Written by Mike Hurley, founder of WarmUp. This is the system we run on ourselves. Capture, qualification, suppression, routing and the record are live; the weekly signal report and the automated Tier 3 nurture lane are drawn and not yet built.

Content creates the demand · signals set the priority · people advance the sale

Read the board left to right. The first column is what we make: the standup, the guides, the pages built for search and AI answers. The second is what catches the response to it. Every captured signal passes through one qualification step and one suppression step, then lands in one of three tiers. Tier 1 and Tier 2 go to a person; Tier 3 goes to a sequence. Everything is written to the CRM, and the loop at the bottom sends what the rep hears back to the start as next week's content. Click the board to open it full size.

Why it helps

Most companies I talk to already create engagement. A founder posts, a page gets read, a video gets watched, someone fills in a form and never hears back. Almost all of it disappears, because nothing is watching it and nothing is deciding what it means. The sales team, meanwhile, works a cold list.

This engine closes that gap. It treats every reaction, visit, download and reply as a signal, puts each one through the same qualification and suppression it would apply to a cold account, and then routes it by tier so the warmest, best-fit people are in front of a rep the same day with the reason attached. The cold motion does not go away; it becomes the fallback instead of the whole job.

It is also the system we sell, pointed at ourselves. The client version assumed signal sources already existed. Ours builds them, because a founder's own content is the cheapest signal source there is. The qualification, suppression and routing layer is the same one in every deployment, which is why this guide can be specific about it.

The sources

Signal creation is the content: a short standup video most days, the open guide library, pages written to answer the questions buyers put to search engines and AI assistants, long-form teardowns, and reviews on the directories AI engines cite. Signal capture is one step per source. Our live ones are LinkedIn engagement (reactions, comments and reposts on our own posts and on posts from a few companies we watch, collected by Apify running through Freckle) and the site's own forms and booking page, where the source field now includes AI search. Identified website visitors and video viewers are drawn on the board and added the same way: one capture step each, the same shape downstream.

The three tiers

• Tier 1, hot. An active signal on a high-fit account. The rep works it the same day: a call or a message, with the signal and the full engagement history already in front of them.
• Tier 2, warm. Engaged and worth a touch. A sequence that references the signal: email, LinkedIn or a call, each on its own sender. A person still writes the first message.
• Tier 3, fits, no signal yet. Today's cold motion, demoted to the fallback. A nurture sequence, never worked blind. A reply or a fresh signal promotes the record to Tier 2.

Why we built it this way

• Build the signal sources; do not wait for them. The client version of this engine assumed signals already existed. For a small company they usually do not, and a founder's own content is the cheapest source to build. The standup, the guides and the search pages are on the board as parts of the system, not as marketing beside it.
• One qualification step, one suppression step, whatever the source. A warm signal is tempting to act on without checking. It is still scored against the same ICP facts and the same segments as a cold account, and suppression still runs first: open opportunities, current clients, recent activity, duplicates in the book. Warmth sets the priority, not the rules.
• Two things swap per client. Everything else carries over. Signal sources swap, and the CRM swaps. Scoring, suppression, ownership, tiering, routing and reporting are the same layer in every deployment, which is what makes the engine repeatable rather than a one-off.
• A reply promotes the record. Nothing else changes a tier. Fit belongs to the account. Timing belongs to the signal. A reply or a fresh signal moves a record up a tier; a sequence finishing, or time passing, never moves it down past where its fit puts it.
• The gates hold. Agents draft, a person posts, the rep works Tier 1 and Tier 2 by hand. Nothing external ships unattended, and every number on the report comes from the scorecard, never from memory.