Sales research is the foundation of effective B2B selling. Before a sales rep sends an email, makes a call, or joins a discovery meeting, they need context: who the company is, what the buyer cares about, and why the conversation matters right now.
In this blog post, you’ll learn:
What sales research really is in modern B2B teams
How to do sales research step by step
The difference between company research and prospect research
Which sales research tools teams actually use today
How AI is changing sales research workflows
This article is written for SDRs, AEs, Sales Leaders, and RevOps teams looking to improve personalization, reply rates, and deal quality.
What Is Sales Research?
Sales research is the process of collecting and analyzing information about companies and prospects to support relevant, personalized, and timely sales outreach.
At a practical level, sales research includes:
Company research: what a business does, its market, size, and direction
Prospect research: who the buyer is, their role, and what they’re responsible for
Contextual signals: news, funding, hiring, product launches, or strategic changes
Strong sales research helps reps avoid generic outreach and instead lead with insight.
Why Sales Research Is Critical in B2B Sales
B2B buyers expect sales reps to be informed. Generic messaging signals a lack of preparation and immediately reduces trust.
Proper sales research is also crucial for GDPR-compliant outreach. Relevance and legitimate interest start with understanding who you are contacting and why your message is genuinely useful to them. Well-researched outreach is less annoying, more respectful, and far more likely to receive a response.
Effective sales research helps teams:
Personalize outreach without sounding forced
Ask smarter discovery questions
Build credibility early in the sales cycle
Improve reply rates and meeting conversions
As competition increases, sales research has shifted from a “nice to have” to a core sales capability.
Sales Research vs Prospect Research vs Company Research
These terms are often used interchangeably, but they serve different purposes.
Company research focuses on understanding the business itself: industry, products, customers, and growth.
Prospect research focuses on the individual buyer: role, seniority, priorities, and background.
Sales research brings both together, adding timing and relevance so outreach actually lands.
High-performing teams combine all three rather than relying on one in isolation.
How to Do Sales Research: A Step-by-Step Process
1. Define Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Before researching individual accounts, teams must be aligned on who they want to sell to. Industry, company size, geography, and business model all influence research quality.
2. Start With Company Research
Company research sets the foundation for all outreach. Sales reps should understand:
What the company does and who it serves
How it positions itself in the market
Any recent changes that may create urgency
This context ensures conversations are relevant from the first touch.
3. Add Account-Level Context
For mid-market and enterprise deals, account research goes deeper. It looks at strategic priorities, competitors, and expansion signals to tailor messaging to the account as a whole.
4. Conduct Prospect Research
Prospect research focuses on the individual buyer. Key details include role scope, decision-making power, and likely goals.
This step enables real personalization instead of generic “fill-in-the-name” outreach that references obvious details without showing real understanding.
5. Turn Research Into Insight
Research only matters if it informs action. The goal is to translate findings into:
A relevant outreach angle
A clear value hypothesis
Meaningful discovery questions
Manual vs Modern Sales Research
Traditional sales research relies on LinkedIn, Google searches, and spreadsheets. While accurate, it is slow, inconsistent, and difficult to scale.
Modern sales research tools help centralize company and prospect data, reducing time spent searching and increasing time spent selling. AI sales tools now support this process by summarizing information, highlighting relevant signals, and standardizing research quality across teams.
Sales Research Tools Teams Use Today
Sales research tools generally fall into a few categories:
Prospect research tools for individual buyer data & contact details
Company research tools for firmographic and contextual insights
Sales intelligence tools that combine data and insights
The most effective stacks reduce manual effort while keeping research actionable.
How AI Is Changing Sales Research
AI does not replace sales research - it improves it.
Modern AI sales research tools help teams:
Reduce time spent on manual research
Surface relevant insights faster
Maintain consistent research quality
Scale personalization across outreach
Instead of replacing judgment, AI supports better decision-making by organizing and prioritizing information.
How SalesPort Helps Teams Do Sales Research Faster and Smarter
If you want to see how this works in practice, we’ve also published a step-by-step walkthrough showing how to use SalesPort’s AI Sales Researcher on real companies. You can find it in our guide to getting started with SalesPort AI Sales Researcher, which demonstrates the full research workflow inside the product.
Modern sales research requires more than raw data - it requires context, synthesis, and speed. This is where SalesPort fits into the sales research workflow.
SalesPort is designed to act as an AI-powered sales research assistant, helping teams turn fragmented company and prospect data into clear, actionable insights - without spending hours across dozens of tabs.
With SalesPort, sales teams can:
Research companies and accounts in minutes by automatically summarizing key company information and relevant business signals
Understand prospects in context by combining company research with buyer-level insights
Standardize sales research across the team, ensuring consistent quality across SDRs and AEs
Reduce manual work without losing depth, allowing reps to focus on insight rather than searching
In practice, sales research rarely stops at insights alone. Once teams understand an account, they still need to identify the right decision-maker and translate that research into a relevant message.
With SalesPort, teams can move through this entire workflow in one place - from researching a company, to revealing the most relevant contact, and finally composing a personalized sales email based on those research insights using the built-in AI Email Writer. This removes the typical handoff between research tools, contact databases, and email writing tools.
Sales Research Checklist
Before reaching out to a prospect, sales reps should be able to answer:
What does the company do and who do they serve?
Who is the buyer and what is their role?
Why might this account care right now?
What problem can we realistically help solve?
If these answers are unclear, more research is needed.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should sales research take?
When done manually and thoroughly, sales research can take several hours per account, especially for complex B2B deals. Modern sales research tools can significantly reduce this time without sacrificing quality.
What are the best sales research tools?
The best tools depend on your sales motion, but teams increasingly rely on sales intelligence and AI-supported tools to scale research efficiently.
If you’re currently evaluating different options, stay tuned - we’re preparing a dedicated blog post that compares sales research tools side by side and explains how to choose the right one for your team.
Final Thoughts
Sales research is no longer optional in B2B sales. Teams that invest in structured research processes - and support them with modern tools - consistently outperform those that rely on guesswork.
When sales research is done well, outreach becomes relevant, conversations become meaningful, and deals move forward faster.
