Decide which buyers to pursue, and why now

---
name: pumpgtm-buyer-signals
description: Convert product context and customer evidence into an actionable buyer-selection brief for PumpGTM. Use for ICP definition, account qualification, purchase triggers, stakeholder mapping, and relevant conversation angles.
---

# PumpGTM buyer signals

Identify which accounts deserve a conversation and why the timing makes sense. Build the profile around a costly job and a buying situation, rather than a fictional person's biography.

## Establish the value exchange

Extract the offer, intended outcome, delivery requirements, known customers, and commercial constraints from the supplied material. Ask only for an unresolved detail that would change qualification. If customer evidence is absent, produce a provisional selection model and identify what would test it.

Keep the two possible subjects distinct: a brief for selling PumpGTM itself and a brief for a customer's product using PumpGTM. Name the subject at the top so the audience for one is never silently reused for the other.

For PumpGTM itself, the supplied project context describes finding buyers and starting conversations, with early-stage founders and GTM practitioners as the intended audience. That is a starting boundary, not proof that every founder is a qualified buyer. Pricing, integrations, customer results, and actual purchasing roles require additional evidence.

## Intake: establish what makes a customer valuable

Read existing deal notes, onboarding records, account lists, and product material before asking questions. Extract these items when available:

| Context | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Product job and promised outcome | Defines the problem the buyer must actually have |
| Delivery model and prerequisites | Distinguishes a usable offer from an attractive but unsuitable one |
| Price basis or known commercial constraints | Determines which use cases can make economic sense |
| Successful, lost, and poor-fit accounts | Reveals both inclusion and exclusion patterns |
| Current workaround and switching cost | Explains the alternative competing for effort and budget |
| Sales cycle and approval requirements | Establishes what a realistic next step looks like |
| Geographic or operational limitations | Prevents recommending accounts that cannot be served |
| Available research and outreach capacity | Keeps the first review batch practical |

Do not convert missing commercial details into fabricated pricing or ROI. Continue with a provisional profile when that is useful, marking which qualification decisions remain unresolved. Ask one focused question when the missing information blocks a correct recommendation.

## Turn customer material into evidence

Create a lightweight evidence map before describing patterns:

| Evidence ID | Account or safe identifier | Observed or reported situation | Outcome | Date | Source | Limitation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|

Separate a customer's own description from the team's explanation of it. A salesperson's note that a deal was "budget related" may be an interpretation rather than a verified buyer statement. Include lost deals and poor-fit customers so the ICP does not become a description of only the easiest wins.

Group by shared problem, workflow, and buying situation before grouping by job title. If two customers have the same title but different jobs to solve, they may belong to different segments. If unrelated industries share the same job and delivery requirements, describe the common mechanism while retaining any meaningful differences.

## Construct an account-selection model

Describe each candidate segment through these fields:

| Field | What belongs here |
|---|---|
| Situation | The operating condition that creates the problem |
| Costly job | What the team needs to accomplish and what blocks it |
| Present workaround | The observable alternative being used today |
| Fit requirement | A condition the offer must satisfy to deliver value |
| Timing signal | A dated event that suggests the problem may matter now |
| Exclusion | A reason the account would receive little value |
| Evidence | A supplied note or a directly supporting public source |
| Uncertainty | The part that still needs confirmation |

Use company size, geography, or industry only when they change the economics, delivery, or relevance of the offer. Avoid unsupported revenue estimates and fabricated customer quotations.

## Analyze the buying situation

For each segment, explain:

1. **Starting situation:** what is happening before the buyer looks for help.
2. **Friction:** the task, constraint, or risk making the current approach difficult.
3. **Consequence:** what becomes slower, more expensive, less predictable, or harder to coordinate.
4. **Alternative:** how the team currently manages the issue, including doing nothing.
5. **Desired progress:** the change the buyer wants in their work.
6. **Switching condition:** the proof, timing, or support needed to move away from the current approach.

Use reported cost estimates only with attribution and context. Never multiply an uncertain time estimate across an invented headcount and present the result as verified savings.

Distinguish problem importance from ability to buy. An account can have real pain yet lack the prerequisites, authority, timing, or economics to use the offer. Record these as separate questions.

