Rank your market: GTM Pipes.

What this settles.

One ordered list, built from facts anyone can go and check, ends several arguments at once.

Who gets called first

Territory arguments usually come down to two people with different instincts and no shared evidence. An order that carries its reasons with it is something both of them can look at, disagree with, and settle.

Who belongs on the target list

Target account lists are famous for arriving without much behind them. Somebody senior liked the name, or it came up twice in one week. Every company on this list has a reason attached, which means it can be challenged and either survives or does not.

Where the money behind the list goes

Rep hours, advertising budget, event budget and the weeks it takes to write something worth reading are all finite, and all of it gets spent on somebody. Spending it against a ranked list is a different decision from spending it against a hunch.

What it looks like.

Every company you point it at, scored on two separate things, ordered by both, with the reason attached to each one.

You choose the companies

It might be a list you already hold, or a market you can define, or every company that meets a few conditions. Whatever you point it at gets read against the same standard, so a score means the same thing at the bottom of the list as it does at the top.

Every position shows its work

Each company comes back with two scores and the dated facts behind them. There is nothing to take on trust: any position can be traced to the evidence that put it there, and every piece of that evidence carries where it came from and the day it was read.

It is read again every month

Companies get acquired, hire, announce and go quiet. The order moves as your market does, so the list is current rather than a picture of the month you bought it.

This is not the score already sitting in your CRM. That one is built from how people have behaved toward you: what they opened, clicked and visited. This one is built from what is verifiably true about a company before anyone there has spoken to you at all, which is why it works on companies who have never heard of you.

Two numbers, never one.

Fit asks whether a company looks like the customers you already win. Timing asks whether something has just happened there. Those are different questions, so they stay different scores.

Blend them into a single number and you lose the one thing that tells you what to do next. A company that would make an excellent customer one day is not the same as a company worth calling this quarter, and an average cannot tell you which of the two you are looking at.

Fit

Standing conditions. What the company is, what it sells, how big it is, what it has already been through. These move slowly.

Timing

Dated events. What was announced, filed, posted or launched, and how long ago. These move constantly, and they expire.

The list below has one of each, five places apart.

The top of one market.

This is a real run, on a real market. The company doing the selling is TieOut, a demo company we invented, because we will not put a client’s market on display. The banks, the filings and the dates are real, and every reason below came out of the run rather than out of a copywriter.

1,921 companies read 13 criteria 175 worth engaging read 18-21 September 2026

Fifteen companies from the top of the example market, each scored separately on fit and on timing, with the dated reason it sits where it does.
Rank	Company	Fit	Timing
1	The Fountain Trust Company Closed its first acquisition on 10 March 2026 and put the customer conversion live in early April. The efficiency ratio has risen 10 points year over year, and it is still hiring loan operations staff.	Fit 100	Timing 90
2	Heritage Bank Absorbed a $1.65B bank on 31 January 2026. The efficiency ratio has climbed 6.9 points in the two quarters since it closed, and the bank’s website still runs a separate login for the acquired bank’s customers.	Fit 100	Timing 90
3	Volunteer Bank Absorbed a $1.55B bank on 1 January 2026, its second in eighteen months, and ran the systems cutover over a weekend in June. The efficiency ratio worsened 4 points in the quarter it completed.	Fit 100	Timing 74
4	Dream First Bank, N.A. Two absorptions still inside their conversion runways, and an efficiency ratio at 72.09%, up 14.8 points year over year and still rising in the most recent filed quarter.	Fit 83	Timing 90
5	First Mid Bank & Trust, N.A. Closed its absorption of a $1.20B bank on 12 June 2026, its second in three years. The efficiency ratio worsened 3.2 points in the quarter the merger closed, and the homepage still carries a live conversion alert.	Fit 83	Timing 88
6	Merchants & Marine Bank Absorbed a $448.2M bank on 1 April 2026, its second absorption in two years. Its own published risk factors still list completing the core conversion of acquired banks as an open item.	Fit 83	Timing 85
7	Security First Bank Bought eleven branches on 10 April 2026 and ran the customer conversion that weekend. Five months on, the routing-number change and reconnection guides are still published for customers.	Fit 83	Timing 85
8	High Plains Bank Absorbed a $151.1M bank on 22 April 2026 and is moving the acquired customers onto its own app. It is hiring into loan operations, though its cost ratio has been improving throughout.	Fit 100	Timing 62
9	The Bennington State Bank Two whole-bank acquisitions in seventeen months, the second closing 8 April 2026 and folding in four separately branded locations. It redesigned its mobile app on 1 September, mid-integration.	Fit 83	Timing 78
10	Vallant Bank Merged with a $1.60B bank on 1 April 2026 and announced the systems conversion complete on 17 June. The quarter still carried $8.0M of one-time merger expense, and the efficiency ratio worsened on every filed horizon.	Fit 83	Timing 78
11	NexTier Bank, N.A. Its legal merger with Riverside Bank of Dublin closed on 31 August 2026, and the operational merger is scheduled for November. The customer migration has not happened yet, which is the rarest thing on this list.	Fit 67	Timing 92
12	Arrow Bank, N.A. Closed its acquisition of Adirondack Bank on 1 July 2026 and has told customers in writing that the systems transition happens in early November. Two routing numbers are published on its site today.	Fit 67	Timing 88
13	Community West Bank Absorbed a $1.22B bank on 1 April 2026 and targeted its systems conversion for the quarter now ending. It added 100 staff for the merger, including temporary people to help with the integration.	Fit 67	Timing 88
14	Ion Bank Absorbed a $645.2M bank in April 2025 and signed a second merger on 20 May 2026, targeted to close in October. Its efficiency ratio rose 5.75 points across the two quarters after the first deal closed.	Fit 67	Timing 88
15	Bank First, N.A. Absorbed a $1.59B bank on 1 January 2026, converted its core during the second quarter, and signed a second acquisition in May targeted to close on 4 December. The efficiency ratio is 7.3 points worse year over year.	Fit 67	Timing 88

Fifteen from the top of this run. The run is re-read every month, and these rows move when it is.

Why a perfect fit sits eighth.

High Plains Bank scores as well on fit as any company on this list, and sits below seven companies, four of which score lower on fit, because the thing that would have made it urgent is already behind it. NexTier Bank is the opposite: a lower fit score, but its customer migration has not happened yet and is booked for November. Sorted on one blended number, High Plains would have come out near the top and somebody would have walked in to pitch a project that was already winding down.

See one of these companies read in full

Two that work with it.

Group your market

A ranked list tells you the order. Groups tell you which companies need to hear the same thing, which is what makes one message into a handful aimed at somebody.

On the capabilities page

Find the people

A company cannot take a call. Once you know which companies matter, this finds the people inside them who would actually be involved in the decision.