A list of names is not yet a list you can judge
An exhibitor list, a supplier directory, a spreadsheet a colleague left behind. It holds two hundred company names and tells you nothing about which twenty belong on your desk. Before you can qualify it you need facts, and before you pay to find people you need to qualify it. This play is the first of those three steps.
Company facts are sold the way contact details are: column by column, at different rates, by different providers. Size, industry and location usually arrive together in one firmographic lookup. Funding is a separate lookup. Technology is another. Whether they are hiring is another again. Asking for everything on every row is the expensive way to learn that most of the list was never a fit.
So the play starts with a question: which facts decide fit for you? A desk that places finance staff in mid-sized firms needs size, sector and location and has no use for a technology column. A desk built around one software platform needs the technology first. Only the deciding columns are bought.
The other half of the work is identity. A name is not a company. A domain is, so every row is pinned to a website before anything is looked up.
What you get back
A copy of your file, same rows and order, with the chosen columns added. Every value names its source. Where two sources disagree, both are shown. Where nothing was found, the cell is empty and a status says why: not resolved, not found, or skipped because you already held it. Hiring comes back as the active roles in your discipline, with the date the latest one was first seen.
No people are searched for and nobody is contacted. The file is ready for qualify a company list against your ICP, which turns the facts into a pass or a drop with a reason.
Variations worth knowing
Hiring only. If the list is already qualified, run the hiring column alone to decide who to ring first.
Go deep on the few. For the companies you are going to call, walk into a business development call with a one-page account brief does the full research this play deliberately skips.
Where this goes wrong
The wrong company behind the name. Names collide, and groups have subsidiaries with their own sites. Unsure matches are put to you, not guessed.
Headcount lags. Database size figures trail reality and come as bands. Treat them as bands.
Technology from a single advert. A detection is often inferred from the wording of one job advert. One detection is a hint, several are evidence.
No roles found is not "not hiring". Roles given to agencies or never advertised do not show.
Small private firms are thin. Little funding data, few records. Expect more empty cells, each labelled with the reason.
