Build a 25-Organization Referral Pipeline with Apollo + Clay

Reviewed November 2026. This is a relationship-development pilot for independent home care, assisted living, senior placement and senior housing businesses. It is about finding professional referral organizations, not purchasing patient or family leads. Contact databases are imperfect; verify each person and contact method before outreach.

Business problem and finished result

The agency needs a repeatable way to identify hospital discharge planners, skilled nursing and rehab admissions teams, hospice liaisons, elder law attorneys, and geriatric care managers in its service area. By the end of this lab you will have a verified pilot list of 25 organizations, a shortlist of up to 10 relevant professional contacts, five manually reviewed personalized outreach drafts, and a follow-up dashboard.

What Apollo does vs. what Clay does

Apollo: search and filter professional people and businesses; save prospects to a list, verify fields, and optionally use CRM/sequencing features within its supported permissions and plan. Clay: find people at selected companies, enrich only promising rows, apply qualification rules and move useful structured data to your chosen database. You can pilot with only one of these tools; connecting both is optional and may increase subscription or credit costs. Neither guarantees verified contacts or meetings.

Time, budget and prerequisites

• Time estimate: 60–90 minutes to define the target, 2–4 hours for initial research, 1–2 hours to verify records and drafts, and 15–30 minutes daily for follow-up.
• Cost: compare the current trial, seat, credit and export pricing directly at Apollo pricing and Clay pricing; do not subscribe to both before validating a first 10-contact pilot.
• Prerequisites: authorized B2B outreach process, approved CRM or spreadsheet, defined service counties, clear service description, and someone to personally review communications.

Step 1 — Define the exact ICP

Example for a home care agency in Anne Arundel and Howard Counties, Maryland: organizations that regularly serve older adults and have referral coordination functions. Categories include hospital case management/discharge planning; skilled nursing and rehab; hospice/home health; elder law; geriatric care management; county aging services and senior centers. Target professional roles such as discharge planner, case manager, director of admissions, community liaison, care transitions specialist, or elder law attorney. An AL home or placement firm may use a different shortlist.

Step 2 — Build a short Apollo search

1. Sign into Apollo and open People (or Companies first if you want to validate businesses).
2. Click Show Filters → More Filters.
3. Apply job-title terms such as "discharge planner", "director of admissions", "hospice liaison", "care manager", or "elder law attorney". Combine with your relevant region and company-type/industry filters; adjust if results are too broad.
4. Review names and organizations. Prefer business contacts relevant to the operator's services. Save a small shortlist to a named list such as "AA County Referral Pilot — Dec 2026".
5. Verify roles and employer using current official organization sites or direct professional channels. Mark uncertain names as unverified; do not invent email addresses. Advanced filters, exports and contact reveals can depend on plan.

Step 3 — Enrich only selected contacts in Clay

1. Open Clay and start a workbook/table from your small vetted list of companies or domains.
2. Use the company's current public website/domain or another reliable identifier. Clay's guidance recommends grounding company searches in descriptive keywords, not broad industry tags alone.
3. Use Find People or Find People at These Companies, narrowing by role, company and location. Compare the returned person to the official site and current title.
4. Use enrichment only for rows that survived manual qualification; credits may apply. Verify whether the professional email is valid, and never treat enrichment as proof of current employment.
5. Deduplicate using work email when reliable; otherwise use company domain + full name with human review. Label records as Confirmed, Needs Verification, Wrong Role or Do Not Contact.
6. Export permitted business-contact fields to a CSV or CRM. Maintain one source of truth; do not create duplicate pipelines without owners.

Copy-ready AI research prompt

Act as an administrative research assistant for a licensed senior care business in [county, state]. Identify up to 25 real ORGANIZATIONS that could be professional referral partners: hospitals/discharge planning departments, skilled nursing and rehabilitation centers, hospice providers, geriatric care managers, elder law practices, county aging offices and senior centers. Return organization, category, city, official URL, and a short reason for relevance. Do not guess people's names or private emails. Mark anything unverified as UNVERIFIED. This is B2B research, not patient lead generation. No PHI or individual family information. Provide primary website links for each entry. Do not send messages or take external actions.

CSV schema to use

Organization,Category,ContactName,JobTitle,WorkEmail,BusinessPhone,City,County,OfficialWebsite,VerificationURL,VerifiedDate,Status,LastTouch,NextTouch,Owner,Notes
Harborview Rehab (FICTIONAL),SNF/Rehab,Pat Taylor (FICTIONAL),Admissions Director,not found,not found,Example City,Example County,not found,not found,2026-11-10,Needs Verification,,,VA,Sample data only

Five-email human-reviewed outreach pilot

Pick five VERIFIED professional contacts with a genuine service connection. Use a separate, personalized message that identifies you and your business, explains who you serve, asks for a brief introduction, and offers useful local information. Avoid claims of preferred status, referral guarantees, or inappropriate inducements.

Subject: Local senior care resource in [county]
Hi [professional first name],
I run [business], which serves [service area] with [accurate one-sentence service]. I noticed your team supports older adults transitioning between care settings.
Would it be useful if I sent a one-page overview of our service criteria and contact process, or scheduled a brief introduction?
Thanks,
[real name], [company], [business phone]
[required sender contact/address and opt-out information, where applicable]

Review for applicable email marketing law and organizational policies before sending. The US CAN-SPAM Act applies to commercial B2B email; accurate headers, a valid postal address and an opt-out mechanism are among its requirements. State privacy and telemarketing rules may add obligations. See FTC compliance guidance.

Assign work correctly

AI: draft research categories, suggest professional search keywords and personalize copy using verified public business information only. VA: compile and verify organizations, enrich only authorized rows, dedupe, document source URLs and prepare drafts. Owner: approve outreach, handle relationships, review legal restrictions and conduct meetings.

1-day, 7-day, and 30-day scorecard

• Day 1: identify 25 potential organizations, not 25 fake named leads. Build the source-linked CSV structure.
• Day 7: verify 25 organizations, confirm up to 10 genuinely relevant contacts, and manually review five personalized outreach messages.
• Day 30: report researched organizations, validated contacts, bounced/invalid emails, outreach messages sent, meaningful replies, introductions requested, meetings held and referrals received. Optional pilot goals: 5 well-targeted contacts and 2 meeting requests. These are experiments, not forecast results.

References

Apollo: Search for People · Apollo filters · Clay: Find Companies and People · Clay Find People · FTC CAN-SPAM guidance.