The short answer
First establish which company you are actually researching. Then keep sourced findings, unresolved points and the next action together in a customer record. The input may be a business card, company name or domain. The output should be a set of files that the next round of work can find, update and trace—not just a company summary in a chat.
Three inputs, three starting risks
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| Input | Check first | Common error |
|---|---|---|
| Business card | Company name, domain, country or region, role and easily confused characters; keep the original card. | Mixing a brand, group, branch and legal entity, or treating a job title as proof of purchasing authority. |
| Company name | Search same-name candidates, then match the website, address and business. | Creating a formal customer file before resolving a critical identity ambiguity. Keep candidate notes and ask the smallest distinguishing question instead. |
| Domain | Read the company's own business, products, applications, contacts and recent information, then check other accessible public sources. | Treating a search snippet as a read primary source, or inventing demand or revenue absent from the site. |
What the research should answer
An industrial customer may be a manufacturer, distributor, system integrator, end user or a combination. Identify its actual work, sectors and regions, visible products or specifications, and possible user and purchasing roles. Explain why each finding matters for development. Public information provides context; it does not confirm that the customer intends to buy.
The research should go deep enough to answer the decision at hand, not hit a fixed page or search count. Read the original page for important claims where possible. Record access dates, source locations and failures. Local-language sources may close gaps. If purchasing volume, financials or a contact cannot be found, record the gap rather than estimate a plausible number.
A record that can support follow-up
Skill 1.0.0 normally delivers an editable folder and Markdown files: customer facts, development log, one-page brief and navigation, seven-part research, a source and evidence table, positioning and strategy, status card, clarification questions, separate contact records and an original-material index. If the user already has a customer folder, preserve its structure rather than creating a parallel one or overwriting old work.
Start with three files:
- One-page brief and navigation: who this is, what is known, what remains unknown and where the detail lives.
- Evidence table: the original source, access date and verification status for each important claim, including conflicts and inaccessible pages.
- Status card and development log: current stage, who will verify what and when to return. “Record created” does not mean “contact established.”
Keep separate communication records for known contacts directly relevant to this development task. A management name found on a website does not automatically become an outreach list. Supplier fit can only use verified facts about the seller's own products. Missing seller information does not prevent customer research, but it limits fit conclusions.
Three checks before calling the job done
- Entity match: do the domain, company name, address, brand and branch refer to the same entity? If not clear, stay at candidate status.
- Fact versus judgment: distinguish a source claim, independent support, a working hypothesis and something only the customer can confirm. Showing a brand is not proof of authorized distribution; an MX record does not prove an email address works.
- Actual files: return real saved paths, key findings, the main unresolved point and one reasonable next step. Empty templates or a chat summary alone are not a completed customer file.
The skill does not send bulk outreach or emails, guarantee creditworthiness, or bypass login and verification. Source access depends on the user's assistant and its network, image-reading and file permissions. A cloud task cannot be described as already saved on the user's computer.
Start using it
The listed Industrial B2B Customer Research and Records skill is available through WorkBuddy, with an original package and guide on the website. For stage assessment, strategy, business clarification, drafting and independent review, see the seven-role B2B Export Customer Development Team. To manage customer files and updates on a computer, see the Broadlatus desktop app.