Lusha: Treat Contact Credits Like a Budget. Filter and Save Freely, Reveal Only the Three People You'll Call This Week

Most small sales teams I talk to prospect from an old spreadsheet. Some firms on it are too big, some too small, a few have closed, and for most of them nobody knows who actually signs. Every call to a wrong firm is a call not made to one that would buy.

Contact databases fix the list, but they bring a new way to waste money: revealing everyone "just in case." Each reveal uses credits, and each revealed contact is a real person whose details you now hold.

So the habit I teach is simple. Filter and save as much as you like. Reveal on purpose.

The tool here is Lusha (affiliate link: I may earn a commission, at no cost to you). Every click below comes from the free practice lesson I built on real Lusha screens (the free plan, 40 credits, 25 October 2026). The search returns real companies and people, so all of them are blurred in the lesson, and no contact was revealed. The business in the example is made up.

The scenario

You sell outsourced payroll to accounting firms in Pennsylvania. Your best customers have something in common: they're accounting firms, headquartered in the state, big enough to need payroll help and small enough that a partner still makes the call.

That sentence is your ideal customer profile (ICP). Each trait becomes a filter.

Part 1: describe the ideal account

1. In Lusha, click Company filters. The filters sit in the left panel; the table fills in as you add them.
2. Click Industry, type Accounting and tick Accounting & Services.
3. Open Company location, type Pennsylvania and pick Pennsylvania, United States.
4. Tick HQ location only.
5. Open Company size and tick 11-50 and 51-200.

Watch the count at the top while you go. In the lesson it starts at about 256,000 companies and ends at a few hundred. That drop is the whole point: a few hundred firms worth a call instead of a database worth of maybes.

Why "HQ location only" matters

Without it, every national firm with a branch office in Pennsylvania shows up, and those aren't the regional firms you're after. One checkbox removes them.

Part 2: save the list where the team can find it

1. Click Save to table.
2. Drag the slider to how many companies you want to keep (the lesson keeps 40), then click Create new table.
3. Lusha names the table after your filters and keeps it Private. Open the menu next to the name, click Rename, type something the team will recognise (PA accounting firms) and click Save.

In the lesson's run, saving companies to a table didn't touch the credit counter. It stayed at 40.

A saved, named table is what replaces everyone's own spreadsheet. Everyone works from the same list, and nobody calls the same firm twice.

Part 3: find who decides, then stop

1. Tick a company in the table. View employees lights up.
2. Click the small arrow next to it. Lusha groups people by buying role: Buying group, Decision makers, Potential champions, End users.
3. Click Decision makers.

You get the people with their role and a fit score. Their emails and phones stay masked. Listing them didn't use a credit in our run either.

Now the button that does cost credits: Show details. It reveals one person's contact details and spends credits from your plan.

This is where the budget habit kicks in. Reveal only the two or three people you'll actually contact this week. The lesson stops right here, with nothing revealed.

Why the budget framing works

• Credits are finite. On a free or small plan, revealing a whole table can use up your credits in an afternoon.
• Data goes stale. A contact you reveal today and email in six weeks may have changed jobs.
• Every reveal is a real person. Once you hold their details, the email and privacy rules that apply to you (such as CAN-SPAM or GDPR) apply to how you use them. Keep the table private and reveal only who you'll contact soon.

Mistakes I'd avoid

1. Skipping the ICP. Filtering without one just makes a smaller random list. Look at your five best customers first and write down what they share.
2. Leaving HQ location only unticked for a regional list.
3. Revealing the whole table. Browse roles freely, reveal two or three.
4. Leaving the table with its auto-generated name. Nobody else will find it.

The checklist

• [ ] Write the ICP: industry, territory, size
• [ ] Company filters: Industry, Company location (HQ location only), Company size
• [ ] Save to table > Create new table
• [ ] Rename it so the team recognises it (it stays Private)
• [ ] Tick a firm > arrow next to View employees > Decision makers
• [ ] Show details only for the people you'll contact this week

What comes after the reveal

The list is only the start. Once you've called someone, the next job is not letting the conversation go cold: log the call and set a dated follow-up. That's another lesson in the same course, Close CRM: Log a Sales Call and Set a Follow-up.

Practice it step by step

The lesson, Lusha: Build a Target Account List and Find the Decision Makers, walks through every click above on real Lusha screens, with every company and person blurred, and it doesn't touch any account. It's part of my free AI for Sales Teams course. To do it for real, Lusha has a free plan with a small number of credits; check lusha.com for current plans.

Practice it step by step, free: https://learn.ynteractive.com/content/lusha-target-account-list