Automated AI Powered LinkedIn Company Search & Scoring with Google Sheets CRM

Your sales team is burning out from endless LinkedIn scrolling sessions. They're drowning in spreadsheets, chasing cold prospects, and playing the guessing game with lead quality. Meanwhile, your competition is closing deals while you're still figuring out which companies are worth calling. The manual approach to lead generation isn't just inefficient anymore. It's business suicide.

What if LinkedIn worked for you around the clock? This N8N workflow creates an unstoppable lead generation engine that hunts down prospects, analyzes them with artificial intelligence, and delivers perfectly scored leads straight to your CRM. While you sleep, it's working. While you're in meetings, it's qualifying. While others are manually copying and pasting company data, you're already making the sale.

Prerequisites: What You'll Need to Get Started

Before diving into the workflow construction, you'll need access to these essential APIs and tools:

• GhostGenius API - For LinkedIn company search and data enrichment
• OpenAI API - Powers the AI scoring system using GPT-4.1
• Google Sheets API - For CRM integration and data storage
• N8N Platform - The automation engine that orchestrates everything

Each service requires proper authentication credentials. The GhostGenius API uses header authentication, while Google Sheets requires OAuth2 authentication. OpenAI needs an API key for accessing their language models.

Key Components: The Building Blocks

This workflow leverages several powerful N8N nodes working in harmony:

• Manual Trigger - Starts the automation process
• Set Variables - Defines your targeting criteria and scoring parameters
• HTTP Request - Communicates with external APIs
• Split Out & Split in Batches - Processes data efficiently
• IF Conditions - Filters and validates company data
• OpenAI Node - Performs intelligent company scoring
• Google Sheets - Manages your CRM database
• Wait Node - Prevents API rate limiting

Step 1: Define Your Target Criteria

The workflow begins with the Set Variables node, where you configure your ideal customer profile. This is where the magic starts. You define your target market, company size preferences, geographic location, and most importantly, the positive and negative indicators that help AI understand what makes a good prospect.

In our example, the workflow targets growth marketing agencies with 11-50 employees, focusing on companies that mention challenges with customer relationships or are in a growth phase. The system also identifies red flags like companies already using advanced CRM solutions or those with minimal customer interaction needs.

Step 2: Search and Extract Company Data

Once your criteria are set, the Search Companies node springs into action. It queries the GhostGenius API using your parameters, implementing smart pagination to gather comprehensive results. The system fetches up to three pages of results with built-in delays to respect API limits.

The Extract Company Data node then processes the raw search results, splitting them into individual company records. Each company becomes a separate data point flowing through the pipeline, ready for detailed analysis and enrichment.

Step 3: Enrich and Filter Company Information

Here's where the workflow gets sophisticated. The Process Each Company node handles data one record at a time, preventing system overload while ensuring thorough processing. Each company profile gets enriched with additional details through the Get Company Info API call.

The Filter Valid Companies node acts as your quality gatekeeper. It ensures companies have websites and maintain at least 200 LinkedIn followers, filtering out inactive or low-quality prospects. This validation step dramatically improves your lead quality.

"Quality over quantity is the secret to successful lead generation. This filtering stage ensures you only work with prospects worth your time."

Step 4: Prevent Duplicates with Smart Detection

Nobody wants duplicate leads cluttering their CRM. The Check If Company Exists node queries your Google Sheets database, comparing company IDs to prevent redundant entries. This deduplication process keeps your database clean and prevents wasted effort on companies you've already evaluated.

The Is New Company conditional node directs the workflow flow. New companies proceed to AI scoring, while existing entries skip ahead, maintaining efficiency throughout the process.

Step 5: AI-Powered Company Scoring

This is where artificial intelligence transforms your lead qualification process. The AI Company Scoring node uses GPT-4.1 to analyze each company profile against your predefined criteria. The AI considers industry fit, company profile alignment, and potential pain points that your product or service could solve.

The scoring system operates on a scale of 0 to 10, providing consistent, objective evaluations. With a temperature setting of 0.2, the AI maintains consistency across evaluations while still allowing for nuanced assessments based on company-specific factors.

Step 6: Automated CRM Integration

Qualified companies automatically flow into your Google Sheets CRM through the Add Company to CRM node. The system captures essential information including company ID, name, AI score, qualification state, description, website, and LinkedIn profile URL.

The Wait 2s node provides a crucial buffer, preventing API throttling while ensuring smooth data transfer. This small delay prevents system overwhelm and maintains consistent performance throughout long processing runs.

Benefits and Use Cases: Why This Workflow Changes Everything

This automated lead generation system delivers multiple compelling advantages for modern sales and marketing teams:

• Time Savings - Eliminates hours of manual research and data entry
• Consistent Quality - AI scoring ensures objective, repeatable lead qualification
• Scalability - Process hundreds of companies without additional human resources
• Data Accuracy - Automated data collection reduces human error
• Smart Filtering - Multiple validation stages ensure only quality prospects reach your CRM

Sales development representatives can focus on relationship building instead of data gathering. Marketing teams can maintain fuller pipelines with pre-qualified prospects. Business development managers can scale their outreach efforts without proportionally increasing their workload.

The workflow adapts to various industries and target markets. Whether you're selling CRM implementations, marketing services, or software solutions, the AI scoring system learns your specific qualification criteria and applies them consistently across all prospects.

Ready to Transform Your Lead Generation?

Building an AI-powered lead generation machine with N8N isn't just about automation; it's about creating a competitive advantage. While your competitors manually sift through LinkedIn profiles, you're systematically identifying, qualifying, and organizing prospects at scale.

This workflow represents the future of sales operations where human creativity combines with artificial intelligence to create unprecedented efficiency. Your sales team gets more time for relationship building, your pipeline stays consistently full, and your conversion rates improve through better lead quality.

The best part? Once you build this workflow, it runs continuously in the background, feeding your sales team a steady stream of qualified prospects while you focus on closing deals and growing your business.