Signal-based selling: mapping the digital buyer's journey

Signal-selling is a hot topic right now. But here’s something not everyone gets about it:

You need the right signals to do the right job.

The great thing about signal-led selling is that it can be applied to any part of your B2B sales funnel to help you generate top-of-funnel, mid-funnel, or bottom-of-funnel leads as required; you just need to understand which signals apply to each stage of your buyer’s journey.

Here’s our guide to matching sales signals to your sales funnel for more extensive pipeline creation.

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The fundamentals of the B2B sales funnel

Before we map signals to funnel stages, let's recap your general B2B buyer journey:

Awareness stage

This is where prospects first realize they have a problem to solve. 

We call this becoming ‘problem-aware’ because it’s the first impulse that gives them reason to embark on a buying journey; buyers don’t generally spend money if they don’t have pains to solve.

They might not know your solution exists yet, but they're experiencing pain points that could lead them to you. 

At this stage, prospects are typically:

• Researching general industry trends
• Following thought leaders
• Joining industry communities
• Starting to explore potential solutions

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Interest/consideration stage

Now that prospects have a decent understanding of their pains, they’re actively researching solutions. 

We call this becoming ‘solution-aware’ because they’re starting to learn what they need and want, and might even be able to picture what their dream solution would look like.

They're:

• Comparing different vendors
• Reading case studies
• Engaging with solution-specific content
• Building internal consensus for a purchase

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Decision stage

Prospects are ready to make a choice and have money to invest, which means they have high intent to buy and are likely to convert soon.

They're now:

• Creating vendor shortlists
• Requesting detailed pricing
• Involving key decision-makers
• Planning implementation

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Mapping signals to your funnel

The next step is to take a look at all the amazing digital signals you can leverage to find prospective buyers and divide them up to the relevant stages of your funnel.

The reason this is a good exercise is that it helps you map our your prospecting strategy and identify areas of weakness – and areas of untapped potential!

For the sake of our examples, we’re including signals from Amplemarket’s AI Copilot for Sales, Duo, which gives you access to hundreds of bespoke signals in one single platform.

Now, let’s review each stage of the buying journey to see what your signal-led funnel looks like:

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Awareness stage signals

Company growth

These indicators show you prospects that are planning to expand and scale up in the near future. 

They may not yet be able to articulate their problems, but you can jump in early and explain how your solution will ease their growth.

Signal examples:

• Company raising funding: Signals budget availability and potential need for scaling solutions
• Company appearing in news: Indicates business changes that might create new needs
• Hiring patterns:
  • Hiring SDRs/AEs: Shows sales team expansion
  • Hiring marketers: Indicates marketing investment
  • Hiring remotely: Suggests operational changes

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Early digital engagement

These signals reveal prospects that might be interested in your solution based on the conversations their having online, the communities they’re joining, and the content they’re interested in.

Try using these signals to start conversations around relevant pain points and build rapport with useful, no-strings-attached support!

Signal examples: 

• Joining Slack channels: Shows interest in specific industry trends, topics, or roles
• Contact following your company: Initial brand awareness established
• Basic LinkedIn engagement:
  • Liking posts about general sales topics
  • Following industry influencers
  • Viewing company profiles

Interest/consideration stage signals

Competitive intelligence

This is where you identify prospects who are checking out your competitors and leverage their solution interest to draw them into your pipeline.

The benefit here is that your prospects are already problem-aware, so you’ll need a different messaging approach to your awareness stage leads.

In this case, you’ll need to highlight your unique selling points to show why your solution is the best choice on the market.

Signal examples:

• Contact evaluating competitors: Signals your prospect is actively researching solutions
• Connections with competitor sales teams: Reveals where discovery conversations are already taking place
  • Connected with competitor's SDR
  • Connected with competitor's BDR
  • Connected with competitor's AE
• Engagement with competitor content: Suggests interest in similar solutions to yours
  • Liking competitor posts
  • Commenting on competitor updates
  • Rating competitors on review platforms

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Active research signals

The above signals refer to intent data you draw directly from your competitor’s digital footprint.

But there’s another signal strategy that allows you to find mid-funnel prospects: by tapping into ‘consideration stage’ conversations.

