Stage 1 gets sharper the longer you run it

Every signal in Stage 1 starts from the same default weight. That's the right place to start and the wrong place to stay.

A default is a guess about the average firm. Your firm isn't average. A new CIO might be your best way in. An AI mandate might go nowhere for you, however good it looks on paper. No rubric written in advance can know that. Your replies can.

Where the weights start

Each default comes from four questions about the event. Is money committed? Does it start a deadline? Does this kind of work usually go to an outside firm? Does it give you a way in?

An RFP answers yes to all four. A like on an influencer's post answers yes to none of them. That's why one counts many times the other on day one. The signals page shows every signal and where it comes from.

Where your results take over

Stage 1 tracks the reply rate behind each signal for your firm. Every first message is tied to the signal that picked the account, so the math is simple. Sends in, replies out, by signal.

Once a signal has ten sends, it starts steering. Beat your firm's average reply rate and its weight goes up. Trail it and the weight comes down. The range is 0.75 to 1.35 of the starting weight, so one lucky week can't take over the Board.

Ten is a small number on purpose. It's enough to stop a single reply from swinging the weights, and it's reached in a few weeks of normal outreach. It borrows from what statisticians call shrinkage. Pull a small sample toward what you already know until the data earns the right to move it.

Passes teach it too

Replies aren't the only lesson. Pass on an account and Stage 1 asks why. Too small, too big, wrong region, not our kind of work, already a customer. Each reason moves the scoring rules, so the next account like it ranks lower before you ever see it.

You can read all of it. The reply rate behind every signal sits on a panel in the app. Every rule is in plain English. You can override any weight.

Why month three beats month one

In month one, Stage 1 ranks your accounts like a sharp seller who's never met you. By month three, it ranks them like a seller who's watched every reply you got.

That learning lives in your workspace and builds every week you run it. It's the part of Stage 1 that only gets better with time, and it's built on your results, not anyone else's.