Define your industrial ideal customer profile

Write one sentence: “We supply [range] and want to research businesses that [activity] as [customer role].” Replace broad labels such as “engineering companies” with an activity that evidence could support or contradict.

Use these working labels to frame the question:

Operator

Must the business operate the relevant facility itself?

Original equipment manufacturer (OEM)

Must it build machines or systems for other businesses?

Integrator or contractor

Which assembly, integration or installation activity belongs in scope?

Distributor

Is resale the intended route, an excluded activity, or a potential channel conflict?

Select a primary route. If several routes matter, give each its own inclusion rule rather than accepting any company with a shared product word. A role match is not engineering suitability, buying intent or outreach permission. The pump and flow-control guide explores role-specific application questions.

Separate sales territory from evidence of operations. Does “Ireland” mean the Republic of Ireland or the island? Must the relevant production, assembly or service activity happen there, or is supplying that territory sufficient? State the answer; do not let a headquarters address decide it.

• Company brief: count the company once and attach relevant facilities beneath it.
• Site brief: identify each qualifying facility and its operating company; do not present site totals as company totals.
• Group boundary: define how subsidiaries, trading names and multiple sites should be treated. Hold unresolved relationships rather than assuming a shared brand means one entity.

Specify evidence for the required operation and location. Do not infer a workshop from a sales office or local delivery coverage.

Describe the activity you want to investigate, not a technical conclusion you want the researcher to reach. For example: “Does this business assemble control panels for machinery builders?” is a research question. “Our enclosure accessories are suitable for its panels” is an unproven engineering judgement.

• What activity must the account perform, and for whom?
• Which part of your range gives a reason to investigate that activity?
• Which duty conditions, specifications and purchasing responsibilities remain unknown?

Keep technical selection outside this brief. Do not convert a relevant application into confirmed installed equipment, demand or an available supply package.

A disqualifier contradicts the required activity or territory. An exclusion removes an otherwise relevant account because of your commercial instructions. Keep both explicit:

• Activity disqualifiers: describe the exact unwanted work, such as installation-only when panel building is required. Missing detail means unresolved, not automatically disqualified.
• Existing accounts: decide whether exclusion applies to the named company, a particular site or the whole group, including subsidiaries.
• Channel boundaries: define reserved territories, protected partner accounts or other agreed conflicts without assuming every distributor is excluded.

Use a controlled company-level exclusion reference, its version and the internal role authorised to resolve ambiguous matches. Keep confidential account lists outside a public brief. No supplied list does not mean “no exclusions”.

Separate preferences from must-haves. Add size or revenue limits only when you can explain their purpose and evidence requirements; do not borrow numerical defaults or let a preference override a failed rule.

For each must-have, specify what observation would support it, acceptable evidence and the consequence of a gap. Keep these checks separate:

1. Source use: establish whether the source and item can be used for the intended research and customer output. Public visibility or a link is not permission to reuse content.
2. Identity: attribute the activity and site to the company being counted, rather than its customer or group generally.
3. Fit: support the required role, activity and territory, recording source references, publication dates where known and actual check dates.
4. Exclusions: resolve existing-account and channel matches against the agreed instructions.

Include only when all required checks are satisfied. Hold missing or conflicting material evidence; record the next question without inventing a date or fact. Stop source-content reuse where rights remain unresolved. An industry-matched brief need not require a project; keep “not assessed” separate from “searched, no qualifying signal found”.

Wholly fictional exercise: a supplier of industrial enclosure accessories seeks control-panel builders with assembly workshops in the Republic of Ireland. Count companies, not workshops. Exclude installation-only businesses, existing-account groups and reserved channel accounts. No project is required. All businesses and evidence below are invented; these are not researched cases.

Include: Fictional Panel Builder A

The stipulated evidence connects two qualifying workshops to one company. Source-use, identity, fit and exclusion checks are separately stipulated as satisfied. Include one company with both sites noted. Component compatibility, purchasing authority and present need remain unknown.

Hold: Fictional Controls Brand B

An invented group description mentions panel assembly, but only a Republic of Ireland sales office is attributed to this brand. Source-use review is stipulated as satisfied; identity and workshop location are not. Hold pending evidence of who operates the qualifying workshop and where. Do not count the brand or infer local assembly.

Hold: Fictional Panel Builder C

Identity, workshop activity, location and source-use checks are stipulated as satisfied. A possible relationship to an excluded customer group remains unresolved. Hold for the authorised exclusion decision; a role match cannot override that gap. Confirmed group membership would place it out of scope under this brief.

Out of scope: Fictional Installation Business D

Permitted invented evidence explicitly establishes installation-only work and no panel assembly. That fails the required activity. Record the failed rule rather than keeping it to meet a target count. This decision says nothing about its relevance to a different supplier brief.

Complete one worksheet per profile. Every value cell starts blank; guidance is not evidence. Record unresolved choices explicitly, keep incompatible routes separate and assign a brief version before sourcing. If a must-have changes, record the change rather than quietly widening the search.

Agree requested counts, company-versus-site treatment, deliverable fields, research limits, timing and acceptance terms in writing. Keep held accounts outside accepted counts. The worksheet is not a booked package, coverage promise, legal clearance or authority to collect personal contacts.

Next, use the manufacturing account-discovery guide to apply the brief and the fictional account sample to inspect record-level outputs. This worksheet defines the rules; it is not a batch audit or maintenance log.

Read the industrial account-research service scope, then request a quote with your range, customer role, territory and unresolved scope questions.