NeedShift: Expansion Signals for B2B Sales Research

Find a documented reason to research an industrial account. Get the announcement, possible operational need, buyer roles to investigate, and a concrete validation step in one JSON record.

Built for sales teams selling equipment, materials handling, logistics and operational services to expanding manufacturers. NeedShift helps you decide what to investigate before contacting a company. It does not verify that a company wants to buy your product.

What you receive

• A dated expansion candidate with source URLs and excerpts, when supported by the supplied public pages.
• A salesResearchBrief: what happened, announcement date, possible needs clearly labeled as hypotheses, relevant roles to research and the next question to ask.
• A distinction between an unconfirmed candidate, a corroborated business event and unavailable evidence.
• A persistent monitor for repeat runs. A changed page or keyword alone cannot open a verified buying window.

Quick start

For the most reliable result, supply the company name, domain and direct URLs of dated announcements. One credible announcement can produce a research candidate. Corroboration requires distinct reports across source groups, including the company website, matching the date and investment. Copies, owned subdomains and known government aliases cannot establish independent corroboration. Unknown common ownership and rewritten syndication may require manual review.

{
  "companies": [{
    "name": "CurTec",
    "domain": "curtec.com",
    "evidenceUrls": [
      "https://www.curtec.com/en/news/press/curtec-expands-us-manufacturing-westminster",
      "https://www.sccommerce.com/newsroom/curtec-usa-expands-oconee-county-operations"
    ]
  }],
  "monitorId": "my-industrial-accounts",
  "autoDiscover": false,
  "outputMode": "all"
}

This is a real October 7, 2026 announcement. The 90-day freshness window applies at run time, so an old example must eventually be replaced. A source may become unavailable; inspect coverage and evidenceSources before relying on a result.

You can also start with just {"companies":[{"name":"CurTec","domain":"curtec.com"}]}. Domain discovery checks a bounded set of common pages and follows some first-party news links. It is not a web-wide search, does not discover all announcements, and does not automatically obtain external corroboration. Direct article URLs are recommended. No result means no qualifying evidence in the pages checked, not that the company has no projects.

Read the result correctly

Field or status	Meaning
RESEARCH_CANDIDATE	A recent dated industrial expansion was found. Not a confirmed buying window. Human validation required.
verifiedBusinessEvent.confirmed: true	Matching expansion announcement corroborated across distinct source groups. Business event only.
EVIDENCE_UNAVAILABLE	Required evidence could not be fetched. Previous monitor state is preserved.
NO_OPPORTUNITY	No qualified opportunity in the checked pages. Coverage is not exhaustive.
confidence	Heuristic research score, not a calibrated probability of a purchase. Candidates score 55; corroborated events 70–79; keyword topics at most 44.
actionDecision: VALIDATE	Research the project and procurement status before pitching.

Illustrative abridged output, not a guaranteed run result:

{
  "company": "CurTec",
  "opportunityStatus": "RESEARCH_CANDIDATE",
  "buyingWindowState": "UNCONFIRMED",
  "buyingWindowOpened": false,
  "confidence": 55,
  "actionDecision": "VALIDATE",
  "confidenceBasis": {"purchaseIntentConfirmed": false},
  "salesResearchBrief": {
    "evidenceLevel": "UNCONFIRMED_DATED_CANDIDATE",
    "announcedAt": "2026-10-07",
    "buyerRolesToResearch": ["Plant / Operations Director", "Supply Chain Director", "Capital Projects / Procurement"],
    "nextStep": "Validate the project phase, which work packages remain unawarded and who owns supplier selection."
  }
}

The full record includes exact source URLs and excerpts. Buyer roles are research hypotheses. No named person, email address, available budget or open procurement process is implied.

Scope and limits

Current strongest support is English-language, dated manufacturing, warehouse and physical production expansion announcements within 90 days. Detection is rule based, not general intelligence across every industry or event. Generic AI, security, hiring, funding and product keywords are unverified topics and cannot independently establish buying intent. Some news pages, JavaScript sites, PDFs, blocked pages and unusual publication formats cannot be read. Source groups do not establish editorial independence.

Use outputMode: "all" while evaluating coverage. transitions_only can suppress unqualified baseline rows. Reuse a monitor ID to track the same accounts; use a new ID for an isolated test. Up to 100 companies per run; evidence and discovery limits bound the work.

Why pay for it?

Use the structured output to create a research queue for industrial sales: evidence first, then a project-specific question. Export JSON or CSV from Apify or connect the dataset to your own workflow. The value is a traceable starting point for a conversation, not a list of guaranteed buyers. Assess candidate relevance against your actual offering during a limited pilot.

Pricing is displayed in the Apify Pricing tab. A result is an output company record, not a verified lead; diagnostic and no-opportunity records can be billable. No paid external AI API is required. Runtime and source availability affect delivery costs. No ROI, conversion rate or revenue outcome is promised.