AI Prospecting
Describe the businesses you want, narrow them with the filter rail, and hand the results to the CRM, a campaign, a voice agent or a spreadsheet.
Prospecting is the outbound half of Lead Manager. Instead of waiting for someone to fill in a form, you describe who you are looking for in chat, refine with filters, and act on the results. It runs on credits, so it is worth getting the description right before you run a wide search.
Before you start
You need the Leads plan feature, and either owner access or the
prospecting permission. Prospecting is also switched on per workspace, so it
can be unavailable even when you hold the permission. Searches and research runs
consume credits.
Run a search
Open Prospecting
CRMProspecting in the sidebar.
Describe what you want
Type it into the composer in plain language — the trade, the area, the kind of business.
Narrow with Filters
The facet rail has four groups: Category, Location, Business signals and Contact & company.
Read the results grid
Including the Research column, which is where deeper findings land.
Tick the rows you want and use the action bar
The chat moves after your first message
The composer starts in the centre of the page and then re-homes into the side panel. The centre one greys out with “Continue in the Prospecting panel…” — that is the conversation moving, not breaking. Chat history in the header reopens past sessions.
Filters reference
| Setting | What it changes | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Niche | Business category, chosen from the preset niche list. | — |
| Keywords | Free-text terms such as emergency service. Press Enter to add each one. | — |
| Cities | One or more cities. Press Enter to add each one. | — |
| State | A two-letter state code. | — |
| Search the whole state | Searches statewide instead of city by city. | Off |
| Minimum rating / Maximum rating | Bounds the business rating. | — |
| Price level | Filters by price band. | — |
| Open now | Only businesses currently open. | Off |
| Business status | Operational, closed and similar. | Any status |
| Site issues | Filters by problems detected on the business website. | Any site issue |
| Job titles | Contact titles such as Owner. Press Enter to add each one. | — |
| Seniority | Contact seniority band. | Any seniority |
| Department | Contact department. | Any department |
| Company size | Headcount band. | Any headcount |
| Revenue | Revenue band. | Any revenue |
| Company domains | Limits results to specific company domains. | — |
| Exclude previously found businesses | Skips businesses earlier searches already returned. | Off |
Contact filters need a provider
The Contact & company group is locked until a contact-data provider is connected, and the rail badge reads Provider needed. An owner connects Apollo or People Data Labs with their own API key under SettingsIntegrations; the badge then shows the connected provider's name.
Not every filter travels to every provider. The group tells you which ones the connected provider actually honours — read it rather than assuming a filter applied.
When both providers are connected
Zyan picks whichever connected provider supports more of the filters you have actually set, and falls back to Apollo when they tie. Department is the clearest split: People Data Labs honours it, Apollo does not. You can also name the provider you want in chat and it will be used instead.
The provider bills your own account, on top of credits
The key is yours, so the searches are billed to you by the provider. People Data Labs charges one record credit for every record it returns, whether or not you keep it. Ask for contact data deliberately — a wide search with contact enrichment on is the most expensive thing on this page.
Filters round-trip through the page URL, so a filtered view can be bookmarked or sent to a colleague.
Reading the results
The table can list several cohorts, switched by tab: Found, Saved, Recent and SMS campaigns. The columns are Search, Leads, Emails, Phones and Found on.
A row badged Found earlier came from a previous search and is counted against that earlier search, not this one — useful when the numbers do not seem to add up.
Credits
Credits are consumed by AI turns, business lookups and research runs. When a budget stops a turn mid-search, a one-tap Continue searching chip appears — nothing is lost, you are just being asked before more is spent. A workspace that is credit-exempt shows Unmetered instead of a balance.
Hand-offs
Tick rows, then use the action bar.
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Add to CRM | Creates leads from the selection, with optional comma-separated tags. Afterwards the popover links straight to View leads tagged … |
| Add to campaign | Smartlead or a native sequence. Each row carries a sub-label about its current status. Smartlead additionally needs Marketing edit access |
| Assign voice agent | Hands the selection to a voice agent |
| Text | Opens the SMS campaign review |
| Deep research | Queues a research run over the selected rows. Disabled while a run already holds the session |
| Export | Downloads the selection as a spreadsheet |
Nothing sends itself
The assistant only proposes campaigns. A human confirms, and campaigns are created paused. Starting a Smartlead campaign is always a manual click in Smartlead, and arming a prospecting SMS campaign is owner-only — it stays dormant until an owner arms it, which also needs an OpenPhone campaign number.
Contacts with no reachable email or phone are skipped when you promote a selection, so the number of leads created can be lower than the number of rows you ticked.
Tag limits are shown inline in the Add to CRM popover: a maximum number of tags per write, and a character limit per tag. Case is kept exactly as you type it — see Tags, intake and first-touch SLA.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Prospecting is missing from the sidebar | The plan feature, the prospecting permission, or the per-workspace switch is off | Ask an owner |
| The Contact & company filters are locked | No contact-data provider is connected | An owner connects Apollo or People Data Labs in Settings → Integrations |
| A filter seems to have been ignored | That provider does not honour it | Check the note on the filter group |
| The centre composer is greyed out | The chat re-homed into the side panel | Carry on in the Prospecting panel |
| The search stopped partway | A budget stopped the turn | Click Continue searching |
| Fewer leads were created than rows ticked | Rows with no reachable email or phone are skipped | Expected. Widen the contact filters |
| Results look familiar | They were found by an earlier search | Look for the Found earlier badge, or turn on Exclude previously found businesses |
| Deep research is disabled | A research run already holds the session | Wait for it to finish |
| Business lookups return nothing at all | Places lookups depend on a platform key that may not be set | Contact Zyan |