How to choose 25 accounts to approach this week

When a team has a list of 100, 200 or 500 companies, the problem is rarely a shortage of names. The problem is knowing which ones deserve attention this week.

Choosing 25 accounts does not mean lowering your ambitions. It creates a unit of work that the team can research, approach, follow up and learn from without turning prospecting into noise.

The aim of this guide is simple: move from a large list to 25 accounts with a priority, context and a next step.

Before choosing: define the sprint

A list only becomes operational when it is linked to a commercial hypothesis.

Before opening Explorador Comercial, the CRM or the spreadsheet, answer three questions:

1. Which sector will we focus on?
2. Which region or territory makes sense this week?
3. What likely problem justifies making contact?

Useful examples include dental clinics in Porto with a booking option that is hard to find; training companies in Coimbra with active course pages; workshops in a specific area with an incomplete digital presence; and local estate agencies with potential for partnerships.

If the team cannot explain why this list exists, it is not yet ready to select the 25 accounts.

Do you still need a base to select from? Start with the guide to building a list by city and sector. If you already have companies saved in Explorador, you can export the list as a CSV and work on priorities in the spreadsheet or CRM your team uses.

Step 1: start by cleaning the list

Before scoring, remove anything that should not take up the team’s time.

Exclude accounts outside the defined region, duplicates, current customers, opportunities that are already open, companies unrelated to the sector, closed businesses and contacts that have recently given a negative response.

This step may seem administrative, but it changes the quality of the sprint. A clean list reduces repeated work and prevents poorly targeted approaches.

Step 2: score simple signals

Use a short score that is sufficient to guide decisions. Do not turn the weekly selection into a complex scoring project.

You can use four criteria, each scored from 0 to 3:

The maximum score is 12. Scoring does not replace commercial judgement, but it prevents the team from working through the list at random.

In Explorador, these signals can come from category, location, website, public contacts, digital presence, visible activity and research notes. In AOS or the CRM, they should become fields or tasks, rather than remain only in the researcher’s head.

Step 3: choose a balanced set of 25

Do not simply choose the 25 accounts with the highest scores. A useful weekly list needs balance.

A practical split:

• 10 high-priority accounts, with strong scores and a clear reason.
• 10 medium-priority accounts, with a good fit but context still to validate.
• 5 reserve accounts, to replace companies with no useful channel or unsuitable timing.

This split avoids two extremes: working only on obvious accounts, or filling the week with companies that still require too much research.

Step 4: write down the reason for the priority

Each of the 25 accounts should have a short sentence explaining why it was included in the sprint.

Good notes:

• “The website has a booking page, but the CTA is hard to find.”
• “The right sector and a strong local presence; validate the decision-maker before offering a diagnostic review.”
• “A public contact channel exists, but we still need to understand whether the company works B2B.”

Weak notes:

• “Looks good.”
• “Contact.”
• “Look at later.”

The priority sentence is what separates an approach with context from a generic interruption.

Step 5: define one next step per account

Before you start contacting companies, each account needs a clear action.

Some options:

• prepare a short email with a specific observation;
• validate the decision-maker by phone;
• review the website before making contact;
• save the account for a future campaign focused on that sector;
• exclude it because it is not a fit;
• pass it to AOS as a follow-up task;
• ask someone on the team to review it before the approach.

The next step should fit on one line and have an owner. If no one owns the action, the account does not yet belong in the sprint.

Step 6: limit the week’s cadence

The 25 accounts should not receive the same message on the same day.

Spread the work out. For example:

• Monday: final review and preparation of the first 8 accounts;
• Tuesday: first contact with high-priority accounts;
• Wednesday: phone validation or additional research;
• Thursday: medium-priority contacts and relevant follow-ups;
• Friday: review responses, blockers and lessons learnt.

The aim for the week is not to “hit a volume target”. It is to discover which accounts warrant a conversation, which signals work and which segments should enter the next list.

Minimum checklist

Before starting the approach, confirm:

• The sector and region are clear.
• Duplicate accounts and those outside the profile have been removed.
• Each account has a total score.
• Each account has its main signal recorded.
• The priority channel is defined.
• The reason for its priority is written in concrete terms.
• There is a next step and an owner.
• There is a deadline for the action.
• Reserve accounts are identified.
• The weekly review is scheduled.

The download on this page includes a simple CSV for building your first weekly list. Use it as an operational checklist: one row per account, one decision per field and always an explicit next step.

For an initial review, choose three companies from the list and compare the decisions made by two team members. If they assign very different priorities, clarify the criteria before scoring the remaining companies. For example, “the website has no information for businesses” is an observation; “they need to buy our service” is still a hypothesis. Record each in its own field and define what remains to be confirmed.

A good weekly list does not try to contact the entire database. It chooses more carefully, approaches with more context and generates learning for the following week.