Buyer Journey · Complete How-To Guide

Three principles before any feature:

• Curated, not exhaustive. You will see 3-5 matched suppliers per brief, not 50. Suppliers are vetted before they ever surface. The trade-off is rare but real · for very niche needs you may wait a few days while we match.
• Buyer-led pace. You set the rhythm. You decide whether to respond to a shortlisted supplier within an hour or a week. We don't auto-share your data with suppliers · they see your brief only when you accept them onto the shortlist.
• Free to use, paid to buy. Posting briefs, browsing suppliers and reading reports costs nothing. You only ever pay a supplier directly · we don't add a markup between you and them.

1. Sign up at /auth/signup using your business email (it makes verification faster and helps us auto-match you to your organisation if a colleague's already on the platform).
2. Choose "Buyer" as your role. Pick "Hybrid" if your company also sells through the ecosystem · this is rare for first-time signups, so default to Buyer.
3. Verify your email · check your inbox and click the link. Until you verify, posting briefs is locked.
4. Land on your dashboard at /account. Complete the profile card · your name, organisation name, timezone, role within the company. The completion bar tells you what's still missing · take it to 100% before you post a brief.

The brief is the single most important thing you'll write on the platform · everything that follows runs off it. A good brief gets 3-5 shortlisted suppliers responding inside 48 hours; a poor one gets generic pitches from poorly-matched suppliers.

1. Open /account/briefs/new and start the wizard. It's a multi-step form · don't skip the optional fields, they drive matching.
2. What you're trying to do · in one paragraph. Lead with the outcome, not the activity. "Triple SaaS pipeline by Q4" beats "hire a content marketing agency".
3. Why now · what triggered this. Suppliers respond differently to "we just lost our biggest customer" vs "we just closed a funding round" · both are valid, both need different responses.
4. Budget bracket · ranges, not exact numbers. Suppliers below your floor don't see your brief · suppliers above your ceiling do (they'll usually propose a scoped-down phase 1). This field is the single biggest signal in the matching engine.
5. Timeline · when you need this in market. Realistic, not aspirational · "yesterday" is treated as "next quarter" by suppliers.
6. Categories · pick primary + up to 2 secondary. The category filter is one of the matching engine's hardest gates · choose carefully.
7. Open to / not open to · helpful constraints. Geographic, industry, supplier size. Saying "open to anywhere" means suppliers stop self-filtering on relevance.

Tip · save a draft halfway through if you need to think. The form auto-saves so you can come back to /account/briefs and finish later.

Within 24-48 hours of posting, your brief gets matched against the supplier roster and 3-5 supplier responses land at /account/briefs.

For each response:

1. Read the response, then the supplier profile. The response answers "can they do it"; the profile answers "are they the right people". Both matter.
2. Look for the case study, not the pitch. A response with "we did this exact thing for [similar client]" is worth ten responses with "we're a leading agency in...".
3. Compare structures, not just numbers. A £15k fixed-scope proposal isn't comparable to a £25k retainer over 6 months. The wizard lets you mark proposals "comparable" · use it.
4. Aim to shortlist 2-3. Talking to 5 suppliers is too many · you'll lose track. Talking to 1 means you have no leverage. Three is the sweet spot.

Once you've shortlisted, the suppliers see your full brief + your name + your organisation. Before that point they only see the anonymised brief.

1. Hit "Shortlist" on each card · the supplier gets a notification and the brief unlocks for them.
2. Book a discovery call directly from the profile · most suppliers have a calendar link embedded. 20-30 minutes is standard.
3. Ask three questions every time:
   • What's the closest thing you've done to this? (probes relevant experience)
   • What would you do in the first 30 days? (probes operating cadence)
   • What's the most common reason this goes wrong, and how do you prevent it? (probes honesty)
4. Take notes inside the brief detail page · the platform stores them privately so you don't lose context across multiple suppliers.

You don't have to post a brief to browse. Use the supplier directory when:

• You're researching the market before a brief.
• You have a specific supplier name in mind and want to see their profile.
• You want to bookmark suppliers you might engage in 6 months.

The directory lives under the Browse suppliers link in your account dashboard. Filter by category, deal size and ICP. You can save any supplier to a private list for later.

