Prospecting is the step where you decide who not to message

A list of every gym in Bengaluru is a fact about Bengaluru. A list of gyms in Bengaluru that are independently owned, have more than a handful of reviews, and do not already advertise the thing you sell is a hypothesis about your business.

The second one is prospecting. It can be wrong, which is exactly what makes it useful — a hypothesis produces information when it fails, and a list does not.

The description has to be specific enough to exclude things. A useful one names the industry, the size or maturity signal you can actually observe, the geography, and the trigger that makes now the moment.

On Rechlio this description is written once and every lead is scored against it, so the quality of that paragraph propagates through every list you build afterwards. It is worth an hour.

The argument for qualifying is usually made on taste. It is also straightforwardly cheaper, and the numbers are small enough to do in your head.

Five hundred businesses found costs ₹1,500. Scoring all five hundred costs ₹1,000. Messaging the best two hundred on WhatsApp costs ₹0 on Rechlio, plus whatever Meta charges for those conversations. Messaging all five hundred instead would save the ₹1,000 of scoring — and spend three hundred more conversations, plus three hundred more chances at a block, on businesses you had a reason to skip.

On email the arithmetic is the same shape with different numbers: three hundred unnecessary sends is ₹105 through ZeptoMail, and rather more in sending reputation.

• Write the ideal-customer description, specific enough to exclude things.
• Build a list for one industry in one city. One, so you can tell what worked.
• Score it, and read the bottom of the ranking as well as the top — that is where you find out whether your description says what you meant.
• Message the top slice, in business hours, on the channel that category actually answers.
• Watch the behaviour score, not the send count.
• Change one thing and run it again.

How big should a prospecting list be?

Small enough that you could describe why each business is on it. In practice that is usually a couple of hundred, not thousands — and if you cannot articulate the criterion, that is the finding, not the list size.

Should I qualify manually or let the AI do it?

Both, in that order. Write the criteria yourself, because that is the part that requires knowing your business. Then let scoring apply them at volume at ₹2 a lead, which is the part that is unbearable by hand.

What if my ideal customer profile is wrong?

You will find out from replies faster than from any amount of analysis, which is an argument for a first campaign that is small and specific rather than large and hedged. The behaviour score is what tells you — see lead scoring.