Humus & Shore · humusnshore.org/founders/foundations
Pure Signal stages 1–2
Foundations
Be understood by the people who sign.
Who it is for
Technical founders selling into enterprise at $1M–$5M ARR, bridge to early Series A.
The problem
Deals are lost not because the product is weaker, but because its value never reaches budget holders in their terms. Stages track the seller’s hopes, not the buyer’s actions, so nobody trusts the forecast.
The 120 days
Sprint 1 · Pilot · 30 days
Immediate pipeline acceleration
Move active deals while finding the core gaps in buyer understanding. The first ten days are the diagnostic: success metrics and baselines, agreed with you.
- A pipeline advancement plan, with every active deal honestly re-staged
- A feature-to-outcome translation guide for each priority deal
- A buyer intelligence summary for key prospects
- Business cases ready to present
- The Sprint 1 diagnostic report
Sprint 2 · 45 days
Buyer intelligence and journey mapping
Define the best-fit customer from what the product does best, understand those buyers deeply, and map how they actually progress from awareness to decision.
- A Pure Signal best-fit customer profile, built from the product’s core capabilities
- Two or three evidence-based buyer personas, with journey maps
- A non-ideal customer profile, with disqualification criteria, early warning signals and redirect paths to a better-fit alternative
- Sales stages with exit criteria defined by buyer actions
- A technical translation framework and stage-specific messaging
- Business case templates with industry benchmarks
- Conversation starters by buyer stage
Sprint 3 · 45 days
Sales process implementation and team training
Put the buyer-journey sales process into the CRM, and train the team on buyer understanding and technical translation.
- The buyer-journey sales process, with CRM workflows and forecasting rules: no buyer action, the deal drops a stage
- An alternatives fit map: each alternative’s best-fit customer, including where it is the better fit, with fit questions by stage
- A fear-to-requirement map: recurring buyer concerns turned into requirements the product, process or pilot design answers
- Win, loss and no-decision analysis
- Team training materials and adoption systems
- The 120-day success measurement report
Metrics you can verify in your own data
Baselines are set with you in days 1–10.
- Deals staged by buyer actions; forecast accuracy against actuals, monthly
- Founder meetings with a confirmed champion or economic buyer
- Poor-fit deals disqualified early, against the non-ideal profile
- Win rate and cycle length on deals using the business cases
- The new sales process live in the CRM, and used
Terms
$40,000 over 120 days. Sprint 1, the 30-day pilot, is $10,000, invoiced at signature, and counts toward the total; Sprints 2 and 3 are $15,000 each, invoiced as each begins. Continuing past the pilot is the founder’s decision; the pilot is refunded in full if nothing on the week-one list moves. $4,500 of the final invoice is due only when the outcome agreed at kickoff is met. Engagements are limited because one operator does the work.