> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.getswan.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Prospecting

> Finding net-new companies and people before you spend credits enriching them.

Prospecting is how Swan finds net-new accounts and people you haven't already added to your database — as opposed to [enrichment](enrichment), which deepens data on a company or contact you've already identified. The two-step flow is: search broadly for free, then enrich only the specific results worth pursuing.

Where: this runs through conversation, not a search form — ask the agent in [Chat](https://agent.getswan.com/chat), or use the "Find new accounts" prompt shown on the empty [Accounts](https://agent.getswan.com/companies) page, which describes your ICP and has the agent build and add the list from there.

## Company search

Ask Swan to find companies matching criteria like industry, employee count, revenue range, headquarters or operating location, company age, tech stack, or keywords on their website — and it returns a preview list at no cost in credits. This is a good way to build a first-pass list before committing to enrichment on any of them.

Filters must use valid values the underlying data provider recognizes — for company size ranges, revenue bands, industry categories, and so on. Rather than guessing, Swan looks up valid options first (for things like specific technologies, industry categories, or intent topics) so a search for "companies using Snowflake" resolves to the exact value the provider expects instead of failing on a near-miss spelling.

## People search

The same free-preview approach applies to finding people: search across all companies, or within one specific company, by title keywords, seniority, department, location (or explicitly excluding a location), and how recently someone moved into their current role. This is useful both for open-ended prospecting ("find revops leaders at mid-market SaaS companies") and for quick lookups ("does this company have a VP of Sales, and who is it").

Company and people search previews return a capped set of results per call — for a larger sequence, the agent runs the search repeatedly with different filters or pagination rather than pulling everything in one shot.

## Turning a prospect into an actionable contact

Preview results give you enough to judge fit — name, title, company, a snippet of firmographic data — but not a verified email, phone number, or full profile. Getting from a preview result to something the agent can actually act on (add to a sequence, hand to a teammate as a task) is where enrichment, and credits, come in. See [enrichment](enrichment) for what that costs.

## Intent and event-based discovery

Beyond filter-based search, Swan can surface companies based on signals rather than static firmographics:

* **[Bombora intent](../triggers/bombora-intent)** — buyer intent signals showing a company is actively researching topics related to what you sell.
* **[Business events](../triggers/business-events)** — firmographic and company-level events, like funding rounds, hiring surges, or leadership changes.

Both can also be used as filters within a company search (for example, "companies in my ICP with high buying intent on cloud security topics in the last 30 days"), not just as standalone triggers.

## Common questions

**Does browsing or previewing prospects cost credits?**
No — company search and people search previews are free. Credits are only spent when you enrich a specific result.

**Can Swan crawl arbitrary websites to build a prospect list?**
No — prospecting works off Swan's connected data providers and structured filters, not general web crawling. For niche sources outside that, a webhook or CSV import is the usual path.

**What happens if I use an invalid filter value, like a misspelled technology name?**
Swan looks up valid values first for fields like technologies, industry categories, and intent topics, so the agent typically corrects to the right term automatically or asks you to confirm.

**Is there a limit on how many results one search returns?**
Yes, each call returns a capped page of results; larger searches are handled by paging through multiple calls rather than one unbounded pull.

**Can I combine intent signals with firmographic filters in one search?**
Yes — buying-intent topics and recent business events can be added as filters alongside industry, size, and other firmographic criteria in the same company search.