How to Boost Sales Using Buying Signals

Random cold calling can often feel like fishing in the Dead Sea — no bites and no wins. The problem is that it’s ineffective and time-consuming. You might land a good lead after hours of cold calling, but generally, it leads to wasted time and effort.

I know this firsthand. In my first sales job, I cold-called a list of leads generated based on job titles and company size. I spent at least 20 hours a week securing about 20 meetings, but the conversion rate into opportunities was low — we were not landing the right leads. 

One of the biggest pain points of B2B revenue teams is hitting sales quotas. In most companies, when a rep begins their day, they call prospects from a list of target accounts without any prioritization. A rep might make ten calls daily, choosing randomly from a list of thousands of leads. 

But, there’s a better way to do outbound. Instead of randomly reaching out to everyone, you identify the right leads using signal-based tracking. This method allows you to go after warm leads — prospects more likely to buy based on clearly identifiable signals, such as job changes and new hires, and account signals like product integrations, headcount, fundraising, and more. 

In this article, I will talk about buying signals: what they are, why you should track them, and the benefits of doing so. I will also go over a three-step process to implement an effective buying signals strategy. As a previous sales rep and leader — and now the CEO of a signal-based orchestration tool — I’ve helped dozens of companies accelerate their outbound strategy using the power of buying signals.

According to the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s 95-5 rule, only 5% of your prospects are actively buying at any time. While this rule has significant implications for how we should approach marketing (investing in brand marketing vs. lead generation), it also creates an essential truth for those of us in sales.

Only about 5% of our market is ready to buy at any given time, and those 5% are constantly changing. The challenge is to identify 5% of their ready-to-buy moments so you don’t lose key engagement opportunities to competitors. This is where tracking buying signals comes in. 

Here are just a few of the benefits of tracking signals: 

• Focusing your sales and marketing efforts on high-priority targets: When you get clear signals on the accounts that are ready to buy now, both your sales and marketing teams can go after these accounts through account-based marketing (ABM) and sales. 
• Qualifying accounts based on real-time intent: Most sales organizations don’t have a volume problem — they have a quality problem. Getting signals can help score and qualify accounts in real time and go after the qualified high-priority leads.
• Spotting upsell opportunities within your customer base: Not only are signals great at identifying new prospects, but they can also reveal the customers that are hiring, fundraising, expanding to new continents, or implementing new tooling and projects. This can help you find opportunities for upselling and avoid churn. 

Most B2B sales teams track the signals manually, but these days, a range of signal-based tracking tools allow you to automate these processes to scale your outbound strategy easily. While you can choose to implement this manually, it’s much faster and easier to do it at scale using a tool like LoneScale.

If you’re not convinced signal-based outbound is right for you, consider this statistic: businesses that use buyer signals are able to enhance their ROI by 232%. Companies such as Greenly were able to boost their pipelines by 25% simply by implementing buying signals in their outbound strategy.

But with so many signals around, how do you decide which ones to track? Let’s discuss how you can identify the signals most suitable for your business goals.  

Why tracking the right buying signals for you is the key

Let me clarify: just tracking signals is not what makes this strategy successful. These days, there are plenty of intent signals you can track and tools to go alongside it, from a prospect checking out a competitor’s G2 reviews to tracking prospects’ LinkedIn activity, content consumption patterns, and more.

So, when you start thinking about implementing a signal-based outbound strategy, it’s essential to identify the signal from the noise (no pun intended). You want to ensure you start small with one signal and scale only once that signal is performing well for you.

Lastly, the signals that make sense for you to track will depend on various factors, from your GTM (go-to-market) motion to your ideal customer profile (ICP) and how you convert and close deals. 

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For example, our customer mentioned that one of their key ICP characteristics is whether a company has an ESG program. So, in Greenly’s case, it made sense that they would create a workflow to review the websites of target accounts to identify whether an ICP has an ESG program mentioned. This example illustrates why understanding your own ICP and the key factors that would make them convert is a must before you begin tracking signals. 

