How do you find the right person to contact at a company?
You find the right person in two steps. First, decide which role at that company owns the problem your product solves. Then find the name of whoever holds that role right now, and confirm it from a current source before you write to them.
Most people skip the first step and search for a title. That works when titles are standard, but they often aren't. The person who runs marketing might be called Head of Growth, Marketing Lead, or VP of Demand Generation. At a small company, it might be a co-founder with no marketing title at all. A title search can also return the wrong people, such as a marketing coordinator whose title contains the word "marketing" but who doesn't choose vendors.
The second step is where lists usually go wrong. People change jobs constantly, and contact databases update on their own schedule. A record that names someone as head of marketing can be months out of date. Before you email anyone, it's worth checking their current LinkedIn profile, the company's team page, or a recent announcement that names them in the role.
This is careful, repetitive research, and it's the kind of work an AI agent does well. It takes judgment about what each company's structure looks like, access to good people data, and the patience to check every name.
Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. Finding the right person at each company you want to reach is part of that work, and here's how Kite does it.
How Kite finds the right person to contact
Kite starts with what it already knows about your business. Its research on your company covers what you sell, who your customers are, and who usually buys from you, and that tells Kite which role to look for. You give it the companies, or ask it to find them, and you name the role if you already know it.
For each company, Kite decides which role owns the decision, finds the people in that role, and confirms they still hold it. It then finds a work email for each person and tells you how much to trust that address. When a contact on your list has left, Kite finds their replacement and follows the person who left to their new company.
You get the people back in the conversation with a reason for each one. From there, Kite can add them to your CRM and write the outreach.
- Decide which role owns the decision at each company
- Find who holds that role today
- Confirm the person still has the job
- Find who replaced a contact who left
- Get a work email you can trust
- Put the right contact to work
Decide which role owns the decision at each company
The right role depends on what you sell and how big the company is. Kite works it out from your ideal customer profile and from the roles of the people who bought from you before. If your past deals were signed by heads of marketing at software companies, that's where Kite starts.
Company size changes the answer. Say you sell an email marketing tool. At a 25-person company, the founder or the one marketer on staff usually chooses it. At a 300-person company, it's probably the director of marketing operations. At a 3,000-person company, the VP of marketing owns the budget, and a lifecycle marketing manager runs the tool day to day. Kite looks for the person who matches each company's structure, not one fixed title across every account.
When a deal needs more than one person, Kite picks the strongest one to three people at each company and says why each one is there. That might be the person who owns the budget and the person who feels the problem most.
Find who holds that role today
Once Kite knows the role, it looks for the person in it. It starts with the sources that name people in their current jobs: the company's own team and leadership pages, recent press releases and announcements, conference speaker pages, and public professional profiles. A press release from last month that names a new VP of marketing is better evidence than a database record from last year.
Kite then searches its people data sources. It looks for people by title, function, and seniority at the company's website domain, so it doesn't confuse the business with a similarly named one. Kite reads each title against the role you're after rather than matching keywords. "Head of Growth" can be the person who runs marketing, while "Marketing Coordinator" contains the right word but usually isn't the decision-maker.
This is also how Kite answers a question like "Who is the head of marketing at Acme?" You get the name, their exact title, how long they've been in the role, a link to their LinkedIn profile, and the page that confirmed it.
Playbooks for this step
- How to build a qualified prospect list with ApolloFind the companies that match your ideal customer and the people in the right roles at each one.
- How to build a prospect list with RocketReachLook up the people who match a role and the contact details RocketReach holds for them.
Show 1 more playbook for this step
Confirm the person still has the job
Kite checks every person before it adds them to your list. It reads their current LinkedIn profile for their title, employer, headline, and location. If the profile shows they've moved on, Kite drops them and keeps looking. When a profile lists more than one current job, Kite goes with the employer the person names in their headline, because that's usually the job they lead with.
Kite also notes recent title changes. Someone who started as head of marketing two months ago is often reviewing the tools their predecessor chose, and that can make them a better contact than someone who has been in the seat for five years.
Before it finishes, Kite removes your existing customers, your competitors, and anyone who has asked not to hear from you. With your CRM connected, it can also leave out people your sales team is already talking to.
Playbooks for this step
Find who replaced a contact who left
When your contact leaves a company, you have two leads instead of none. The company still needs someone in that role, and the person who left now works somewhere new and already knows your product.
Kite checks both. For the company, it searches for whoever holds the role now, using the same title, function, and seniority it would use for any account. It looks for recent hires and title changes, because a replacement is often new to the job or was promoted from the same team. If the role has been split or renamed, such as a head of marketing replaced by a VP of growth, Kite reads the new titles and tells you who now owns the work.
For the person who left, Kite reads their current profile to see where they went and what they do now. If their new company fits your ideal customer profile, Kite adds them as a new lead and can write an email that mentions their history with your product. With your CRM connected, Kite can update the old record so your team knows the contact has moved.
