From a business on the map to the person to call

To get from a business to a person, put the Apollo block after the step that found the businesses. Using your own Apollo account, it matches each company first by its website and, when that fails, by its public company profile, then looks for people whose job titles contain the words you give, up to ten per company. Expect gaps: small, single-site businesses are often not listed with anyone at all, so plan a second route for those.

This is for sales teams that already have a good list of local or regional companies, from places, job postings or their own sheet, and now need names, titles and work emails. It explains which job titles to ask for, how the matching works, what comes back, what to do when nobody is found, and how to make the first contact well.

Who to look for depends on the business

The right person changes with the size and kind of company. Ask for the titles that actually make your kind of decision there.

A starting point. Change the titles until the people found are the ones your team wants to reach.

Apollo matches job titles that contain your words, so purchasing manager also finds senior purchasing manager. Give two or three titles rather than ten, or the people found will drift away from the decision.

How companies are matched

The Apollo block works with your own Apollo account, on your Apollo plan. It does not use a shared xMap list. Each incoming company is matched in one of four ways, set under Find each company by:

• Website, then company profile (the default): the website first; when there is none, or it finds nobody, the company's public profile page, keeping only the Apollo company whose profile is the same one.
• Website only or company profile only, when you trust one of the two more.

Pages on social networks are not treated as company websites. The step says how many companies were matched each way, how many profiles Apollo did not know, and how many companies had neither. It handles up to 50 companies a run, and the same company appearing twice is asked about once.

What comes back

The Find setting decides what you get:

• Contacts at each company. People with the titles you gave, up to ten a company. Either each company goes on with its first contact's name, title and email and a count of contacts found, or each contact becomes its own item that still carries its company's fields, which suits sending one message per person.
• Company details. Industry, number of employees, revenue band, year founded, description and domain, useful for scoring before you look for anyone.
• A person from their email. For a list of addresses you already have, the person's name, title and company.

Apollo's people search on its own returns first names and titles. The Full name and work email option asks Apollo for each contact's details, which uses your Apollo plan. Test runs only search, so they show first names; Run once and live runs ask for the rest.

A worked example

Here is a made-up case, with invented numbers, to show what a run looks like. An office coffee supplier in Mexico City wants the people who run offices in two business districts.

1. Area of interest: the two districts, drawn on the map.
2. Nearby places: corporate offices and coworking spaces, with phone and website.
3. Only new, so each office is looked up once ever.
4. Apollo: Contacts at each company, titles office manager and facilities manager, one item per contact.
5. xMap LLM: one line on why coffee for staff might matter to this office, from what the earlier blocks found.
6. Outreach, with each first message waiting for approval.

Say the first run sends in 40 offices. In this invented run, 26 are matched by website and 6 by their company profile, and 8 have neither and are left without contacts. Of the 32 matched, 21 have someone with one of the two titles. That is the shape to expect: a good share of names, never all of them.

When nobody is found

The companies Apollo cannot match are still leads; they need another way in.

• Call the main number that Nearby places or Map business scan brought in, and ask for the role by its title.
• Write to the general address on the company's website.
• Visit, if it is a shop, clinic or restaurant: the owner is often there.
• Ask for the role, not the name, in your first message.

Keep these companies on the list with a note rather than dropping them; small independents are often the best customers precisely because nobody else can find them either.

Making the first contact

The Outreach block writes to each person for you: a first message, then up to two follow-ups a few days apart, stopping as soon as they reply. By email, every message carries an unsubscribe link, and people who unsubscribed, bounced or complained get nothing. Every first message waits for your approval, and you can rewrite it before it goes. For a one-off message, Draft intro on a result writes a first draft for WhatsApp or email that you send yourself.

Mistakes between business and person

• Too many titles. Ten titles find ten people per company, most of whom do not decide.
• Skipping Only new. The same companies get looked up every week, using your Apollo plan each time.
• Dropping unmatched companies. They need a phone call, not the bin.
• Sending before reading. Approve first messages; a wrong title in a greeting ends a conversation before it starts.

If the list behind this step is job postings, hiring signals near you covers how to build it.