Unlike the community signals in the awareness stage, prospects in the ‘consideration stage’ will be more solution-focused than problem-focused. I.e. instead of asking for advice on dealing with a specific pain point, they might ask for tool recommendations, comparisons, or ask for others to share their experiences working with specific solutions.

Signal examples:

• Deeper content engagement:
  • Commenting on specific sales tactics
  • Participating in industry discussions
  • Sharing relevant content
• Community participation:
  • Active Slack channel engagement
  • Contributing to industry conversations
  • Building professional networks

Decision stage signals

High-intent personnel changes

This is when important leaders or stakeholders who have budgetary and decision-making power move or show direct interest in your product.

These are considered lower down the funnel than other leads because they give you direct access to relevant decision-makers and save you a lot of research time!

Signal examples:

• Champion role changes:
  • Promotions indicate increased decision-making power
  • Job changes can create new operational opportunities and therefore new purchasing interest
• Past user movements:
  • Past users in new roles bring familiarity with your solution and can advocate for you
  • Deal blocker changes can remove obstacles in otherwise promising opportunities

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Purchase-ready behaviors

These are other digital behaviors that often imply prospects have budget to spend and that your prospects are in the final stages of evaluating solutions.

• Complementary solution adoption: Shows budget allocation for related tools
• Recycling your closed-lost opportunities after a contract times out: prospects are familiar with your solution, but timing or circumstances might have improved for them to reconsider
• Key stakeholder engagement:
  • Multiple decision-makers engaging with your content suggests consensus toward your solution
  • Direct website visits from leadership show immediate stakeholder interest

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Best practices for aligning your signal-led selling with your buyer journey

1. Prioritize your signals

Your go-to-market strategy isn’t the same as anyone else’s, so your best-performing signals will be unique to you too! 

We’ve given lots of examples in the framework above, but you’ll probably find specific signals work better for your target audience and their buying habits than others. 

To make sure you’re prioritizing the signals that bring you the most high-quality conversions, make sure you’re:

• Focusing on high-intent signal combinations – you don’t have to use one signal at a time! Experiment with overlapping your strongest signals, e.g. recent job changes and competitive intelligence.
• Considering signal recency and frequency – try to keep your outreach as prompt as possible so your signals are relevant and you’re not reaching out on data that’s already stale.
• Weight signals based on historical conversion data – keep tabs on which signals bring you best conversion results so you can refine your signal plays around those.

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2. Perfect your response strategy

Using signals isn’t enough to guarantee a prospect will fall in love with your solution. A strong signal-led sales funnel needs structured and carefully-constructed content to engage your prospects and nurture them towards a purchase.

That means:

• Aligning content with each funnel stage – create marketing and sales collaterals so support buyers at different stages of their journey.
• Personalizing outreach based on observed signals – make your outreach stand out ith thoughtful messaging that shows you’ve done your research on their needs. ‘Go to your prospect’, don’t ‘ask them to come to you!’
• Timing engagements for maximum impact – Map out your prospect engagement timeline so you balance marketing and sales outreach. Take care not to swamp prospects with too many messages or go silent on them.

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3. Keep experimenting and optimizing

As with anything in sales, you should never settle! Keep testing out different signals or signal combinations and refining your sales plays. Digital buying behaviors are changing all the time, so what works one month might not the next, and vice versa!

Make sure you’re:

• Monitoring signal effectiveness – compare your revenue attribution with lead volumes to see which signals are converting and which are bringing lower quality leads. This is easy with Amplemarket Duo analytics!
• Adjust weights based on outcomes – be agile in prioritizing different signal plays if you notice they suddenly start performing better, or putting them on the back-burner if they stop bringing you good results.
• Refine response strategies – keep experimenting with your responses, too! With Amplemarket Duo’s signal plays, you can simply tweak your AI prompts to try a new messaging approach for any of your favorite signals.

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Better sales signal plays mean better buyer journeys!

The key to succeeding with signal-based selling lies in understanding the story behind each signal. 

It's not a matter of collecting data points so much as interpreting what these signals say about your potential buyers, where they are in their buying journey, and what they need to hear right now. 

By aligning your sales approach with digital buying signals, you can engage prospects more effectively throughout their journey. It’s a win for you because it means better chances of converting prospects to paying customers. But it’s also a win for B2B buyers, because they finally get to engage with a seller that gets them.

Power up your sales funnel with your own AI Sales Copilot – sign up for a demo to see our signals in actions!