Outbound

Old vs. New Way of Building Targeted Account Lists

Joseph Wheatley
September 27, 2025
•
3
min read

Your list is your strategy.

Get it right, you reach the right people. Get it wrong, you won’t book meetings, and you won’t make sales.

Results are downstream from the quality of your list. So let’s look at the 3 ways you can build them.

Old Ways ❌

Option 1) Hire SDRs to build lists manually

This means hiring an army of SDRs to do slow, manual research.

The problem? It takes forever to book meetings. You’re also constantly dealing with churn, hiring, and firing. Plus, it’s not very scalable (headcount and costs grow with revenue).

Option 2) Use ZoomInfo or LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Tools like ZoomInfo or Sales Navigator let you pull large lists of companies and decision-makers. Better than option 1, but still limited.

Why? Because the filters don’t go deep enough. For example, if you want to target SaaS companies:

  • They either don’t have a “SaaS” filter, or the results are hit and miss.
  • Even if you find SaaS, the definition is too broad.

What if you only want MarTech SaaS, with a PLG model, expanding into new regions? Impossible.

That means to get a precise list, you still need manual labor or web scraping. Otherwise, you’re left spraying and praying (and as we know by now, hope is not a strategy).

New Way âś…

Option 3) Use Clay and AI to get super-targeted lists

Tools like Clay add an extra layer of refinement that changes the game.

Here’s how it works:

  • Pull a raw list from Apollo.
  • Import into Clay.
  • Enrich with LinkedIn to add details about companies and decision-makers.
  • Classify with Claygent (Web-Scraping + AI), e.g. sort by vertical, motion (PLG vs. SLG), signals, and other granular attributes.

The result? A hyper-targeted list.

With it, you can filter the right ICP from the wrong ICP and tailor messaging to each segment - driving higher response rates.

For example:

  • MarTech PLG SaaS, 11–50 employees, actively hiring → one message.
  • SalesTech SaaS in the same size range, just raised a seed round → another message.

Right Prospects. Right Message. Right Time:

  • Hyper-targeted lists mean you reach the right prospects.
  • Granular attributes and signals mean you deliver the right message.
  • Using recent signals as triggers means you reach out at the right time.

Do all three, and you’ll book more meetings and close more sales.

But steps 2 and 3 only happen if you get step 1 right.

Which brings us full circle.

Takeaways

  • Your list is your strategy.
  • Hiring an army of SDRs is slow, manual, costly, and hard to scale.
  • Using tools like ZoomInfo or Sales Navigator means you either spray and pray with a broad list or spend manual effort refining further.
  • Clay + AI allows you to build hyper-targeted, scalable lists and tailor your messaging to each segment - so you can book more meetings and close more sales.