48 buying signals in ten families

Not every signal is worth the same. An RFP with a due date and a like on an influencer's post are both signals, and a tool that scores them the same will fill your week with the wrong accounts.

Stage 1 names 48 specific signals, groups them into ten families, and gives each one a default weight you can see and change.

The ten families

RFP. A vendor search or a public tender.

Leadership change. A new executive, an officer change filed with the SEC, an executive departure, your champion leaving, or a connection leaving a buying seat.

Business pressure. The biggest family, with twelve. Margin pressure, a restructuring, layoffs, a missed launch or outage, an AI commitment, AI pilots that haven't scaled, a new risk factor, a breach, a guidance cut, regulatory action, a new industry rule and a broader industry shift.

Hiring. Hiring for the problem you solve, a transformation hire, a role open 60 days or more, and engineering hiring for a global capability center.

Your network. Someone engaging with your posts, a champion who joined a new company, a connection who landed a buying seat, a connection who joined a target account, and a new leader who came from a past client.

Competitor. Engagement with a competitor, a big integrator named as the incumbent, and a dispute with a vendor.

Growth and deals. A funding round, an acquisition, a merger, being acquired, an IPO, a new facility, a product launch, a carve-out, a plan for a global capability center, and debt financing.

Tech stack. A job post naming a tool you replace, and an announced migration.

Topic. A post on a topic you care about, event attendance, a speaking slot and a podcast guest spot.

Influencer. Engagement with a voice your buyers follow.

How the weights work

Each signal has a default weight from 0 to 100. On screen it shows as one of four levels, Strongest, Strong, Medium or Light, with a small four-bar meter next to every signal on an account.

The defaults look at four things about the event itself. Is money committed? Does a date force the spend? Does it point at work that goes to an outside firm? Do you have access, through someone you know or a new leader still picking partners?

The strongest signals have most of the four. An RFP, a public tender, a carve-out with a transition deadline, a plan to stand up a capability center and a dispute with the current vendor all sit at the top. A new executive and an announced migration sit just below. A post on a topic you care about is light. A like on an influencer's post is the lightest of all.

Change them to fit your firm

Open Brain, then Scoring rules. Signal strength lists every signal by family, with its current level. Set any one to Strongest, Strong, Medium, Light or Off. The Board rescores at once, and the signal shows what it was changed from.

Your replies keep tuning each family on top of that. More on that in Stage 1 gets sharper the longer you run it.

Why this matters for services

The same event means different things to different firms. A cloud migration is a loud signal for a data engineering shop and noise for a change management firm. How to rank signals for your offer walks through setting them for yours.

And one signal is rarely enough. Stage 1 adds them up at the account, fades the old ones and rewards different kinds stacking at the same company. How Stage 1 ranks accounts on the Board covers the math.

Forty-eight signals, ten families, and every weight out in the open where you can change it.