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YES

As of 13 August 2026, AI can find decision-makers at target companies.

This still needs a person who signs their name to it.

Can you do it?

15 minutesto a draft.

30 minutesto something you’d act on.

Cost, all in£0/month

Skill neededpower-user

Who has to check ityou

What the alternative costsThe alternative is manual research by a salesperson or sales researcher; no comparable price is provided here.

If this goes wrong: you contact the wrong person, waste sales time and damage your credibility with a company you may want to approach again.

What to actually do

  1. Hand it to a person

    The route this page recommends

    A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

  2. Use a tool built for this

    Second choice

  3. Do it yourself

    The distant third

    A chat interface, power-user skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

    How to actually do it

    1. Open a spreadsheet and add columns for company, domain, target function, seniority, person, current title, source URL, evidence, confidence and verification status.
    2. Gather the target company names or domains and define the buying decision, geography, relevant departments and seniority before searching.
    3. Paste the target list and criteria into the prompt, then ask the chatbot to produce a shortlist without inventing missing contact details.
    4. Open Apollo.io or another approved prospecting database, search each company and filter for the functions and seniority in your criteria.
    5. Compare every suggested person with the company website and a current professional profile, then record the source URL and mark the record confirmed or unverified.
    6. Remove people whose role is outdated, unrelated or based only on an inference, and keep a separate list of companies with no confirmed decision-maker.
    7. Send only the verified shortlist to your CRM or outreach workflow, and check your intended contact method against your organisation's UK marketing and data-protection process before sending.

    Prompt

    Find the likely decision-makers at the target companies below for this offer: [DESCRIBE THE OFFER]. Target companies: [PASTE COMPANY NAMES OR DOMAINS]. Market and geography: [STATE MARKET AND COUNTRY OR REGION]. Look for people who influence or approve [STATE THE BUYING DECISION]. Prioritise these functions and seniority levels: [LIST JOB TITLES OR FUNCTIONS]. Exclude: [LIST EXCLUSIONS]. Return a table with company, person, current job title, evidence for why they are relevant, public professional profile or company-page URL, likely buying role, confidence level, and what still needs checking. Use only information available in the supplied sources or clearly identified public sources. Do not invent names, job titles, email addresses or evidence. Mark a person as unverified if you cannot confirm that they currently hold the role. Separate confirmed facts from inferences, and flag companies where no suitable decision-maker can be identified. Do not recommend contacting anyone until the records have been checked.

    Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.

What it gets wrong

  • AI cannot reliably know whether a job title is current when public pages and databases are out of date.
  • AI cannot infer the real internal buying process from a company chart alone.
  • AI cannot access every relevant profile, database or private contact record without the permissions and subscriptions you provide.
  • AI cannot decide whether contacting a particular person is appropriate for your relationship, timing or compliance process.

Even on a YES, the friction has a name: real time truth, verification cost and private data access.

How we scored this

Five axes, each scored nought to two by hand: ten means AI carries the task cleanly, and the thresholds that turn a total into YES, PARTLY or NO are published in the methodology. Each axis name links to its definition.

AxisScore (0–2)
Output2
Inputs2
Verification1
Liability2
Effort delta2
Total9 / 10

The methodology and its thresholds are published in full.

FAQ

Can AI find the right person to contact at a company?
Yes, it can produce a useful shortlist from company names, buying criteria, job titles and seniority. Treat the result as likely contacts rather than proof that they own the decision, and check each current role before outreach.
Can ChatGPT find decision-makers on LinkedIn?
It can help organise information you provide and suggest search criteria, but it cannot guarantee access to current LinkedIn records or confirm every job change. A specialist database such as Apollo.io is more directly suited to searching and enriching company contacts.
How do I find decision-makers at target companies?
Define the buying decision, target function, seniority and geography, then search each company in a prospecting database. Confirm the person's current role against a company source or current professional profile before adding them to outreach.
Can AI find work email addresses for decision-makers?
Some prospecting tools can provide or infer business contact routes, but the data can be wrong or out of date. Do not treat an inferred address as confirmed, and check that your use of the information fits your organisation's UK marketing and data-protection process.

Nearby answers

All Prospecting & outreach rulings

Assessed by gpt-5.6-luna (gpt-5.6-luna) on 2026-08-13, second-checked by an independent model. Wrong somewhere? Email [email protected] and it gets re-checked.

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