Propecto and Pappers: Complementary Use Cases

Two different starting points

People often turn to Pappers when they already know a company’s name or registration number: they want to check its executives, articles of association, published accounts or locations. It’s a verification process focused on a specific entity.

Propecto starts instead from an open question: which companies match a given profile, in a given area, with a given business activity? Its value lies in exploration workflows and in putting information into action, with filtered searches and B2B opportunities to pursue.

What each approach brings to a salesperson

A salesperson’s day alternates between two needs: filling the target list and preparing for each meeting. The first is a matter of exploration, the second of in-depth analysis of a company.

An exploration tool saves time when building a segment; a tool for looking up detailed legal and financial data provides reassurance when preparing a proposal or assessing how solid a prospect is. The two tasks complement each other.

• Building a target list by industry and area: exploration
• Spotting opportunities to reach out to: exploration
• Verifying the identity of a company’s executives: lookup
• Reviewing published accounts before a negotiation: lookup
• Positioning a company within its market: both

A combined use case

Take a consultant who wants to offer their services to manufacturing companies in a given region. They start with a filtered search in Propecto to get a list of companies in the sector, review the contextualized profiles to rule out those that don’t fit, then select around twenty priority targets.

Before each first meeting, they can dig deeper into a company’s legal and financial situation using a lookup service such as Pappers. Exploration fuels prospecting; lookup makes preparation more reliable.

Criteria for choosing based on your use case

Rather than looking for a single tool that does everything, start from your main activity. If you spend most of your time checking known companies, a directory for detailed lookups will be central. If your challenge is discovering new targets or mapping a market, an exploration tool will play a bigger role.

Also look at data traceability. Knowing where a piece of information comes from lets you judge how current it is; Propecto highlights identifiable sources on its company profiles. Finally, test both approaches on a real case from your own business rather than on a demo example.

Adapting your use to your profession

A business owner looking for a subcontractor, a consultant preparing an engagement and an economic development team studying a region don’t relate to information in the same way. The first wants to quickly identify a few reliable candidates; the second needs to understand a client’s context; the third is looking for an overview of the local business landscape.

In all three cases, exploration helps build an overview and identify the right contacts, while detailed lookup comes in when it’s time to dig into a specific case. Mapping a market or searching for partners is, in fact, among the uses Propecto was designed for.

Avoiding duplicate work across tools

Using several services has a hidden cost: re-entering data, scattered lists and contradictory information. Define who does what: the exploration tool to build and prioritize lists, the lookup tool for occasional checks and your CRM as the single source of truth for the history of your interactions.

In your CRM, record the date and source of the key information you use. If you’re ever unsure about a piece of data, you’ll know where to double-check it.