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Why Fimiliarity and readiness are different questions.

The short answer

Fimiliarity and readiness answer different questions, and they belong to different things. Fimiliarity is how well a specific person knows you, so it starts with them. Readiness is whether the account as a whole is in a position to act, so it lives with the account. Score them as one number and you lose the ability to tell "they do not know us yet" from "they know us but cannot move yet", which are two different problems with two different next steps.

Cathleen Vermaak-Nisbet
By Cathleen Vermaak-Nisbet, Co-founder and CEO

Guides

Two readings: Fimiliarity per person, readiness per account A dashed box marked the account holds five person nodes at different heights on a vertical axis marked Fimiliarity: one is lit at the top, one at the bottom is an empty node. Under the box, one thread across its whole width marked readiness, one reading for the account. The account Fimiliarity Most None yet Readiness · one reading
Two readings · Fimiliarity is read per person and differs inside one account; readiness is one reading for the whole account.

01The person

Fimiliarity starts with the person.

Fimiliarity is built one person at a time. A company does not get to know you; the people inside it do, at different rates, for different reasons, based on what they have personally seen, read or heard. The finance director who has read three of your articles knows you far better than the operations lead who has never heard of your firm, even though they sit inside the same account.

Reading Fimiliarity only at the account level flattens that difference away, which is exactly the difference that matters when deciding who to talk to next and what to say to them.

Five people in one account, five Fimiliarity readings A dashed box marked same account holds five rows. Each row is a person node with a horizontal thread whose length is how fimiliar they are with the firm. The finance director, who has read three articles, is lit with the longest thread. Three more people have shorter threads. The operations lead, who has never heard of the firm, is an empty node with no thread. Same account Finance director Three articles Operations lead Never heard of you
The person · inside one account, Fimiliarity is read one person at a time and is never the same twice.

02The account

Readiness belongs to the account.

Readiness is a different kind of fact. It is not about how well any one person knows you; it is about whether the company as a whole has a live problem, a budget, and the organisational appetite to act on it now. An account can be highly ready, a live need, a real budget, while almost nobody inside it knows your firm yet. The reverse also happens: a champion knows you well, and the company is nowhere near ready to spend.

Readiness is one reading for the whole account, because it describes the account's situation, not any individual's opinion of you.

Two accounts, two readings each Two dashed boxes side by side. Account A: readiness marked live need, real budget with a filled node, and five person nodes below, all empty: nobody knows the firm yet. Account B: readiness marked nowhere near ready with an empty node, and five person nodes below of which one, the champion, is lit. Account A Readiness Live need, real budget Fimiliarity Almost nobody yet Account B Readiness Nowhere near ready Fimiliarity A champion
One reading per account · A is ready and nobody knows you yet; B has a champion and is nowhere near ready.

03The cost

What gets lost when the two are merged.

A single score cannot tell a team which situation it is looking at.

Collapse Fimiliarity and readiness into one lead score and both signals get muddier.

A high score could mean

"Ready to buy, barely knows us yet"

which needs relationship-building before any commercial conversation.

Or it could mean

"Knows us well, but there is no budget this year"

which needs patience and staying visible, not a harder pitch.

A blended number tends to push every lead toward the same next action: reach out now. That is the wrong move for at least one of those two accounts, and probably both.

04How Fimiliarity moves

Fimiliarity moves through what people read, not what they are sold.

If Fimiliarity starts with the person, the way to build it is not a pitch. It is being seen to say something worth reading, repeatedly, before you ever ask for anything.

  • 64%

    trust thought leadership over marketing materials when judging a firm's capabilities.

    Source Edelman and LinkedIn, "2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report", June 2025.1,934 executives, US. Self-reported attitudes, not observed behaviour.

  • 79%

    more likely to actively advocate for a firm in an RFP if it is seen as a consistent thought leader.

    Source Edelman and LinkedIn, 2025, as above.Same base and caveat.

Both figures are self-reported attitudes rather than observed behaviour, which is worth holding lightly. The direction is still hard to miss: people trust what a firm has shown them thinking, more than what a firm has told them to believe.

05Questions

What partners ask about this.

Short answers.

or pick the ones to ask your AI

Can an account be ready before anyone in it knows the firm?

Yes, and it happens often. A live need and a budget do not require anyone to have formed an opinion of you yet. That account needs Fimiliarity built fast, through the people who will actually shape the decision, not a harder sales push.

Can someone know a firm well and the account still not be ready?

Also yes. A champion who knows you well cannot create budget or urgency that does not exist. The right move there is patience: stay visible, keep being useful, and be first in line when readiness does arrive. A harder pitch at that point spends goodwill without creating a budget.

How should a professional service firm score its leads?

With two readings, not one score. Score Fimiliarity for each person: how well they know your firm. Judge readiness for the account: whether it is moving toward a decision. Averaged together they erase what a team needs to act on: one account needs relationship work, another needs patience, and the same blended score sends both to the same, wrong, next step.

Can a CRM lead score measure Fimiliarity and readiness?

Partly. A CRM such as HubSpot or Salesforce can collect the raw signals, such as email opens, visits, form fills and job titles, and many teams roll them into one lead score. What a single score cannot do is keep Fimiliarity and readiness apart, or judge what a signal actually means. Tools collect the data; a person still has to decide the next step.

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