How to scrape 1,000+ Leads on autopilot (LONG CONTENT)

Instead of buying stale lead lists, you’ll learn to scrape your own highly-targeted B2B/B2C contacts on demand. By the end, you’ll have a cleaned CSV of ready-to-buy leads and know how to trigger AI-powered outreach to contact them at scale. All of this is done fast, with precision, and without writing a single line of code.

Why use AI for lead generation? Simply put: it’s faster, more precise, and massively scalable. With the right tools, you can gather hundreds of fresh, relevant leads in minutes – something that would take days if done manually. These modern scraping tools tap into vast online data to find exactly your ideal prospects. You’ll leverage automation to do the heavy lifting (so you can focus on closing deals), and AI outreach to engage leads in a personalized way at scale. This is the same kind of system top outbound teams use, and you’re about to implement it step by step.

Step 1: Define Your Ideal Lead Profile (ICP & Niche)

Before scraping a single lead, get crystal clear on who you want to target. In outbound sales, this is your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) or niche. Defining this upfront will make your searches precise and yield high-quality prospects rather than random contacts.

Identify your niche and segment: Are you targeting real estate agents? Online coaches/consultants? SaaS startup founders? Be specific. For example, “real estate agents in California earning over $100K,” or “SaaS founders in fintech with 10-50 employees.” The more specific your target criteria, the easier it is to filter for those leads.
Decide on key attributes: List the traits that define your ideal leads. Common attributes include industry, job title/role, company size, location, revenue, etc. For instance, real estate agents might be found by the title “Realtor” or “Real Estate Agent,” in the Real Estate industry. Coaches might include titles like “Business Coach” or keywords like “Coach” in their profiles. SaaS founders might be filtered by Industry: Software, Title: Founder/CEO, and perhaps company size or funding stage.
Find where they congregate: Consider where data on these people exists. B2B roles (like SaaS CEOs or realtors) are plentiful in professional databases like LinkedIn and Apollo. Coaches or B2C might be found via social media groups or specific platforms. This will inform which tool to use (LinkedIn scraping vs. a B2B database, etc.). We’ll cover multiple methods to ensure you can get leads for any niche.

Taking a moment to clearly define your target ensures every lead you scrape is a potential buyer. You’re aiming for a highly-targeted list – quality over quantity. Now let’s get into building that list using our first tool, Apollo.io.

Step 2: Scrape Targeted Leads with Apollo.io

Apollo.io is a powerhouse for B2B lead generation, boasting a database of over 250 million contacts. It allows you to apply detailed filters to find prospects that match your ICP, and then export those leads with verified contact info. We’ll use Apollo to quickly build a list of leads in your chosen niche.

Why Apollo? It’s essentially a huge, constantly updated Rolodex of business contacts. You can search by title, industry, company size, geography, technologies used, and more – and get direct emails and sometimes phone numbers. Think of it as searching LinkedIn on steroids, with contact details included. With Apollo, you’ll pinpoint prospects and get their info in a ready CSV.

Follow these steps to build and export a lead list from Apollo.io:

Access Apollo and go to People Search: If you don’t have an Apollo account, sign up (it offers a free plan to start). Log in and click on the “Search” tab, then select “People”. This opens the People Search interface where you’ll set filters.
Apply filters to match your ICP: Use Apollo’s filters on the left side to narrow down your audience. You will mostly use filters like Location, Job Title, Company size (# Employees), Industry, Keywords, Technologies, and Revenue. Start with the most important ones for your niche:
Review and refine the results: Apollo will list the contacts on the right side as you apply filters. Scan a few entries to ensure they look relevant (e.g., you set “CEO” and you see mostly CEO/Founders of target companies – good). If you see off-target results, adjust filters (add an industry keyword, etc.). This step ensures your list will be high-quality.
Select leads and export: Once you’re happy with the filtered list, it’s time to export. Apollo may require you to save the search or add leads to a list first (on some versions you can export directly). Click “Save search” to save it, then open your Saved Searches and pull up that list. Now, click on the Export option. In Apollo’s interface this is usually a download icon or a menu that says “Export CSV”. Choose Export as CSV.
Choose verified emails and export: Apollo will ask if you want only leads with verified emails or all leads. Always opt for verified emails if available – these are confirmed deliverable addresses, which means your outreach emails won’t bounce. After selecting, confirm the export. Apollo will compile the list into a CSV file. On completion, you can download it from Apollo (and you’ll often get an email with a download link as well).
Open and inspect your CSV: Congrats – you now have a raw list of leads! Open the CSV in Excel or Google Sheets to take a look. You should see columns like Name, Title, Company, Email, etc., for each contact. Verify that the entries make sense (no weird data).
At this stage, also scan for any obvious duplicates or junk entries; Apollo’s data is pretty clean, but it’s good to be sure your list is solid.

