Signal-led prospecting: finding companies with a reason to buy now

The prospecting industry sells contact data. Contact data answers the easiest question, who to email, and ignores the only one that matters: why would they answer. That question is answered by what the company has been doing, and all of it is public.

This is one use of the Qravitas evidence base, not its identity. The same intelligence that tells an investor a company is under strain tells a seller that the same company has a reason to change something. Both readings come from the same evidence. The difference is who is asking.

What a signal is

A signal is a dated, cited change in a company's public behaviour that creates a commercial opening for a specific kind of seller. Not a firmographic attribute, not an intent-data guess from ad pixels, but something the company did:

• Expansion. New market, new geography, new product line, visible in hiring, domains, pricing pages and partner listings.
• Stack change. A technology replaced or added, read from the site, job postings and integration pages.
• Leadership change. A new executive in the function you sell to, who has a mandate and a ninety-day window.
• Constraint. A measurable growth constraint the company may or may not know it has: conversion drag, search visibility loss, technical debt, a measurement gap.
• Investment. Funding, hiring surges, or capital allocation visible in filings and announcements.

From signal to a ranked list

The seller defines what they solve, in terms of the constraint or change it addresses. Qravitas then reads the evidence base for companies exhibiting that change, scores each on magnitude, recency, confidence and precedent, and returns a ranked list. Each entry carries the evidence, the date, and a one-paragraph why-now that a human can put in the first line of an email without embarrassment.

Why the evidence base, not a feed

A feed reports events. The evidence base knows what the event meant elsewhere. A company that just lost search share to a named competitor is a stronger prospect for a search programme than one that lost share to the category, and the evidence base can tell the two apart because it has read both companies and their peers. Precedent is the ranking; without it a signal list is just a longer lead list.

What it is not

It is not a contact database and it does not find email addresses. It is not intent data inferred from ad networks. It is not a claim that the company wants to buy. It is a claim that the company has changed in a way that makes a specific conversation relevant, with the evidence for that claim attached. The conversation is still the seller's job.

Who uses it

Agencies auditing an account before the pitch. Enterprise sales teams prioritising a territory by evidence rather than by list order. Investors sourcing companies that fit a thesis. In each case the output is the same: fewer companies, each with a reason.

Questions this raises

Is this an AI lead generator?

No. It does not generate leads or contacts. It ranks companies that already exist by evidence that something changed, and it tells you what and when.

Can the signals be tuned to what we sell?

Yes. The seller defines the change or constraint their product addresses, and the evidence base is read for that pattern.