What It Does

MSP Hunter is Gridlock's AI lead generation engine. It finds businesses that need managed security services, scores them on likelihood to buy, and drafts personalized outreach campaigns — all without any manual prospecting work from your team. Feed it a target vertical or geography and it returns a prioritized list of prospects with contact intelligence, firmographic data, and suggested outreach copy ready to send.

Unlike generic sales tools, MSP Hunter understands the MSP buying context: companies that just suffered a breach, firms in regulated industries approaching a compliance deadline, businesses that recently hired a new IT director, and organizations running outdated infrastructure are all surfaced and scored accordingly.

How It Works

The agent runs a five-stage pipeline every time you trigger a hunt. You can run it on demand from the dashboard or schedule it on a recurring cadence (daily, weekly, or monthly by vertical).

Target Verticals

MSP Hunter maintains intent signals and firmographic data across the highest-value verticals for managed security services. Each vertical has pre-tuned scoring weights reflecting how MSP services are bought in that sector.

Vertical	Primary Driver	Avg. Deal Size	Typical Timeline
Healthcare / Medical Practices	HIPAA compliance deadline or audit	$2,800 – $6,500 / mo	30 – 60 days
Legal Firms	Client data confidentiality obligations	$1,500 – $4,200 / mo	45 – 90 days
Financial Services / CPA	FTC Safeguards Rule, SOC 2	$2,200 – $5,800 / mo	30 – 75 days
Manufacturing	OT/IT convergence, ransomware exposure	$3,500 – $9,000 / mo	60 – 120 days
Education (K-12 / Higher Ed)	FERPA, rising ransomware targeting	$1,800 – $5,000 / mo	45 – 90 days
Professional Services	Cyber insurance requirements	$1,200 – $3,600 / mo	30 – 60 days
Government / Municipal	CISA directives, budget cycles	$4,000 – $12,000 / mo	90 – 180 days

Lead Scoring Algorithm

Every prospect receives a composite score from 0 to 100, modeled after CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) severity math. The score combines four independently weighted dimensions. A score above 75 is considered hot — prioritize these for same-week outreach.

Scoring Dimensions

Dimension	Weight	What It Measures	High-Score Signals
Budget Fit	25%	Ability and propensity to pay MSP retainers	50+ employees, $5M+ revenue, prior IT spend detected
Need Urgency	35%	Active security pain signals in public data	Recent breach news, CVE exposure, compliance deadline within 90 days
Decision Timeline	20%	How quickly they can sign a contract	New IT director hire, open RFP, fiscal year end within 60 days
Competitive Landscape	20%	How easy it is to displace their current provider	No current MSP, MSP in unrelated vertical, bad review signals

Score Bands

75–100   HOT   Engage within 48 hours. High urgency + budget fit. Prioritize phone outreach first, email second.

50–74   WARM   Add to a drip sequence. Good fit but longer timeline or moderate urgency. Re-score in 30 days.

0–49   COLD   Not ready now. Archive or place in a 90-day nurture track. Do not spend manual sales effort here.

Sample Lead Profile

This is what a scored lead looks like in the dashboard and in CSV export.

A/B Email Variant Generation

For every qualified lead, MSP Hunter drafts two outreach variants. Run both variants to a split of your list and let the response rate data guide which angle you scale.

Variant A: Pain-Focused

Leads with the pain-focused approach by surfacing a specific, real vulnerability or compliance risk tied to the prospect. Uses factual signals pulled from open sources (Shodan, breach databases, regulatory filings) to create a credible "I did my homework" impression. Converts well with technical buyers (IT directors, CTOs).

Subject: Cascade Orthopedics — 3 exposed systems I noticed this morning

Hi [First Name], I was doing some routine threat surface research on healthcare providers in Portland and noticed Cascade Orthopedics has three Windows Server systems reachable on the open internet without proper hardening. With your HIPAA audit coming up in Q3, that's exactly the kind of finding that creates real exposure — both technically and for your organization's liability. We help medical practices like yours get audit-ready and stay protected. Worth a 15-minute call?

Variant B: ROI-Focused

Opens with the cost of inaction — breach costs, downtime, regulatory fines — framed against the predictable monthly cost of managed protection. Converts well with business decision-makers (practice owners, CFOs, operations managers) who respond to financial framing.

Subject: What a healthcare breach actually costs in Oregon (numbers might surprise you)

Hi [First Name], the average ransomware attack on a medical practice in 2025 cost $312,000 in recovery — that's before HIPAA penalties, which averaged $1.2M for practices under 100 employees. For less than the cost of a single part-time IT hire, Gridlock gives Cascade Orthopedics enterprise-grade protection and handles your HIPAA compliance documentation automatically. I'd love to show you the numbers. Can we find 15 minutes this week?

Campaign Management

Campaigns let you organize hunts by vertical, region, or any combination. A campaign runs continuously in the background and surfaces new leads as they meet your scoring threshold.

