Account Research: From 30 Tabs Open To One Good Brief

When you sell into an enterprise, you can't show up cold. You need to know how the company makes money, who their biggest customers are, what their last earnings call said, who their competitors are, what initiatives the CEO has named, and where your product would actually fit. Two years ago this was a half-day of work per account. Today it's 10 to 15 minutes. The research stack: Perplexity Pro for deep research with citations, Claude or ChatGPT for synthesis, the 10-K (SEC EDGAR) for public-company truth, Crunchbase and PitchBook for private-company funding, G2 for reviews, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator for org structure.

1. 1Business model: how do they make money? Top revenue streams.
2. 2Stage and trajectory: size, growth, recent funding or earnings highlights
3. 3Strategic priorities: top 3 themes from CEO/CFO commentary in the last 6 months
4. 4Tech stack: what's known about how they build and operate (BuiltWith, job posts)
5. 5Org changes: leadership hires/departures in the last quarter
6. 6Where your product fits: given their priorities, where would it move the needle?

Reps who walk into calls reciting research like a Wikipedia article are creepy and gain no trust. The point is to speak fluently about the buyer's world when relevant — not to perform that you researched them. A good account brief gives you three things: one fact you can drop naturally in the first five minutes, one objection you can pre-empt because of context, and one specific person you should be trying to meet. If your AI brief gives you all three, it earned its 10 minutes.