Prospector: how the SDR qualifies pipeline before founder demo

Most founder demos are with leads that should not have been demos. Prospector qualifies pipeline before the founder shows up — same playbook a senior SDR runs, at the price of a tool subscription.

Prospector is the SDR specialist that SALES (the VP Sales exec) manages. It runs three jobs: enrichment, qualification, and outbound sequencing.

Enrichment

Inbound leads — from your /pricing page form, demo request, free trial signup — get enriched the moment they land. Prospector pulls company size, industry, tech stack, funding stage, recent news. The enrichment runs against multiple data sources so a missing field on one source gets filled by another.

The enriched record lands in your CRM (or in Prospector's own pipeline view if you don't have a CRM) within 60 seconds.

Qualification

Each enriched lead is scored against the ICP you set at hire. The ICP is structured: company size band, industry, role of the person who signed up, presence of specific signals (paid ads running, hiring for relevant roles, recent fundraise).

Leads that match: scheduled for founder time.
Leads that partially match: held for SDR-style outbound to expand contacts.
Leads that don't match: routed to nurture sequences or politely declined.

The founder gets demos with qualified leads. The unqualified ones don't waste their week.

Outbound sequencing

For partial-match and outbound-targeted leads, Prospector runs sequences. Email or LinkedIn or both depending on what's configured. Each sequence is 4-7 touches over 3-5 weeks. Replies route back to the operator's inbox; non-replies advance to the next touch automatically.

The sequences are personalized using the enrichment data — not "Hi {first_name}" mail-merge personalization, real personalization that references the company's recent news, the buyer's role-specific pain, the relevant integration in their stack.

The handoff to the founder

When a lead becomes founder-ready (qualified + warm enough to demo), Prospector schedules. The founder gets a calendar invite with a one-page brief: who the buyer is, what their role is, what they care about, what's been said in the sequence, what to ask.

The brief means the founder walks in cold to the meeting and warm to the context.

What it doesn't do

Prospector doesn't close. The closing motion stays with the founder (or whoever does sales) because closing is relationship work that does not delegate cleanly.

It also doesn't do account research above the SDR level — strategic account targeting for enterprise deals is closer to a VP Sales motion (which is what SALES the exec handles, separately).

How it compares

The closest market alternative is a senior SDR at $80-120k loaded, plus the tools the SDR uses (Apollo, Outreach, ZoomInfo) at another $500-1,500/mo combined. Total: ~$95-145k loaded.

SALES (which includes Prospector + OODA + Signals) is $99/mo. The math is not subtle.