Playbook
How to write a discovery brief that finds the right buyers
2026-07-06 · 5 min read
By TradeOcto Research Team · Reviewed 2026-07-06
The quality of your results starts with the sentence you type. Here is the anatomy of a brief that returns companies worth contacting.
Start from the market, not the product
A brief like “garden machinery” tells the agent almost nothing. A brief like “US distributors and purchasing leads for garden machinery and compact farm equipment” names the country, the channel role, and the product family — three signals the agent can verify against real websites.
Rule of thumb: if a colleague could not build a prospect list from your sentence, neither can an agent.
Say what to exclude
Exclusions sharpen results more than additions. “Exclude pure retailers”, “no trading companies”, “skip marketplaces” — each one removes a whole class of noise before it reaches your list.
Name the role you want to reach
Buyer or supplier? Purchasing manager or owner? The same company list leads to different contacts depending on the role you name. Spelling it out lets the people-search step score contacts against the right profile.
Review the plan before it runs
TradeOcto drafts a discovery plan from your brief before spending credits. If the queries drift toward consumers or the wrong industry, fix the brief — not the results. Thirty seconds here saves a whole re-run.
Key takeaways
- Name the country, channel role, and product family — three verifiable signals.
- Exclusions remove whole classes of noise; use them generously.
- Review the search plan before it runs — fixing the brief beats cleaning results.