Apollo.io People Search: The Apollo interface allows you to refine leads by numerous filters. In this example, the search is filtered for the job title “travel agent” (left panel), yielding a list of matching contacts (right panel) complete with emails. By stacking multiple such filters (e.g. adding location or industry), you can zero in on highly targeted prospects to build your lead list.

If you used Apollo’s free plan, you might have exported, say, 25 or 50 leads (whatever your credit limit allowed). That’s fine – you can repeat the process with different filters or on different days to get more leads (e.g., change location to another state, or use alternate titles). With a paid plan, you could export hundreds or thousands at once. Either way, the process is repeatable. Apollo is a goldmine because you can always come back and refine new searches to continuously feed your pipeline.

Pro Tip: Apollo also has a feature to enrich a CSV of contacts knowledge. This means if you have names or LinkedIn URLs from another source (like we’ll get from LinkedIn in the next step), you can upload that to Apollo and let it find emails/phones for those people. This hybrid approach leverages Apollo’s data even if you start elsewhere.

Now, with an initial list in hand, let’s explore an alternative (or additional) path: scraping leads from LinkedIn or other platforms using PhantomBuster. This is especially useful for niches not easily found via Apollo’s filters or if you want B2C contexts (like independent coaches or group members).

Step 3: Extract Niche Leads via LinkedIn (PhantomBuster)

While Apollo is fantastic for standard B2B data, sometimes you need to go straight to the source – for example, LinkedIn – to gather leads, especially in niche communities. PhantomBuster is a tool that automates web scraping tasks, and it shines with LinkedIn. We’ll use PhantomBuster’s LinkedIn Search Export to pull leads from a LinkedIn search query. This way, even if a contact isn’t easily found in Apollo, you can still get their public info via LinkedIn.

What PhantomBuster can do: It runs cloud-based “Phantoms” (pre-made automation scripts) on your behalf. For LinkedIn, PhantomBuster offers Phantoms to scrape search results, profiles, group members, event attendees, and more. Essentially, anything you can manually find on LinkedIn, PhantomBuster can extract at scale and put into a spreadsheet for you. This is a code-free way to turn LinkedIn into your personal lead database.

Follow these steps to scrape leads from LinkedIn:

