How do you research target accounts with Claude and HubSpot?
Fifty target companies, three public Australian sources and a brief on every company record, researched in batches of ten and checked before a rep reads it.
Pick your 50 target companies in HubSpot, then run Claude's Research feature over them in batches of ten. Point it at three sources for each company: ABN Lookup, the free fields on the ASIC register, and the company's own website.
Ask for a short account brief with a link against every fact, and "not found" wherever it cannot find something. Then have Claude write each brief into a custom property on the HubSpot company record through the HubSpot connector, ten records at a time, after you have checked them.
It takes about a day, and your reps open a company record and find the homework already done.
Research the company, not the people. That one rule keeps you on the right side of the Privacy Act and the Spam Act.
Most account-based plans stall at the same step. Everyone agrees on the list of fifty, and then nobody has three hours per company to find out what each one actually does, how big it is and what might make them talk to you. So the list sits in a spreadsheet and reps go back to whoever replied last.
This is the research step, done properly, once, and stored where the sales team already works.
If you have not set up target accounts in HubSpot yet, start with this video on using HubSpot for account-based marketing.
Why not just use HubSpot's own agents?
You might, and it is worth knowing where each one fits.
HubSpot's Prospecting Agent is built for outreach. It finds companies that match your buying triggers, identifies contacts there and drafts personalised emails for a rep to review. HubSpot also has a company research agent, which shows a research card on company records for Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise users, drawing on public sources and your CRM.
The approach here suits a different job. You decide exactly which sources count, including Australian registers that tell you things a news search will not. You write the fit criteria yourself. And the output is stored in a property you own, so you can filter, report and build lists on it. Plenty of teams will end up using both.
What goes in an account brief
Keep it to what a rep would actually read before a first call. Here is the shape we use:
| Section | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Legal name, trading names, ABN status, entity type, GST registration date, state and postcode of main business location | ABN Lookup |
| ACN, company type, registration date, locality of registered office | ASIC register (free fields) |
| What they sell, who they sell to, locations, how they describe themselves | The company's own website |
| Anything recent: new sites, acquisitions, careers pages hiring in sales or ops | The company's website and news coverage |
| Why they fit, and the one question worth asking them | Claude's reasoning against your fit criteria, clearly marked as reasoning |
The registry facts sound dull and are the most useful bit. ABN Lookup tells you whether the ABN is active, the legal name behind the trading name, and how long they have been registered for GST, which is a decent clue to age and size. The ASIC company register shows the company type, registration date and locality of the registered office for free. Directors and shareholders are only on a paid company extract, and for this job you do not need them.
Set up HubSpot first
- Mark your targets. If you use HubSpot's ABM tools, set the Target account property to true on your fifty and use the Ideal customer profile tier property to rank them. If you do not, a static list works.
- Create four company properties: Account brief (multi-line text), ABN (single-line text), Brief sources (multi-line text) and Brief researched on (date picker).
- Connect Claude. The HubSpot connector for Claude needs a paid Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise), and a Super Admin or someone with App Marketplace Access to connect it. It can read and update company records, but only ten at a time when writing in bulk, and it cannot delete anything.
On a Team or Enterprise plan, web search has to be switched on for the workspace by an owner, under Organization settings, then Capabilities. Research needs web search turned on to work. If you are new to connecting AI to your CRM, our explainer on what MCP changes for your CRM covers the moving parts.
The prompts
Run these in one Claude conversation per batch of ten. Research takes a few minutes per run, and ten companies is about as much as you can properly check in one sitting.
1. Pull the batch from HubSpot
From HubSpot, get the 10 companies with Target account = true and
an empty "Account brief", ordered by Ideal customer profile tier.
Show me the company name, domain and record ID for each. Don't
change anything yet.2. Research the batch
Research each of these 10 Australian companies. For each one, write
an account brief of no more than 200 words with these sections:
- Registry: legal name, trading names, ABN and whether it is active, entity type, GST registered since, state and postcode. Use ABN
Lookup (abr.business.gov.au). Add ACN, company type and registration
date from the ASIC register if you can reach it.
- What they do: products or services, who they sell to, locations.
Use their own website first.
- Recent: anything from the last 12 months worth mentioning.
- Fit: why they match our ideal customer, which is [describe yours:
industry, size, systems, trigger]. Mark this section as your
reasoning.
