> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://help.pipelime.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Decision-maker targeting: what each filter changes

> Industry, company locations, company size and decision-maker roles: what each filter narrows, and how roles guide who gets contacted.

export const Screenshot = ({id, alt, caption, frame = 'browser', url, marks = [], lang = 'en', workspace = 'northwind-outbound'}) => {
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            <span className="pl-shot__url">{chrome}</span>
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A lead source's targeting is a handful of filters that narrow which companies it searches, plus one field that works differently: **Decision-maker roles** never changes which companies match, only which people inside each matched company your agent tries to reach.

<div className="pl-availability">
  <div className="pl-availability__row">
    <div className="pl-availability__label">Where</div>
    <div className="pl-availability__value"><span className="pl-path">Outreach<span className="pl-path__sep">→</span>AI Agents</span></div>
  </div>

  <div className="pl-availability__row">
    <div className="pl-availability__label">Your role needs</div>
    <div className="pl-availability__value">Read access to AI Agents <code>read-campaigns</code>. Admin, Member and Viewer have it by default.</div>
  </div>

  <div className="pl-availability__row">
    <div className="pl-availability__label">To create or change</div>
    <div className="pl-availability__value"><code>create-campaigns</code> to add one, <code>update-campaigns</code> to change one, on top of the permission above.</div>
  </div>

  <div className="pl-availability__note">If you cannot find this in your sidebar, your workspace may have a custom menu configuration. Contact support and we will check it for you.</div>
</div>

The same panel appears in two places: the **Targeting** step of the create-agent wizard, and the
**Add a source** or **Edit source** dialog on an existing agent. In the wizard it opens pre-filled
by an AI suggestion read from your own company profile, which fills the industry terms, the
locations, the company sizes and the roles for you. The dialog does not suggest anything by
itself: **Add a source** opens blank and **Edit source** opens on the source's saved values. The
**Suggest with AI** button next to the source name fills those same four fields on demand,
replacing whatever is in them.

Two exceptions. An agent created by adopting an existing lead source shows that source's
targeting as a locked read-only summary instead of the fields, because the adopted source's own
targeting is what binds it. And a role that cannot update sources never sees the **Edit source**
item on a source's menu, so it cannot open this panel on an existing source at all.

<Screenshot id="finding-leads/decision-maker-targeting--filters" frame="bare" alt="The targeting column of the Edit source dialog, top to bottom: Industry with two chips and the Any term / All terms toggle, Company locations with one chip, an empty Decision-maker roles field, the Advanced Hiring Filters block with its switch off, and an expanded Advanced targeting section showing two Company size chips and an empty Exclude locations field" caption="The panel in the order it lists its fields. Every one of them narrows the company search except Decision-maker roles, in the middle, which picks people." marks={[{ n: 1, x: 8, y: 14 }, { n: 2, x: 8, y: 30 }, { n: 3, x: 8, y: 42 }]} />

## How it behaves

### Industry (1) narrows which companies match

Type one or more terms and press Enter to add each as a chip. A term shorter than a couple of
characters is dropped rather than added, so a stray keystroke never becomes a search criterion,
and a term you already added is not added twice. Add a second term and a match-mode toggle
appears under the chips: **Any term** matches a company against any one of them (broader, a
union), **All terms** requires every one to match (narrower, an intersection). With a single term
the toggle is hidden, and the mode makes no difference to the search.

<Screenshot id="finding-leads/decision-maker-targeting--match-toggle" frame="bare" alt="A close crop of the industry match toggle: two buttons, Any term and All terms, with the line Any = broader (union). All = narrower (intersection) underneath" caption="Shows up the instant a second industry term is added. There's no separate setting to go find." />

Industry is normally required, with one exception: once at least one **Advanced Hiring Filters**
value is set (see below), an **Optional** chip appears next to the Industry heading and you can
leave the field empty to match companies of any industry. Save a source with neither and the save
is rejected, with a message telling you to add an industry or to target companies by their job
postings.

### Company locations (2) set where those companies are headquartered

Type a city, state or country and pick a suggestion from the list. Suggestions are limited to
places of that kind, and a picked suggestion is stored in a normalized "city, state, country"
form, as much of it as the place actually has. A picked place that reads "USA" is stored as
"United States".

If nothing in the list fits, press Enter to add exactly what you typed as a custom location. That
path stores your text verbatim: type "USA" and press Enter and the chip stays "USA", so prefer a
suggestion when there is one. Leave the field empty and targeting is worldwide.

This is where a company is headquartered, not where a job posting lives. If you also use Advanced
Hiring Filters, the locations of the postings themselves are a separate field inside that block,
and the two do not have to match.

### Decision-maker roles (3) picks people, not companies

It sits between Company locations and Advanced Hiring Filters, in the middle of the same column,
but it is not a company filter. It never changes which companies are found, only who your agent
tries to reach once a company already matches. It is a plain text field rather than a list to pick
from: type a title in your own words and press Enter, and each one becomes a chip you can delete.
There is no seniority picklist anywhere on this screen.

