Why I Joined Polaris I/O: From Propensity Models to Pre-Intent Signals (And Why It Matters for B2B Sales)

For most of my career, I’ve been obsessed with one question:

How do you identify who will buy before they raise their hand?

At Vista Equity Partners, I learned propensity modeling through CapDB, Vista’s proprietary system for systematically prioritizing accounts across portfolio companies.

At TCV, I built and scaled these models for portfolio growth. At Bain & Company, I had the privilege of introducing propensity modeling for new logo acquisition and working alongside a team to develop statistical frameworks that identified buying signals across hundreds of companies.

Across roles, the objective remained constant: Use data to move from intuition to probability.

 

The Day One List: Why 95% of Your Target Market Isn’t Ready to Buy

One of the most influential insights I encountered at Bain centered on what’s known as the Day One List, a concept later featured in Harvard Business Review that fundamentally changed how I think about B2B sales strategy. I have Rishi Dave, one of the brightest CMOs I’ve ever worked with, to thank for illuminating this insight.

The data is stark:

• Only 5% of B2B companies are actively in-market at any given time
• When buyers begin their search, 86% narrow to three vendors based on independent research, before speaking to sales
• 92% ultimately choose one of those three vendors

If you’re not on that Day One list, your probability of winning collapses.

This insight has shaped my approach to revenue growth ever since.

 

The Critical Limitation of Traditional Propensity Modeling

Propensity modeling is powerful for B2B sales and marketing teams. It answers:

• Which accounts match your ideal customer profile
• Which segments statistically convert at higher rates
• Which variables correlate with win probability

But traditional propensity models have one blind spot:

• They predict who might buy.
• They don’t predict when they’re about to buy.

In a world where only 5% of companies are actively in market, timing is everything.

You can achieve perfect account segmentation and still miss the critical moment when a buyer enters the market.

 

From Intent Data to Pre-Intent Signals: The Next Evolution

Many B2B sales intelligence platforms today focus on intent data, tracking search behavior, content consumption, keyword spikes, and engagement patterns.

That’s valuable.

But by the time someone is actively searching, they’re already narrowing their vendor shortlist.

What makes Polaris I/O different is that it operates earlier in the buyer journey.

 

Dave Irwin, Polaris I/O’s founder, calls this achieving “Speed to Need”: getting to customer needs faster than anyone else on the planet.

Polaris I/O monitors thousands of operational signals across target accounts:

• Leadership transitions and hiring patterns
• Technology stack changes and digital transformation initiatives
• Regulatory developments and compliance requirements
• Market expansion patterns and new office openings
• Ecosystem movements and partnership announcements
• Budget signals and funding events

These signals indicate a company is becoming ready to buy, not actively shopping yet.

That’s a fundamentally different problem to solve.

It’s the difference between reacting to demand and predicting demand formation.

 

Why Pre-Intent Signals Matter for Sales Leaders, Marketers, and Private Equity

For Chief Revenue Officers and Sales Leaders

Your job isn’t to increase sales activity.
It’s to increase sales precision.

Pre-intent signals help you:

• Prioritize accounts entering the buying window
• Engage prospects before competitors recognize the opportunity
• Position your solution during the problem-awareness phase
• Reduce wasted cycles on accounts not yet ready

For Chief Marketing Officers and Demand Generation Teams

Traditional lead scoring measures engagement.
Pre-intent signals measure readiness.

This enables you to:

• Time campaigns to market inflection points
• Personalize messaging to specific organizational triggers
• Allocate budget toward high-probability accounts
• Prove marketing’s impact on pipeline quality, not just quantity

For Private Equity Operating Partners

Lagging indicators tell you what happened.
Pre-intent signals show you what’s forming.

This allows you to:

• Identify expansion opportunities across portfolio companies
• Spot cross-sell moments before they appear in pipeline reports
• Guide sales teams toward the highest-value opportunities
• Accelerate time-to-revenue in platform investments

 

How Polaris I/O Creates Engineered Relevance (Not Generic Targeting)

Polaris I/O does three things I’ve rarely seen combined in a single B2B sales intelligence platform:

1. Continuous Signal Monitoring

Tracks thousands of trigger events across target accounts in real-time and have been doing it for years

2. Portfolio-Specific Mapping

Connects those signals to your specific solution set, use cases, and value propositions. Who would say no to that?

3. Actionable Engagement Guidance

Translates raw data into specific insights for sales and marketing teams:

• Why this account is heating up (the triggering event)
• Which use case is most relevant (the business problem)
• Who inside the account to engage (the decision-maker and champions)
• How to frame the message (the contextual insight)

This isn’t generic account-based marketing targeting.

This is engineered relevance at scale.

 

Winning the “Agile Thinkers”: Early Engagement with Forward-Leaning Buyers

Gartner identifies that roughly 20% of all enterprises are what they call “agile thinkers”, the most sophisticated enterprise buyers. These companies:

• Move early on emerging opportunities
• Invest ahead of market curves
• Respond to inflection points before competitors

These are precisely the organizations Polaris I/O is working with today.

When we talk to agile thinkers, some of the things they want:

• We are not responding to random RFPs
• We want to be out ahead so we are not competing in crowded evaluations
• We want to be shaping demand before it crystallizes

That’s how you earn a place on the Day One list.

 

The Compounding Advantage of Pre-Intent Signal Intelligence

Everyone is talking about AI in sales, competitive advantages in go-to-market strategy, and workflow automation.

Those conversations matter.

But here’s the critical nuance most people miss:

The edge isn’t just in how you use AI. It’s in what you monitor and how long you’ve been monitoring it.

Pre-intent signals compound over time.

The longer you observe buying patterns:

• The more you understand which signal combinations truly precede purchases
• The fewer false positives you chase
• The higher your predictive accuracy becomes
• The more trusted you become in the organization, because you are bringing relevant insight

You move from reacting to visible intent signals to understanding pre-intent formation patterns.

That’s where durable competitive advantage in B2B sales lives.

 

Why I Joined Polaris I/O: The Company That Solved the Harder Problem

I didn’t join Polaris I/O for what it is today.

I joined for what it’s becoming.

For years, I’ve worked on propensity models that answer:
“Who looks like a buyer?”

Polaris I/O solved a fundamentally harder question:
“Who is about to become one, and why?”

Today, they’re delivering this intelligence to some of the largest, most prestigious brands in the world, achieving what founder David Irwin calls “Speed to Need”, reaching customer needs faster than anyone else on the planet.

In a market where:

• 95% of companies aren’t actively buying at any moment
• Most B2B buyers create their vendor shortlist before ever speaking to sales
• Being early determines whether you’re considered at all

Being early is everything.

If you want to win deals before your competitors see them forming, you don’t just need AI-powered sales tools.

You need a system of insight that operates before intent becomes visible.

That’s the future I wanted to help build.

 

What’s Next: Building Pre-Intent Intelligence into Your Go-to-Market Strategy

I’ll be writing more about:

• Pre-intent signal architecture: How to identify and monitor the right triggers
• Day One positioning strategies: Operationalizing early engagement at scale
• Precision go-to-market frameworks: How leading B2B companies engineer timing into growth

Because the next generation of competitive advantage in B2B sales won’t come from more activity.

It will come from better timing.

Want to discuss pre-intent signals, propensity modeling, or B2B sales strategy? Connect with me here on LinkedIn or drop a comment below.

About the Author: Kunal Mehta is Chief Commercial Officer at Polaris I/O, with prior experience in propensity modeling and revenue optimization at Vista Equity Partners, TCV, and Bain & Company.