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Lookalikes: How to clone your best customers into a prospect list
Find lookalike companies with Sidekick | Free prospecting tool
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You already know which accounts closed fast, expanded early, and never needed hand-holding through the deal. Those accounts are data. Most reps leave that data sitting in their CRM and go back to cold lists. Sidekick turns your best customers into a repeatable prospecting strategy by helping you find lookalike companies that match the same profile, in seconds.
This guide walks you through how to use the lookalike feature inside Sidekick, why it works, and how to build a prospect list that actually converts.
Why your best customers are your best prospecting asset
Think about the accounts that performed well. They had the right tech stack. The team size matched. The use case fit. The deal moved. Those signals are not coincidental. They reflect a pattern you want to repeat.
The problem is that most reps treat every prospecting session as a blank page. They pull a list by industry and company size and start dialing. That approach ignores everything you already know about who buys from you.
Similar company prospecting flips that logic. Instead of guessing who fits, you point at proof and build from there.
According to McKinsey, B2B buyers are 50 percent more likely to purchase when content and outreach feel personally relevant to their situation. Relevance starts with account fit. Fit starts with knowing what a good account actually looks like.
What Sidekick's lookalike feature does
Inside Sidekick, the lookalike feature works directly from the professional profiles you already open during your prospecting sessions. You do not need to export anything, build a spreadsheet, or submit a request to ops.
Here is how it works in practice.
Step 1: Start with an account you trust
Open the profile of someone at one of your best-fit closed-won accounts. Sidekick reads the account data in the background and pulls together the firmographic and technographic signals that define that company.
You are not guessing at ideal customer profile attributes. You are pointing at a real account and saying, find me more of these.
Step 2: Generate the lookalike list
Tap the lookalike function inside the Sidekick panel. The tool surfaces accounts that share the same core profile. You get a ranked list of similar companies built from real-time data, not a static export that was refreshed six months ago.
Stale lists are one of the most consistent pipeline killers in outbound. Salesforce research shows that sales reps spend an average of 28 percent of their week on manual data entry and list management. A lookalike list generated from a live profile eliminates most of that friction.
Step 3: Check AI fit scoring before you work the list
Not every lookalike is worth the same effort. Sidekick runs AI fit scoring across each account it surfaces. You see which ones score highest before you open a single profile or write a single email.
That score reflects whether the account matches your strong accounts across the dimensions that matter. You work the top of the list first and stop wasting dials on accounts that look similar on the surface but do not hold up under scrutiny.
Step 4: Map the buying committee on the accounts that score well
Once you have a high-fit lookalike account, the next move is identifying who you need to reach. One contact is not enough in B2B. Deals stall when you are only talking to one person.
Sidekick's buying-committee mapping breaks the account into roles: economic buyer, champion, evaluator, and the gaps where no one has been contacted yet. You see the full picture in one click. That means your outreach strategy starts with a map, not a single name.
Gartner reports that the typical B2B buying group involves six to ten stakeholders. Reaching only one of them is one of the fastest ways to lose a deal that should have closed.
How to build an account expansion list from scratch
Lookalikes are not only useful for net-new pipeline. They work for account expansion too. If you have a product line or use case that fits a specific type of customer, you want more of that type, even if they are already in your CRM or territory.
Here is a clean process for building an account expansion list using Sidekick.
• Identify two or three of your strongest accounts by revenue, retention, or expansion history.
• Open each account's primary contact in the profiles you work in daily.
• Run the lookalike function for each anchor account.
• Filter the output by AI fit score and focus on the top tier.
• Map the buying committee for each high-scoring account before you start outreach.
• Pull verified emails and direct dials for the contacts you want to reach.
• Build sequences by role. Economic buyers get a different message than evaluators.
This process gives you a structured list with contact data attached. You are not working off intuition. You are working off a pattern that has already proven itself.
Why this beats building lists the old way
Most list-building tools hand you a contact. You get a name, a title, an email that may or may not work, and a company name. That is where most tools stop.
Sidekick starts where those tools stop. The free B2B contact data you get with Sidekick includes verified emails and direct dials. The data runs on the same platform that enterprise revenue teams use inside Leadspace, which continuously resolves and enriches buyer and account identity in real time. That means the contact information you pull is current, not pulled from a stale database.
HubSpot research shows that bad data costs sales organizations roughly 27 percent of their revenue annually. Working from verified, real-time data is not a feature preference. It is a revenue protection decision.
When you compare that to what you would pay for a ZoomInfo alternative or a Lusha plan at scale, the cost difference becomes hard to ignore. Sidekick is free. The contact data is enterprise-grade. Teams that roll this out across their SDR floor are not sacrificing quality for price. They are getting the same quality for nothing.
Common mistakes reps make with lookalikes
The lookalike feature is fast. That speed can lead to some shortcuts that hurt the output.
Anchoring on the wrong account
If you start with an account that closed for the wrong reasons, you will generate a list of accounts that fit the same wrong pattern. Use accounts where the fit was genuine and the expansion or renewal was clean. Anchor on strength, not just on closed-won status.
Skipping the fit score
The lookalike list gives you options. The AI fit score tells you which options are worth your time. Skipping the score and working the list top to bottom by alphabetical order or company size wastes both.
Reaching only one contact per account
Even a perfect-fit account will stall if you only reach one person. Use the buying-committee map. Find the gaps. Reach the economic buyer and the evaluator in the same sequence window. Multi-threading is what separates accounts that convert from accounts that go quiet.
Treating the list as static
A lookalike list is not a spreadsheet you work for a quarter and throw away. Accounts change. Companies grow, pivot, or hire new leadership. ZoomInfo's own research estimates that B2B contact data decays at a rate of about 30 percent per year. Real-time enrichment keeps your list relevant. Come back to it, refresh it, and add new anchor accounts as your customer base grows.
What a strong lookalike workflow looks like week to week
You do not need to rebuild your prospecting process to use this well. The workflow fits inside what you already do.
At the start of each week, pick one strong customer account and run a lookalike search. Take the top five accounts by fit score. Map each buying committee. Pull verified contacts for the roles you need. Add them to your sequences by role and run outreach that week.
Five accounts per week is 20 per month. Done well, that is a pipeline that runs on proof rather than guess work.
As your customer base grows, your anchor pool grows too. Each new strong account you close becomes a new source of similar company prospecting. The process compounds over time because your ICP gets sharper every time you close a good deal.
How to get started
Sidekick is a free Chrome extension. You install it in under two minutes, and it works inside the profiles you already open during your normal prospecting day. There is no data migration, no contract, and no sales call required.
If you manage a team, the rollout works the same way. Each rep installs it individually. The data quality is consistent across the team because it runs on Leadspace's enterprise data platform. You do not need to negotiate a seat-based contract to give your SDRs access to verified contact data and account intelligence.
Start with one anchor account. Run the lookalike search. Check the fit scores. Map the buying committee on the top results. Pull the contacts. That is the whole process. Everything you need to find lookalike companies and build a prospect list that reflects what you already know is already in the extension.
Add Sidekick to Chrome for free and run your first lookalike search today.
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