How to Find a Sales Director's Phone Number (2026)

The fastest way to find a Sales Director's phone number is to search a people database for Directors in sales, keep the ones flagged with a phone, then pull the direct dial by person id. A switchboard gets you a gatekeeper. A direct dial or mobile gets you the Director.

TL;DR

• Search with jobLevel: Director, jobFunction: Sales & Business Development and hasPhone: true. Size the list free, then pull numbers only for people you will call.
• Time: about 15 minutes for one Director, about 30 for a list of 500. Cost: 1 LeadOcean record per number pulled.
• Check the calling rules first. An API returns a number, not permission to dial it.

Prerequisites

• A LeadOcean account on the free plan: app.leadocean.io/register. Free gives you 1,000 records for life, every feature and 5 requests a second.
• An API key from the app, exported as $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY.
• curl and jq.
• A target: a company domain for one Director, or a filter set for a list.

Step 1: Pick the right Director and the right kind of number

"Sales Director" is a title, not a level. Companies also write Director of Sales, Sales Director EMEA or Director, Business Development. Filtering on the level Director plus the function Sales & Business Development catches them in one pass.

A main line rings reception. A direct dial or mobile rings the person. A switchboard adds a gatekeeper between you and the Director.

LeadOcean returns each number with a type: mobile, direct or office. Take mobile and direct first. Treat office as a fallback.

Step 2: Size the Sales Director list for free

Count before you spend. A count costs 0 records. Ask the MCP tool leadocean_count_leads, or send count=true with limit=1 as query parameters on the search endpoint.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search?count=true&limit=1" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jobLevel": ["Director"],
    "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"],
    "country": ["US"],
    "hasPhone": true
  }'

meta.total is capped at 100,000 on this call, so use the MCP count for the exact figure. Enum values are exact strings, so check them with leadocean_list_enum_values before you filter.

Step 3: Search for Directors who have a phone on file

Search returns people, one record per row. Filters are arrays, the body is flat JSON, and limit runs 1 to 100.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/people/search" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "jobLevel": ["Director"],
    "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"],
    "country": ["US"],
    "employeeRange": ["51-200"],
    "hasPhone": true,
    "limit": 25
  }' | jq '.meta, (.data | length)'

Page on with meta.nextCursor. One search stops at 10,000 rows (meta.depthCapped), so narrow by industry or headcount instead of paging deeper. To find one named company's Sales Director, use GET /v1/companies/{domain}/people and read the title column.

Step 4: Pull the direct dial

Spend records last. Each phone pull is one record, so a 25-person test batch costs 25 records on the free plan.

Take the person id from meta.source_ids.person_id on a search row and ask for the phone. This costs 1 record per call, including a call that finds nothing.

curl -s "https://api.leadocean.io/v2/people/phone?person_id=1234567" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" | jq

Numbers come back best first. In Claude or any MCP client, the tool leadocean_find_phone does the same job.

For a list over a few hundred people, skip the loop. Start an export with POST /v1/exports. One export takes up to 50,000 rows, and an account gets 500,000 a day. Bulk CSV export is not on Free: it comes with Solo ($97 a month) and Agency ($497 a month, 50k rows a file). See pricing.

curl -s -X POST "https://api.leadocean.io/v1/exports" \
  -H "x-api-key: $LEADOCEAN_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "us-sales-directors-with-phone",
    "filters": {
      "jobLevel": ["Director"],
      "jobFunction": ["Sales & Business Development"],
      "country": ["US"],
      "hasPhone": true
    },
    "limit": 500,
    "preset": "full",
    "reveal": "email_phone"
  }'

Poll GET /v1/exports/{id}, then fetch GET /v1/exports/{id}/download. You can build the same export in the app: filter builder, column picker, price preview, then download.

Step 5: Check what you may call before you dial

Having a number is not the same as being allowed to call it. The rules differ by country, by whether the line is a mobile, and by whether you use an autodialer or a recorded message.

• The API does not return a usable do-not-call flag. The v2 phone endpoint omits dnc because the field is unpopulated at source. Its absence is not clearance.
• Run your own list through the registries that apply to you before a campaign.
• Rules for calls to businesses differ by market. Ask your counsel which rules cover your target country.
• A Director at a small firm may give out a personal mobile as the business line. Keep a suppression list and honour opt-outs.

This is not legal advice.

What you get

Expect a short list, not a dump. Most Directors in a mid-size slice will have a number on file, a few will not, and some numbers will be an office line. Sort by type and call direct and mobile first.

A free count run on 2026-10-21 with leadocean_count_leads (jobLevel Director, jobFunction Sales & Business Development, country US, hasPhone true, no email filter). It is a phone-flag count. It is not a verified-number count.

{
  "total": 589483,
  "totalIsExact": true,
  "distinctCompanies": 207693,
  "credits": 0,
  "facets": {
    "country": [{ "value": "US", "count": 589483 }],
    "industry": [
      { "value": "Software Development", "count": 39592 },
      { "value": "Retail", "count": 33514 },
      { "value": "Advertising Services", "count": 24162 }
    ],
    "company_size": [
      { "value": "10001+", "count": 107066 },
      { "value": "11-50", "count": 94317 },
      { "value": "51-200", "count": 89345 }
    ]
  }
}

The phone call returns this shape. It is the response shape from the API reference, with placeholder values.

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "found": true,
    "phones": [
      { "phone": "+1 415 555 0133", "type": "direct" },
      { "phone": "+1 415 555 0134", "type": "office" }
    ]
  }
}

The function filter is a classification, so a few rows will be a Director of customer success or marketing. Read the title column before you dial.

Troubleshooting

FAQ