03Section 3 of 8

Build, verify, and export your market

I start by telling Claude who we're trying to reach. “Find me a big list” isn't enough. I want the right companies, the right people at those companies, and an email we can actually use.

Give it a brief like this

Here's an example brief for a sales follow-up SaaS. Replace this with your own business.

What Claude needs	Example
What we sell	A tool that helps sales teams follow up with inbound leads. The email sends people straight to the free plan.
Which companies	U.S.-headquartered B2B software companies with 50–500 employees and a sales team.
Which people	The current VP Sales, Head of Sales, or sales operations person responsible for that work.
Useful groups to test	Companies hiring SDRs, companies with 10+ salespeople, and companies using HubSpot or Salesforce.
Who stays out	Customers, active sales opportunities, competitors, people who opted out, and addresses that already bounced.
People per company	Up to two relevant buyers. Start with the person who owns the problem.
What comes back	A file I can upload to Instantly, a saved master list, people needing review, and the total spend.

I separate rules someone has to meet from preferences I want to test. Otherwise I can exclude half the market before I've sent an email.

In my walkthrough, I wanted companies with more than 250 employees and at least 70 people in sales. We got 380,000 sales leaders. I kept the company list too, so we could find more people at those same companies through another provider.

Video: How I Get 8M+ Leads Using Claude Code (For Cold Email)

Start with 100 people

I have Claude run the whole process on 100 contacts first. It searches the tools, combines the results, finds missing work emails, checks the addresses, and cleans the file.

Then I open the sample and check:

Are these the companies I asked for?
Do these people still work there, in the right roles?
Does the email belong to the person's current company?
Did it leave out customers and people we've already excluded?
What did we spend to get the usable contacts?

If the sample is wrong, I fix the brief before asking for the full market. A bigger version of the wrong list doesn't help us.

Give Claude this

Use my campaign brief and the two installed lead skills to build
this list. My maximum spend is [amount].
Check our existing contacts and exclusions first so we don't
pay again for work we've already done.
Run 100 contacts through the full process before the larger run.
Search the connected tools, combine the results, find missing
work emails, check them with both validators, and clean the list.
Use the provider order we saved during setup.
Check that each person fits the brief, still works at the company,
and has the right work email. Remove duplicates and exclusions.
Keep uncertain matches and conflicting email checks out of
the ready-to-send file and explain what needs reviewing.
Show me the sample, the rejected contacts and reasons, and the
spend. Wait for my approval before running the full list.
After approval, run the rest using the same rules. Save progress
so we can continue a stopped job without repeating paid work.
Give me a ready-to-upload file for Instantly, the full saved
master list, a review file, and an excluded file with reasons.
Show how many people we started with, what was removed,
how many are ready, and what each tool cost. Don't upload or send.

What I want back

Output	How I use it
Ready to upload	Open the file and inspect a few real contacts. This is the list that goes into the sending tool.
Needs review	Decide whether the uncertain people or email results belong. They stay out of sending until resolved.
Excluded	See who was removed and why, including duplicates, bad matches, and opt-outs.
Master list	Keep the full information so the next campaign can reuse it.
Cost summary	See which tools added usable contacts and how much we paid for each one.

Claude handles the cleaning, name formatting, duplicate removal, and file layout. I ask it to check its own finished file before handing it back, including the cleaning skill's audit.

I tell Claude which sending tool I'm using and ask it to make a file that tool accepts. Keep the complete contact information in the master list and include only what the campaign needs in the sending file. Claude checks the format and splits large files when needed.