Pointer Strategy

Company-specific capability checks

Custom Certifications

Turn company context into a manager-ready certification. Pointer drafts the definition, scorecard, and evidence examples; your managers approve before anything goes live.

How it actually works

AI drafts. Managers approve. Pointer turns your inputs into a first draft of the certification — definition, scorecard, evidence examples — and surfaces it to a human reviewer with explicit edit/approve controls. Nothing rolls out until a manager signs off. No autonomous certification authority, no vague rubrics.

Step 1

Describe your company context

A rough sketch is enough. The draft gets tightened by the manager review in step 4.

Industry

B2B SaaS

Stage

Series A

GTM motion

Outbound-led, mid-market AEs

Deal cycle

60–90 day deals, 3–5 stakeholders

The certification you need

A BDR-to-AE hand-off standard so AEs stop re-discovering deals at the first call.

Step 2

Pointer drafts a certification definition

Drafted certification

Bring outbound deals to qualified meeting

Carry a self-sourced outbound conversation from cold engagement through to a qualified discovery meeting with the right stakeholder, with enough recorded evidence for the AE to inherit the deal without re-discovery.

Drafted by AIPending manager approval

Step 3

…and a drafted scorecard

Same rubric structure as Pointer's certified skills library — area + standard, 5-point scale. So managers can score consistently across custom and standard certifications.

AreaStandard (a 4 looks like…)
Hypothesis qualityThe rep articulates a specific business reason the prospect should care, tied to a measurable outcome and a current trigger event — not a generic pain pitch.
Stakeholder targetingOutreach is scoped to the role most likely to own the problem at the right account tier, not whichever email is easiest to find.
Meeting qualificationBooked meetings carry a confirmed business problem, named decision process owner, and indicative timeline — enough that the AE accepts the hand-off without negotiation.
CRM evidence captureConversation outcomes, objections, and next steps land in the CRM the same day in the team's agreed format, with no missing fields.
Cadence disciplineMulti-touch cadences are run end-to-end without dropped steps, with clear signals on when to pause, escalate, or recycle.

Step 4 of the draft

Concrete evidence examples

Specific artifacts a manager can look for during certification — not abstract qualities.

  • Call recording where the rep names the buyer's business problem in the rep's own words within the first three minutes
  • CRM activity log showing two channels of outreach (email + LinkedIn or phone) before the first meeting was booked
  • Hand-off Slack/CRM note from rep to AE that the AE accepted without follow-up questions
  • Two examples of cadences paused with a documented reason and a recycle date, not silent drops

Step 5

Manager review controls

The draft is never live until a manager has read it end to end and made a deliberate choice. Three controls:

Approve

Ships as-is to the team library. Tagged with the approving manager's name and the date.

Edit

Open the draft inline, change any area, re-anchor the standards, then approve. AI suggestions stay as a side-by-side reference.

Reject + redraft

Add a one-line reason. The next draft incorporates the feedback and the rejected version stays in the audit log.

What this is not

  • Not autonomous certification authority. AI never decides a person is certified.
  • Not a static template. The drafts adapt to your context — they don't pull from a fixed set of 50 generic rubrics.
  • Not a black box. Every draft, edit, and approval is logged with the manager's name and date.
  • Not separate from the standard library. Custom certifications live alongside Pointer's 112 certified skills with the same rubric format, so scoring and gap analysis stay consistent.

Build your first custom certification

Draft in your Pointer client workspace. Drafts only ship after a manager on your team approves them.