Spear combines two key functions in one platform.
It helps you find the right prospects and also assists in managing your conversations with them until a meeting is booked. This guide walks you through the approval/denial process for reviewing prospects.
Open the Suggestions tab
Here you'll find new prospect suggestions awaiting review each day. You can go down in chronological order or use the filters at the top to prioritize what you want to approach first.
Under the More dropdown, you'll also find a Full ICP Match: Yes/No filter, to only show prospects that fully match your ICP, and a Company domain filter.
Filter by company domain: select one or several domains at once to review only the suggestions from those companies. This is handy when you want to go through everyone suggested at a specific account in one sitting.
Review the prospect card
What can you see on the Prospect Card?
Name & agent recommendation: At the top of the card, you'll see the prospect's name. If you have qualification rules set up, the agent reviews every prospect against them and shows its recommendation next to the name: a green check when it recommends approving the prospect, or Agent: Deny when it recommends denying. Hover over it to see the agent's explanation and reasoning. If you have no qualification rules set up, no recommendation is shown.
Professional Summary: Below the name, the card displays the prospect's Job Title, Company, and Location.
LinkedIn Shortcut: A button in the top-right corner allows you to jump directly to their LinkedIn profile.
Export to CRM: Next to the LinkedIn button, a button lets you export the prospect to your CRM, either HubSpot or Salesforce depending on which one you have connected.
CRM Shortcut: If the prospect already exists in your connected CRM, a button lets you jump straight to their record there. This also appears on the prospect card in the Messages and Prospects tabs.
Note: the link only appears for prospects created going forward, and it isn't backfilled for prospects created before this update. Matching to your CRM record happens by email or LinkedIn URL. Either one is enough, you don't need both mapped.
Company Overview: This section provides key information about the organization, including:
Website Link: Located at the top right corner of this section for quick access to their corporate site.
Description: A summary of the company's core business and services.
Employee Count: Total number of employees associated with the company.
Company Location: The headquarters or primary office location of the business.
Industry Tags: Categories that define their market (e.g., Cybersecurity).
"Approved company" badge: A green checkmark label that appears automatically next to the company name when another prospect from that same company has already been approved into a campaign. It's purely informational. There's no setting to add or remove it, it's just there to let you know this isn't the first contact at that account.
Campaign Info: Displays the specific Campaign name. If you want to move the prospect to a different campaign you can select from the dropdown another one.
Triggers: The source Spear uses to generate the personalized outreach message. Clicking on it will take you directly to the original source the message was based on. (e.g., Article). For a more comprehensive look at how these signals work, check out our guide on Trigger-based Outbound.
Message Customization
AI-Generated Draft: Spear provides a pre-written message tailored to the prospect based on the identified triggers.
Editing Tools: Use the toolbar to Undo changes, Save to Library, or use the Ask AI button to instantly refine and polish the draft.
Character Counter: A real-time counter (e.g., 175/300) ensures your message stays within recommended limits.
Using Placeholders
In Spear, brackets are used as placeholders that automatically pull data about the prospect to personalize your message at scale. By clicking the { } icon, you can insert:
Prospect Details:
{first_name},{last_name},{company_name},{job_title},{prospect_city},{prospect_state},{prospect_country}, or{linkedin_industry}.Profile Details:
{calendar_link},{spear_profile_first_name}.
The same { } picker appears everywhere you write a message, including the subject line of an email step in a campaign sequence.
Location and industry placeholders
{prospect_city}: the prospect's city.{prospect_state}: the prospect's state, spelled out (for example, Pennsylvania). Outside the US, it shows their region (for example, Ontario).{prospect_country}: the prospect's country, spelled out (for example, United States).{linkedin_industry}: the industry of the prospect's company, as LinkedIn lists it.
If a prospect has no value for a placeholder, it renders empty. The raw token is never sent. City, state, country and industry are often unknown, so place them where the sentence still reads if they drop out. "Hi {first_name}, fellow {linkedin_industry} teams have been asking about this" only loses one word, while "How are things in {prospect_city}?" would be left with a blank.
Editing a single prospect's message: when you edit one prospect's message, a placeholder that has no value for that prospect shows as disabled in the picker. Hover over it to see "{placeholder name} is not available". Pick a different placeholder or write the text yourself.
Final Actions:
Once you have reviewed the details and finalized the message, use the bottom toolbar to manage the prospect:
Deny: Use the dropdown to reject the prospect or mark them as "not a fit".
Monitor for another trigger: Save the prospect to watch for future updates without immediate outreach.
Approve: Confirm the prospect and the message to move them forward in your campaign.
1. To approve, click the "Approve" button
Note: you can also super approve a prospect who is a perfect match to what you're looking for. The system will skip the outreach queue and contact them immediately.
2. How to Deny and Provide Feedback
When reviewing prospects, you have two distinct options to manage those who do not fit your criteria:
Standard Denial: To remove a prospect from the current campaign without providing specific feedback, simply click the "Deny" button. This action removes the individual from the queue but does not apply broader exclusions to your campaign logic.
Deny and Exclude: This option allows you to provide direct feedback to the system, acting as a powerful tool to accelerate ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) refinement.
This functionality transforms a simple rejection into a technical adjustment of your prospecting logic:
Dynamic Attribute Exclusion: When you identify an undesirable prospect, you can immediately correct your ICP by excluding specific attributes, such as Company or Job Title. By selecting these options, you instruct the platform to cease searching for any profiles matching those criteria across the entire campaign.
Real-Time Refinement: Instead of just removing a single lead, this process acts as a corrective measure for your targeting strategy. By providing this actionable feedback, you train the algorithm to filter similar profiles in future iterations automatically. This significantly narrows the margin of error in your ICP and drastically reduces manual review time for future batches.
3. Monitor
Monitor for another trigger: Selecting this option tells the system to keep tracking the prospect. The system will "re-surface" them approximately every 3 weeks if it finds new relevant triggers or updates.
Tips & Best Practices
Be consistent: Put aside 15 minutes every morning to review prospects so they don't pile up
Always provide feedback when denying: it helps the system improve your prospect matches
Keep your ICP definition updated
Need to deny multiple prospects at once? See How to Deny Prospects in Bulk.