Valuation Funnel

Turn inbound catalog-valuation leads into Recoup Pro signups. When someone runs Recoup's free "what is my catalog worth?" valuation, a lead lands in the Attio Valuation Leads funnel at stage New. This skill is the repeatable motion for working that lead to a paying customer.

The valuation is the wedge; the product is growing the catalog's value (recover uncollected royalties + grow streams + document it for a higher multiple). The job is to prove that quickly enough that the lead converts.

When to use

• "Work / triage the valuation funnel." "Who's in the pipeline?"
• "Who ran this valuation and what's their relationship to the artist?"
• "Is this catalog worth our time?" (qualify against goals)
• "Fill in the Attio profile and advance this lead."
• "Draft the welcome email + a clean valuation PDF for this lead."

Prerequisites

• ATTIO_API_KEY — an Attio access token (read-write on records + list entries).
• RECOUP_API_KEY (recoup_sk_…) — for catalog sizing via the Research API; mint one with POST https://api.recoupable.dev/api/agents/signup. Load the recoup-research-artist-overview and recoup-catalog-estimate-value skills for endpoint detail.
• reportlab for the PDF: pip install reportlab --break-system-packages.
• Scripts ship in this skill's scripts/; run them from the skill directory as python3 scripts/<name>.py.

The funnel's stages, field slugs, and the exact Attio API calls are documented in references/attio-funnel.md. Pulling a lead's catalog — album art + live streams — straight from the public Recoup APIs (the same ones the marketing valuation tool uses, no scraping) is documented in references/recoup-valuation-api.md and automated by scripts/fetch_catalog.py. The qualification rubric is in references/qualification-rubric.md. The email template is in templates/outreach-email.md. A spoofed end-to-end example is in fixtures/.

The pipeline (stages)

New → Report Delivered → Qualified → Pro Offer Sent → Pro Active (Won) → Lost

New = valuation ran (auto). Pro Active (Won) = a Stripe Pro subscription is live — the one true win. Lost requires a Lost Reason. See references/attio-funnel.md.

The report PDF (what you send)

scripts/render_valuation_pdf.py produces a 3-part PDF whose order is deliberate:

1. Page 1 — executive summary. The headline value + range and the top releases by streams (with album art) — the same figures the contact saw in the tool. Its one job is to build trust on first contact by proving the report is accurate to what they already saw. Lead with accuracy, not a pitch.
2. Page 2 — an honest reading. Grounded, specific observations from the page-1 data (concentration, range caveats, master-side scope). No unverified claims about what Recoup "will" recover or grow — only what the data shows.
3. Appendix — full source data. Every measured release (album art + year + tracks + streams), matching the tool's complete list, so nothing is hidden behind the summary.

Build the data with scripts/fetch_catalog.py (below), add the dollar band, then render.

Workflow

1. Research the lead

Pull the lead's Attio record + funnel entry (references/attio-funnel.md has the calls). Capture: looked_up_artist, est_catalog_value, lifetime_streams, follower_count, spotify_artist_url, email_addresses, name, primary_location, valued_at.

Then establish who they are and how official they are to the catalog — this decides the outreach tone and whether they can actually authorize work:

• Web-search the artist + the person/brand behind the email. Compare the email handle to the looked-up artist (self-search of own brand vs. a third party).
• Classify the Relationship: Owner/Operator (the artist or label/brand itself) · Label · Manager · Collaborator (released work with the artist) · Fan/Other · Unknown. Owners/labels/managers can authorize an engagement; collaborators are warm insiders; fans rarely convert.
• Cross-check recent product activity (signup date, credits used) if you have account access — a lead who burned most of their credits is highly engaged.

2. Qualify against goals

Score the lead with references/qualification-rubric.md. In short: a real, mid-size catalog (meaningful lifetime streams and estimated value) held by someone official enough to say yes, active recently. Decide:

• Pursue → continue to step 3.
• Backlog → real but low priority (small catalog or unclear relationship). Leave at New; note why.
• Disqualify → move to Lost with a Lost Reason (e.g. junk/zero-stream lookup, a fan, a test row). Don't spend outreach on these.

