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In a fast-paced, competitive environment, how can you build revenue teams primed for efficient growth?
While there’s no silver bullet, converting buying signals into pipeline is foundational.
In Part 1 of this comprehensive guide, we’ll provide an overview of buying signals: what they are, why they matter, and the types worth tracking.
Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll review strategies to optimize capture of high-intent prospects.
Simply put, buying signals are indicators that someone is interested, right now, in purchasing your product.
These intent signals can include actions like demo requests, phone calls to your sales team, or pricing inquiry emails.
But some actions are more subtle, like screenshotting critical content from your site or repeatedly visiting your pricing page.
Luckily, digital actions leave digital breadcrumbs. With the right tools, these data can be detected, interpreted, and seamlessly integrated into your outreach workflow.
Traditional sales channels are getting saturated, while spray and pray outbound grows increasingly prevalent with the mass adoption of generative AI1.
Meanwhile, customer data is more abundant than ever, unlocking the ability to reveal previously hidden opportunities unique to your business motions.
As a result, not only is it now possible to capture and execute on the best opportunities, it has never been more important.
Sending targeted messages to the right person at the right time is becoming table stakes for high-performing revenue teams. Check out Avina's Signals Guide for a detailed list of specific use cases your team can put into practice today.
Buying signals can be broadly grouped as follows: first-party engagement, third-party data, product usage, firmographic/technographic, and champion/leadership signals. Moreover, companies that clearly understand which leads convert best can benefit greatly from custom signals, though these are typically more challenging to implement.
First-party engagement encompasses actions taken directly with your marketing and/or sales content. They indicate a prospect is specifically checking you out.
Key signals include:
Ideally, your team should get alerts when high-value actions happen or set up automations (e.g., a Slack notification when an ideal-fit account is on your pricing page or clicks on a sales email link). This allows you to respond quickly with relevant outreach. Modern tools make this possible by capturing on-site behavior and pushing instant alerts to your team2.
Third-party signals indicate a prospect’s interest in particular topics or products, often gathered from external actions taken by leads. Monitoring these signals can help you identify intent surges, i.e., when a particular company has greatly increased their research activity in a relevant area.
Key signals include:
Intent data signals help you identify who is in-market right now even if those prospects haven’t yet landed on your website. However, this data is often anonymous and broad – you might know some company is researching a topic, but not which individuals. That’s why it’s most powerful when combined with other signals (e.g., intent surge plus a key contact visiting your website).
Product usage signals are gathered from engagement with your product itself. These signals can help turn prospects into customers (pre-sale), as well as boost customer retention and expansion (post-sale).
Key product usage signals include:
These product usage signals are especially critical in product-led sales (i.e., where the product is driving the lead). We recommend SaaS teams utilize a Product-Qualified Lead (PQL) score that combines usage (e.g., number of invites on a trial account) and fit (e.g., companies with more than X employees) metrics to indicate readiness for a sales call.
Firmographic and Technographic signals indicate changes in a target company’s situation.
Examples include:
To leverage these signals, you can(1) pul news sources, press releases, and databases like Crunchbase and (2) set up alerts for key trigger events, relevant to your target accounts. There are also a variety of data vendors available that provide this kind of data typically through an API.
Even better: automate this process, so you can be ready to craft an outreach strategy, the moment a trigger event occurs!
Relationships matter. When key people move, crucial opportunities emerge.
Two scenarios stand out:
Don’t underestimate these signals: a well-timed congratulations to a past champion can bypass a lot of the usual cold outreach hurdles. Even without a prior relationship, mentioning company developments to a prospect shows you are doing your homework.
Sometimes you know exactly what your ideal customer profile (ICP) looks like, and it may be highly specific to your business. In these cases, it could be valuable to go out and get the right data on your own.
Methods: AI web search, web scraping
Examples:
Tools like Clay offer the ability to quickly experiment with custom AI-driven signals, and tools like Avina offer a way to codify those custom signals so your sales team can continuously leverage them to generate pipeline.
Buying signals are powerful tools that enable proactive, intelligent selling. Recognizing, prioritizing, and responding effectively to these signals can transform your sales and marketing approach, enabling your GTM team to engage prospects at precisely the right moments.
With Avina, you’re equipped to detect every meaningful buying signal and respond with precision and speed, ensuring you never miss a high-intent, high-fit lead again. Welcome to the future of B2B sales—signal-led, AI-driven, and always proactive.
Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll go over actionable strategies to ensure you never miss a high-intent prospect again.
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Avina is a signals-based GTM automation platform for B2B teams that uses cutting-edge artificial intelligence to convert data into revenue.
Ready to move from chaos to clarity? Book a demo with us here.
Have questions, feedback, or ideas? Reach out to hello@avina.io - we would love to hear from you!
Here’s what our customers are saying:
“Avina has completely changed the way I work. Before, I felt like I was shooting in the dark to get responses, but now I have the highest propensity buyers being delivered to my doorstep, and I can focus on closing those deals.”
- James, Director of Strategic Partnerships, Ingenious (Case study)
“In sales, it’s all about getting more quality at-bats. Products that help do better cold outbound are faster horses - Avina’s warm inbound alerts is a car.”
- Ethan Pope, VP Revenue Operations, Nitrogen Wealth