Set up PhantomBuster with your LinkedIn session: Sign up for PhantomBuster (there’s a free trial) and connect your LinkedIn account. You’ll usually use a browser extension or copy a session cookie so PhantomBuster can access LinkedIn as if it were you – this is needed to scrape data from your account. It’s safe as long as you follow their instructions.
Define a LinkedIn search for your niche: On LinkedIn, use the search bar to find your prospects. Click on the People filter (so you search people, not posts or companies). Then add filters exactly like you would on LinkedIn normally: location, industry, current company, etc. If you have Sales Navigator, you can use its advanced filters (even better). For example, search for “Real Estate Agent” and filter by Location: California and Industry: Real Estate. LinkedIn will show a list of people. Make sure the list is sorted by Relevance or something logical (not random).
Launch the LinkedIn Search Export Phantom: In PhantomBuster, find the LinkedIn Search Export phantom (you can search in their Phantom store). This Phantom “extracts leads directly from LinkedIn search results”. Paste the LinkedIn search URL into the Phantom’s input settings. Configure how many results to scrape – e.g., the first 100 or 500 results. (On LinkedIn, you might be limited to the first 1,000 results for a search, and PhantomBuster will iterate through the pages for you.)
Run the Phantom and wait: Start the Phantom. It will log into LinkedIn with your session and start clicking through the search results, scraping data. You can watch the progress in real-time. The Phantom will collect data like each person’s name, headline (usually their title and company), possibly location, and the URL of their LinkedIn profile. It will not automatically get emails (LinkedIn doesn’t expose emails in search results), so you’ll get primarily the public info. However, this is still extremely useful: you now have a list of people in your niche, each with a profile link, name, title, etc.
Retrieve the results: Once finished, PhantomBuster will provide the output file (CSV or Excel). Download it. Open it up, and you should see columns such as Full Name, LinkedIn Profile URL, Occupation/Title, maybe Company, etc. For example, it might show “Jane Doe – Real Estate Agent at XYZ Realty – linkedin.com/in/janedoe – 2nd connection” and so on. (If you saw the Phantom’s example screenshot, it shows names, job titles, profile URLs, etc.). This is your raw list from LinkedIn.
Enrich the data (optional but recommended): The LinkedIn search data by itself doesn’t have emails or phone numbers. At this point, you have two main options:
Repeat or refine for more leads: Just like with Apollo, you can repeat the LinkedIn scrape for different segments. For example, after California real estate agents, run another search for “Real Estate Agent” in New York. Or if targeting coaches, search “business coach” in the LinkedIn title filter. Each time, feed the URL into PhantomBuster and get a new chunk of leads. Be mindful of LinkedIn limits – scraping too aggressively can temporarily flag your account. PhantomBuster usually has rate limits to stay safe (e.g., scraping 100 or 200 profiles per hour). Follow their recommended settings.

Using PhantomBuster, you can tap into any niche community on LinkedIn. Even if your target isn’t easily defined in Apollo, you can likely find them by clever LinkedIn searches. There are Phantoms to scrape LinkedIn Groups members and event attendees too – so if your targets hang out in a specific LinkedIn group or attend certain events, you can extract those lists as well. Hundreds of leads per day are achievable this way, giving you a firehose of prospects for your pipeline.

Now that we have leads either from Apollo, LinkedIn, or both, the next step is to organize and clean the data, and enrich any missing info (like adding emails to the LinkedIn-sourced leads). For this, we’ll use Clay, a no-code automation tool that will help us merge and polish our lead list.

Step 4: Enrich and Prepare Your Lead List (Clay & AI)

At this stage, you likely have one or multiple CSV files containing raw leads (from Apollo, PhantomBuster, or elsewhere). Clay is a powerful no-code tool that can take a list of leads and automate all kinds of tasks: enrich data (find missing emails, social profiles, etc.), run custom formulas or even AI prompts on each lead, and then output a final polished list. Think of Clay as a hybrid of a spreadsheet and an automation engine – perfect for preparing your leads for outreach.

Here’s how we’ll use Clay to get our leads list ready to launch:

Import your leads into Clay: Sign up for Clay (it has a free tier with generous credits). Create a new table and import your CSV file(s) of leads. Clay will display them in a spreadsheet-like grid. For example, you’ll have columns for Name, Company, etc., from your Apollo export or LinkedIn scrape.
Clean and consolidate data: If you have multiple sources (say 500 leads from Apollo and 300 from LinkedIn), you can import both into Clay and merge or work on them in one place. Remove any obvious duplicates (Clay can do this via a “Remove Duplicates” function on a column like email or LinkedIn URL).
Enrich missing information: This is where Clay shines. You likely need to fill in emails for LinkedIn-sourced leads. In Clay, you can add a column and choose an Enrichment integration. For example, use an integration like Clearbit, Hunter, Snov, or even Apollo API if you have it, to find email by Name + Company domain. Clay has a library of data sources – you could input “Name, Company” and get back “Work Email” using an email finder service. Another enrichment could be “Find LinkedIn URL by Name+Company” if you started with Apollo and want profile links. Essentially, any gap in your data, Clay can call a service to fill it.
Verify emails (optional): To keep your list high-quality, you might run a verification on the emails (Clay also can connect to email verification APIs like NeverBounce). Apollo gave verified emails already, but emails found via other methods should be verified to avoid bounces.
Use AI for personalization (bonus): One of the coolest features – Clay can use OpenAI (ChatGPT) on your data. For instance, add a column “First Line” and provide a prompt like: “Write a friendly one-sentence icebreaker for an email to {{Name}}, who is a {{Title}} at {{Company}}.” Clay will then use GPT-4 to generate a tailored first-liner for each lead. If you have more data (like the company’s industry or a recent news), you can feed that into the prompt for even richer personalization. This way, you’re preparing a snippet about each lead that you can use in outreach to catch their attention. Everyone knows personalized emails perform much better than generic ones – in fact, customizing the first sentence of an email can literally 10x your response rate. Clay lets you do this at scale, in minutes, instead of writing by hand.
Export the final CSV: After enrichment and any AI-generated fields, review your table. You should now have a complete set of columns ready for outreach: Name, Email, Phone (if gathered), Company, perhaps a Personalization snippet, etc. Once satisfied, export this data from Clay as a CSV. This is your ready-to-buy leads list, fully cleaned and enriched.