3. Enrich the Attio profile

For a pursued lead, write back to the Attio record/entry (references/attio-funnel.md):

• Person record: set name (real person or brand), and socials if known.
• Funnel entry: set Catalog Value, Relationship, and Owner (the Recoup rep working it). These make the board sortable by $ and accountable.
• Advance the stage to Report Delivered only once the email + PDF actually go out (step 4). Until then it stays New.

4. Draft outreach + valuation PDF

• Pull the catalog + album art straight from the public APIs (no scraping): python3 scripts/fetch_catalog.py --artist-id <spotifyId> --out lead.json — fills streams, album art, and release counts. Add the dollar band (from the tool, or computed with the recoup-catalog-estimate-value skill) to lead.json. Don't infer "dormant" from a $0 row in the live UI — confirm against the measurements endpoint (see references/recoup-valuation-api.md).
• Render the valuation PDF (headline + a top-releases breakdown with album art, an honest "reading your result" page, and a full-catalog appendix): python3 scripts/render_valuation_pdf.py --lead lead.json --out ./out (see fixtures/example-lead.json for the shape).
• Attach the artist's verified socials to the lead JSON socials block (Spotify, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X) so the report renders a clickable "Artist channels" line. Get them from research/lookup?spotifyId= / research/metrics when available; when those are Songstats-rate- limited (429) or fail, verify from the artist's official release upload description or label page, cross-checking the same Spotify artist id so you don't attach a same-name impostor.
• Draft the first email from templates/outreach-email.md: personal, references the specific artist + their number, delivers the PDF, gives one free specific insight (a playlist gap, a likely-uncollected royalty source, a concentration note), and ends with a low-friction CTA. Send from the rep, not a generic address.
• After it's sent, move the entry to Report Delivered and log a note of what was sent.

Notes & caveats

• PII / privacy. Leads are real people. Keep names, emails, and account IDs inside the CRM; the bundled fixtures/ use spoofed data only. Never paste a lead's PII into shared docs or external services.
• Relationship drives capacity to pay - a single six-figure catalog rarely justifies a large retainer; convert to Pro and/or a managed engagement, or run the strongest as a pilot. Sizing and routing detail in references/qualification-rubric.md.

Lessons from live runs (ICEBOX · Chilled Cat · Eurotripp)

The API/measurement gotchas live in references/recoup-valuation-api.md; the report-judgment ones are spelled out here because they shape what you write.

• Before you trust a run, watch for these (all detailed in references/recoup-valuation-api.md): the auth route-split (hex x-api-key works on /spotify/* only; /research/* needs a Bearer token that expires ~1h) · 0-streams-across-everything means auth/expiry, not a dormant catalog · a credit-exhausted free run undercounts, so re-measure the full catalog and reframe as "we finished your interrupted run" · the dollar model is trailing-12-month-driven, so a single-snapshot lead can't be priced same-day.
• Gross streams ≠ owned value - read it honestly:
  • Collaborations / compilations (Chilled Cat's "Vibes" releases are each Chilled Cat × a different producer): the owner holds only a split of each track, so realizable value is below the gross. Say so, and point to a statement to pin the splits.
  • Cover songs (Eurotripp's "Where's Your Head At" = ~95% of streams, a Basement Jaxx cover): the artist owns the master, not the publishing. Lead with master royalties + neighboring rights (SoundExchange) + Content ID, not catalog publishing.
  • Curate the displayed release list so a single that also sits on a compilation isn't shown twice (lifetime totals are already deduped by track id in fetch_catalog.py).
• Pre-cache album art before rendering. Downloading 100+ covers inline gets i.scdn.co throttled and render_valuation_pdf.py silently drops the failed images. Pre-fetch covers to local files (retries + a small delay) and point the lead JSON image fields at file:// paths.
• Keep page-2 reading concise, and use plain hyphens (no em/en dashes) in all outbound copy - long reading notes push the footer onto a near-empty extra page, and em dashes read as AI-generated to recipients. The render script and templates/outreach-email.md already follow both; keep lead JSON reading_notes the same.