Lead generation and nurturing

# Lead generation and nurturing

## Goal

Design the path from first recognition to a commitment-bearing conversation: the landing surfaces, sales assets, and follow-up sequences that move a beachhead prospect without pretending attention is a pipeline.

This is a planning task. Do not send email, publish pages, or add strangers to a sequence. Do not invent leads.

Complete the analysis autonomously. Do not stop to ask clarifying questions. When evidence is missing, make the narrowest assumption that permits a usable path or `HOLD`, label it, and state what changes if it is false.

Do not modify application code.

## Prerequisites

Read the latest ICP, market, positioning, pricing, and campaign files; existing landing pages, forms, CRM stages, and email drafts; support threads that show how people actually arrive; and any existing `docs/gtm/nurture.md`, `docs/gtm/nurture.yaml`, and `docs/gtm/nurture-changelog.md`.

If campaigns are `HOLD`, this prompt may still design the path, but it must not assume a live acquisition engine.

Nurture exists to qualify and advance the beachhead. It is not a permission structure for talking to everyone who downloads a PDF.

## Evidence standard

Label claims with the shared GTM labels. A form fill proves interest in a next step, not budget, authority, or fit. A reply proves a conversation is possible, not that the job is active.

## Step 1: Define the funnel in buyer states, not CRM names

Map the states a beachhead buyer actually passes through:

1. unaware of the job as a purchase
2. aware of the painful job or trigger
3. comparing the named alternative
4. evaluating this product
5. committing time, access, or money
6. activating

For each state record the question they are asking, the proof they need, the asset that answers it, and the next commitment.

Do not add states the motion cannot observe.

## Step 2: Design landing surfaces

For each primary entry path from the campaign plan, specify one landing surface:

* who it is for and who should leave
* the positioning sequence, truncated
* the offer
* the single primary action
* qualification questions that test trigger, alternative, and buyer role
* the false-positive it must reject

Reject generic “book a demo” as the only action if the product’s first proof is a workflow or representative case.

Do not design ten landing pages. Design the few the next 30 days will actually use.

## Step 3: Design the nurture sequences

Write sequences by state and role (buyer, champion, user), not by blast cadence.

Each sequence:

* purpose
* entry condition
* exit condition, including disqualification
* messages in the buyer’s nouns
* the commitment asked at each step
* stop rules if they go silent or are off-ICP

Maximum length should fit founder follow-up capacity. A 12-step sequence no one can honor is not nurture.

Forbidden: fake personalization, invented case studies, urgency that is not true, and continuing to nurture RED accounts.

## Step 4: Sales assets for the path

List the smallest asset set the path requires: one-pager, thread, FAQ, objection card, comparison to the named alternative. Each asset must cite allowed claims and proof readiness. Missing proof removes the asset from external use.

## Step 5: Qualification and handoff

Define what makes a lead:

* `UNQUALIFIED`
* `WORTH A CONVERSATION`
* `COMMITMENT-READY`
* `DISQUALIFIED`

Use ICP signals: operating state, trigger, alternative, buyer, prerequisites. Do not use title plus company size as the whole definition.

Specify what is handed to sales or the founder, in what artifact, and what must already be true so the first live conversation is not a re-discovery of basics.

## Step 6: Desk-test

1. The path sells the positioned job.
2. Qualification can fail. If everyone passes, rewrite it.
3. Assets stay under the evidence ceiling.
4. Sequences stop. They do not nag forever.
5. Volume matches reply capacity.

Design, do not run, one comprehension test of the primary landing surface and one sequence test with falsification thresholds. Clicks are not confirmation.

## Decision

* `BUILD PATH`: the path may be implemented
* `BUILD NARROWLY`: one surface and one short sequence only
* `HOLD`
* `REVISIT CAMPAIGN` or `REVISIT POSITIONING`

Lead with:

“As of [date], the path from first recognition to [commitment] for [beachhead] uses [surfaces] and [sequence count] sequences, qualifying on [signals], with decision [BUILD PATH / BUILD NARROWLY / HOLD / REVISIT CAMPAIGN / REVISIT POSITIONING].”

## Deliverables

### 1. `docs/gtm/nurture.md`

Buyer states, surfaces, sequences, assets, qualification rules, handoff, desk tests, designed tests.

### 2. `docs/gtm/nurture.yaml`

`version`, `status`, `decision`, `buyer_states`, `surfaces`, `sequences`, `qualification`, `handoff`, `assets`, `assumptions`, `unknowns`, `sources`.

`status: planned` unless later observed. Do not invent contacts.

### 3. `docs/gtm/nurture-changelog.md`

Append only.

## Boundaries

* Do not send mail, scrape contacts, or guess personal emails.
* Do not treat downloads as pipeline.
* Do not nurture excluded segments “just in case.”
* Do not write a second value proposition in the sequence.
* Do not promise response times the founder cannot keep.
* Preserve uncertainty.

## Done when

* Buyer states, one recommended path, and qualification that can fail are explicit.
* Sequences have entry, exit, and stop rules.
* Desk tests passed or forced `HOLD`.
* All three files agree and contain no invented leads.