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How to find leads with Apollo discovery

Connect your own Apollo API key, search for the right people, enrich the ones worth pursuing, and convert them into tracked leads — bring-your-own-key prospecting and enrichment, right inside KudosCRM.

Updated July 2026

Lead discovery is how you bring net-new prospects in rather than waiting for inbound. KudosCRM integrates Apollo on a bring-your-own-key basis — you connect your own per-tenant Apollo API key, search Apollo's people data from inside KudosCRM, enrich the contacts you want, and convert them straight into leads on your scoring and routing.

This guide covers connecting your key, running a people search, when enrichment consumes an Apollo credit, and converting a result into a tracked lead. It's also honest about which numbers are Apollo's and which are KudosCRM's own labelled estimates — so you know what you're looking at.

Who this is for

SDRs and reps doing outbound prospecting, and ops who manage the Apollo key and its credit budget.

Before you start

  • Your own Apollo account and API key — discovery runs on your key, not a shared one.
  • An understanding that enrichment (the People-Match step) consumes Apollo credits from your account.
  • Your lead scoring and routing set up, so converted leads land prioritized and assigned.

Whose numbers are whose — and how credits work

Discovery uses YOUR OWN per-tenant Apollo API key (bring-your-own-key) — the search and enrichment hit Apollo on your account, so credit costs are yours. The enrichment step (People-Match) is what costs an Apollo credit; plain search results do not consume credits until you enrich. One honesty note: any fit, confidence, or predicted-value labels you see in KudosCRM are OUR own estimates to help you triage — they are not figures provided by Apollo. Treat them as a KudosCRM-side heuristic, not Apollo data.

Connect, search, enrich, convert

  1. Connect your Apollo API key

    Add your own Apollo API key in settings. Discovery runs per-tenant on your key, so the data and any credit usage belong to your Apollo account — KudosCRM doesn't proxy a shared pool.

  2. Run a people search

    Search Apollo's people data from inside KudosCRM — by title, company, industry, location, and more. Browsing the results doesn't consume credits; you're just finding the people worth pursuing.

  3. Review the fit signals

    Scan the results and any fit or confidence labels KudosCRM shows. These are our own labelled estimates to help you prioritize — not Apollo's numbers — so use them as a triage aid, then trust your own judgment on who's worth a credit.

  4. Enrich the ones you want

    For a promising person, run enrichment (People-Match) to pull verified contact detail. This is the step that consumes an Apollo credit from your account, so enrich deliberately rather than in bulk on every result.

  5. Convert to a lead

    Turn an enriched result into a lead in KudosCRM. It lands as a tracked lead, runs through your scoring rules, and routes to the right owner — so a discovered prospect immediately enters the same flow as any inbound lead.

  6. Work it like any other lead

    From here the converted lead behaves like everything else in the CRM — it can be added to an audience, enrolled in a sequence, and worked through qualification and the pipeline.

What you get

  • Net-new prospects sourced from Apollo without leaving KudosCRM.
  • Enrichment that runs on your own key, so you control credit spend.
  • Discovered people converted into tracked, scored, routed leads.
  • Honest labelling — KudosCRM's fit estimates are flagged as ours, not Apollo's.

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Part of Growth

Growth is the broad engine of the KudosCRM journey — sequences, campaigns, audiences, lead discovery, and referrals that keep new pipeline flowing. See the full picture on the Growth platform overview.

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