HG Insights

Skill: HG Tool Chain: Account Research

The same account-research order on every brief, with a gate at each step and a credit estimate before you run it.

Overview

The account-research playbook your best AE runs in their head, written down for Claude. It checks which tools are available, resolves the right entity first, then works through the stack, spend, intent on resolved topics, FAI, contacts, contracts and SEC filings, with a gate at each step and a credit estimate for each chain, so every brief follows the same order and you only pay for steps that earn their place.

Use cases

  • Account briefs that follow the same order every time

    Firmographic first to resolve the entity, then stack and spend, intent on resolved topics, FAI before any contact lookup, then contacts, contracts and filings. No brief skips intent or jumps straight to generic IT contacts.

  • Know the cost of a brief before you run 50 of them

    Claude prices the chain up front: about 5 credits for a quick profile, about 10 for a standard brief, about 14 for a full one. RevOps can size a territory sweep before it starts, and cached calls cost nothing.

  • New AEs productive on the methodology from day one

    A new hire's Claude runs the same gated sequence your senior team uses, including when to drop spend, hierarchy, contracts or SEC for the play at hand. The methodology lives in the skill, not in six months of shadowing.

View full skill

HG Tool Chain: Account Research

The canonical order of HG calls for researching one account, with the gate at each step and what it costs.

When to use

  • Authoring a new account-research workflow or brief.
  • Auditing a workflow that calls tools in an unprincipled order.

Tools you'll touch

  • company_firmographic: resolve the company and its level. Cost: 0.1 per company (see hg-credit-awareness).
  • company_hierarchy: ownership and sister companies. Cost: 0.1 per node.
  • company_technographic: the stack. Cost: 2 per company.
  • company_spend / company_ai_spend: size of the opportunity. Cost: 3 / 2 per company.
  • company_enrich: several sections in one call. Cost: sum of sections per company.
  • list_intent_topics then company_intent: what they're researching. Cost: free, then 0.1.
  • company_fai: which department to target. Cost: 2.
  • contact_search then contact_enrich: named people. Cost: 2, then 0.2 per email.
  • company_contracts: outsourcing context. Cost: 1 per company.
  • web_search then sec_filing_section / sec_full_text_search: ticker, then filings. Cost: 0.05, then 1.

The chain

0. check available tools (hg-mcp-version-and-availability)
1. company_firmographic            → resolve, check company_level
2. company_hierarchy (optional)    → ownership
3. company_technographic + company_spend   (or company_enrich)
4. list_intent_topics → company_intent
5. company_fai
6. contact_search → contact_enrich
7. company_contracts (optional)
8. ticker via web_search → SEC tools (public companies only)

Each arrow is a gate: don't run the next step until the previous output justifies it.

Why this order

  1. company_firmographic first. Every later step needs the hg_id and a deliberate choice of entity. Check company_level: if the domain resolved to a subsidiary and the user meant the brand or group, re-query on corporate_parent_id (brand) or global_hq_id (ultimate parent). Carry the hg_id forward; keep the domain for company_cloud_spend and gov tools.
  2. company_hierarchy when ownership matters ("who owns them", sister companies, regional entities). Pass the resolved hg_id, never a guessed domain. Use mode:"parents" for ownership; use depth:5 with filters for subsidiaries, and dedupe nodes by id.
  3. company_technographic, then company_spend. The stack gates whether there is anything to say; spend sizes the deal. Resolve product or category ids first and pass them as filters, with install_fields to keep the payload small. Read intensity within the company only. Add company_ai_spend for AI plays.
    • Option: for several sections on one to a few companies, company_enrich with explicit fields (e.g. ["firmographics","technographics","spend"]) does it in one round-trip. Sections are capped per company, so use the dedicated tools when you need the full install list or filters.
  4. Intent. Resolve topics with list_intent_topics (one lowercase keyword), then call company_intent with topic_ids, fields:["topics"] and granularity:"global". Without resolved topics the result is saturated and means nothing. No topics at a smaller company means no coverage, not no interest.
  5. company_fai before any contact lookup. It gives the department and the decision_maker_titles / influencer_titles to search for. See hg-fai-vs-contact-search.
  6. contact_search with the FAI titles, then contact_enrich with revealPhone:false for the few people you'll actually quote.
  7. company_contracts for GSI and ICT outsourcing context: which integrators run parts of their IT, and recent announced deals. It is not a renewal tool: no renewal-likelihood or expiry-confidence fields. "Days to end date" is fine without a confidence claim. A missing contract proves nothing.
  8. SEC. No HG tool returns a ticker, so resolve it first (web_search, e.g. "Acme Corp investor relations ticker"). US filers: sec_filing_section (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K). Foreign filers (20-F, 6-K): sec_full_text_search with tickers, formTypes, query and a startDate. If no ticker exists, skip this step.

Credit estimate per chain

Using the proportional table, for one company:

ChainStepsCredits
Quick profile1, 3, 4about 5.2
Standard brief1, 3, 4, 5, 6 (5 emails)about 10.2
Full briefStandard + 2 (about 20 nodes), 7, 8about 14.3
Add-onscompany_ai_spend +2, company_ai_maturity +2, company_install_time_series +3 per product

Multiply steps 1, 3 and 7 by the number of companies when batching. Cached calls cost 0.

Where to drop a step

  • No spend for pure technographic-fit plays (competitive replacement).
  • No hierarchy when the user named a specific entity and ownership doesn't matter.
  • No contracts for awareness or discovery work.
  • No SEC when there's no ticker or the deliverable doesn't need filings.
  • No contacts for territory sweeps that only need account-level summaries.

Where to add a step

  • Intent before technographic when the primary signal is "what are they researching".
  • company_install_time_series with product_ids when the question is adoption trend.
  • web_search for recent news or non-US registries; see hg-fallback-to-web-search.

Common pitfalls

  1. Calling contact_search before FAI.
  2. Calling SEC tools without resolving a ticker, or sec_filing_section for a foreign filer.
  3. Using the user's domain without checking company_level.
  4. Running intent without topic_ids.
  5. Framing contracts as renewal timing.
  6. Running the full chain over a territory. Pre-filter with search_companies and firmographic, then run the chain on the top 10 to 20.

Reference