Prospecting Questions to Ask Claude About a Territory

Start with the search

"Search plumbers in Austin, TX with Lyre Leads."

This runs one search from the centre of the city and returns about 20 businesses a page. It's the right size for a small town or a first look. For the whole of a large city, ask for "all of Austin" instead: that searches the same city from many overlapping points and merges the results, because a single search stops after a few pages. In Houston that found 1,061 roofing contractors where one search, paged to the end, stopped at 255.

Questions any seller can ask

"Drop the ones that aren't really plumbers."

Google Maps returns the wrong kind of business more often than you'd expect. When we checked keyword searches by hand, 72.2% of results were the business searched for, from 95.8% for roofing contractors down to 28% for home remodelling contractors. Every business we read gets a yes, no or unclear on that question, together with the sentence from its own homepage that decided it, so you can check the call yourself.

"Which have a verified email, and who's the owner?"

Each business email comes with its state. Verified means the receiving mail server confirmed the mailbox. Catch-all means the domain accepts any address, so nobody can confirm it, and Claude won't see it labelled as verified. Where the business's own site names a person, you get the name and title, and that person's own email when we found and checked one.

"Find the owners at the ones without a named contact."

This is contact discovery: it looks for the owner or another named person on the public web, keeps a name only when the page naming them also carries the business's own domain, phone or address, and checks their email. It costs 2 tokens per person found, verification included, which is why Claude asks before running it.

If you sell software to these businesses

"Which run ServiceTitan, which run Jobber or Housecall Pro, and which show none?"

We read the CRM and booking system off each business's homepage. In a quick search of Austin plumbers on 16 October, four of the 17 distinct websites ran ServiceTitan, one ran Jobber and one GoHighLevel, and on the other eleven we found no CRM or booking platform. The eleven are the open conversations, and the four are a competitive displacement list.

"Search hair salons in Copenhagen. Which book through Planway, Bokadirekt or Booksy, and which show no online booking?"

The booking systems we recognise include the Nordic ones, so this works in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian cities as well as American ones. Swap in your own product and its competitors.

"Which have no live chat on their site?"

Chat widgets are read the same way. One caution applies to every "which have no" question: an absence only counts on a site we could read. Claude sees whether each site was read, so it can tell "no chat found" from "couldn't check".

If you sell marketing or websites

"Which run Wix or Squarespace, and which have no website at all?"

The website platform is on every site we read, and a listing with no website is marked as one. Both lists are a web designer's opening line.

"Which have more than 200 reviews but a rating under 4?"

Rating and review count come straight from the Google Maps listing. Plenty of customers and a weak score is a reputation conversation, and the review count tells you the business is busy enough to pay for one.

"Which have ad pixels installed?"

An advertising pixel from Meta, Google Ads or another network on the homepage means someone set the business up to advertise, whether or not ads are running today. That changes the pitch from starting paid ads to running them better.

If you sell payments, financing or staffing

"Which say cash only, or ask customers to pay by Zelle or Cash App?"

We read what a merchant's own site says about getting paid: cash only, Zelle or Cash App, card minimums, surcharges and cash-discount programs, financing, memberships and deposits. The merchant page lists them all with real examples.

"Which say they're hiring?"

A job board embedded in the homepage, or a line like "we're hiring", is flagged. For a staffing agency those are the businesses to call this week, while the hiring is still open.

What Claude can't answer from this

Everything above comes from the Google Maps listing and the business's own homepage. Revenue, headcount and the rate a merchant pays aren't published there, so Claude won't know them, and it shouldn't guess. Policies that live one click in, on a pricing or careers page, may be missed, so a "no" on those is a floor rather than a certainty.

A conversation also suits a city better than a country. Claude reads leads a page at a time, so for thousands of rows it's quicker to export from the Database page on the website and work there.