Prospect Workflow

SKILL.md — VP Prospect Research Workflow

End-to-end workflow for identifying, researching, and loading VP/Director-level platform engineering prospects into the CRM.

Overview

This workflow combines:

1. Company Research (PinchTab) — Find companies with ELK/platform pain
2. Prospect Research (LinkedIn MCP) — Find decision-makers at those companies
3. CRM Loading — Add prospects with full context

Target Prospect Profile

ICP: VP and Team Leads responsible for understaffed ELK/platform teams

MUST HAVE:
- Title: VP of Platform / VP of Infrastructure / VP of Engineering / Director of SRE / 
  Director of Platform Engineering / Senior Director of Engineering (platform focus) /
  Platform Team Lead / Engineering Manager (Platform/DevOps/SRE/Observability)
- Company size: 50-10,000+ employees
- Company runs self-managed ELK (not Elastic Cloud)
- NOT: job seeker, contractor, competitor, IT services company

PREFER:
- Company in: Fintech, Cybersecurity, E-commerce, Logistics, Healthcare, Media/Gaming, Telecom
- Explicit ELK/Elasticsearch mention in profile
- Active poster (last 90 days)
- 1st or 2nd connection degree

Workflow

Phase 1: Identify Target Companies (PinchTab)

Use PinchTab to research companies in priority verticals:

Step 1a: Elastic.co Customers (start here — highest signal)

Navigate to: https://www.elastic.co/customers

Read the case studies for:

• TVH (logistics, industrial) — "platform team was a bottleneck"
• BBVA (banking) — 150-node Elastic cluster
• Brazilian Telecom — 5K hosts, exploring AI incident analysis
• ID Logistics — 60% cost reduction with Elastic

Click through to individual case studies and extract:

• Pain language (exact quotes)
• Company size and industry
• Decision-maker name/title if listed
• Cluster/data volume

Step 1b: Target Engineering Blogs For specific companies, navigate to their engineering blog:

• Discord: https://discord.com/blog — search for "ELK", "Elasticsearch", "indexing"
• Stripe: https://stripe.com/blog/engineering — platform engineering posts
• Others: https://engineering.{company}.com

Step 1c: Job Postings (optional) If company research is thin, check LinkedIn job postings:

Navigate to: https://www.linkedin.com/work/search?keywords=Senior+Platform+Engineer+ELK+{company}

Hiring signals = understaffing = pain.

Phase 2: Find Decision-Makers (LinkedIn MCP)

Step 2a: Search for Prospects Use search_people for each target company:

Keywords: "VP Director Platform Engineering SRE {CompanyName}"

If no results, broaden:

Keywords: "VP Director Platform Engineering SRE"

And filter results to the target company from the profile.

Step 2b: Profile Each Prospect Use get_person_profile for the top 5-10 results. Look for:

• Title matches ICP (VP/Director/Senior Director/Manager of Platform/SRE/Infrastructure)
• Connection degree: 1st or 2nd = ideal; 3rd+ = follow-only
• Connect button available (not follow-only profile)
• Recent activity (last 90 days = fresh signal)
• ELK/Elasticsearch mention = gold
• Tech stack mentions (Kafka, Logstash, Ansible, Kubernetes = good)
• Company pain signals from their posts

Step 2c: Score and Prioritize

Priority: High
  - Title matches exactly (VP Platform / Director SRE)
  - 1st or 2nd degree connection
  - Recent post or active engagement
  - ELK mention or platform pain signal

Priority: Medium
  - Title mostly matches
  - 2nd or 3rd degree
  - Some activity signal

Priority: Low
  - Title borderline (e.g., "VP Product" not platform)
  - 3rd+ degree
  - No recent activity

Phase 3: Send Connection Requests

Step 3a: Batch Send For all High and Medium priority prospects with Connect available:

connect_with_person(linkedin_username: "{username}")

Step 3b: Track Blocked Profiles For follow-only profiles:

• Note in CRM as "Follow-Only"
• Don't retry more than once
• Move on

Phase 4: Load into CRM

For each new prospect, add to the vp_prospect CRM object with:

• Full Name
• Title
• Company
• Company Size
• LinkedIn URL
• Connection Status: "Pending" / "Connected" / "Follow-Only" / "Not Connected"
• Priority: "High" / "Medium" / "Low"
• Pain Signals: From research (ELK mention, recent posts about platform pain, etc.)
• Last Activity: From LinkedIn profile ("3w ago", "Active today", etc.)

Phase 5: Synthesize Findings

After research is complete, return a summary:

{
  "vertical": "...",
  "companies_researched": ["Company A", "Company B"],
  "pain_themes": ["theme 1", "theme 2"],
  "prospects_added": [
    {"name": "...", "company": "...", "connection_status": "Pending"}
  ],
  "connection_requests_sent": N,
  "follow_only_profiles": [...],
  "top_3_recommendations": ["company or prospect 1", "..."]
}

Vertical Shortcuts (Pre-Researched)

These verticals and companies have confirmed ELK pain:

What NOT to Do

• Don't send notes with connection requests — use blank requests, follow up after acceptance
• Don't use web_search for deep research — it's blocked on most sites
• Don't over-research — 5-10 well-chosen prospects > 50 random ones
• Don't pursue 3rd+ degree profiles — accept the follow-only limitation
• Don't target ICs without team authority — they can't buy or champion the product
• Don't target competitors or job seekers — filter these out early

Tool Priority

1. PinchTab for company/vertical research (Elastic.co customers, engineering blogs, Reddit)
2. LinkedIn MCP for prospect search and connection requests
3. DuckDB CRM for storing and updating prospect records
4. web_search — only as a last resort; most sites block it