Validate decision makers before sending the contract
A Claude prompt that runs the final pre-signature check on a deal about to close. The prompt validates three things: that the planned signer still has authority for this dollar amount and contract term, that the buying group roles are mapped to their current roles (not who they were when the deal started), and that no structural change has happened at the prospect that would re-route the contract through different approvals.
The worst kind of deal slip is the one that happens after the contract is sent. The new CSTO wants to review. The original signer left two weeks ago. The acquired entity’s contracts are under freeze. All of these are catchable with a 60-second pre-close validation that no AE has time to run manually but every AE needs.
Once Lusha is connected in Claude, the connector runs in the background — no special syntax needed. Just describe the deal at the contract stage and run.
Images on this webpage are for illustrative purposes only. Any named individuals shown in live demo outputs are real, with last names abbreviated for privacy.
The prompt
<context>
I'm about to send the contract for signature on a deal. Before I do, I want to validate the decision makers — confirm the signing authority is current, the buying group roles are correct, and nothing has changed at the prospect that would re-route the contract.
My deal at contract stage:
- Prospect company / domain: [COMPANY]
- Planned signer (name, title): [NAME, TITLE]
- Contract value (annual): [DOLLAR AMOUNT]
- Contract term: [LENGTH]
- Buying group I've been working with (name, role): [LIST]
- Date of last meaningful touch with the signer: [DATE]
- Stage in CRM: [Negotiation / Closing]
</context>
<task>
1. Use Lusha to validate the planned signer:
- Confirm the signer's current title matches what's on the contract
- Confirm the signer is still at the prospect company (catches departures that happened during the deal)
- Check the signer's seniority level against the contract value (a $250K annual contract typically requires VP or higher signing authority; $1M+ typically requires C-suite)
- Surface the signer's job start date — if they joined recently, their authority may not yet cover this contract size
2. Validate the buying group roles I've been working with:
- Confirm each contact's current title matches my notes
- Flag any contact who has departed, been promoted, or changed roles since the last touch
- Surface anyone in the buying group whose role change means their position on the contract approval chain has shifted
3. Use Lusha's signals layer to scan the prospect for structural changes since my last meaningful touch:
- Executive departures (especially anyone in the contract approval chain — CRO, CFO, CSTO, CTO)
- Leadership hires (anyone new in the approval chain who may want to review)
- M&A as the acquired party (acquired companies often freeze contracts during integration)
- Security incidents (may trigger new procurement scrutiny)
- Major reorganizations (changed reporting lines = changed approval routing)
4. Return a clear pre-close decision:
- SEND — signer validated, buying group current, no structural changes. Safe to send the contract today.
- HOLD — verify one thing first — minor issue caught (stale contact info, recent change worth confirming, signer's authority at this dollar amount uncertain). Prescribe the specific verification.
- HOLD — structural change — significant change at the prospect that materially affects the contract path. Surface what changed and the right next move (re-route the contract, re-validate with new owner, pause for procurement re-check).
5. If the planned signer has departed, surface the verified replacement candidate (using the find-new-champion logic) and recommend re-validation before sending.
</task>
<constraints>
- Validation is binary on each check — the contact is at the company or they aren't, the title matches or it doesn't. Don't soften with "probably still there."
- The signer authority check is approximate (Lusha doesn't return signing limits), but seniority + recent role can flag the obvious mismatches.
- Do not invent contacts, roles, or signals. Surface only what Lusha returns.
- A SEND decision means the contract can go out today. A HOLD decision means specific verification first. Be clear which.
</constraints>What you'll get back
Input: Deal at Snowflake about to send for signature. Planned signer — Brian R., Chief Financial Officer. Contract value — $480K annual. Contract term — 24 months. Buying group worked with: Keegan R. (SVP Sales Americas), Patrick H. (VP RevOps), Dwarak R. (VP AI Engineering). Last touch with Brian: 11 days ago. CRM stage — Closing.
Output: HOLD — structural change. Two material events have happened at Snowflake in the days surrounding the planned send. Below is the real result from running the prompt against the live Lusha connector.
Pre-close decision: HOLD — structural change
The signer is validated and the buying group is current. However, two structural changes at Snowflake in the last 30 days create real risk that the contract will get re-routed if sent today. Recommended hold of 5-7 business days while one verification touch closes the gap.
Signer validation
| Check | Result |
|---|---|
| Brian R. still at Snowflake | ✓ Confirmed |
| Title matches contract: Chief Financial Officer | ✓ Confirmed |
| Job start date: September 2025 | ✓ In role 8+ months — authority established |
| Seniority appropriate for $480K annual contract | ✓ C-suite, well within typical CFO authority |
Signer is fine. The issue is downstream.
Buying group validation
| Contact | Confirmed current | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Keegan R., SVP Sales Americas | ✓ Confirmed | Same role, same scope |
| Patrick H., VP RevOps | ✓ Confirmed | Stale thread (23 days) noted in earlier audit but role unchanged |
| Dwarak R., VP and Head of AI Engineering | ✓ Confirmed | Same role, same scope |
Buying group roles are current. The issue is in the approval chain that touches the contract but isn’t in your touched contacts list.
Structural changes at Snowflake since last touch
1. New Chief Revenue Officer Jonathan B. — start date March 31, 2026 (CRITICAL for routing)
- Jonathan is approximately 6 weeks into his role. He sits above Keegan R. in the Sales reporting chain. New CROs typically want visibility into active vendor contracts for their team — especially contracts at this dollar tier — during their first 90 days.
