States, Archetypes, and Conversation Score: Operating Intention in Real Time

The 8Cs provide the lens. The next question is operational: how do you transform this framework into an actionable real-time reading? Most companies still govern revenue as if they were governing inventory—they stack records, push messages, measure volume, and wait for conversion to "happen." A decision is not inventory. It's flow, movement, a state.

This is the MCI operating model: three instruments that make intention readable.

Why 'Stage' Fails and 'State' Governs

A stage is a company action. A state is a customer's condition—and the decision's. When a company defines "stages" in the CRM (Prospecting → Qualification → Proposal → Closing), it describes what it does, not what the customer experiences. "Proposal sent" doesn't mean "customer in a Purchase state"; it means "the salesperson clicked send." The distance between these two things is where the risk to predictability lies.

Stage is the language of the company. State is the language of the decision.

The 6 Decision States

• No Need — the customer has not yet perceived a clear pain, opportunity, or motivation to act. There is no active intention.
• Trigger — something activates the perception of a problem, desire, risk, or opportunity. Intention is born here, fragile but real.
• Exploration — the customer begins to search for paths, information, references, and possibilities. They map the terrain before comparing vendors.
• Comparison — the customer compares alternatives, vendors, criteria, risks, costs, and trust. Silence is more dangerous here than in any other state.
• Purchase — the customer is in the process of deciding, negotiating, closing, or committing. Risk isn't about the argument—it's about friction and slowness.
• Experience — the customer has already entered the phase of use, delivery, relationship, expansion, retention, or repurchase. This is where referrals—or early churn—are born.

The states are not linear. A customer can jump from Trigger directly to Purchase, regress from Comparison to Exploration when a new criterion arises, or oscillate for weeks. Instead of "moving cards in the pipeline," the company starts "reading and enabling transitions."

The Metadata That Makes the Reading Actionable

Knowing that the customer is in Comparison is useful. Knowing why, for how long, with what intensity, and what barrier is preventing them from moving forward is what makes the reading actionable. MCI accompanies each state with layers of metadata: the context of the action (the scenario that triggered the state), the owner of the state (who assumes the primary action), the sentiment and intensity (which change the SLA, required proof, and cadence), and the relative weights (not all triggers are worth the same). With this metadata, the company gains continuity without starting over: the next team comes in at the right point, with the right statement, at the right time.

The 5 Decision Archetypes

If states answer "where is the decision," archetypes answer "how the customer decides." An archetype is not a persona: a persona describes who the person is; an archetype describes how they are deciding now, in this context, for this decision. The same person can be an Explorer for one purchase and Decided for another.

• Tourist — high volume, low intent. Arrived out of curiosity. A healthy operation nurtures them lightly and filters them out, protecting sales capacity. The expensive mistake is investing a salesperson's time in someone who won't buy.
• Explorer — active curiosity, immature criteria. They know they have a pain but haven't defined what they want. They need diagnosis and qualification. The mistake: treating them as Decided (which leads to ghosting) or as a Tourist (handing them over to a competitor).
• Researcher — seeks evidence and materiality. Converts with confidence, not pressure. Needs proof: case studies, comparisons, demos in their scenario. When they close, they do so with conviction and provide referrals.
• Loyalist — already trusts you. Needs consistency and continuity. The risk is taking them for granted—a competitor who shows more attention can capture them. They don't need to be sold to; they need recognition and expansion at the right time.
• Decided — high intent, short window. Risk isn't about the argument—it's about friction and slowness. Every extra form is an open door for the competition. They penalize low Convenience more than any other archetype.

The executive gain is direct: archetypes allow the operation to be organized by probability patterns, not by message volume. A pipeline with 70% Tourists and 5% Decided requires a radically different strategy than one with 40% Explorers and 20% Researchers—even with the same "total leads."

The Conversation Score

The Conversation Score is the multidimensional telemetry that makes intention measurable in real time. It answers what lead scoring never properly answered: is this lead truly advancing or just interacting?

The Score is born from the six Decision States as axes. Each axis carries a value (the signal intensity) and a relative weight that reflects its contribution to the probability of conversion: No Need weighs negatively; Trigger, low; Exploration, medium; Comparison, high; Purchase, maximum; Experience, medium. Multipliers adjust for the context of the action and for sentiment, and old signals undergo temporal decay. The calibration of absolute weights and thresholds is the responsibility of each implementation—there is no universal formula; the first 90 days of measurement produce the baseline.

Two distinctions matter. Conversation Score is not lead scoring: lead scoring measures engagement (opened email, visited pricing), and engagement is not intention. Conversation Score is not pT (Thermal Probability): the Score is an operational reading ("what to do now?"); pT is the financial use of that reading, the probability of transition within a horizon ("how much of the portfolio will convert and when?"). The Score feeds pT; pT feeds predictability.

Business Badges: From Score to Business Alert

Business Badges translate the state into an actionable alert: Promoter (high Experience + satisfaction—activate referral), Churn Risk (negative sentiment—escalate to CS before the customer leaves in silence), Nurturing Opportunity (cold lead—allocate to automation with memory), and Upsell Potential (high Experience + positive sentiment—expand without friction). They are recalculated with every interaction.

From Score to Action

The operational sequence is: Signals → State → Score → Archetype → Next Step (with SLA). Two customers can be in the same CRM column ("Proposal Sent") and require opposite actions: a Researcher in Comparison with a risk-related barrier needs an implementation plan and proof (longer SLA); a Decided in Purchase with high urgency needs obstacles removed—a contract and a short call (SLA of hours). Treating both with the same follow-up wastes one's time and scares the other away. The action changes because the state, archetype, and context are different—even when the CRM shows the same thing.