The most under-used buyer feature. The GrowthLens diagnostic at /growthlens/diagnostic is a 20-minute self-assessment that produces:

• A Business Health Score (0-100) across 15 categories · your strengths, your gaps, your blind spots.
• A stage classification (Pre-Foundation / Foundation / Growth / Scale-up) with a 3-paragraph narrative.
• Top 10 priority recommendations and the categories most worth investing in next.

Run it before you post your first brief. Two reasons:

1. You write better briefs. Knowing your weakest category sharpens the brief from "we need marketing" to "our messaging scores 38/100 · we need a positioning audit".
2. You get a calibration target. Re-running the diagnostic 90 days into a supplier engagement is the cleanest possible ROI signal. Did your score move? By how much? In which categories?

The free tier shows the score, stage and basic recommendations. The £27 Pro Report unlocks the 90-day roadmap, peer benchmark, AI strategic assistant and the exit-readiness composite. Worth the £27 the first time; subsequent re-scores stay on Pro for free.

The 21-Day Challenge is a structured 3-week sequence of prompts + operating- cadence resets. It's free, it's self-directed, and it's the highest-leverage thing a buyer can do before bringing in external help.

• Sign up via the challenge page · you'll get a daily email for 21 days.
• Each day takes 15-25 minutes. Don't catch up over a weekend · the cadence matters more than the catch-up.
• Day 21 ends with a structured review · what's changed, what would be easier to solve now, where you still need help. This is your real brief.

The ecosystem runs regular exhibitions and matched buyer/ supplier events. As a buyer you can:

• Visit an exhibition · register to attend via the events surface. You'll get pre-event briefing materials so you know which suppliers are worth speaking to.
• Pre-book supplier meetings · for vetted buyers, we open 1:1 meeting slots with suppliers a week before the event. Filter by category, book 5-10 meetings, treat the event like a structured day of discovery calls.
• Attend keynote sessions · suppliers in the Authority tier speak on category- defining topics. Worth attending even when not directly relevant · the calibre of question-and-answer reveals who knows their stuff.

The Customer Journey page is a 10-chapter map of how buying through the ecosystem differs from typical RFP processes. Read it before you post your second brief · most buyers' first brief looks like a corporate RFP (a 12-page Word doc). That's not what we ask for or what suppliers respond best to.

The platform compounds in value the longer you use it. High-impact recurring activities:

• Re-run GrowthLens every 90 days. The trajectory shows whether your supplier investments are landing. Trend data tells you more than any single score.
• Post a fresh brief per quarter. Even if you don't end up buying, the responses reveal where the market is moving · suppliers cluster around real problems, not imagined ones.
• Visit one exhibition a year. The cohort discovery value is huge · you meet other buyers solving similar problems and quietly hire each other's suppliers.
• Maintain a bookmark list. Save suppliers you don't need now but might in 12 months. The list is private to your account.

Some buyers become suppliers · your business may itself serve other businesses. The path is:

1. Run the GrowthLens diagnostic on your own business and confirm you're at Growth or Scale-up stage. Below that, the supplier ecosystem won't yield much.
2. Apply to the supplier wait list at /supplier-wait-list. Mention your existing buyer account · we'll fast-track the vetting call.
3. On invitation, your account role flips from Buyer to Hybrid · you keep the buyer surfaces and gain the supplier ones. Two profiles, one login.

• No responses to my brief? Usually one of three causes: budget below the supplier floor in your category; categories too narrow; brief written as an RFP rather than a problem statement. Book a 15-minute brief review via /contact and we'll triage.
• A supplier feels pushy. Decline them from the shortlist · they lose access to the brief immediately and won't be re-matched to your future briefs. Tell us · we use the signal to recalibrate the supplier's matching weight.
• My diagnostic shows weak scores in areas I thought I was strong. Re-read the questions for those categories. The scoring is uncomfortably specific by design · "we have a written plan" scores differently from "we have plans". If you still disagree, the AI assistant in the Pro tier is there for exactly this kind of conversation.
• Lost access? /auth/forgot-password resets your password. For deeper account issues, use /contact with the email you signed up with.