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Engagement 02 · System

Find the accounts
worth your attention.

This engagement turns that definition into a repeatable way to discover companies, check their fit, interpret the signals and decide which accounts deserve attention.

The gap

A buying trigger can fire at exactly the right company and still lead nowhere.

You need to know what the event indicates, whether anything else supports it, who inside the company it affects, and whether the window is open now. A trigger on its own answers none of this.

01 / INTENT

Every intent tool answers one question: did activity go up.

None of them answer the one that decides your quarter, which is whether anyone inside that company has a reason to move now.

02 / SCORE

The account comes back High. Nobody can say what made it High.

It goes into the campaign anyway, and that is the whole decision.

03 / CHECK

The trigger fires. That is the last check it gets.

Nobody asks whether it touches the problem you solve, or whether anything else at that company points the same way.

04 / PRIORITY

A list that takes an afternoon to build takes your team a quarter to work.

Nothing says which accounts earn the week, so the hours go wherever the tool ranked first, and the account that deserved them waits.

From your Situational ICP to a working prospecting system.

Your Situational ICP establishes who fits and what makes your product relevant. This work carries that definition into a repeatable way to find companies, interpret their signals and decide which accounts deserve attention.

We start with your Situational ICP and buying triggers, then translate them into practical criteria for company discovery, fit assessment and signal interpretation. This gives prospecting a clear set of rules to work from.

  • What makes a company relevant to your product
  • The evidence that matters behind each criterion
  • What the system must record before an account can be prioritised
  • The rules the team applies, written down rather than held in your head
What this stage deliversDiscovery criteria, fit checks and signal definitions grounded in your Situational ICP.

We identify relevant companies using suitable data sources and discovery methods, then assess them against your ICP. Poor matches are filtered out before they ever reach the priority list.

  • Business context and company characteristics
  • The criteria that matter specifically to your product
  • Filters that remove poor matches early
  • A pool of companies worth examining, not every account that exists
What this stage deliversA repeatable company discovery process with documented fit criteria.

We define how the relevant buying triggers get monitored, and what the system checks when one appears. A hiring post on its own may mean nothing. A role tied to the problem, supported by other evidence, could mean a great deal.

  • How each trigger connects back to the buying situation
  • A second supporting signal before an account qualifies for outreach
  • Criteria set by your ICP and the signals your market actually produces
  • Uncertainty preserved, rather than every trigger treated as intent
What this stage deliversA signal-monitoring and corroboration process that records the evidence behind each account decision.

We bring fit, signal evidence and supporting context together, so the system can separate accounts that are ready for outreach from those that need more investigation and those worth keeping under observation.

  • Ready for outreach, needs investigation, or keep watching
  • The evidence recorded behind each of those decisions
  • Inbound leads assessed against ICP and buying context, not one form field
  • A repeatable way for the team to decide what gets attention first
What this stage deliversAn account-prioritisation model and inbound qualification process with clear next steps.
▶ Play the walkthrough
Tools used
Claude Code Clay Apify Trigify Notion Common Room RB2B Humantic AI
How we build your prospecting system

Eight weeks, and every account on the list has a reason to be there.

Week
123456789101112
Engagement 01Redefine Your Situational ICP
Situational ICP
5 weeks
Weeks 1–5 · Situational ICP
Engagement 02Build Your Prospecting SystemYou are here
8 weeks
Weeks 1–5 Situational ICP · Weeks 6–8 prospecting system
Engagement 03Build Your Outbound Engine
Situational ICP
Prospecting system
Outbound engine
12 weeks
Weeks 1–5 Situational ICP · Weeks 6–8 prospecting system · Weeks 9–12 outbound engine

Each engagement includes the work before it. Weeks 1–5 are the Situational ICP; if yours already exists and holds up, you start at week six.Hover or tap any week to see what happens in it.

Week 1–2From Engagement 01

Read the market evidence

Customer reviews, job posts, community threads, competitor customers and existing alternatives, alongside your own call notes. We read what the market has already said about this problem before defining anything.

Your timeAround three hours. A kickoff session, then one working session on your best customers, your current ICP and the deals that went quiet.
Handed overA market evidence base separating what the evidence supports from what is still an assumption, with the source recorded against each.
Week 3From Engagement 01

Define the ICP and its triggers

Company fit, the outcome the buyer owns, the problem in the way and the workaround they use today — plus who feels it, who owns it and who could champion a change. In the same week we identify what could move the problem up the list.

Your timeAround two hours. One session to pressure-test the definition wherever the evidence and your experience disagree.
Handed overA Situational ICP with buying roles and champions named, plus buying triggers and the evidence criteria for judging each.
Week 4–5From Engagement 01

Derive the messaging pillars

What the buyer is trying to achieve, what they compare you against and what would delay a decision. Week 05 puts the draft in front of real buyers and corrects it where they disagree.

Your timeAround three hours. One session on the pillars, one on revisions after buyer feedback, plus a read-through before handover.
Handed overMessaging pillars tied to the buying situation, and the complete ICP & Messaging Playbook.
Week 6–7

Set the criteria and discover accounts

We turn the Situational ICP and buying triggers into rules a system can apply, then use them to pull relevant companies from the data sources that suit your market and filter the poor matches out before they reach a list.

