Mine a 10-K or annual report for the pain your product solves
Turns a 10-K or annual report into a seller's cheat sheet: admitted pains with section references, implied pressures, strategic bets, and verbatim quotable lines mapped to the outcome you sell. It replaces two hours of skimming dense filing language with a focused read that flags weak fits honestly instead of forcing connections.
You are an equity analyst turned sales strategist. You've read hundreds of 10-Ks and you know the good stuff never lives in the letter to shareholders — it lives in Risk Factors, MD&A, and the quiet year-over-year changes in language.
I'll give you a 10-K or annual report (pasted sections or a link to browse). Read it like a seller, not an investor, and produce:
1. STATED PAINS — 3 to 5 problems the company admits to, quoted or closely paraphrased, each with the section it came from.
2. BETWEEN THE LINES — 2 to 3 pressures implied but not stated: segment margins shrinking, a risk factor that's new or newly expanded this year, heavy spend categories.
3. STRATEGIC BETS — what they say they're investing in next year, in one line each.
4. SALES TRANSLATION — for each stated pain, one sentence connecting it to the outcome I sell. If the connection is a stretch, say 'weak fit' instead of forcing it.
5. QUOTABLE — the 2 best verbatim lines a rep could reference in an email or call ('your own annual report calls out X').
Rules: no summarizing the whole filing, no financial advice, no pains that are generic to every public company ('macroeconomic conditions'), and never invent a quote — if you're paraphrasing, mark it.
Before you read anything, interview me. Ask me these questions ONE AT A TIME, waiting for my answer each time:
1. What does your company sell, and what measurable outcome does it drive?
2. Which company's filing are we mining, and do you have a link or pasted sections? Risk Factors and MD&A matter most.
3. Who's your buyer inside this company (title and function)?
4. Is there a specific initiative or pain you're hoping to find evidence for?
Once you have my answers, do the analysis. If the filing sections I gave you are too thin, tell me exactly which section to paste next.How to use it
- 1
Copy the prompt into Claude or Gemini — long filings need a large context window.
- 2
Pull the company's latest 10-K from their investor relations page or SEC EDGAR; paste Risk Factors and MD&A, or give a link if your model browses well.
- 3
Answer the interview, being concrete about the measurable outcome you sell.
- 4
Verify each QUOTABLE line against the actual filing before using it in outreach — a misquoted 10-K line is an instant credibility killer.
- 5
Feed the SALES TRANSLATION lines into your email sequence as the evidence layer.
Best practices
Paste Risk Factors and MD&A rather than linking the whole filing — models read pasted text more reliably than 300-page PDFs behind a link.
Ask a follow-up: 'what changed in Risk Factors versus last year's filing?' New or expanded risks are the freshest pain signals a public company will ever admit to.
Run this only for public companies and enterprise deals worth the prep — for private accounts, use the hiring-signals or Glassdoor prompts in this category instead.
If SALES TRANSLATION reads like a stretch, trust the 'weak fit' flag. A forced 10-K angle sounds like a rep doing a book report.
Example: what this looks like in practice
An enterprise AE selling supply-chain visibility software targets a mid-cap manufacturer. He pastes the Risk Factors and MD&A sections from their latest 10-K and answers the interview: the outcome he sells is 'cut expedited-freight spend by catching disruptions two weeks earlier.' The model surfaces a newly expanded risk factor on supplier concentration in Southeast Asia, an MD&A note on logistics cost inflation eating 120 basis points of margin, and flags one quotable line about 'limited visibility into sub-tier suppliers.' His opening email quotes that line back to the VP of Supply Chain. She replies the same day asking who else he's shown this to.
Best fit
This prompt is one gear in a bigger machine. We orchestrate 20+ tools into outbound systems our clients own — and guarantee the results.
Apply for a Pilot Spot → →Frequently asked questions
Skip the shareholder letter and go straight to Risk Factors and MD&A — that's where companies legally have to admit what worries them. Look for newly added risks, margin commentary, and named initiatives, then connect one admitted pain to the outcome you sell. This prompt automates that read and hands you quotable lines with section references.
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