A trigger from a year ago is not a trigger — date every one and drop the stale.

Problem, trigger, and whether you can actually reach them. Cut anyone failing the third.

Dead waitlists, a shut-down side project, the product that did not work. They already trusted you once, which is the expensive half, and nobody else can email them.

Pick the three accounts that already own your audience and read their comment sections: people mid-comparison, in public, for free. The signal decides who you write to — never what you write. “Saw you liked their post” reads as surveillance.

Association member lists, state licence lookups, or a Google Maps search by category and postcode, where the review count is a free size estimate. A licensed business is real and operating, and almost nobody else is writing to it from that list. Maps gives the phone number too: an owner who runs the business from a phone answers a call, not an email. In the UK a sole trader counts as an individual, who must agree before you email them, so call or write instead.