Target
The account fits your ideal customer profile, with little recent buying activity.
What runs
Brand and category campaigns, use-case education.
Owner
Marketing.
Expertise / Signal-based GTM
I help B2B teams turn buyer signals into sales and marketing action.
Intent data, website visits, product usage and CRM activity show which accounts are researching you. I design the rules that decide which of those accounts your team works first, who follows up, how fast and with what information, and help set them up in the tools you already use.
- 01Signals worth acting on
- 02Buying roles on each account
- 03Sales-ready rules per product
- 04Owners and response times
- 05A monthly rules review
The problems I fix
Buyer signals that nobody acts on, or that several teams act on at once.
Intent tools, website tracking, product analytics and your CRM all flag accounts that look active. Without shared rules, those alerts turn into missed follow-up, duplicate outreach and a sales team that stops trusting the data.
Reps ignore the alerts.
Sales gets a list of “hot” accounts with no context: who is looking, at which product and why now. Reps skip them and go back to their own lists.
Two teams contact the same account.
An SDR starts a cold sequence while an account executive is mid-deal, or marketing keeps nurturing a developer who has already asked for pricing.
The same poor-fit accounts keep coming back.
Rejection reasons and win/loss results stay in reps’ heads and never reach the scoring rules.
What I set up
Rules your marketing, SDR
and sales teams all follow.
A signal-based GTM operating model is a written set of rules for which accounts get attention, who follows up, how fast and with what information. I write it with your marketing, sales, product and RevOps leads, then build it into your CRM, marketing automation, intent data and sales engagement tools.
- 01
Signals worth acting on
A short list of the buyer actions that count, such as pricing-page visits, intent surges, product sign-ups or a champion changing jobs. For each one: where it comes from, how reliable it is and what it should trigger.
- 02
Buying roles on each account
Activity is tied to the company and to the people involved, mapped to roles such as economic buyer, champion and technical evaluator. Verified contacts are kept separate from guesses.
- 03
Sales-ready rules per product
A clear rule for when an account moves from target to engaged to ready for sales, based on fit, signal strength, recency and how many buying roles are active.
- 04
Owners and response times
Each trigger routes to one team, whether that’s SDR outreach, an alert to the account executive, nurture or product-led follow-up. It comes with a named owner, a response time and a brief explaining why this account, why now and what to pause.
- 05
A monthly rules review
Sales acceptance, rejection reasons, replies, meetings, upgrades and win/loss results decide which signals stay, which thresholds change and when outreach should start.
New signals start as a small test. Each one runs on a limited set of accounts first. It stays if reps accept the accounts it flags and those accounts respond; otherwise it is dropped and the reason is logged.
Every action is checked before it goes out. The rules check account ownership, consent, suppression lists and whether another team is already in contact. If there’s a conflict, the action is held or rerouted, and the reason is logged in the CRM.
Readiness by product
An account can be ready for one product
and early for another.
I set the stage separately for each product or use case. The stage decides what runs and who owns it.
Engaged
Interest in a product is building, and key buying roles are still missing.
What runs
Targeted nurture and 1:few ABM to reach the missing roles.
Owner
Marketing with SDRs.
Ready
Good fit, recent signals and several buying roles engaged.
What runs
One triggered motion: SDR outreach, sales follow-up or product-led sales help.
Owner
SDRs and sales, with a set response time.
Direct requests go straight to sales. A demo or “talk to sales” request is routed immediately, with the account’s context attached. Brand and category campaigns keep running at every stage.
A real example (name changed)
Northwind Software: from ignored alerts to same-day follow-up.
A B2B software company selling to enterprise buying groups. Pipeline had stalled during a leadership change.
Based on my in-house work at a B2B software company. Name and identifying details changed.
Before
- Intent data flagged active accounts, and no one owned the follow-up.
- Marketing, SDRs and sales contacted the same accounts without coordinating.
- Reps had stopped trusting marketing’s leads.
What I changed
- A short list of signals that meant an account was worth working.
- One target-account list sales and marketing agreed on.
- An owner and a response time for every signal.
- A regular review with sales that fed accepted and rejected accounts back into the rules.
What happened
- High-intent accounts got a response within hours instead of days.
- The same target accounts booked more meetings.
- Sales accepted most of the accounts marketing passed over.
- Deals moved through the pipeline faster.
The sample operating model shows the full enterprise version of these rules for a fictional bank, Northwind Financial. Most teams start smaller: one motion and a few signals, in the CRM they already use.
Show the sample model on this page
For more room, open the sample model in a new tab with the button above.
Working together
From audit to a live pilot
in three steps.
Scope depends on your data, tools and team. You can start with the audit, or go straight to design if you already know where the gaps are.
1. Audit signals and handoffs
I trace how real accounts move through your tools and teams today: which signals you capture, who sees them, how fast anyone acts and where accounts fall through.
You get
A prioritized list of the handoffs and rules to fix.
2. Design the operating model
We define the signal list, buying roles, sales-ready rules, routing, owners, response times and conflict checks with the people who will run them.
You get
A written playbook with every rule and owner, plus the setup for your CRM and marketing tools.
3. Pilot one or two motions
The rules first run in shadow mode, making recommendations without changing live campaigns or routing. Then one or two motions go live on a set of accounts for about 90 days, with monthly reviews.
You get
Baseline and pilot results, and the criteria for rolling out further.
Using AI agents for research or outreach? I also define what each agent is allowed to do, which actions need a person’s approval and how every action is logged.
How we know it’s working.
Whether reps accept the accounts they’re sent, how fast they follow up, reply and meeting rates, opportunity progression and product upgrades. The measures match the motion being tested.
For a broader review of your revenue system, explore my GTM leadership and diagnostic approach.
Let’s talk
Bring the signals your team ignores
or the handoff that keeps breaking.
In 30 minutes we’ll look at what your tools capture today, who acts on it and the first rule worth fixing.
Book a 30-minute call
Pick a time that suits you on Calendly.