How to Find Leads in Claude

To find leads in Claude, connect it to a tool that has access to company or contact data. Claude can help define an ideal customer profile, research public information, and draft outreach, but it is not a native company database or email-verification service. ToolRouter exposes Lead Finder for prospecting and enrichment, Lead Planner for structured strategy, and People Search for public-source research through one connector.

Claude can synthesize targeting logic, interpret company descriptions, and reason across multiple signals. Connected data tools add repeatable database lookups and structured outputs; native web research and database enrichment are different capabilities.

The useful workflow separates three steps: define who qualifies, retrieve candidate records from an allowed source, then review accuracy before outreach. Claude helps with the first and third steps; connected tools supply the structured data for the second.

What Claude Can and Cannot Do Natively for Lead Generation#

Claude's built-in capabilities for sales work are real but bounded:

• Claude can help you define an ideal customer profile from first principles.
• Claude can write cold outreach emails, LinkedIn messages, and follow-up sequences.
• Claude can analyze a company's website, product, and positioning if you paste in the content.
• Claude can build persona frameworks and prioritization logic.
• Claude cannot search a live database of companies or contacts.
• Claude cannot find or verify email addresses.
• Claude's web research is not a substitute for a structured contact database or verification service.
• Claude cannot generate lead lists from filters like funding stage, headcount, geography, or job title.

The practical split looks like this:

If your goal is to think about sales strategy, Claude alone is often enough. If your goal is to produce actual leads with real contact information, you need database access. That is what the ToolRouter connection provides.

How to Connect ToolRouter and Start Finding Leads#

The setup is the same two-step process as any connector.

1. In Claude, go to Customize → Connectors → + → Add custom connector.
2. Enter:

• Name: ToolRouter
• URL: https://api.toolrouter.com/mcp

1. Start chatting normally.

Once connected, you describe the outcome you want rather than memorizing tool names:

• "Find 30 Series A SaaS companies in the UK that are hiring a Head of Sales."
• "Get me the LinkedIn and email for the Head of Partnerships at Notion."
• "Find companies similar to Figma but smaller — I want to prospect their marketing teams."
• "Build me a cold outreach plan for my consulting business, starting with a diagnosis of what kind of leads I need."

Claude picks the right tool, decides what to pass it, and handles multi-step workflows without you manually moving data between applications.

Which ToolRouter Lead Tool to Use#

The three tools handle different phases of the prospecting workflow. Most users end up using all three in sequence.

The practical workflow for most people is: Lead Planner to figure out who to target → Lead Finder to find and enrich contacts → People Search for individual deep-dives → Lead Planner for building the outreach copy and plan.

Four Lead Generation Workflows That Are Better Than Cold Lists#

The most valuable approaches are usually chained conversations, not single-shot searches.

1. ICP-First Company Prospecting#

Use this when you have a vague sense of your target customer but need actual companies.

Workflow: Lead Planner (diagnose) → Lead Finder (find_companies) → Lead Finder (enrich_company)

Example:

I sell a B2B SaaS product for construction project management. Revenue is $30k MRR. I mostly close deals via warm intro and inbound. Help me diagnose my lead gen bottleneck, then find 25 construction companies in the US with 50-200 employees that are growing and enrich each domain to get contacts.

This is where Claude's reasoning adds real value on top of the database. A filter-only tool returns results that match criteria. Claude interprets "growing construction companies" into the right query logic, diagnoses whether your outreach or targeting is the real bottleneck, and then calls the lead finder with the right parameters. You get a list that reflects intent, not just metadata.

2. Contact Enrichment With Email Candidates#

Use this when you already have a company list and need contacts.

Workflow: Lead Finder (find_people) → Lead Finder (enrich_person)

Example:

Here's a list of 15 companies I want to reach: [paste domains]. For each, find the Head of Marketing or Director of Demand Generation, then enrich their contact info. I need verified work emails if possible.

Lead Finder can return email candidates with source or confidence information when the underlying provider supplies it. Treat every address as a candidate until it has been checked; coverage and accuracy vary by company, geography, and provider.

What Claude adds here is the qualification pass. Before calling enrich, it can look at the company list, spot which ones are actually a good fit, and deprioritize the rest so you are not enriching 100 contacts when you only want the 20 most likely to convert.

3. Lookalike Expansion From a Competitor URL#

Use this when your best customers look like each other and you want to find more.

Workflow: Lead Finder (find_similar) → Lead Finder (enrich_company or find_people)

Example:

My best customers are similar to Intercom, Zendesk, and Freshdesk — SaaS companies with a support team of 20-50 people. Find me 40 lookalike companies using those three URLs as seeds. Then find the VP of Customer Success at each.

The find_similar skill takes a competitor or reference URL and returns companies with similar characteristics. It is a faster starting point than trying to define every filter manually. This works well when you know who your happy customers look like but not necessarily how to express that in a database query.

4. Individual Research Before a Big Reach-Out#

Use this when you are about to reach out to a specific person and want real context first.

Workflow: People Search (deep_search or osint_search) → Lead Planner (outreach_plan)

Example:

Before I reach out to [name], the Head of Revenue at [company], find everything publicly available: their LinkedIn, recent posts, podcast appearances, articles they've written, companies they've worked at. Then help me write an outreach email that references something specific.

People Search can start from a name, email, username, or phone and return public-source links and profiles. Only collect information you are permitted to use, avoid sensitive personal data, and check the result against its original source.

The result can support pre-call research without moving between several tools. Keep personalization relevant and proportionate; do not turn unrelated personal information into outreach copy.

Best Prompts to Use in Claude#

These prompt patterns work well once ToolRouter is connected.

Company prospecting with specific filters#

Find 30 e-commerce companies in the US that are:
- Funded between $1M and $20M (Seed to Series A)
- 20-100 employees
- Hiring for a marketing or growth role
- Selling a physical product, not software

Then enrich each domain to get headcount, tech stack, and main contacts.
I want to reach out to whoever owns the paid ads budget.

Contact find with email enrichment#

I have this list of companies: [paste list of domains].
For each, find the person responsible for procurement or operations — 
VP, Director, or Head of level. Enrich with their work email and LinkedIn URL.
Include the source and confidence information for each email candidate so I can verify it before use.

Lookalike prospecting from existing customers#

One of my best customers is https://example.com.
Use that URL as the seed for a similar-company search, then return the closest matches.
I will run a separate search for each additional customer and compare the results.

Personal research before outreach#

I'm reaching out to [full name] at [company] tomorrow.
Find what you can about them publicly — LinkedIn, recent content, career history,
any interviews or podcast appearances. Then write a personalized opening line
for a cold email that I could realistically have noticed without being creepy.

Lead generation strategy diagnosis#

Here is my business: [brief description].
Current monthly revenue: [amount]. Lead sources: [how you currently get leads].
Team: [size and structure]. Goal: [what you're trying to achieve].
Diagnose where my lead generation is actually breaking down and give me
one specific plan to fix the most important bottleneck first.

Why One Connector Beats Stitching Together Separate Lead Tools#

Manual lead research workflows are common. They usually look like this: use one tool to get a company list, export it to a spreadsheet, paste company names into a separate email finder, verify results in another tool, move everything into a CRM, then open Claude separately to write outreach. That works. It is also slow and loses context constantly.

Here is what the comparison looks like in practice:

The specific thing that disappears when you use a single conversation is re-explanation. If you find a company list, enrich it, and then ask Claude to write tailored outreach in the same thread, Claude already knows the company names, the contact details, the target role, and the tone you have been using. You do not have to paste anything back in. You do not have to explain what you already told it. That continuity is worth more than the feature comparison suggests.