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Objective of this Week’s Prompt

Clay just launched Custom Signals - a capability that enables you to turn nearly any custom data point into a signal.

I’m totally stoked about this and believe it’s the future of GTM: Ideal Customer Signals (ICS).

We can no longer rely on ICP, Personas, or general campaigns.

To find GTM alpha, you gotta get to your target customers at just the right time and before your competitors.

What are these? Ideal Customer Signals are changes in your prospect accounts behavior and environment that indicates the company has an objective, pain, or situation that is ripe for your solution or services. They often leverage unique data points about your ICP and Personas.

It links the timing of a sales or marketing play to your ICP & Personas.

The purpose of this Chain-of-Thought prompt is to help you find your company’s Ideal Customer Signals.

Then you can start building custom signals in Clay to operationalize ICS.

Example Output (Company = Datadog)

The output is too long for this post. But check out some of the examples sections:

Signal summary table for Datadog

Provides a summary of the top 10 must read articles on Datadog

The Prompt

👉 Copy and past this into ChatGPT. You can also experiment with Deep Research for a more more detailed output.

👉 If it stops short and doesn’t include the last section with relevant news, then just ask it to finish the running the prompt.

👉 Ask AI follow up questions.

🧠 Ideal Customer Signals (ICS) Deep-Dive Generator

🤖 AI Persona, Context & Research Process

Definition – Ideal Customer Signals (ICS):
ICS are observable changes inside a target account’s environment that indicate a business objective, pain point, or buying readiness that the input company can solve.

You are a Go-To-Market strategist tasked with identifying the best-fit target accounts based on signals that originate from external companies — i.e., potential buyers of the input company, not the input company itself.

Your goal is to uncover timely, actionable, and verifiable signals that suggest a target account is likely to need the input company’s solution soon.

🔍 Chain of Thought Reasoning (Before Surfacing Signals)

Use structured reasoning to identify what triggers a company's need for this product or service. Think across first-order and second-order effects.

  1. What problem does the input company solve? Who benefits most?

  2. Define the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP):

    • Industry verticals

    • Company size and maturity

    • Typical tech stack and infrastructure

  3. Identify Key Personas:

    • Roles, titles, and departments most impacted

    • What KPIs they care about

    • Where budget authority lives

  4. List Internal Triggers of Need:

    • Org restructuring or headcount growth

    • Technology migrations or stack changes

    • Compliance, security, or efficiency goals

  5. Pattern Match & Synthesize:

    • Combine signals into repeatable patterns

    • Prioritize recency, verifiability, and relevance

    • Consider both explicit intent (e.g., job posts) and inferred intent (e.g., leadership changes)

  6. Avoid Product Bias:

    • Think from the buyer’s perspective

    • Describe signals objectively

    • Don’t assume solution-fit without a trigger

🧶 Signal Prioritization Criteria

Give higher weight to signals that are:

  • Originating from mid-market or enterprise accounts

  • Recent and verifiable (within ~90 days)

  • Tied to budget owners or key influencers

  • Related to internal change, urgency, or growth

  • Detectable via public or third-party data sources

📚 Data Sources to Use

👥 People & Org Changes

  • LinkedIn job postings, team growth, org charts, promotions, leadership changes

  • Executive announcements via press releases or blogs

  • Team size trackers (e.g., LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Revelio Labs)

🧰 Tech Stack & Tooling Shifts

  • BuiltWith, Wappalyzer, StackShare, G2 Stack

  • Mentions in job descriptions (e.g., “experience with Terraform”)

  • Product release notes or migration blog posts

  • Greenhouse, Lever, Workable, SmartRecruiters

  • ZipRecruiter, Indeed APIs (for volume-based hiring signals)

  • Hacker News “Who is hiring?” threads (for early-stage tech indicators)

📈 Strategic & Financial Signals

  • SEC filings (10-K, 10-Q, 8-K): strategy shifts, spending priorities, risks

  • Earnings call transcripts: transformation, compliance, GTM priorities

  • Investor presentations and IR pages

  • Fundraising and M&A data: Crunchbase, PitchBook, CB Insights

🔐 Compliance & Security

  • SOC2 / ISO / HIPAA readiness or announcements

  • Public security disclosures, breach reports, or compliance updates

  • Vendor trust pages (e.g., trust.salesforce.com)

🌍 Market & Industry Signals

  • TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Yahoo Finance, PRNewswire

  • Analyst reports (Gartner, Forrester, IDC)

  • Subreddits, Twitter, public forums for pain point chatter

🧠 Intent & Behavioral Signals

  • G2, Bombora, 6sense: category research, solution interest

  • Similarweb, SEMrush: traffic shifts to solution/competitor pages

  • Webinar attendance or conference sponsorships

🛠 Developer & Product Ecosystem

  • GitHub: repo launches, dependencies, forks/stars

  • DockerHub, NPM, Terraform Registry: package downloads or updates

  • Stack Overflow trends or spike in topic searches

🗓 Output Format

🔹 Executive Summary

  • Key Trigger: What external pattern indicates growing need? (Provide 5 themes)

  • Top Segment to Target: Persona + industry + likely use case

  • GTM Risk: Where might targeting or timing friction occur?

🧹 1. Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Field

Description

Personas

[Insert personas most likely to engage]

Industries

[Insert ideal industries]

Company Size

[Size range of most successful customers]

Tech Stack Fit

[Common enabling or adjacent tools]

Sales Motion

[Outbound / Inbound / PLG / Sales-Assist]

📍 2. External Signals from Target Accounts

Break signals into categories. Include:

  • Signal Description

  • Why it Matters

  • Relevant Persona

  • GTM Play to Trigger Outreach

Examples of signal categories:

  • Hiring-Based Signals

  • Tech Stack or Infrastructure Changes

  • Compliance & Risk Motions

  • People Movement or Leadership Shifts

  • Strategic Initiatives or Public Commitments

  • Intent & Behavioral Data

🚀 3. High-Impact Signal Examples (10 Minimum)

Signal

Persona

Stage

Insight

GTM Play

Detection Source

[Insert]

[Insert]

[Insert]

[Insert]

[Insert]

[Insert]

🧹 4. Signal Clusters (10 Minimum)

Cluster Name

Indicators

Why It Matters

GTM Play

[Insert]

[Insert signals]

[Insert reasoning]

[Insert GTM angle]

📊 5. ICS Scorecard (10 Minimum)

Signal

ICP Fit

Conversion Likelihood

Detection Ease

Strategic Value

[Insert]

[Insert]

[Insert]

[Insert]

[Insert]

🧠 6. Signal-Driven Narrative Hypotheses (10 Minimum)

Create hypotheses combining 2–3 signals per account or persona. Example structure:

[Target Account] is [doing X, adopting Y, or hiring Z].
This likely signals a shift toward [desired outcome or mandate].
Their pain points may include [1–2 pain points].
GTM Play: [Message or campaign angle]

📰 7. Top 5 Recent News Articles on [Input Company]

  • Title: [Headline] – [Source]
    Summary sentence 1 (what happened).
    Sentence 2 (why it matters).
    Sentence 3 (implication for GTM, product, or market).
    👉 [Link]

(Repeat for 5 articles)

Let me know if you'd like this formatted as a Google Slide deck or used as the base for a custom GPT with automated outputs.

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