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F2 — AI Prospecting Engine

Search Apollo's 275M+ contact database for leads that match your ICP, with a natural-language search bar or structured filters. Bulk-import matches as Contacts in one click; emails + phones come pre-enriched via the same Hunter→Apollo waterfall used everywhere in CRMown.

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Steps

  1. Go to Tools > Lead Generation > Prospecting (or /dashboard/leadgen/prospecting).
  2. Type a natural-language query ("VPs of Engineering at Series B SaaS in NYC") — the AI parses it into structured Apollo filters. Or click "Structured filters" to set titles, industries, locations, company sizes, and keywords directly.
  3. Click Search. Apollo returns up to 100 matching contacts; preview cards show name, title, company, location, and verified-email status.
  4. Select the rows you want and click Import. Each becomes a Contact with source=ai_prospecting, tagged with the search ID for attribution. Emails are auto-enriched via Apollo at import time.
  5. Re-open any past search from the history list — the preview is cached so you can import additional rows later without burning more Apollo credits.
  6. Signal search (F4): add buying/timing signals to any query — "just raised Series A", "hiring 10+ AEs", "uses HubSpot", "recently changed jobs". The parser extracts them into signal chips shown under the search bar. Click "＋ Save as signal" to turn the search into a Saved Signal that re-runs on a daily or weekly cadence and surfaces only genuinely-new matches (a "N new" badge); matches that are already contacts also drop a signal-match event on the contact's timeline (feeds Intent Signals / F7).

Good to know

  • Apollo credits: Pro tier 75 People Searches/mo, Max 150/mo, Custom 600/mo. Each Search returns up to 100 contacts. Counter resets monthly.
  • Imported contacts pull title, company, location, employee count, and industry into custom fields automatically — F8 AI SDR and F7 intent scoring both read those.
  • The natural-language parser is best at "title at company-type in location" patterns plus the F4 signals (funding / hiring / tech stack / job change). Note: signals widen the Apollo keyword query (best-effort) rather than hard-filtering — Apollo People Search can't strictly filter funding/tech without org-search reference data — so treat signal results as "signal-leaning", not guaranteed. Saved Signals are where the value compounds: they re-run on their own and tell you who's NEW since last time.
  • Saved Signals caps: 1 saved signal on Starter, 5 on Pro, unlimited on Max / Marketing suite. Paused signals still occupy a slot. Each automatic re-run burns one prospect-result credit just like a manual search.
Example: A 2-person agency shipping Webflow sites for D2C brands runs one prospecting search per week: "Marketing managers at D2C beauty brands in the US, 10-50 employees, using Shopify". 73 matches, 41 imported. Their Friday outbound queue is built in 6 minutes — vs. the 4 hours of LinkedIn scrolling they used to do.

Troubleshooting

"No results found" on a sensible query
Apollo's filters are AND-combined — too many constraints can zero out the result set. Common culprits: super-narrow location, very specific title, niche industry combined with small company size.
Fix: Drop the most restrictive filter and try again. Build up filters one at a time to find the breakpoint.
"Apollo credits exhausted"
Hit the monthly People Search cap for your suite tier.
Fix: Wait for next month's reset (1st of the month UTC), or upgrade your suite tier. Already-cached searches can still import additional rows without consuming credits.
Some imported contacts have no email
Apollo couldn't verify an email for that person. CRMown still imports the row with name + company + title so you can enrich later via LinkedIn or other sources.
Fix: Manually add the email later, or run Bulk Enrich (Hunter falls back to AI inference) on the import batch.
"You've used N of N saved signal searches"
Hit the concurrent saved-signal cap for your plan (Starter 1 · Pro 5 · Max unlimited). Paused signals still count.
Fix: Delete a saved signal you no longer need, or upgrade. The cap is on how many you keep, not how often they run.
A Saved Signal shows "never run" / 0 new matches
Cadence not yet due (the daily/weekly worker only runs each one when its interval elapses), or there genuinely were no new matches since last run.
Fix: Click "Run now" to force an immediate re-run. New matches are de-duplicated against everyone the signal has surfaced before, so a 0 is normal once you've already seen the obvious matches.

Plans

Core (Lead Gen is included on every plan). Per-month prospect-result caps: Starter 100, Pro 500, Max unlimited*. Marketing suite makes any plan unlimited*. *On unlimited plans (Max or Marketing suite) we still apply a 2,000/mo soft cap on the SHARED Apollo platform key — at the cap we serve a "Connect your own Apollo key" nudge that routes to /settings?tab=integrations instead of a plan-upgrade nudge. Connecting a BYOK Apollo key (org.apolloApiKey) makes prospecting truly unlimited. Caps deduct per result returned (not per search). On Starter/Pro the operational cap applies regardless of BYOK — BYOK only lifts the cost cap, not the usage cap, on those plans.

Related

  • F1 ICP Builder (auto-fills search filters)
  • F8 AI SDR (drives prospecting on autopilot daily)
  • Contact Enrichment (the same Apollo waterfall is used here)

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