Go-to-market professionals are the fuel for a company’s growth engine. But these days, beyond just driving revenue, sales and marketing teams are being pushed to deliver efficient growth.
What’s the most effective way to shortcut an unpredictable buyer’s journey? Tips, tricks and hot takes are plentiful. But a truly efficient GTM motion is built on the ability to turn signals into action — at scale.
Here are the key buying signals anyone can use to target their efforts and streamline their tactics to dial into the accounts that are ready to buy.
What Are Buying Signals?
At the highest level, buying signals are any actions that indicate a potential customer is actively considering purchasing your product or service. These signals come in many forms from many different sources, and if used correctly, can simplify the notoriously complicated B2B sales cycle.
It helps to think of customer buying signals as the “data trail” potential customers leave behind. That trail — and getting familiar with the multiple buying signals within it — helps sales and marketing teams align their efforts to the customer’s needs.
In marketing, for example, tracking buying signals is crucial to presenting prospects with the right content at the right time. In sales, blending several buying signals allows sales reps to create more personalized outreach.
Why Are Buying Signals Important?
Understanding and using buying signals transforms the way you approach potential customers. By tuning into these cues, you set the stage for a sales strategy that’s not only smarter, but significantly more effective.
Buying signals offer a unique insight into the customer’s journey, revealing their current position in the sales funnel. Whether it’s the timing of a follow-up call or the customization of marketing materials, responding to buying signals ensures your message hits home when it matters most.
In the complex world of B2B sales — where every lead counts — recognizing and acting on these signals can mean the difference between a deal won and an opportunity missed.
Examples of Common Buying Signals
When you consistently identify and interpret B2B buying signals, you create more predictive intelligence strategies for both sales and marketing—improving your ROI in the process.
But this takes knowing what those signals actually are. Here’s a breakdown of common buying signals — with examples that illustrate low, medium and high intent — for key buying signals, broken down for both marketing and sales teams.
Marketing Buying Signals
Behavioral Data
Buyers with pain points seek out informational content, and that behavior leaves digital footprints that can inform sales and marketing tactics. These can include:
Website Visits
- Low Intent: Visiting the homepage or blog
- Medium Intent: Visiting product/service pages
- High Intent: Repeated visits to pricing or contact pages
Email Interaction
- Low: Opening an email
- Medium: Clicking links within an email
- High: Replying to an email with specific questions
Engagement Data
Engagement reflects the level of interest a prospect has in your brand or offering — anyone can simply view a web page, but an engaged prospect will explore content, sign up for email updates, and generally build a relationship with a potential seller.
Engagement Depth
- Low: Following a company on social media
- Medium: Registering for a webinar
- High: Attending a private event or scheduling a meeting
Content Interaction
- Low: Liking a social media post
- Medium: Downloading a whitepaper or case study
- High: Signing up for a trial or a demo
Intent Data
Intent data tells you that prospects are actively showing interest in purchasing a solution. Examples include:
Derived Intent
- Low: Ad engagement
- Medium: Review site visits
- High: First-party website activity
Known Intent
- Low: Upcoming projects and RFPs
- Medium: Abandoned form tracking
- High: Conversation intelligence
Champion Updates
- Low: Decision-maker celebrates a work anniversary
- Medium: Decision-maker is promoted within current company
- High: Notable “champion” leaders move to a new company
Sales Buying Signals
Fit Data
Fit refers to a prospect’s level of overlap with a seller’s ideal customer profile, both in terms of firmographic datapoints like industry and headcount, and need to solve the problem addressed by a specific product or service.
Engagement
- Low: Following a company’s social account
- Medium: Engaging with company’s social content
- High: Speaking with a company sales rep about business challenges
Role-Based Interaction
- Low: A prospect in a managerial or executive role signs up for general industry news
- Medium: A prospect in a managerial or executive role participates in solutions forums, groups, or membership
- High: A prospect in a managerial or executive role engages with ROI calculator or assessment tools
Scoops Data
Scoops — buying signals uniquely offered by ZoomInfo — are actionable intelligence leads sourced through our surveys and in-house research team. With these tools, we’re able to source project, budget, growth, and leadership news that can help sellers tailor their outreach effectively.
These “triggering events” help you get your foot in the door ahead of the competition. Check out some examples of ZoomInfo Scoops data:
Financial Scoops
- Low: Changes in budgeting
- Medium: Public strategic partnership announcements
- High: A new round of funding
General Scoops
- Low: Press releases and public mentions
- Medium: Earnings call insights
- High: Insight from direct company surveys
Opportunity Scoops
- Low: Ongoing tech stack changes
- Medium: A planned or upcoming project initiative
- High: Actively restructuring internal logistics
Personnel Scoops
- Low: Changes in hiring trends
- Medium: Outstanding executive performance
- High: An executive job change has been confirmed
How to Spot, Access, and Respond to Buying Signals
B2B buyers often start their journey by scouring websites, reading articles, watching product demos, and downloading guides. By merging marketing insights with sales efforts, based on specific data about a prospect’s online activity, teams can predict interest pretty accurately.
Here’s what that would look like in practice:
1. Collect Data
First, you need to collect data that reveals buyer intent. You’re likely already tracking first-party data like visitor interactions on your website, time spent on pages, or form fills and newsletter sign-ups.
A strong way to enhance that first-party data is through third-party data. Every week, vendors collect and aggregate internet activity from thousands of B2B websites and online publishers. With more of this information in your hands, you’ll have a more comprehensive view of potential buyers’ interests and behaviors.
A strong data foundation built with accurate and reliable data is essential to being able to spot and activate buying signals.
2. Build Automated Workflows
Set up triggers that give your sales reps a heads up to take immediate action using automated data management workflows and integrations. This way, you increase the chances of reaching ready-to-buy accounts first, at the right time, and with little effort.
For example, let’s say your data management solution is set up for a “streaming intent workflow.” This means that whenever a company is engaging on a topic that’s relevant to your business, the resulting trigger will notify you so that you can take action.
Once notified, your sales rep can immediately pick up the phone and reach out or proactively act on the signal with the right sales motion.
3. Prioritize Those Hot Leads
At this point, you have a reliable data foundation in place, and the solutions to uncover buying signals when and where you need them.
Use your account data — along with relevant buying signals — to refine your lead scoring software to accurately segment and score accounts with the highest likelihood to buy.
For example, you can layer intent data like repeated visits to specific product pages from several account contacts or downloads of detailed guides into your lead scoring system to capture your most valuable, active buyers.
4. Nurture Current Customers and Reconnect With Past Prospects
Don’t forget to use customer buying signals to keep track of what solutions your existing customers are researching. It’s a great way to identify upsell opportunities and get ahead of any potential dissatisfaction with your product offering or services.
Buying signals can also apply at different areas in the customer lifecycle. By systematically tracking and responding to buyer intent signals, sales and marketing teams can run more aligned sales motions that bear real results. Even leads that went cold can be reactivated with buying signals. By monitoring their current activity, you can identify renewed interest and tailor your approach to re-engage them effectively.
The Bottom Line: Buying Signals Help Close More Sales
When you tune into your prospects’ behaviors and intents, you position yourself to provide highly focused, personalized sales and marketing at the right time.
This way, you catch the lead’s attention, predict their pain points, lower their resistance, and, of course, win the sale.