Waiting for a public RFP or a formal bid request is usually a losing battle cause by the time a tender is written, the prospect has either drafted the requirements around an incumbent they already like or it turns into a race to the bottom on per-user seat pricing.
We spent months trying to figure out how to detect vendor churn earlier and started tracking digital exhaust signals based on how scaleintelligence.dev structures market monitoring radars across competitor touchpoints, instead of waiting for an owner to announce they are shopping, there are specific breadcrumbs that indicate friction weeks ahead of time:
Key leadership departures: when an operations director or CFO leaves and a new executive steps in, they audit overhead and vendors within their first 90 days.
Glassdoor and job board venting: employees leaving reviews mentioning outdated internal tech, constant VPN failures or poor onboarding equipment. It points straight to an unmanaged or neglectful MSP.
DNS and mail record anomalies: subtle changes to MX records or third-party email routing additions that suggest internal IT experiments or migrations gone sideways.
Local business forum gripes: owners complaining in niche regional Slack groups or business forums about downtime or unexpected billing add-ons.
Catching these patterns early allows you to reach out casually as a peer than showing up as a pushy vendor in a formal bidding war.
Source: r/GrowthHacking · by /u/sibraan_