The Research Inventory

What it is

A short checklist of the customer evidence assets your function does or does not have — not to score the program, but to surface where your ICP and buying permissions work is grounded versus where it is hovering on assumption.

How to use it

Mark each asset as In place and active, Exists but stale, or Missing. The sum of Stale and Missing answers is your research investment plan for the next two quarters.

The inventory

1. Active win/loss program. Structured, third-party-run or rigorously internal, with verbatim transcripts available to PMM, product, and sales leadership. Producing new signals — not repackaging existing belief.
2. Win/loss verbatim review cadence. A standing meeting or process where PMM reads the verbatim, not just the synthesis deck. Quarterly minimum.
3. Analyst inquiry log access. PMM has read access to the questions your AR function logs from buyer inquiries with Gartner, Forrester, IDC, or equivalent. Six months of logs reviewed in the last quarter.
4. Practitioner community presence. Someone on the PMM team is actively reading (not posting) in at least two practitioner communities relevant to your ICP. Reading is documented and patterns are surfaced internally.
5. Customer interviews in the last ninety days. Direct conversations with current customers, prospects, or churned accounts in the target ICP. Not advisory board events. Working interviews focused on engagements, pains, and proof.
6. Practitioner advisory. A standing relationship with three to five practitioners in the ICP who will take a call when you need a quick reality check on positioning, messaging, or product direction. Not a customer advisory board — a practitioner one.
7. Pipeline and expansion analytics. Access to pipeline conversion data and expansion data segmented by ICP criteria. Tells you whether the ICP on paper is the ICP that converts.
8. Churn signal. A standing process for understanding why customers leave, separate from CSM save attempts. Most churn data is laundered through CS narratives. Get the verbatim.
9. Reference inventory. A current map of which customers will speak on the record, which will speak under NDA, and which will be available for peer reference calls — segmented by ICP.
10. Hyperscaler or partner buyer signal. If your motion includes co-sell, a process for understanding what the partner's sellers and the partner's buyers are actually saying about your category and your product.

How to read the output