The Scenario
You are an outbound SDR. Your manager told you Monday morning: build a list of 200 CFO contacts at manufacturing companies headquartered in Germany or France with fewer than 1,000 employees. By Wednesday. The cold email campaign kicks off Thursday.
You have Apollo. You do not have time to click through the filter UI, export a CSV, clean the columns, import into an Excel workbook on SharePoint, and repeat until you hit 200.
The slow version of Monday and Tuesday:
- You open Apollo, set the title filter to CFO, set country to Germany or France, set industry to Manufacturing, set headcount to under 1,000
- Apollo returns 700 results. You page through, manually select contacts, hit the export limit
- The export comes back with 40 columns you do not need and the four you want are buried
- You spend an hour slimming the file down to name, email, company, and LinkedIn URL
- Wednesday: 158 contacts. Not 200. You go back into Apollo to find more.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI is an AI agent inside your Excel workbook that runs the Apollo people search with your filters and writes the results directly into the workbook in the columns you specify.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Search Apollo for CFO contacts at manufacturing companies headquartered in Germany or France with fewer than 1,000 employees. Return up to 200 contacts with verified emails only. Write first and last name into columns A and B, email into column C, company name into column D, and LinkedIn URL into column E of the Prospects tab.
SheetXAI runs the search, filters for verified emails, and writes the results into the Prospects tab. You get the list shaped the way you need it, without touching Apollo's export UI.
What You Get
A 200-row prospect list with:
- Column A — first name
- Column B — last name
- Column C — verified email address
- Column D — company name
- Column E — LinkedIn URL
Only contacts with verified emails make it in. No bounced emails on the first send.
What If the Search Results Are Not Quite Ready
Search results rarely land exactly how you need them. SheetXAI handles filtering, deduplication, and personalization prep in the same operation.
When the results include companies already in your CRM
You do not want to cold-email contacts your team is already working. Column G of the Prospects tab has a list of company domains to exclude.
Search Apollo for CFO contacts at manufacturing companies in Germany or France with under 1,000 employees. Write name, email, company, and LinkedIn URL into columns A through D of the Prospects tab. Remove any row whose company domain matches a domain in column G before writing the final list.
When you want the list grouped by country for tiered sequencing
Your campaign has two tracks: one for Germany, one for France.
Search Apollo for CFO contacts at manufacturing companies in Germany or France with under 1,000 employees. Write name, email, company, LinkedIn URL, and headquarters country into columns A through E of the Prospects tab. Then sort rows by country so all Germany contacts appear before France contacts.
When you need contacts from two title variations
Your campaign targets both CFO and Head of Finance, but Apollo returns them separately.
Run two Apollo people searches: one for "CFO" and one for "Head of Finance" at manufacturing companies in Germany or France with under 1,000 employees. Combine the results in the Prospects tab, deduplicate by email, and return up to 200 unique contacts. Write name, email, company, title, and LinkedIn URL into columns A through E.
When you want the search, deduplication, CRM exclusion, and personalization data in one shot
Your manager wants 200 clean contacts, no duplicates, not already in your CRM, with headcount and city added for personalization.
Search Apollo for CFO and Head of Finance contacts at manufacturing companies in Germany or France with under 1,000 employees. Deduplicate by email. Remove any contact whose company domain matches a domain in the Existing CRM tab, column A. Return up to 200 remaining contacts. Write name, email, company, LinkedIn URL, headcount, and city into columns A through F of the Prospects tab.
The pattern: search, filter, deduplicate, and populate — all in one prompt. The list is in the workbook ready to use.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and open a blank workbook, then ask it to run an Apollo people search and write the results in. The Apollo integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For related workflows, see how to bulk-create contacts in Apollo from an Excel workbook or the Apollo in Excel overview.