AI in sales
AI assistants for prospecting: how Claude or ChatGPT finds B2B contact details
A salesperson gives an AI assistant, such as Claude or ChatGPT, a single request and gets the target audience size, contact details and outreach drafts in the same conversation. The assistant can help move the work from one stage to the next without you having to repeat the brief in every tool. You define the target audience, approve how many contacts to retrieve, and review the data and messages before the next step.
In brief: The assistant counts your target audience for free, retrieves the contact details you approve, and prepares a CRM transfer and message drafts. You can guide each stage in the same conversation and separately approve the search, data transfer and drafts.
Want to try it now? Connect NordicContacts to your AI assistant.
Why use an assistant for prospecting?
In a typical workflow, you move from a search service to a spreadsheet, from the spreadsheet to your CRM, and from there to email. At every handover, you need to remember the original criteria, check the data and tell the next tool what you are doing. With Claude or ChatGPT, you can keep the goal and progress in one conversation.
Your request might look like this:
Find prospective customers in Finland for HR software, add the top 50 to a separate list in my CRM, and draft initial outreach messages for review.
This request contains several separate tasks. The assistant first needs to establish what makes a company a good fit and what “top” means. It can then count the companies matching your criteria, retrieve the approved number of contacts and prepare the next steps.
One conversation does not mean one unrestricted command. A practical workflow includes checkpoints: you approve the target audience, the number of contacts to retrieve and the data transfer before execution. This lets the assistant reduce manual work without deciding on your behalf who to contact.
Why isn’t web search enough as a source of contact details?
Web search helps you learn about a company’s business, products and recent news. That is a different task from counting a defined group of companies or retrieving usable contact details. Finding a name and job title online does not tell you whether a verified work email is available or whether the person’s duties include the responsibility you are targeting.
| Task | Assistant relying only on web search | NordicContacts as a data source |
|---|---|---|
| Finding a work email | May guess the address from the company’s email format | Verified work emails: all exportable addresses have been checked within the past 91 days. See data quality monitoring. |
| Identifying responsibilities | May infer responsibilities from a job title alone | Responsibility filters help narrow the search |
| Counting the target audience | Search results do not provide a reliable total market count | Free counting shows the number of companies or contacts in the database matching your criteria |
| Search cost | Browsing pages does not guarantee a usable contact list | Counting is free; paid search tools deduct usage from your balance. |
Describe your target audience and let the assistant ask for clarification
Start with companies, not the number of people. Our example target audience for HR software is companies in Finland with 10–49 employees, where at least one contact has a valid work email address. This excludes companies outside that employee range and companies whose employee count is unknown.
In the NordicContacts database, 7,693 companies meet these company criteria, as of October 2026. The conversation could go like this:
User: Find companies in Finland with 10–49 employees for HR software. I want an HR director with a work email as the contact. Count the results first; don’t retrieve contact details yet.
Assistant: 7,693 companies meet the company criteria. An HR contact is available at 484 of them, and a CEO at 5,907. Should we use the CEO where no HR contact is available?
User: Yes. Show me the final search criteria first, then retrieve up to 50 contacts after I approve them.
The role-specific figures refer to companies in the same example segment where a contact in that role is available with a work email address. They are not contact counts and should not be added together: a company may have both roles. This is an example segment in the database, not the entire Finnish market.
Broadening a request for an HR director to include anyone responsible for HR, or the CEO, is a choice that must be shown to the user. Finding a CEO also does not establish that they are responsible for buying HR systems. You can confirm that in the first conversation.
Set separate boundaries for the search, CRM transfer and messages
Give the assistant an order of operations and keep tool approval prompts enabled so you can catch a misinterpretation before data is retrieved or transferred.
- Count first. Ask for the country, employee range, contact detail requirements, role options and counting results, with company and contact counts shown separately.
- Approve retrieval with an upper limit. Authorize the retrieval of, for example, up to 50 contacts, and specify how many contacts you will accept from a single company.
- Check for missing information. Ask the assistant to report missing roles and data without inventing values or relaxing the criteria on its own.
- Check for duplicates before transferring data to your CRM. Compare the results with existing companies and people, then transfer the approved data to a separate list.
- Keep emails as drafts. Request drafts for review without granting permission to send, and approve the content yourself.
“Top 50” needs a selection criterion relevant to your business. The assistant should explain it briefly without presenting willingness to buy as a known attribute unless there is evidence.
Connect NordicContacts to Claude or ChatGPT
In ChatGPT, start with the app directory: NordicContacts in OpenAI’s app directory. Enable the connection and, before the first task, make sure the assistant has access to the search tools it needs.
In Claude and other MCP clients, add https://nordiccontacts.eu/mcp as the connection URL. Sign in through your browser. You can find detailed setup steps in the technical documentation. A new account may receive a free trial that includes a one-time download of up to 50 contacts. MCP is included in the Starter subscription.
Working with your CRM and saving email drafts to your email service require separate tool connections and sufficient permissions; the NordicContacts connection alone does not provide access to them. Limit permissions to the task: preparing a prospect list does not require permission to send messages or change other customer data.
Start by checking how the assistant interprets your target audience and running a free count. Then approve a limited contact search, and add the CRM transfer and message drafts only after reviewing the results.