So, before you start tracking any signals at all, start with understanding your ICP and buyer personas. Run customer research to learn what made your current customers buy your product and the key decision-making criteria they used, and only then start thinking about the signals you should track. 

The latter is what the next section is all about.

Champion signals, such as job movements within ICP accounts, comprise about a fourth of top software vendors’ pipelines. This is unsurprising, as about 30% of Americans change jobs yearly. This is one of the first signals we recommend our customers start tracking at LoneScale — and multiple organizations find new avenues of revenue simply by implementing this signal well.

2. Organizational signals 

Organizational signals may include new projects, fundraising updates, or new hires. For the latter, new executive hires spend about 70% of their budgets within 100 days, so tracking these new hires in your ICP accounts will yield an additional high-performing sales signal you can act on. 

3. Technographic signals 

Another type of signal you can implement is identifying product tooling, integrations, and updates. These technographic signals signify changes in your ICP’s priorities, new revenue avenues, value propositions, and new projects and initiatives. One way to identify these is through the job postings of your ICP accounts, which are full of buying signals.

There are a lot more buying signals you can track, but starting with these three will already place you above the majority of most sales organizations. Now let’s discuss how you implement a signal-based selling strategy.

We’ve already reviewed the importance of monitoring the right signals for you above. However, if you still need help identifying the right signals, here’s a list of 27 prospecting signals that might be useful to check out.

To hone in on the right signals to begin tracking first, you will need to run ICP research. Asking your champion customers questions like ‘What challenge made you look for a solution like ours?’ will help you pinpoint the key turning points in their buyer journeys. You want to be aware when prospects reach these pivotal events so you can reach out to them at the right time.

Usually, those stepping stones in their buyer journeys represent key signals you should be monitoring. Examples of key buying moments are new executive hires, fundraising, new projects, business expansion, and more. These are typical activities that could indicate your prospects might be interested in buying new products, services, or tooling to support their business.

Step 3: Establish a signal prioritization framework 

As you increase the number of signals you’re tracking, you will want to establish a signal prioritization framework. Simply put, it is how you’ll decide when to act on which signal and how much weight to give one signal versus another or a combination of signals. 

For instance, a series of senior executive hires at a target account might carry more weight than multiple website visits, while signals from an enterprise account in your target industry should take precedence over similar signals from smaller, non-ICP accounts. 

Your framework should also consider signal combinations. When multiple signals appear within a defined timeframe, they often indicate stronger buying intent than isolated signals. For example, when a company posts multiple job openings in relevant departments shortly after receiving new funding, and key decision-makers begin engaging with your product-related content, these, together, suggest a high likelihood of purchasing intent. 

Deciding which signals to act on — and when — is the key to a successful signal-based selling strategy. It doesn’t matter how many signals you track if the signals don’t enable your reps to act effortlessly on the data at the right moment.

But don’t just stop here: engage multiple contacts in the buying committee at this account, also known as multi-threading. Build relationships with multiple points of contact at your account to increase your chances of success by 42%. 

In addition to outbound efforts, marketing teams can jump in at the right time by targeting accounts that are grouped by a signal — with personalized ads, gifting, event invites, etc. The steps you define here and what you do with the signal will make or break your signal-based outbound strategy. Make sure you align with the team on what happens once a signal gets triggered.

From signal tracking to successful selling

A signal-based strategy should be at the heart of any successful GTM motion in 2025 — not only gathering data but establishing a systematized process for how you’ll be reaching out to prospects triggered by signals, along with when (timing), where (channels), and how (message).

Start small by establishing one key signal you want to track, then scale up from there as soon as your strategy is successful. Signals are only as successful as your use of them. They aren’t a bulletproof solution that will fix your entire sales and marketing strategy, but they will enable you to engage with the right prospects at the right moment to ensure you’re part of the conversations that matter and selling to those looking to buy right now.

At the end of the day, if you’re not aware sales conversations are happening, how are you going to show up in the consideration part, preferably before your competition is already there? That’s why tracking signals is a must — and why I believe you should.

Curious about how to launch AI products in new markets? Read this interview with a GTM expert to know more.