Creating a Campaign

1. Navigate to Agents → MSP Hunter → New Campaign in the dashboard.
2. Set your Target Vertical (single vertical or "All Verticals").
3. Set your Geography — state, metro area, or radius from a zip code.
4. Set the Minimum Score Threshold (default: 60). Leads below this score are silently discarded and never appear in your pipeline.
5. Choose your Outreach Variant — Pain, ROI, or A/B Split.
6. Set your Cadence — how often to re-run the hunt (daily, weekly, monthly).
7. Activate. The first results typically appear within 2–4 hours.

Campaign Filters

Advanced filters let you narrow results:

• Employee count — exclude micro-businesses or enterprise accounts outside your sweet spot.
• Revenue range — estimated annual revenue bracket.
• Has current MSP — include, exclude, or specifically target businesses with a current MSP (displacement campaigns).
• Recent breach detected — surface only companies with active breach signals.
• Compliance deadline within N days — find companies under time pressure.
• Tech stack signals — companies using specific platforms (Office 365, on-prem Exchange, outdated Windows) that signal MSP opportunity.

CRM & Lead Pipeline

Every lead generated by MSP Hunter flows into the built-in pipeline. The pipeline tracks each lead through six statuses from initial discovery to close.

Status	Definition	Recommended Action
New	Lead discovered and scored, no outreach yet	Review the intelligence summary. Send Variant A or B, or both if A/B split is enabled.
Contacted	At least one outreach touch sent	Wait 3 business days. If no response, send a follow-up. MSP Hunter suggests follow-up copy.
Responded	Prospect replied to any touch	Route to a human rep immediately. Time-to-response here is the #1 close rate factor.
Qualified	Discovery call completed; confirmed budget, need, authority, and timeline	Prepare a custom security assessment or proposal using the Threat Researcher agent output.
Won	Contract signed	Trigger the Onboarding Agent to begin the client setup flow.
Lost	Prospect declined or went dark after qualification	Add to a 6-month re-score queue. Circumstances change. Score again in 180 days.

Competitive Analysis

Before you pitch a prospect, MSP Hunter can generate a competitive brief covering who their current security provider is (if any), what gaps that provider likely has, and how to position Gridlock against them. This brief is attached to every qualified lead automatically when the data is available.

What the Competitive Brief Includes

• Current MSP or security vendor name and estimated service tier
• Known weaknesses of that vendor in the prospect's vertical (drawn from public breach reports, compliance violations, and customer review signals)
• Suggested displacement messaging: what pain points to emphasize when their current provider is named specifically
• Contract renewal timing estimate (based on typical MSP contract lengths and any public procurement data available)
• Gridlock differentiators most relevant to this specific prospect

CSV Export & CRM Integration

Export your pipeline at any time from Agents → MSP Hunter → Export. The CSV includes all scored fields, contact data, intelligence summaries, and generated email copy.

CSV Column Reference

Column	Description
lead_id	Unique identifier for deduplication on re-import
company_name	Legal entity name
vertical	Industry vertical assigned by the agent
employee_count	Estimated headcount
city, state	Primary business location
lead_score	Composite score 0–100
score_budget	Budget Fit sub-score (0–25)
score_urgency	Need Urgency sub-score (0–35)
score_timeline	Decision Timeline sub-score (0–20)
score_competitive	Competitive Landscape sub-score (0–20)
contact_name	Primary decision-maker name (when available)
contact_title	Decision-maker title
contact_email	Best available email (verified where possible)
contact_linkedin	LinkedIn profile URL
intelligence_summary	Plain-text intelligence brief (1–3 sentences)
email_variant_a	Pain-focused email body text
email_variant_b	ROI-focused email body text
pipeline_status	Current CRM status
scored_at	ISO 8601 timestamp of most recent scoring

Outreach Best Practices for MSPs

Sequence Structure That Works

1. Day 1: Send personalized email (MSP Hunter Variant A — pain-focused). Keep it under 120 words. One specific finding. One clear CTA (15-minute call).
2. Day 4: Follow-up email — restate the risk, add social proof (similar client in same vertical). MSP Hunter generates this automatically.
3. Day 8: LinkedIn connection request with a brief, non-salesy note referencing the same specific finding.
4. Day 12: Final email — "closing the loop." Offer a free, no-obligation security assessment. This converts a meaningful portion of non-responders.
5. Day 30+: Archive to nurture. Re-score at 90 days.

Rules That Improve Reply Rates

• Never pitch on the first touch. Lead with the finding, not your product.
• One call-to-action per email — always a specific meeting time or calendar link, never "let me know if you're interested."
• Send Tuesdays through Thursdays, 7–9am local time for the prospect. MSP Hunter's send-time optimizer handles this automatically.
• Personalize the subject line and opening sentence for every email, even in bulk sends. Mass emails with identical subjects trigger spam filters and hurt your domain reputation.
• For healthcare and legal verticals, include a brief compliance hook in the subject — regulatory language converts 2.3x better in these sectors than security language.

FAQ

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