## Distinguish fit from urgency

Assign accounts one of three statuses: supported fit, possible fit, or insufficient evidence. Explain the status with the strongest observed signal and the biggest gap. A funding announcement or leadership change can suggest timing; it does not establish a problem, available budget, or consent to outreach.

Use a numeric score only when its criteria and weighting have been agreed. An invented score should never appear to be a measured purchase probability.

Map the likely user, internal advocate, commercial approver, and reviewer. Mark roles as inferred until supported. Do not create named people or personal characteristics to make the profile feel complete. Use public professional information relevant to the assignment.

## Make qualification rules executable

Translate the narrative into rules a researcher could apply consistently. Each rule should name the condition, where it can be checked, the evidence required, and the treatment of an unknown.

Classify conditions as:

- **Required fit:** the offer cannot deliver value without it.
- **Useful signal:** it increases relevance but does not establish fit alone.
- **Timing indicator:** it suggests when a conversation might matter.
- **Exclusion:** a known mismatch, inability to serve, or clearly irrelevant use case.
- **Discovery question:** something that requires a conversation rather than public inference.

Do not silently treat unknown as false or true. Identify accounts needing manual review. For large account lists, describe the audit method and report how many were checked; do not claim every row was verified after inspecting a sample.

## Map the buying group and process

Describe who experiences the issue, who benefits from solving it, who can approve the purchase, and who might review the change. Explain each role's likely evaluation criteria and evidence status. A founder may occupy several roles in a small team, but verify that rather than assuming it from company stage.

Map the likely path from problem recognition through evaluation, internal review, commitment, and adoption. Unknown steps remain questions. Capture competing initiatives, migration effort, implementation ownership, and the cost of changing a familiar process where relevant.

## Prepare a relevant first conversation

For each selected segment, write a conversation angle that connects an observed situation to a question about the job. Keep the implication tentative when the underlying problem is unconfirmed. Never imply that the team saw a private event or already knows the buyer's internal difficulties.

Pair likely objections with the evidence required to answer them. If the offer cannot currently support an answer, record the gap. Do not substitute an unverified promise about revenue, implementation time, integrations, or compliance.

## Connect messaging to verified relevance

For each priority segment, produce an angle using this reasoning chain:

**Observed context -> plausible job relevance -> question that tests the inference -> appropriate next step.**

Keep the observed context factual. State the job relevance tentatively if it has not been confirmed. Avoid broad personalization that proves only that a profile was read. Reference an event only when its timing and relationship to the job are clear.

Handle objections by finding their underlying constraint. A price objection may concern uncertain value; a timing objection may concern implementation ownership. Offer an answer only if the product or team can substantiate it. Otherwise name the evidence or commercial decision needed.

Channel recommendations should follow observable buyer behavior, reachable professional contexts, and the nature of the question. Do not prescribe Google, Meta, X, or LinkedIn merely because an unrelated source file mentioned them. Distinguish content distribution, research sources, and direct conversation channels.

## Validate and revise the profile

Choose the first segment by evidence strength, offer fit, reachability, and learning value. Explain trade-offs without pretending the selection predicts purchase probability. Define what a review or conversation could disconfirm.

Track fit confirmation, repeated problem descriptions, current alternatives, rejected assumptions, evaluation blockers, and the reasons accounts are excluded. Revisit the profile when feedback contradicts its central mechanism. Do not redefine an ICP solely to fit the accounts that happened to answer one campaign.

Use [the buyer workbook](references/buyer-workbook.md) for a full brief, qualification rules, stakeholder and objection tables, a provisional PumpGTM example, and review guidance.

## Return the selection brief

Provide a one-sentence buyer definition, the segment table, the stakeholder map, qualification and exclusion rules, and a short conversation angle for each priority segment. Finish with a manual review batch sized to the user's capacity and the questions that review should resolve.

Describe how feedback changes the model: qualified conversations support the problem hypothesis; repeated mismatch narrows eligibility; silence alone does not distinguish poor targeting from weak messaging or delivery problems. Preparing this brief does not send messages or export contacts.

## Completion check

Another researcher should be able to explain who qualifies, who does not, why timing might matter, which statements are sourced, and what must be learned in conversation. The brief must separate evidence of a problem, a fit hypothesis, and demonstrated buying intent.