For sales reps, AEs & SDRs

Walk into every sales call already knowing the angle.

Type a prospect’s name and what you sell. Brief returns a sharp pre-call brief in seconds — who they are, the why-now, the hooks, and the questions that land. Not a generic dossier. Not 20 minutes of tabs.

Brief is an AI pre-call research tool for sales. Type a prospect’s name (and optionally your company), and it researches them across the live web and returns a structured pre-meeting brief in seconds — who they are, what they likely care about, a “why now” trigger, and the conversation hooks and questions to open with. It’s the homework a well-prepared rep does in 20 minutes, ready before the call connects.

The pain

By the time you get the meeting, the buyer has already done their homework — and mostly made up their mind. Show up with “I hope this finds you well” or a fact skimmed off LinkedIn and you don’t just underwhelm; you lose the room before you speak.

The “discovery call” is really just them stress testing a decision they’ve mostly already made.
— a sales rep, on r/techsales

How it’s done today: Today that means LinkedIn, the company site, and recent news, dumped into ChatGPT — 15 to 45 minutes a call, redone every time. So on a back-to-back day you skip it and send the same templated note as everyone else.

By the numbers

96% of buyers research you first

HubSpot’s 2025 sales statistics report that 96% of prospects research companies and products before they ever engage a rep — so showing up uninformed cedes ground you can’t win back.

Source: HubSpot, 2025

28% of the week actually selling

Salesforce’s 2023 State of Sales found reps spend just 28% of the week actually selling; research and admin eat the rest. The prep gap is structural, not a personal failing.

Source: Salesforce State of Sales, 2023

73% expect you to get their world

Per Salesforce (2023), 73% of buyers expect companies to understand their unique needs, and over 8 in 10 reps say buyers increasingly research before they ever reach out.

Source: Salesforce State of Sales, 2023

55% say research is the #1 cold-call move

HubSpot (2025) found 55% of successful cold callers name a personalized, research-driven approach as their single most effective technique.

Source: HubSpot, 2025

2–3× reply rate from real personalization

Emails personalized individually earn two-to-three times the reply rate of basic templates (Mailshake, via HubSpot) — real one-to-one homework, not merge-field tricks.

Source: Mailshake via HubSpot, 2025

How to use Brief as a sales rep

  1. 1

    Type the prospect’s name and your company — or paste their LinkedIn URL.

  2. 2

    Get who they are, their company’s priorities, a why-now trigger, three conversation hooks, and the smart questions to ask — every claim linked to its source.

  3. 3

    Use it to open the call on the angle that actually matters to them, then ask the questions that move it forward — instead of reciting a script.

Brief vs. doing it manually

15–45 minutes across a dozen tabs, per prospect

One structured brief in seconds

A pile of disconnected facts

A why-now angle, hooks, and questions to use

Skipped on a back-to-back day

Fast enough to do before every call

No idea how current it is

Live web research, with sources to verify

Why Brief is better

  • Leads with why-now, not just who — so you enter before the buyer’s criteria harden.
  • Hands you the angle and the questions to ask — to open a conversation, never to recite at them.
  • 60 seconds from a name or a calendar invite. It augments your judgment; it isn’t autopilot.

Straight answers

I can just Google them and check LinkedIn myself.

You can — but that’s 15–45 minutes per prospect across a dozen tabs. Brief does the same open-web sweep and hands you a structured brief, with hooks and questions, in the time it takes to read one.

How do I know it’s accurate? AI makes things up.

Every brief is built from cited open-web sources and labeled AI-generated and possibly inaccurate, so you can verify the load-bearing facts before you walk in. It’s a head start, not a replacement for your judgment.

Isn’t profiling a stranger before a call a bit creepy?

Brief only surfaces what’s already public on the open web — the same things your prospect expects you to have read — and honors no-login takedown requests. Nothing here is data the person hasn’t already published.

Frequently asked

How do I research a prospect before a sales call?

Pull together who they are, their company’s current priorities, and a recent “why now” trigger (a role change, funding, a hire, a public post), then turn that into one or two specific opening questions. With Brief you type the prospect’s name and your company and get that as a structured brief in seconds, instead of assembling it across LinkedIn, the company site, and news yourself.

How long should pre-call research take?

Manually, a good pre-call sweep runs 15–45 minutes per prospect — which is why reps spend only about 28% of the week actually selling (Salesforce, 2023) and often skip prep on busy days. A tool like Brief compresses it to under a minute, so you can prepare for every call, not just the big ones.

What should a pre-call brief include?

A useful pre-call brief covers who the person is, what their company cares about right now, a why-now trigger, two or three conversation hooks, and the sharp questions to ask — with sources so you can verify before you cite anything. Brief structures every brief this way.

Is it creepy to research a prospect before a call?

No — buyers expect it. 96% of prospects research you before engaging (HubSpot, 2025), and 73% expect you to understand their needs (Salesforce, 2023). The line is using public, professional, recent signal to ask a better question — not parroting a personal detail back at them.

Related

Other use cases

Your next call is already on the calendar.

Type any name. Get a structured pre-call brief in seconds — your first one’s free.

Brief your next prospect →