Deep research
Deep Research builds per-prospect context from web, news, job postings, announcements, and your CRM, then produces cited research and a recommended messaging angle.
Deep Research builds substantive context on each prospect before Alice writes anything. It compiles from web sources, news, job postings, and company announcements, layers in your CRM data, and produces a research report containing prospect-specific insights framed against your products, source citations, and a recommended messaging strategy you can review before outreach goes out.
What makes it different from enrichment
Enrichment appends fields. Research produces an argument.
| Data enrichment | Deep Research | |
|---|---|---|
| Output | Firmographic and contact fields | A research report with insights and a recommended angle |
| Framing | Generic, provider-defined | Framed against your products and positioning |
| Traceability | None | Source citations for every finding |
| Freshness | Cached at provider refresh | Live web plus current news and postings |
| Usable by a human | As a record | As a briefing |
The source citations matter more than they look. They let you verify a claim before it goes out — and inaccurate research is worse than no research, because it actively damages credibility with exactly the accounts you care about.
Sources
| Source | What it surfaces |
|---|---|
| Web | Product positioning, public strategy, site content |
| News | Funding, launches, leadership changes, market events |
| Job postings | Hiring direction, tooling in use, team build-out, priorities |
| Company announcements | Initiatives worth referencing, timing signals |
| Your CRM | Account history, prior interactions, opportunity context |
Job postings are the highest-signal public source for most B2B products. What a company is hiring for reveals what they're building, what they're struggling with, and which tools they've committed to — often before any of it is announced.
Customizing with directives
Directives tell Deep Research what to look for. This is the main lever for making research relevant to your specific motion.
Examples of directives in the form 11x documents:
research 10-K for Gen AI initiativesfocus on compliance pain points
Write directives from your qualifying questions
Whatever a good rep would want to know before a first call is what the directive should ask for.
Be specific about the document or source
"Research the 10-K for AI initiatives" produces sharper output than "research their AI strategy."
Point at pain, not just facts
Directives that surface a problem give Alice something to write about. Directives that surface trivia give her something to mention.
Use one directive set per motion
A competitive takeout play and an event follow-up play need different research.
Product scoping
You configure which knowledge base resources inform the research. If you sell multiple products, select only the relevant resources so Alice frames insights around that offering rather than pitching everything at once.
This is the same scoping principle as the knowledge base, applied to research framing rather than message content.
How research reaches the outreach
Research isn't a separate artifact you read and act on. It feeds directly into Alice, so every email and follow-up in the sequence references what the research surfaced.
Reviewing research before launch
Pull a sample of 15–20 prospects
Enough to see patterns, few enough to actually read.
Check accuracy against the citations
Follow the sources. A confidently wrong finding is the failure mode that costs you accounts.
Judge the recommended angle
Ask whether a good rep would open with this. If not, your directives or scoping need work.
Check for sameness
If the research reads nearly identical across prospects, your ICP segment is too broad or your directives are too generic.
Reported outcomes
11x reports customers seeing 1.5x qualified meetings with this approach, and some accounts generating $1M+ pipeline within three months.
Aggregate figures published by 11x, not a guarantee. See case studies for named results.