Most technical professionals starting consulting practices know what they offer; they don’t know who specifically would pay for it next month. lead-research-assistant tries to close that gap by working through your offering’s value proposition, generating a list of target companies that would plausibly need it, and suggesting an outreach angle for each.

What it does

Walks through your service offering, identifies the buyer persona and trigger events that would make them ready to buy, generates a curated list of target companies, and suggests an outreach angle (cold email, LinkedIn comment, mutual-connection ask) for each. Output is a short list with reasoning, not a 200-row spreadsheet of generic leads.

Who it’s for

Career-switchers building a consulting practice on the side of a full-time job, when ten focused leads matter more than a hundred generic ones
Indie SaaS founders doing manual customer development before any automated pipeline exists
PhDs offering technical consulting (statistical, regulatory, ML auditing) who need to find the specific 30 companies that would pay for their unusual mix of skills

What to watch for

AI cannot tell you the trigger event. It can speculate based on public signals (funding rounds, hiring, news), but it can’t see the internal political moment when a buyer is ready to spend money. That moment is what closes; the skill helps you get into the room
Treat the output as hypotheses, not commitments. “Company X is a great fit” is a starting point for a conversation, not evidence the company will buy
Pair with copywriting for the actual outreach message; this skill picks the targets, doesn’t write the email

Verdict

A useful first-pass research tool for early-stage consulting and indie sales work — not a replacement for the human judgment about who’s actually likely to say yes.