Research that takes ten minutes, not two hours

Good research takes ten minutes. Two hours of research usually means you're collecting facts instead of looking for a problem.

Sellers who skip research say it takes too long. Sellers who do too much of it never send the note. Both are the same mistake. Neither has a clear stopping point.

Why research runs long

Research runs long when you don't know what you're looking for. You open the company website, then the 10-K, then the CEO's posts, then a competitor's news, and an hour later you have forty tabs and no hypothesis.

It runs long when you treat every fact as equally useful. Revenue, headcount, office locations and founding year are easy to find and almost never matter to the opener.

And it runs long when you're avoiding the hard part. Gathering facts feels productive. Writing a guess that could be wrong feels risky. So people keep gathering.

The 3x3 is a time limit

The 3x3 isn't just a structure. It's a cap. Three sources, up to three facts each. Public record, social context, market. Then stop.

That's nine facts at most, and you rarely need all nine. Two or three that point at the same problem are enough for a strong hypothesis.

So set a timer. Three minutes on public record. Three minutes on the people. Three minutes on the market. One minute to write the hypothesis. If you're past ten minutes, you're probably reading for interest, not for the note.

Where to look first

Public record goes fastest if you know where to start. For a public company, open the latest 10-K risk factors or the most recent earnings release. For a private company, open the careers page. Job posts tell you more in a minute than a website does in ten. I covered this in the 3x3 for a private company.

Social context goes fastest on the buyer's own profile. When did they start in the seat? What have they posted in the last month? What have they reacted to?

Market goes fastest with two competitors. What did each one do last quarter? That's it.

Look for the problem, not the company

The point of research is a hypothesis. Every fact should earn its place by pointing at a problem the buyer might have.

A new VP of supply chain is a fact. A new VP of supply chain at a company hiring three planners after naming inventory in its last filing is a problem.

When three facts line up like that, stop. You have what you need.

Saw you joined as VP of supply chain in the spring, and the team is hiring three demand planners right after the last 10-K flagged inventory levels. I'd guess the pressure is cutting excess stock without hurting fill rates. Is that accurate, or is the bigger issue on the supplier side?

That's a ten-minute note. It's specific, it's checkable, and it invites correction.

When to go deeper

Some accounts deserve more. A big target where you'll write to the whole committee. An account where signals are stacking hard. A strategic logo you've been chasing for a year.

For those, spend more time. But spend it on the people, not the company. Write a separate hypothesis for the economic buyer, the champion and the technical lead. Each one takes about ten minutes too.

What doesn't deserve more time is an account where the first ten minutes turned up nothing. If no fact points at a problem, the account isn't ready. Move on and check it again in a few weeks.

What changes when you're fast

A rep who can research an account in ten minutes can do a dozen in a morning. Each one gets a real note. That's the difference between personalization at scale and templates with a first name merged in.

And the speed comes from discipline, not shortcuts. Three sources. Three facts. One hypothesis. The full method is on the method page. The ten-minute version is the same method with a timer on it.