- One question a rep should ask on a first call.
Rules:
- Put a source link after every fact.
- If you can't find something, write "not found". Don't estimate.
- If the ABN legal name doesn't match the company name in HubSpot, flag it at the top.
- Research the company only. Don't include names, contact details, social profiles or anything personal about individual people.3. Write it back
For the briefs I've approved, update each HubSpot company record:
- Account brief: the brief
- ABN: the ABN
- Brief sources: the source links, one per line
- Brief researched on: today's date
Show me the exact changes for all records first. Wait for me to say
go, then update them.That last line matters. The connector writes ten at a time, so a batch of ten is one write, and you want to see it before it happens.
How much does a rep know about an account before the first call?
Usually whatever they found in five minutes on LinkedIn.
What not to collect
This is where account research goes wrong, and nobody notices until a complaint arrives.
Information about a company is not personal information. Information about a person is. The Privacy Act covers most businesses with an annual turnover over $3 million, so if you are 60 to 200 people it very likely covers you. A director's name, a sales manager's personal LinkedIn activity, a mobile number from a conference list: all personal information, and the Australian Privacy Principles expect you to collect only what is reasonably necessary for what you do.
For an account brief, none of that is necessary. So the prompt tells Claude to leave people out, and when you check the briefs, delete anything that slips through. When a rep needs a contact, they find them the normal way and add them to HubSpot with a proper source.
The Spam Act 2003 comes in the moment the brief turns into an email. A commercial email needs consent, and the inferred consent that comes from an address being published on a website is narrow: the message has to relate to that person's role, and the site must not say it does not want unsolicited messages. A generic info@ address on a contact page is not permission to put someone in a sequence. Our piece on where your data goes when you use AI covers the other half of the privacy question, which is what happens to what you give Claude.
Check the work before a rep sees it
For each batch, click through the sources on at least two briefs. Things to look for:
- Name mismatches. The trading name on the website and the legal name on the ABN often differ. That is normal. An ABN that belongs to a different business entirely is not, and it is the most common error in this kind of research.
- Stale pages. A "recent" item that is three years old because the company has not updated its news page.
- Fit written as fact. The fit section is Claude's reasoning, and it should read that way. If it claims they use a particular system, there should be a source for it.
- ASIC gaps. ASIC's search does not always open for automated tools. If Claude says it could not reach it, look the ACN up yourself. It takes a minute.
Keep the briefs fresh
A brief is a picture of one moment. Build a HubSpot list of target accounts where Brief researched on is more than 90 days ago, and rerun those each quarter with the same prompts. The date property is what makes that possible, so do not skip it.
Once the briefs exist, the rest of your account-based work gets easier: segments by fit, better first emails, reps who walk into a call knowing the company has just opened in Perth.
If your reps had a proper brief on every target account tomorrow, which first call would you want them to make?
Frequently asked questions
Can Claude research companies and update HubSpot directly? Yes. Claude's Research feature, on paid plans with web search turned on, can research companies across the web, and the HubSpot connector for Claude can update company records up to 10 at a time. Review the changes before letting Claude write them.
Is it legal to research target accounts with AI in Australia? Researching a company from public sources such as ABN Lookup, the ASIC register and its website is fine. Collecting personal information about individuals brings in the Privacy Act, and emailing anyone brings in the Spam Act 2003, so keep the brief about the company.
What Australian sources should an account brief use? ABN Lookup for legal name, ABN status, entity type, GST registration and main business location. The ASIC register for company type, registration date and registered office locality, which are free. The company's own website for what they sell and who to.
How is this different from HubSpot's Prospecting Agent? The Prospecting Agent finds contacts and drafts outreach inside HubSpot. This approach produces a company-level brief from sources you choose, including Australian registers, and stores it in a HubSpot property you can filter and report on.
Sources
- ABN Lookup, Australian Business Register, for ABN status, entity type, legal and trading names, GST registration and main business location.
- Company and organisation registers, ASIC, for the free company information and what needs a paid extract.
- Set up and use the HubSpot connector for Claude, HubSpot Knowledge Base, for connector permissions, plan requirements and the 10 record limit.
Want help deciding what goes in your account briefs, or setting up the properties? Talk to us.
Are you researching the company or the people?
Only one of those keeps you clear of the Privacy Act.