Your timeAround four hours across the two weeks.
Handed overDiscovery criteria, documented fit checks and a working company discovery process.
Week 8

Monitor signals, prioritise, hand over

Buying triggers get monitored with corroboration rules, then fit, signals and context combine into a model that separates accounts ready for outreach from those needing investigation. Inbound is qualified against the same criteria.

Your timeAround two hours.
Handed overSignal monitoring, the prioritisation model, inbound qualification and the full documented system.

You own the system at the end of week eight. The discovery process, the fit criteria, the signal rules, the prioritisation logic and the reasoning behind each are handed over in full, documented so you or your first GTM hire can run and extend them without me. What happens next is your call: run it as it stands, or continue into Engagement 03 and build the outbound process on top — four more weeks, taking the whole thing to twelve.

Is this you?

This builds a system, not a list. It is worth saying what that rules out.

You will leave with a repeatable way to find and prioritise accounts, and the evidence behind every decision it makes. You will not leave with a finished spreadsheet of companies to email on Monday.

✓Start here if:

  • You have a Situational ICP you trust. Or you are willing to establish one first — this engagement includes that foundation where it is missing.
  • You are building lists by hand. Every cycle starts from scratch, and the reasoning lives in whoever happened to build it.
  • Your team cannot reach the same call you would. You can tell a promising account from a weak one. Nobody else on the team reliably can.
  • Inbound arrives and nobody can qualify it. A demo request comes in and the honest answer to “is this worth a call?” is a shrug.
  • You want the reasoning recorded. Not just which accounts were picked, but why — so the criteria can be argued with and improved.

×Start somewhere else if:

  • You want a list of accounts delivered. Discovery is part of this, but the deliverable is a repeatable process. A static spreadsheet is a worse version of the same thing.
  • You want campaigns run for you. This engagement decides which accounts deserve attention. Building the outreach process is Engagement 03, and your team still does the sending.
  • You want the list to be long. The criteria will not be weakened to make the output bigger. If the market is smaller than you expected, that is the finding.
  • You have no ICP and no appetite to define one. The foundation can be built here, but not skipped. A system pointed at the wrong definition just finds the wrong companies faster.
  • You need pipeline this month. This is a build. It will make the next quarter better, not this fortnight.
The engagement

A system built around what matters to your buyers.

Setup8 weeksDefine the criteria, build discovery and signal monitoring, then prioritisation and handover.
After thatOptionalBuild the outbound engine that turns prioritised accounts into conversations.
ENGAGEMENT INVESTMENTStarts at $2,500

The scope depends on your target market, the data available, your current tools and how much of the workflow has to be built. We work with your existing stack where practical; any additional tool is weighed against the job it needs to do and the budget available.

The investment covers

  • Situational ICP and buying criteria, where that foundation is not already in place
  • Company discovery across suitable data sources, with documented fit assessment
  • Signal monitoring and the corroboration rules that decide when a trigger counts
  • Account prioritisation, with the evidence behind each decision recorded
  • Inbound qualification against fit and buying context
  • Documentation and handover of the whole system

Everything above is handed over as a working prospecting system at the end of the engagement. It becomes the foundation for Engagement 03: Build Your Outbound Engine, which turns prioritised accounts into research briefs, messaging and sequences your team can run.

Questions

Before you book an Outbound Review.

The questions that come up most often. If yours is missing, bring it to the call.

Do I need to complete Engagement 01 first?

Not necessarily. This engagement includes the ICP foundation it needs. If you already have a well-supported Situational ICP we build from it and the first stage is shorter. If you do not, we establish it before building anything on top — because a prospecting system pointed at a weak definition just finds the wrong companies more efficiently.

Does this include a list of target accounts?

Account discovery is part of the engagement, so yes, you will see real companies. But the objective is a repeatable way to identify and assess them, not a static spreadsheet. A list goes stale the week after you receive it. The criteria behind it do not.

What counts as a buying signal?

That depends entirely on your buying situation. We define the triggers that matter for your market and the evidence that would make each one meaningful, plus what additional evidence is needed before an account is prioritised for outreach. A signal that is useful for one product is noise for another.

Why do you require a second signal?

Because a single event is usually ambiguous. A company hiring for a role could mean the problem has become a priority, or it could mean someone left. Supporting evidence is how you tell the difference. The specific criteria depend on the market and what evidence is actually available in it.

Will you set up ongoing monitoring?

The engagement includes the monitoring process and the workflows agreed in your scope. What can realistically be monitored depends on the data sources, access and tools available to you — so we size that honestly at the start rather than promising coverage that the data cannot support.

Will you run the outbound campaigns?

No. This engagement builds the system that tells you which accounts deserve attention and why. Building the outreach process is the next engagement, Build Your Outbound Engine, and even there the sending stays with your team.

What if the system finds very few accounts?

That is useful information, not a failure. We examine whether the criteria are too narrow, the data sources incomplete, or the market genuinely smaller than you assumed. What we do not do is weaken the criteria to make the list longer — that just moves the problem to your reply rate.

Outbound Review

Bring whatever list you have. Leave knowing which accounts to start with.

A Sales Navigator search, an Apollo or Clay export, or a spreadsheet you started and never finished. We take a few accounts from it and work through what the public evidence actually says about each one.

  • Which ones to start withBy the end you will know which accounts to work this week, which to look at again later, and which to drop.
  • What to look for next timeThe checks that separate the first group from the last, and where the evidence was sitting.
  • Why the last attempt went quietIf you have sent anything already, whether it missed on the account, the timing or the message.