Example: A snippet of a leads CSV after enrichment and cleaning. Each row contains the lead’s name, title, company, and verified contact details (email and/or phone). Your final CSV will look similar – a structured database of prospects ready for outreach. With tools like Clay, assembling and cleaning such a list can be done in a fraction of the time it would take manually.

Clay essentially allowed us to automate the tedious parts of list building: finding missing emails, removing duplicates, and even writing personalized lines. This is deep implementation clarity – you now have a high-quality list and even content to use in messages. We leveraged strategic automation and AI to prepare everything quickly and accurately.

Before moving on, reflect on what you’ve done: you defined your target, scraped data from the best sources, and polished it into a valuable asset (your leads list). Many people stall out because list building seems like a huge task – but look at how, with the right approach, you did it rapidly. This should reinforce why investing in tools and training pays off. You’re saving countless hours and likely finding leads your competitors will miss.

Now, it’s time for the payoff: putting that lead list to work with outreach. In the next step, we’ll upload your leads into Genesai’s calling panel and trigger AI-powered outreach to start turning leads into sales conversations.

Step 5: Launch AI-Powered Outreach (Upload to Genesai)

Building a lead list is only half the battle – now you need to reach out and initiate conversations at scale. Genesai is the tool that will make your outreach as scalable and smart as your lead generation. Genesai’s calling panel allows you to upload your list of leads and have an AI make calls (or potentially other outreach) to those contacts automatically. This is a no-code, set-and-forget system for outbound outreach, leveraging generative AI to sound just like a human sales rep.

Here’s how to get your leads loaded into Genesai and get the outreach running:

Log in to Genesai and open the Calling Panel: In your Genesai account, navigate to the section where you manage outbound campaigns or the AI dialing system. Look for an option to Import Leads or Upload CSV (typically a button that says “Upload CSV” or “Add Contacts”).
Upload your CSV file: Take the final CSV of leads (from Step 4) and upload it into Genesai. The system will likely prompt you to map the CSV columns to the fields it uses (e.g., it might ask “Which column is phone number?” “Which is name?” etc.). Since you have headers like Name, Phone, Email, this mapping is straightforward. Complete the import, and you should see your contacts now populated in the Genesai panel. (Note: If Genesai is primarily a calling platform, ensure you have phone numbers for these leads. If you only have emails, Genesai might have an email outreach feature or you’d handle email via another tool. But let’s assume phone calls are the focus since it’s a “calling panel.”)
Set up your AI call campaign: Now that leads are in, configure the campaign details:
Initiate the AI outreach: Launch the campaign. Genesai’s AI dialer will start calling through your list. Because it’s AI, it can scale massively – it could be making dozens of calls in parallel if needed. (Imagine having 1000 calls go out in the time it’d take a human to dial 50 – that’s the power here.) Generative AI in outbound calling also means the “agent” never gets tired or frustrated; every call is delivered with the same enthusiasm, and there’s no risk of human error. This addresses the classic problems of call outreach like agent fatigue and inconsistent quality.
Monitor responses and appointments: As the AI engages leads, it will follow the script to handle common responses. For example, if a lead is interested, the AI could be programmed to either transfer the call to you or schedule a callback/demo. If the lead says “not interested” or asks a question, the AI can respond or mark them accordingly. Keep an eye on the dashboard: you’ll likely see metrics like how many picked up, how many interested, etc. This is where you start seeing the fruits of your labor – meetings booked or follow-ups scheduled on autopilot!
Follow up as needed: For leads who didn’t answer, Genesai might automatically try again. You can also follow up with a different channel – for example, send those people an email or a LinkedIn message referencing the call attempt. Since you have their email and LinkedIn from earlier steps, a multi-touch approach can increase your contact rate. (You can automate this too, but that’s beyond our module scope; just note it as a best practice.)

