ZoomInfo and Cognism weren’t surfacing useful insights. Every morning, he faced a list of 100+ accounts with no signal on where to start or how to personalize.
The Manual Research Marathon
Before HG Insights, Takuya’s mornings started the same way: coffee in hand, browser tabs multiplying across his screen. Each account demanded the same exhausting deep dive. He’d start with company websites, hunting for recent data breaches, security incidents, or compliance announcements that might create urgency. Then came the news pages, where he’d scan for cloud migration announcements or digital transformation initiatives that could signal a buying opportunity.
After an hour of hunting across 8-10 scattered sources, he’d have a pile of disconnected data points—but barely enough time left for actual outreach.
The real challenge was not only finding information, but also piecing together fragmented data to answer one critical question: Why should this account care about application security right now?
The pressure was mounting: too much work, not enough time, and no clear way to prioritize. He was trapped in the classic SDR dilemma: needing to be both fast and thoughtful, but unable to be either.
From Manual to AI-Powered Research with Account Brief
Everything changed when Takuya discovered HG Insights Account Brief. Unlike other tools that scatter insights across multiple dashboards, the Account Brief delivered a unified intelligence report for each target account—think of it as having a personal research assistant for each account.
The Account Brief became Takuya’s secret weapon, automatically surfacing the exact signals he used to hunt for manually: engineering hiring surges, recent security incidents, leadership appointments, funding rounds, and web activity spikes on security content. But more importantly, it synthesized these signals into a coherent narrative about why each account is ready to buy now.
Once Takuya gained access to HG Insights Copilot, he adopted a quick repeatable workflow that transformed his entire approach to prospecting:
Feed → Account Brief → Message → SalesLoft
Armed with a prioritized list of accounts to focus on (using the Feed), the Account Brief then gave him instant, comprehensive company context. With these insights, he could craft compelling “Why You, Why Now” messages, polish them in ChatGPT, and launch targeted campaigns through SalesLoft.
“Without HG Insights, I’d still be doing everything manually. The Account Brief saves me hours every day and helps me focus on the right accounts with the right message at the right time.
With all that time saved from research, Takuya could finally focus on what mattered most: crafting highly personalized outreach. He spent the extra hours perfecting his messaging, diving deeper into each prospect’s specific pain points, and timing his outreach perfectly.
The Right Signals
For Takuya, selling Snyk’s developer security platform, the Account Brief’s ability to surface security-specific signals became a true differentiator. Rather than hoping to stumble across relevant news, the Brief automatically highlighted the data points that mattered most for his prospects:
Key signals HG Insights Account Brief surfaces:
- Engineering hiring surges (especially DevOps, Platform, and Security roles)
- Recent security incidents or compliance requirements in the news
- Technology stack changes suggesting modernization efforts
- Competitive intelligence around existing security tooling (GitHub, Veracode, BlackDuck)
- Leadership changes in engineering or security teams (new CISO/CSO appointments)
- Funding rounds or expansion announcements indicating growth capital
- Web activity spikes on security-related content and pricing pages
These signals also transformed how Takuya approached messaging. Instead of generic outreach, he could craft messages around precise timing (“I see you’re hiring 5 DevOps engineers this quarter…”) and sharp relevance (“With your recent Series B funding, securing your development pipeline is probably top of mind for your new CISO…”).
Less Time Researching, More Time Selling
By the end of Q1 2025, just three months into his role, Takuya had achieved something remarkable: 100% quota attainment in one of the most challenging markets for sales intelligence.
The transformation was measurable across every key metric:
- ⏱️ Research time dropped 95% — from 1 hour to 2–5 minutes per account
- 📈 Reply rates increased 67% — from 2–3% to 5%
- 🚀 Daily volume grew 4x — from 1–2 accounts to 5–10 accounts per day
HG Insights Account Brief helps strategic SDRs
- Cut research time from 1 hour to 2 minutes with comprehensive intelligence reports
- Prioritize accounts based on real buying signals instead of guessing
- Personalize outreach using data-driven insights that prospects actually care about
- Scale their daily prospecting volume without sacrificing message quality
If your SDR team is still manually researching accounts one tab at a time, it’s time to upgrade to intelligence-driven prospecting.