- Contract impact: Brian R. (CFO) has signing authority and the contract will technically be valid if signed. But the contract may get held up post-signature in procurement coordination when Jonathan’s office finds out a GTM vendor contract was signed without his pre-briefing. The result is delayed implementation, not delayed contract — but reps who skip the new-CRO briefing often lose the customer’s onboarding momentum.
2. New Chief Security & Trust Officer Mayank U. — start date April 1, 2026 (CRITICAL for procurement gate)
- The CSTO role is brand new at Snowflake. Mayank’s office is in the process of formalizing security and procurement review processes. Existing vendor contracts going through the current process work fine, but new vendors being signed without coordination with his office risk being re-routed once the new process formalizes.
- Contract impact: A $480K, 24-month contract for a sales productivity platform will almost certainly go through security review at Snowflake. If the security review happens through the legacy process (pre-Mayank), the deal closes. If Mayank’s office gets involved, the review may extend by 30-45 days.
Prescribed verification before sending
1. Brief Jonathan B. (new CRO) on the contract before sending — 5 business days
- Approach: Coordinate with Keegan R. to make a brief introduction to Jonathan B., framed as “wanted to give you visibility on the GTM stack contract in motion before signature.”
- Outcome you’re protecting: Smooth post-signature onboarding without the new-CRO surprise
2. Confirm with Patrick H. (VP RevOps) which procurement process this contract goes through — 2 business days
- Approach: Quick refresh with Patrick — “is this going through the standard security review or the new CSTO-coordinated process?”
- Outcome you’re protecting: A 30-45 day security review extension if the process changed mid-deal
Decision summary
- Send the contract today: Possible. The signer is valid. But two structural risks at the prospect are unresolved and create real post-signature slip risk.
- Hold 5-7 business days, run the two verification touches, then send: Recommended. Adds a week to the timeline but materially de-risks the close-to-onboard transition.
The verified contact and signal data reused from earlier gallery runs — zero new credits consumed.
Why use Lusha in Claude
The most expensive deal slip in B2B is the one that happens after the contract is sent. The deal is technically closed in the AE’s mind. The forecast carries it as committed. Then the contract bounces — wrong signer, new CSTO wants to review, acquired entity is under contract freeze — and 30-45 days disappear in re-routing. Three patterns cause this and one prompt prevents it.
The pre-close validation is binary on every check. The planned signer is at the company or they aren’t. The title matches or it doesn’t. The seniority is appropriate for the contract value or it isn’t. A real validation doesn’t soften with “probably still there” or “should be fine” — it confirms each fact or surfaces the gap honestly. AEs in late-stage deals are emotionally invested and prone to wishful interpretation. The prompt does the validation work the AE is structurally unable to do dispassionately at this stage.
Structural changes at the prospect since the last meaningful touch are the silent killers. A new CRO arriving 4 weeks before signature isn’t a coverage problem — the existing signer still has authority. It’s a routing problem — the contract will technically be valid if signed but may stall in post-signature procurement coordination. The prompt surfaces these structural risks explicitly because they’re invisible from the AE’s view of the deal. The deal feels closed. The structure has shifted underneath.
The 5-7 day hold is the right trade-off in most cases. AEs resist any delay this close to signature, but a week of pre-close validation is materially cheaper than a 30-45 day post-signature re-route. The prompt’s HOLD decision protects close-to-revenue timing, not just contract timing. The deal that gets signed today and stalls in onboarding for 45 days produces revenue later than the deal that signs in a week and onboards smoothly.
Data drawn from 300M+ verified contacts under GDPR, CCPA, SOC 2, ISO 27701, ISO 31700, and TRUSTe.
FAQ
How is this different from the stage-gate readiness check?
The stage-gate readiness check fires when an AE is about to advance a deal through the pipeline — Discovery to Proposal, Proposal to Negotiation. This prompt fires once, at the final stage, when the contract is about to go out for signature. Different decision moment, different validation focus. Stage-gate readiness is about coverage progression. Pre-close validation is about signature-time accuracy.
Does the prompt know what signing authority limits look like at the prospect?
Approximately. Lusha returns the signer’s seniority level (Director, VP, C-suite) and job start date, which lets the prompt flag obvious mismatches (a $1M contract being signed by a Director, or a brand-new VP signing without internal precedent). For exact signing-limit confirmation, the AE still needs internal knowledge — the prompt surfaces the structural flags, the AE confirms the specifics.
What if the structural change is positive — like a new champion just got promoted?
That’s still worth surfacing pre-close. A positive change can affect routing too. A champion who got promoted may need to re-sign the contract under their new title. The prompt surfaces all structural changes; the AE judges whether they’re material. Most are.
Should I run this for every deal or only large ones?
Larger deals (typically $100K+ ACV) benefit most from the validation because the financial impact of a slip is larger and the buying group is more complex. Smaller deals (transactional, SMB) often have signer = end user, no separate buying group, and minimal slip risk. Run for any deal where post-signature delay would materially affect quarter or onboarding metrics.
What does "structural change" cover?
Executive departures or hires in the contract approval chain, M&A events (especially as the acquired party), reorganizations that change reporting lines, and security incidents that may trigger new procurement scrutiny. Routine news, product launches, and hiring surges in non-approval functions are NOT structural changes — they’re context but not blockers.
Can I skip the validation if I just confirmed everything 48 hours ago?
A 48-hour-old validation is usually fine for SEND decisions. The structural changes the prompt catches typically happen on weekly or monthly timescales, not 48-hour timescales. The exception is when the AE knows a structural change is pending or recently rumored — in those cases, validate at the actual send moment, not earlier.
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