At this point, you’ve deployed a fully functioning AI sales development rep in Genesai. The system is dialing out, delivering your pitch, and prompting interested leads to take the next step – all while you could be focusing on existing clients or other tasks. This is the definition of working smarter, leveraging the investment you made in these tools to run a 7-figure outreach engine with minimal ongoing effort.

A key mindset here is scale. Because AI is handling the outreach, scaling to more leads is mainly a factor of feeding more data in. You’ve learned how to get 1,000 leads; imagine if you repeat the process to get 10,000 leads – the same AI caller can be reaching all of them systematically. If you decide to ramp up, you already have the playbook.

Before wrapping up, let’s cover some outreach optimization tips to ensure you get the best results from these leads – after all, more conversations and replies mean more potential sales.

Smart Outreach Tips for High Conversions

Having the tech and data in place gives you a huge advantage, but how you communicate with leads still makes a difference. Here are some battle-tested outreach tips (for calls, emails, and DMs) to maximize your conversion of leads to opportunities:

Personalize the first interaction: Whether it’s the AI phone call script, an email, or a LinkedIn message – lead with something personalized to the prospect. Mention their name and maybe their company or a recent achievement. For emails, that first line should be custom-written (or AI-generated from custom data) about them. This dramatically increases engagement – one expert notes that personalized first email sentences can boost reply rates by 10×. In calls, an AI might say: “Hi John, I noticed your company Acme Corp was in the news for launching a new app – congrats!” This kind of personal touch, even automated, makes the outreach feel human and tailored.
Keep it you-focused (actually, them-focused): A classic mistake is talking too much about your company/product. Instead, focus on the prospect’s pain point or goal. In the script or message, frame your offering as a solution to their specific challenge. For example, “I work with real estate agents like you to help double your listings using AI-driven marketing.” This shows you understand their business. AI can help tailor these value props at scale if you feed it the right prompts.
Use a clear call-to-action: Always end with an easy next step. On a call, that could be, “Would you be interested in a 15-minute demo next week?” For an email, a line like “If it sounds interesting, are you available for a quick call Tuesday or Thursday?” Make it simple for them to say yes. Since Genesai can live-transfer or schedule, make sure the AI knows how to handle a yes (like booking a calendar event or transferring to a rep).
Multi-channel follow-up: Smart outreach isn’t one-and-done. You have phone, email, and social at your disposal. A suggested cadence: The AI call goes out first. Then, send a personalized email referencing the call (“I left you a voicemail earlier…” or “Tried reaching you by phone…”). A day or two later, a LinkedIn connection request or DM could follow, mentioning something of value (not just “I want to sell you” but maybe sharing a useful tip or resource related to their industry). People have different channel preferences; meeting them on multiple channels (politely) increases your chances of a response.
Leverage AI for copywriting: Just as we used GPT for first-line writing, you can use it to draft entire cold emails or LinkedIn messages. Many sales teams use AI to iterate variants of messages and find what resonates. You can prompt ChatGPT to write a short, conversational email for your offer – it will pull in the personalization we gave it. Just be sure to tweak AI output to feel genuinely human and in your voice (and double-check accuracy of any inserted facts).
Stay organized and track responses: As replies and callbacks come in, track them in a simple CRM or spreadsheet. Label leads as “Interested – demo scheduled,” “Not now – follow up in Q2,” “Not a fit,” etc. This helps you prioritize follow-ups. Since you might be dealing with large numbers, organization ensures no hot lead falls through cracks. Genesai might integrate with CRM to log calls and outcomes automatically.
Compliance and respect: One note – always follow appropriate laws (like email spam laws, do-not-call lists if applicable, etc.) and respect if someone opts out. The goal is to have a smart outreach machine, not a spam machine. Because you’re targeting relevant leads and personalizing, you’re already a step above spam. Still, if someone says “remove me,” ensure the AI/you do so.
Iterate and refine: Pay attention to what’s working. Maybe you notice that leads in one niche respond more to a certain pitch. You can adjust your messaging or targeting accordingly. The advantage of our approach is you can test and get feedback quickly given the volume of outreach happening. Treat it like a science experiment – tweak one variable, see results, improve.

