A signal is a dated piece of evidence that an account did something on one of the two Demand Compass axes: an awareness signal shows the account knows you, a readiness signal shows the account is in motion now, and every signal is evidence with a half-life, so it decays instead of counting forever.
A signal is evidence with a half-life: a specific, dated thing an account did that says something about where it sits on the Demand Compass. Signals come in two halves, one per axis. Awareness signals say the account knows you. Readiness signals say the account is in motion now. The engine records both as immutable events and derives the two scores from them, with decay applied, so any score can be recomputed and explained. A signal is never a "hot" flag; it is a plain-language record of a thing that fired, such as "senior security role posted" or "pricing page, three visits."
By type, the readiness signals include a relevant role posted, weighted by seniority and function; a senior leadership change in a buying role; a funding round announced; repeated pricing-page or documentation intent; product or developer activity in a repository, docs or API; free-tier signup with active usage; a competitor-tool displacement; a regulatory or compliance change in the account's space; a public incident relevant to your category; and two research signals judged at the edge, an active build in your problem area and a recent security or risk event. The awareness signals include connections or follows into your team, reactions or comments on what you publish, newsletter engagement weighted by recency, event or webinar attendance including badge scans, ad engagement within the ICP audience, a branded or direct site visit, an unprompted community mention, and review-site activity. Most deployments run roughly twenty.
Three misreadings recur. Treating one signal as readiness, when a single pricing visit can be a misclick and the repeat is what means something. Reading the signal at the person instead of rolling it up to the account. And ignoring decay: a docs visit this week is live, the same visit seven months ago is archaeology.
From The Demand Compass, by David Moreira and Marcos Stubrin. All terms · The book
