Decision guide
The Anatomy of an Evidence-Backed Opportunity
A complete opportunity record carries identity, evidence, timing, uncertainty, action readiness, ownership, and review state together.
Identity and mandate
The record starts with the exact account or facility and the commercial mandate it is being evaluated against. Legal name, domain, location, parent relationship, and stable identifiers should remain distinct where they matter. The record should also name the offer, target result, fit logic, and exclusions that govern the evaluation.
This prevents an attractive event from floating free of the market it is supposed to serve. An event can be real and still irrelevant to the client. Exact identity and mandate fit are prerequisites, not decoration.
Dated evidence and why-now interpretation
Every event should preserve its source, native date, citation, rights or allowed use, observed date, receipt, and freshness policy. The interpretation then explains how that event changes the account’s priority for the specific mandate.
The record must distinguish fact from inference. A permit may prove approval without proving construction. A contract may prove an award without proving the supplier need. A company statement may prove intent while leaving the delivery timeline uncertain. Good opportunity records make those boundaries easy to review.
- Source and citation
- Native event date
- Identity attachment reason
- Mandate connection
- Freshness and decay
- Fact versus inference
Corroboration, negative evidence, and uncertainty
Independent evidence can confirm scale, timing, location, or operational consequence. The record should identify whether corroboration comes from a distinct source origin and event family rather than another copy of the same announcement.
Negative and conflicting evidence belongs in the same view. A cancelled project, old role, disputed facility, ambiguous subsidiary, suppression record, or incompatible policy can change the decision. Confidence should be explainable in words, not hidden inside a single number.
Prepared action, owner, and state
The opportunity ends with a recommended next action, the person responsible for deciding it, the contact or action-path status, and the review state. Research-ready, action-ready, hold, reject, and monitor are meaningfully different outcomes and should not be collapsed into a generic lead status.
A prepared action can include a research question, contact-verification task, internal referral request, account brief, or approved external step. Nothing about the record creates consent or authority by itself. The action becomes eligible only when the independent policy and human gates for that path are clear.