With these tips, you’ll convert a higher percentage of your 1,000+ leads into actual conversations and opportunities. Even a 5% conversion of 1,000 leads is 50 engaged prospects – which can be huge for your business. And because so much of this process is automated, you achieve those numbers with a fraction of the effort that traditional outreach would require.

Conclusion: Your 7-Figure Pipeline and Next Steps

In this module, you built an implementation-focused system for lead generation and outreach that can power a 7-figure sales pipeline. Let’s recap the quick actions you took:

Identified your target ICP and exactly who you want to reach (clarity on your ideal prospects).
Used Apollo.io to instantly pull a list of contacts matching that ICP from a 250M+ database, exporting your first batch of leads with verified emails.
Leveraged PhantomBuster to scrape additional leads from LinkedIn and other sources, ensuring no stone is unturned – any corner of the web where your prospects hang out, you can extract and include them in your Rolodex.
Employed Clay and AI to enrich and clean the data, transforming raw info into a outreach-ready list complete with personalized touches at scale (saving you countless hours and ensuring precision).
Deployed Genesai’s AI outreach to contact those leads rapidly and effectively, with human-like personalization and consistency, but without the need for a large sales team.
Optimized outreach strategy with personalization and multi-channel tactics, reinforcing that technology + smart strategy yields the best results.

Take a moment to appreciate that you’ve assembled a lead gen and outreach engine that runs largely on its own. This is the kind of system that business owners dream about when scaling – a constant flow of targeted prospects and a means to reach them that doesn’t depend solely on your time. It’s a direct outcome of investing in your skills and tools (that $47 VIP Vault investment is already paying off, isn’t it?).

Reinforce your decision to invest: You now have a tangible asset – your custom lead list – and a repeatable process to grow it. This is a competitive edge. Many entrepreneurs keep struggling with empty pipelines, but you took action to build a predictable lead gen machine. That’s a huge step toward your revenue goals. Pat yourself on the back for being proactive and leveraging modern techniques; this is exactly what creates breakthroughs in businesses.

As you put this into practice, you might find yourself hitting new levels of growth. With growth can come new challenges – maybe you have more leads than you can handle personally, or you want to optimize conversion rates even further, or scale to new markets. If you want to scale fast and need higher-level support, remember that there’s a next level available. This could mean advanced training, done-with-you services, or coaching that we offer outside of this module. You’ve built the car; if you ever need a professional pit crew to help you race faster, we’re here for that too.

For now, your immediate next step is simple: execute what you’ve learned on a small scale right away. Pick a niche, run an Apollo search or PhantomBuster scrape today, get, say, 50 leads, and upload them to Genesai to see the magic in action. Nothing builds confidence like that first outreach campaign running and yielding replies or meetings. You’ll quickly realize how much of a game-changer this system is for your business.

Speed and action are your friends here. You have the deep clarity on how to do this – the only thing left is to do it. Within a day, you can have dozens of conversations flowing from people you’ve never met, all thanks to the 7-Figure Rolodex system you just implemented. This is how you fill a pipeline fast, how you create growth on demand, and ultimately, how you move towards that 7-figure revenue mark.

Now, go turn on that lead machine! 🚀 Embrace the process, and start engaging those 1,000+ ready-to-buy leads. Your future success is built one lead at a time – and you’ve just equipped yourself to generate an abundance of leads whenever you need them. Here’s to your fast growth and to making the most of this powerful system you now own.

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