Get a work email you can trust
Kite looks up a work email for each confirmed person, preferring the address at their current employer. It tries more than one source when the first one has nothing. It keeps each address's verification status exactly as the provider reports it, whether that's deliverable, risky, catch-all, or unverified, so your team knows which addresses are safe to send to.
Kite never builds an address from a pattern such as firstname.lastname@company.com. A guessed address that bounces can hurt your sender reputation, so when no source has one, Kite marks the email as not found and tells you which sources it tried. The person stays on the list with their LinkedIn profile, and you can still reach them there.
Kite keeps the list to business details. It includes work emails and professional profiles, and leaves out personal email addresses and phone numbers.
Put the right contact to work
Kite delivers the people in the conversation where you asked, as a table and a downloadable file. Each row has the person's name, title, company, LinkedIn profile, work email with its status and source, a score from one to five, a one-line reason they're the right person, and a link to the page that confirmed their role.
From there, Kite can add the people to HubSpot or Salesforce, linked to their companies, or write them to a Google Sheet. It can write a personalized email to each person using its research on their company and send it from your team's Kite email address or a connected email account once you approve it. For LinkedIn, Kite drafts a short connection request or message for you to send from your own account.
What you get
The right people at each company
The one to three people who own the decision, with their current titles, companies, and LinkedIn profiles.
Proof they hold the role today
A link to the profile, team page, or announcement that confirmed each person's current job, plus any recent title changes.
Work emails with honest labels
A work email for each person when a source has one, with its verification status and where it came from, and a clear "not found" when none exists.
A reason for each person
A score from one to five and a short explanation of why this person is the right contact at this company.
Replacements and moved contacts
The new owner of the role when your contact has left, and your old contact's new company when it's worth reaching.
The next step, ready
Records in your CRM or spreadsheet, a drafted email for each person, and LinkedIn messages for you to send.
How to get started
Tell Kite which companies you want to reach and, if you know it, the role. You can work with Kite in the Kite web app or in Slack. You might say:
"Find the head of marketing at these 30 companies."
Or start from a problem:
"Our contact at Northwind left last month. Who runs marketing there now, and where did our old contact go?"
You can also hand Kite a list your team already has and ask it to check who's still in the role.
Kite proposes the roles it will look for at each company and how many people it will return per account. Confirm or adjust that, and Kite starts. The people research runs on Kite's built-in data sources, so you don't need a contact database subscription. If your team already pays for LeadIQ, RocketReach, or People Data Labs, connect it and Kite uses it too. Connect HubSpot or Salesforce when you want the people saved there.
By default, Kite asks before it sends any email. As you come to trust its work, you can let more of it run on its own.
Integrations used to find the right person to contact
Kite's built-in sources handle the people research, so you can start without connecting anything. If your team already uses a contact data product, you can connect it, and Kite adds that data to what it finds.
Find people and confirm their current role
Find the people in a role at each company you name, along with their professional email addresses.
Search people by title, seniority, and current employer, and read their current and past jobs to spot job changes.
Read public LinkedIn profiles to confirm each person's current title and employer, without connecting your own LinkedIn account.
Use the contact data your team already pays for
Search for decision-makers by title, seniority, and company size, and find people by their current or past employer.
Look up people by name, title, or keyword, and read their profiles and contact details.
Search and enrich people and companies from People Data Labs' records.
Common questions
Can Kite tell me when a contact changes jobs?
Kite can recheck your contacts on a schedule you choose, such as the first Monday of every month. Each run confirms that every person still holds their role, finds the replacement for anyone who left, and notes where the person who left went. Kite reports what changed and can update the records in your connected CRM.
What does Kite do when it can't find someone's email address?
Kite keeps the person on the list and marks the email as not found, along with the sources it tried. It doesn't guess the address from the company's email pattern. You still get the person's name, title, and LinkedIn profile, and Kite can draft a LinkedIn message for you to send instead.
Do I need ZoomInfo or another contact database to find the right person?
No. Kite comes with built-in people data, including Apollo, so it can find the right person and their work email without a separate subscription. If your team already pays for a contact database, you can connect it and Kite uses that data as well. For a comparison of the options, read ZoomInfo alternatives for small teams finding the right person to contact Coming soon .
How many people should I contact at one company?
For a small deal at a small company, one person is usually enough, and it's often the founder or the one person who runs that function. For a larger deal, two or three people works better: the person who owns the budget, the person who would use your product, and sometimes someone who has to approve new vendors. Kite suggests the number for each company based on its size and your deal size, and explains its choice.
Does Kite include personal phone numbers or personal email addresses?
No. Kite keeps the list to business information: names, current titles, companies, LinkedIn profiles, and work email addresses. It leaves out personal email addresses, phone numbers, and other personal details.