Which accounts have a cited reason for me to email them this week?
The accounts where you can do three things without guessing: point at a dated public source, write one sentence saying what that development makes harder in the next thirty to ninety days, and name the role that gets blamed if it stays broken. If you can do all three, you have a reason to email this week. If you cannot, you have a company you like, and the email you were going to send is about you.
This is a deliberately narrow test, and it is narrow because the two things teams usually substitute for it do not work. Fit is not a reason: a perfect-profile account with nothing happening has no reason to change anything this quarter. Engagement is not a reason either: someone opening your email or loading a pricing page tells you about your marketing, not about a decision that has to be made inside their business. Neither one gives you a first sentence a buyer can check.
The three-part test, applied
Run any account through this and you will get an answer in about ninety seconds. Change: is there a specific development with a date on it in the last ninety days, and can you link the page you read it on? Consequence: can you name, in one sentence, the operational thing that development makes harder in the next thirty to ninety days? Owner: can you name the role, not the person yet, that gets blamed if it stays broken? An account that passes all three is worth a call this week. An account that passes two is worth watching. An account that passes one is a company you have heard of.
The consequence step is the one everyone skips and the one that does all the work. A funding round on its own is news. A funding round whose stated use of funds is doubling the field team, at a company whose onboarding is already manual, is a consequence: onboarding capacity is about to be the constraint, and the person who feels it has a name on the org chart. The same development can be a strong reason for you and a nothing development for the vendor sitting next to you at the conference. That is correct behavior, not a flaw.
The evidence checklist
This is the working list. The freshness column is the practical shelf life of the evidence, meaning the period during which referencing it still reads as current rather than as you having found an old article. Treat those windows as defaults to argue with, not as measured constants. Every row is something you can verify yourself from a public source in a browser.
| Row | Evidence | What it actually proves | Where it is public | Practical freshness |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Funding round closed | New budget exists and a spending plan was written to justify it | Company newsroom, trade press, Form D on EDGAR | About one quarter |
| 02 | New executive named into a function you sell | A person with a mandate is re-evaluating what they inherited | Company newsroom, LinkedIn, Form 8-K Item 5.02 for public issuers | Four to twelve weeks |
| 03 | Merger or acquisition closed | Two stacks have to become one, and duplicate contracts get cut | Deal announcement, regulatory filings | Two quarters, the integration runs long |
| 04 | Hiring cluster in one function | That function is the current constraint and has approved headcount | Company careers page, job boards | While the reqs are open |
| 05 | Layoff or restructuring notice | Work did not disappear, but the people doing it did | State WARN notice lists, company statements | One to two quarters |
| 06 | New government contract awarded | A delivery obligation with real dates and a real dollar figure | USAspending, SAM.gov | Life of the period of performance |
| 07 | Public product or market launch | A process that worked at the old volume is about to meet a new one | Company newsroom, trade press | Six to eight weeks |
| 08 | Anonymous intent surge from a data vendor | Somebody in a large office building read something | Your intent vendor's dashboard | Days, and only as a tiebreak |
Why the answer has to be dated and sourced
Every piece of evidence you act on needs two attributes attached to it: the date it happened and the link where you read it. Without the date you cannot rank, because ranking this week's list is almost entirely a freshness problem. Without the link you cannot verify, and referencing something you cannot verify is how a first call opens with a correction from the buyer.
This also protects you from the quiet failure mode of signal work, which is a rep half-remembering something. A signal with no source is a rumor, and rumors sort themselves to the top of a list because the people repeating them are confident. Requiring a link is the cheapest possible discipline for keeping gut feel out of a system built to replace it.
- Date the development, not the day you found it. A round announced in March is a March signal even if you read about it in August.
- Store the source URL on the account record, not in a rep's notes, so the next person can check it.
- Write the consequence sentence at the moment you find the evidence. Reconstructing it three weeks later takes ten times as long and comes out worse.
- Name the role that owns the consequence before you look up a person. Role first, contact second, or you will end up mailing whoever was easiest to find.
What to do on Monday
- Pick fifty accounts
Take fifty accounts from your existing list, chosen at random rather than by preference, so you learn the true state of the list instead of the state of your favorites.
- Look for one dated development each
Give yourself five minutes per account across newsroom, careers page, and one filing or funding source. Five minutes is enough. If nothing dated turns up in five minutes, record none and move on.
- Write the consequence or drop it
For every account with a development, write one sentence naming what gets harder in the next ninety days. If you cannot write the sentence, it is news and the account goes back to the watch list.
- Count the survivors
The share of the fifty that survive is how many accounts you actually have a cited reason to email. Most teams doing this exercise for the first time are surprised how small it is, and that number is the single most useful input to how you plan the quarter.
The point of doing it by hand once is that you will never again accept a list that has not been through this filter. It also tells you what to automate: the five minutes of looking, not the judgment.
This is what the category calls buying signals, trigger events, and intent data.
The industry has three names for what this page describes, and they do not mean the same thing. Buying signals and trigger events both mean a dated, attributable public event at a named company: a raise, an executive appointment, a layoff notice, a contract award. Intent data usually means something else entirely, an inferred, often anonymous score built from content consumption across a publisher network, resolved to a company rather than a person.
The distinction matters when you are buying software or arguing with your board. A trigger event names what happened, when, and where you can read it. An intent score names a probability with no event behind it. Both can be useful, but only one of them gives a rep a sentence to open with, and only one of them can be checked by the person being sold to.
Questions people ask next
Why not just ask which accounts are in market right now?
Because nobody outside the company can answer it. A buying decision is private until it becomes an RFP, and by then you are late. The answerable version of the question is the one this page asks: which accounts have a dated public development, a nameable consequence, and a role that owns it. That is checkable, and it is the closest honest proxy that exists.
Is website visitor de-anonymization the same as having a reason to email?
No. It tells you someone from a network associated with a company loaded a page. There is no dated development, no consequence, and no named owner, so it cannot survive the three-part test on its own. It is a reasonable tiebreak between two accounts that already passed.
How far back can a development be and still count?
It depends on the type. Funding and acquisitions stay meaningful for a quarter or more because the work they create runs long. Launches and press moments go stale in weeks. Set a window per type, write it down, and decay accordingly rather than using one cutoff for everything.
What if an account has a development but I cannot name a consequence?
Then it is not a reason for you. That is the correct outcome, not a failure. The same development will matter to a vendor in a different category. Put the account on the watch list and keep the evidence attached so the next one compounds.
Where to check this yourself
Primary records and published research, not vendor blog posts. Every link was checked on September 1, 2026.
- SEC EDGAR full-text searchsec.gov
Search the actual text of filings, including Form D notices of exempt offerings and 8-K disclosures.
- SEC list of filing formssec.gov
The official index of every form type, useful for working out which filing carries which event.
- USAspending.govusaspending.gov
Federal award data with dollar values and periods of performance, the cleanest public budget evidence that exists.
- Crunchbase data documentationdata.crunchbase.com
How a commercial funding database structures and sources its records, worth reading before you trust one.
- The Bridge Group, SDR Models and Metrics researchblog.bridgegroupinc.com
Published biennial survey research on how sales development teams are actually structured and measured.
Intakra runs this test continuously across your market: it watches public sources, keeps only the developments where it can name the consequence and the role that absorbs it, and hands you the dated source with every account.
Free scan, no signup, no card