Most prospect research is wasted - here's what isn't

I have researched, no exaggeration, tens of thousands of businesses. Most of my early research was bad. Not offensively bad - worse than that. It was forgettable. I would collect twelve facts about a company and walk into the meeting with nothing to say, because none of the twelve facts implied anything.

So when people tell me research is a waste of time, what I hear is: my forgettable research stopped paying off. Good. It was never really paying off.

The three things that actually move close rates

After years of testing, I have made peace with the fact that the fancy stuff barely matters. The boring stuff matters enormously.

• Relevance beats trivia. Knowing a company's founding year is not research. Knowing that its booking page breaks on mobile, in a category where every competitor takes bookings online, is.
• One clear thesis. If your research supports three different pitches, it supports none. Land on exactly one problem you can name in a sentence and back with a number.
• Write it down before the meeting, not after. The work usually goes to the person who sounds prepared. Most people wing it. That is the whole game, honestly.

A structure I actually use

Here is the skeleton, and it is almost insultingly simple. One line that proves you looked. One line on the problem you noticed. One line on what you would do about it. One number that makes it real. That is it. If it runs longer than a phone screen, you have written an essay, and nobody sits through an essay from a stranger.

This is the part where the tooling matters, and I will be honest that it is why I ended up here. The reason our meetings go well is not a magic opening line. It is that by the time we walk in, we already know who is a fit, what their gap is, and roughly what it is costing them. The conversation is easy when the homework is done.

So no, research is not a waste. It just stopped rewarding laziness. If you are willing to do the ten minutes per business - or use something that does it for you - it is still the highest-leverage habit there is.