It finds the company, the right person, a working email address, and writes three email sequences with two emails each.
The minutes and the pay rates come from published sources, listed under the fold.
That is the full-time work of about eighteen people whose whole job is prospect research, or $210,000 to $1.3 million of labor depending on who does it.
Over 50,000 people had six emails written for them over eleven months. The hours count all six emails written for each person. That is 50,000 people × 42 minutes each, by hand: 35,000 hours.
| Step | Low | Typical | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| Find the right person at the company (includes picking the company, about 2 minutes, derived from bundled research figures) | 3 | 7 | 15 |
| Find and confirm a working email address. The system tries several finders in turn and checks every address before it is kept. | 2 | 5 | 15 |
| Write six short emails that mention them (three sequences of two, at 3 / 5 / 10 minutes each). Each email carries one to three personal details, and the wording is varied so no two emails are alike. | 18 | 30 | 60 |
| Minutes per person | 23 | 42 | 90 |
The minute figures are my estimate from doing the work by hand, checked against a published study of manual account-research time (Salesmotion, 2026), which puts research alone well above these numbers.
Overseas lead-generation specialist: $5 to $7 an hour mid-level, HireTalent.ph salary guide, 2026; offshore contractor rates are quoted unloaded. US lead-generation specialist: $19.75 an hour, Indeed, about 3,100 reported salaries, 2026. Sales development rep: $55,000 median base, The Bridge Group SDR Metrics Report, February 2025. Market research analyst: $78,760 a year, Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025. Every US rate is loaded for benefits at 1.43 (Bureau of Labor Statistics Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, March 2026) and divided by 2,080 hours a year. That gives $28, $38, and $54 an hour. The page prints the two ends it uses, $6 and $38; the analyst rate is listed for comparison.
Every 30,000 people takes 8 to 18 hours of a person's time. For the volume on this page that is roughly 15 to 30 hours of management against 35,000 hours of research work: more than a thousand to one. The cost per valid contact found is between $0.03 and $0.11, depending on your scale, your target, and how thoroughly you want it to cover your market.
Every company in the area that fits the client's customer profile, and nothing outside it. Current customers and do-not-contact lists are removed at the door.
The cheapest way to find them is tried first; the smarter ways only if needed. Every address is checked before it is believed. Bad ones are thrown out.
Three sequences of two emails each, per person, that mention something personal to them or their business. A few words in each are written for that person.
Each band below is one table; each small card is one column in it; stages run left to right inside a band. Thick orange lines are rows being handed from one table to the next. The bright orange trace follows a single lead the whole way down.
Drag to pan · scroll to zoom · Fit resets the view · hover a card for what that column does
Tap to open the board full screen. Pinch to zoom.
The work on this page used to be a job description: the research half of a sales development desk, done by hand, by people, at 42 minutes a person. Now one person sets it up and checks on it for a few hours per run.
Steps that repeat, with a way to check the output, can be built. In most companies that means the jobs nobody was hired to do but everybody does: chasing renewals, building quotes, screening applicants, collecting on invoices, keeping lists clean. Each one has the shape of the page above: build the list, check it, write the message, hand it off.
