Auto-Research New Leads with Perplexity + Claude + CRM

What this automation does: When a new lead is created in your CRM, automatically triggers a two-step research sequence: Perplexity gathers current company news and intelligence, Claude synthesizes it into a structured account brief, and the brief is attached to the CRM record before you even open it.

Why it matters: The average rep spends 30-45 minutes researching a new account before their first outreach. This automation compresses that to under 3 minutes of automated work that happens in the background. By the time you're ready to reach out, the brief is already in your CRM.

How to set it up:

1. Create a Zapier/Make trigger: "When new lead is created in [CRM]"
2. Step 2: Send company name to Perplexity API with query: "Recent news, funding, leadership changes, and strategic initiatives for [COMPANY] in the past 90 days"
3. Step 3: Pass Perplexity's response to Claude API with the Account Research Brief prompt, including company name, industry, and the Perplexity research as source material
4. Step 4: Update the CRM lead record with Claude's structured brief as a note or custom field

Optional enhancement: Add a LinkedIn scraping step before Perplexity to pull the lead's recent posts and include them in Claude's personalization context.

Estimated time saved: 30-45 minutes per new lead. At 20 new leads per month, that's 10-15 hours of research time automated away.