Research Before Writing

The test a senior buyer applies

A senior buyer reads the first line of an unexpected message with one question in mind: is this about me, or was it sent to everyone? Everything after that line depends on the answer.

"I see you're the COO at Northfield" does not pass. It proves the sender has a database. "You opened a second distribution centre in March" passes, because it could only have been written to this company, and it is a fact the reader recognises.

So the purpose of research is narrow. You are not writing a company profile. You are looking for a small number of true, specific, recent things that give you a reason to write to this person now.

The five things to find

1. What changed. A trigger: a new leader, a new site, an acquisition, a hiring burst, a regulation with a date. Recent means the last six months, and the fresher the better.

2. What they have said they want. A goal the company has stated in public: in an annual report, an earnings call, a press interview or a leader's own post. Their words, not your summary.

3. What it means for this person. The link between the change or the goal and the job of the person you are writing to. This is usually your own inference, and you should label it as one.

4. Who else is involved. The other roles that would take part in a decision, and anyone at the company you or your colleagues already know.

5. One question only they can answer. Not "do you have 15 minutes?" A question about how they are handling the specific thing you found.

If you have 1 or 2, plus 3 and 5, you can write. If you have neither 1 nor 2, you do not have a reason to write yet. Put the account back and look again next week.

Where to look, in order

Spend the time where the yield is highest.

For a private company with no annual report, use the founder's interviews, the company blog and its customers' case studies. Job posts are often the most honest source of all: they say what the company is building and what it lacks.

The brief

Write it down in the same shape every time. It takes five lines.

Account brief (fill in before writing)

ACCOUNT BRIEF: [company], [date]
Person: [name, title, time in role]
What changed: [fact, date, source link]
What they have said they want: [their words, source link]
What it means for this person: [one line] (inference)
Who else is involved: [roles or names; anyone we know]
My one question: [ ]

Three rules keep the brief honest:

• Every fact has a link. If you cannot say where you found it, leave it out.
• Inference is labelled. "This probably puts pressure on planning" is your guess. Write it as a question in the message, not as a statement.
• Nothing personal. Use what someone has published in a professional setting. Leave their family, holidays and private accounts alone. Being specific about the business reads as diligence. Being specific about the person reads as intrusion.

How much is enough

Match the depth to the tier.

• Tier 1: the full brief for every person you contact, around 15 minutes each. The account-level lines are written once and reused.
• Tier 2: one brief per account, with the person's line adjusted by role.
• Tier 3: one brief per segment, plus a single check of each company's news page.

The usual failure is not too little research. It is research that never ends. Set a timer. When it rings, either you have a reason to write or the account waits for a trigger.

Using an AI assistant

An assistant can speed up the reading: paste in a report or a page and ask for stated priorities with the passages they came from. It cannot be the source. It may give you an executive who left last year, or a programme that belongs to a different company. Whatever it tells you, open the original and confirm it before it goes in the brief. The course "AI for Account Research" covers this in detail.