Research new HubSpot companies the contact databases miss

Run this whenever a new company is created in HubSpot. Use a webhook trigger and point a HubSpot company creation webhook subscription at it, so the research is already sitting on the record before a rep ever opens it.

Start with HubSpot Get Company to read the new record. Note which of industry, description, and website are already filled in and which are empty, because that decides what you are allowed to write later. Keep hold of the company name, the domain, any address or phone number that came in with the record, and the owner id so you can message the right person at the end.

Then use SerpApi Google Search on the company name together with its domain to work out what the business actually does. Pull back the knowledge panel if there is one, and read the top organic results. The domain is your tiebreaker: if the name is generic and the results are clearly about a different business, say so rather than guessing.

Use SerpApi Google News Search for anything notable about them in the last 90 days, such as funding, expansion into a new area, awards, new contracts, or a change of leadership. Ignore anything older than 90 days, and ignore stories that are obviously about a different company with a similar name.

When the company looks like a local or physical business, for example a trade, a shop, a clinic, or a contractor, use SerpApi Google Maps Search on the name plus their town or address to capture their locations, star rating, and review count. This is often the strongest signal available for a small operator, so always report the number of reviews alongside the rating, and read the review themes because they frequently hand you the pitch angle. If the business is clearly online only, skip this step and note why.

Write a short profile into a HubSpot Note and associate it with the company record. Keep it to a few short paragraphs: what they do in plain words, roughly how big they look and where they operate, anything notable from the last 90 days, and their Google Maps rating and review count if you found them. Finish the note with a suggested pitch angle, one or two sentences on the specific reason to reach out to this particular business now.

Then use HubSpot Update Company to fill in industry, description, and website, but only where those fields were still empty when you first read the record. Never overwrite a value a human already entered, even when what you found looks better than what is there. If all three are already filled in, skip the update entirely and just leave the note.

Finally, use HubSpot Get Owner to get the record owner's email address, Slack Bot Look Up User by Email to find them in Slack, and Slack Bot Send a Message to send them a direct message with the three line version: what the company does, the single most useful thing you found, and the suggested pitch angle. Include a link to the HubSpot record. If the owner cannot be matched to a Slack account, post to a fallback sales channel instead so the research does not go unseen.

This is aimed squarely at the companies that contact databases go blank on: local businesses, trades, and small operators. So prefer what the public web actually says over anything you could infer from the company name or domain. If the research is thin, say plainly that it is thin and state what you could not establish, rather than inventing a plausible sounding profile. A note saying there is very little public information about this business is a useful note. A fabricated one is worse than nothing.