<Screenshot id="finding-leads/decision-maker-targeting--roles" frame="bare" alt="A close crop of the Decision-maker roles field: a text input above three chips reading CEO, Head of Marketing and VP of Sales, each with its own delete button" caption="Free text, not a picklist: type a title in your own words and press Enter." />

Once a source starts researching a matched company, it hands the roster of people its search
actually found there to an AI selection step, along with whatever you typed here. With roles
typed in, they are the primary criterion: it looks for people who hold one of those roles, or a
close equivalent, and synonyms, abbreviations and titles in another language all count, so a typed
"CEO" also matches someone whose title reads "Chief Executive Officer". Someone who advises on a
role rather than holding it is not a match: an analyst covering sales leaders is not that
company's sales leader.

Leave the field empty and the selection falls back to its own default: the people most likely to
decide on a purchase of what you sell, worked down the seniority ladder, from owners and founders
to C-level executives, then vice presidents, directors and heads of department. It leans toward
the functions closest to what your own company offers, so the ladder is not the whole story.

Either way the result is a ranked list, best match first, and it does not stop at the number you
plan to contact: further candidates are ranked below as backups. Email lookup then works down
that ranking and stops once the company has as many reachable people as **Contacts per company**
allows, so a lookup that finds no address moves to the next-ranked person instead of costing you
the company. **Contacts per company** sets how many of those candidates get enriched and counted
against your credits, and it lives under **Pace & limits** in the source dialog, not in this
panel. See [How many credits does a lead cost?](/en/finding-leads/credits-per-lead)

The selection is also guaranteed to return somebody: when nobody on the roster genuinely fits, it
returns the single most plausible decision-maker, the most senior person available, rather than
returning nothing. People it did not pick are still saved on the company so you can see the full
roster and enrich one by hand, but your agent never reaches out to them on its own.

When the selection records its reasoning, that company's own page carries a **Why these contacts?**
tooltip beside the **Employees** heading, spelling out why those people were picked.

### Advanced Hiring Filters can stand in for Industry

This block targets companies by what they are actively hiring for, matching live job postings from
LinkedIn, public job boards and company career pages, instead of by a declared industry. Its
switch only opens the block: what makes Industry optional is setting at least one value inside it,
whether that is a posting title, a posting location, a bound on how many roles are open, or how
recent the postings have to be. Any one of them narrows on its own, which is why any one of them
is enough to replace an industry term.

A source still needs at least one of the two before it can be saved. A location or a company size
on its own is not enough.

### Company size and Exclude locations sit behind Advanced targeting

**Advanced targeting** is a collapsed section at the foot of the panel, closed until you open it,
so a source that needs neither of its fields never has to look at them.

**Company size** is inside it: a fixed list of employee-count bands, from the smallest teams up to
enterprises. Pick as many as you like. Unlike Industry, you cannot type your own band.

**Exclude locations** is inside it too, and is the location widget in reverse. Whatever you add
there is skipped instead of required, and its chips render in red so they read differently from
the include list at a glance.

## Limits

| Filter                  | What it's made of                                                        | What it does                                                                                              |
| ----------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Industry                | Free-text terms you type, two characters or longer                       | Narrows which companies match. Optional once a hiring filter is set                                       |
| Match mode              | Any term / All terms toggle, shown once two or more industry terms exist | Any = union (broader). All = intersection (narrower)                                                      |
| Company locations       | Suggested places, normalized, or custom text you type                    | Narrows to companies headquartered there. Empty = worldwide                                               |
| Decision-maker roles    | Free text, one or more roles                                             | Does not narrow which companies match. Ranks and selects which people at each matched company get reached |
| Advanced Hiring Filters | Opt-in block: a switch, plus at least one value set inside it            | Narrows to companies with matching active job postings. Can stand in for Industry                         |
| Company size            | Fixed list of employee-count bands, inside Advanced targeting            | Narrows which companies match                                                                             |
| Exclude locations       | Same location widget, inside Advanced targeting                          | Skips companies headquartered there                                                                       |
| Contacts per company    | Number field, under Pace & limits                                        | Caps how many of the ranked candidates get enriched                                                       |

## Related

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Quality gate and match score" icon="sliders-horizontal" href="/en/finding-leads/quality-gate-and-match-score">
    How the AI match score behind a source's optional quality gate is actually calculated.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Advanced hiring filters" icon="briefcase" href="/en/finding-leads/advanced-hiring-filters">
    Job titles, posting locations, open-role counts and recency, in full.
  </Card>

  <Card title="How many credits does a lead cost?" icon="coins" href="/en/finding-leads/credits-per-lead">
    What Contacts per company and phone lookup add to the price of a lead.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Create an AI agent" icon="sparkles" href="/en/ai-agents/create-an-ai-agent">
    Where these same fields sit inside the four-step wizard, alongside pace, goal and instructions.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>