Ladder sources, floors, and freshness windows
Read this when wiring the ladder to your own systems for the first time, and whenever a rung starts returning bridges that do not survive contact with the recipient.
A rung is only usable if it names one system that answers it and one bar that decides whether the answer counts. Without the bar, every rung returns "maybe" and the whole ladder collapses back into a hunch.
The windows below are starting points calibrated to a considered B2B sale, not universal constants. Copy the table, then set each one against your own cycle length: a self-serve motion wants shorter windows, an enterprise renewal cycle wants longer.
| Rung | System that answers it | The bar that makes it count | Freshness window |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Prior one-to-one contact | Mailbox plus CRM activity, searched by person and by email domain | A sent or received message with this human, not their colleague | 24 months |
| 2. Delivered or sold before | The revenue or billing system, not the CRM status field | A spend or order floor you set deliberately, in the region you are selling into | 12 months |
| 3. In your proof set | The case-study or reference register | Cleared for external naming, in writing | No window, but re-confirm clearance |
| 4. Live network edge | The professional network's own degree data, refreshed on a schedule | First degree, or second with a nameable mutual | 90 days since refresh |
| 5. Prior social conversation | Sent-message log, reconciled against what actually left the account | A worded message, not a connection request | 12 months |
| 6. Shared room | Event registration and attendance records | Met at, both attending, or both registered, recorded as three distinct states | The event plus 6 months |
| 7. Peer replied on this angle | The reply log for the segment | A real reply, not an open or a click | 6 months |
| 8. Why-now event | Company news, filings, job posts, product pages | Dated, company-specific, and public | 3 months |
Set the rung 2 floor deliberately
This is the rung that produces false warmth. Most warm-account classifiers label any non-zero history as warm, so an account with a rounding error of spend carries the identical badge to your biggest customer. Pick a floor that means something for your deal size, require recency, and require that the revenue landed in the market you are now selling into. Revenue in another region or routed through a reseller is a rung 3 company fact, not a rung 2 relationship.
Ownership is a separate check
Before a bridge becomes a premise, confirm who owns the account. Call whatever system already decides ownership rather than re-deriving it from the row. A warm account owned by a teammate is a routing outcome, and using it as your own premise is how two reps arrive in the same inbox in the same week.
When a rung goes bad
If bridges from one rung keep drawing confused replies, the rung's bar is too loose, not the copy. Tighten the floor or shorten the window and re-run the batch. Log which rung produced each reply so the ladder's ordering earns its rank from your own outcomes rather than from someone else's benchmark table.
What good looks like
- Every rung in your copy of this table names a real system, and someone can open it.
- Rung 2 has a floor written down as a number, not as a label.
- The count of contacts that failed each rung is visible, so a rung that never returns anything gets fixed or dropped instead of quietly wasting a step.