Stop spray and pray: How to build better pipeline with AI signals (A practical guide)

The hype around artificial intelligence and sales is only growing. But at the same time, sellers are facing the same old problems when it comes to identifying and engaging potential customers:

• Cold outbound that doesn’t bring enough replies or meetings.
• Hit-and-miss results that don’t provide actionable learnings.
• A lot of ‘busy work’ that doesn’t translate to hitting sales targets.

If there’s anyone familiar with solving these problems, it’s Nicolas Schell, founding partner at Scalum. Nicolas has helped countless small and medium businesses diagnose their pipeline problems, choose the best tools to support their go-to-market outlook, and adopt more strategic outbound tactics that bring results.

We sat down with Nicolas to explore one of his favorite strategies to help sellers improve the quality of their sales: using AI signals and buyer intent data. 

He tells us:

“Around 80% of our outbound involve buying intent data. Signals form the backbone of our outreach strategies because they dramatically improve relevance and engagement.”

Read on to see what he’s seen working for his clients and his tips to replicate these results for your team!

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The hidden cost of traditional outbound sales

We’re spoilt for choice in new sales tools, AI solutions, and “must-have” features. And whilst the outbound game is definitely changing, the truth is that most sellers are still facing the same old problems.

Nicolas boils this down to three things:

1. Technical mismanagement

"Teams often use their own domain for cold outreach, exceeding volume limits of 15-20 emails per inbox per day, and neglect email warm-up." 

This simple mistake alone can seriously damage email deliverability and reputation. As soon as your outbound ratios outweigh your inbound ratios, your mailboxes are liable to be flagged by spam blockers. The problem is that not enough sellers are aware of this, nor do they know how to go about fixing it.

"Worst case scenario: Even E-mails sent to your existing contacts land in SPAM."

For more help fixing your deliverability issues and keeping your domains and mailboxes in top health, check out our deliverability guide.

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2. The volume trap 

“There’s still a tendency to fall into the spray-and-pray mentality, assuming volume alone will lead to success—it doesn’t.”

In fact, it will only compound your technical deliverability problems if your bounce rates rise or too many of your emails go unanswered. Not to mention the fact that investing vast amounts of effort on outbound that doesn’t bring results is a waste of time for your entire sales team.

"The list is the message - you need to choose wisely who you are reaching out to - who are you solving the biggest pain for?"

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3. Strategic vacuum 

“When you scratch the surface, you realise that too many teams are working without any concrete strategy. Most commonly, they’re failing to use relevant personalization in their outreach, or missing opportunities because they’re not leveraging intent signals.”

It’s no surprise that the majority of cold sales messages end up being indistinguishable from the hundreds of other sales pitches landing in prospects' inboxes.

In fact, this strategic vacuum sits at the heart of most common outbound sales problems.

It’s the reason sellers resort to spray and pray, or fail to notice where their outbound motions are breaking down over poor mismanagement. 

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Understanding signal-led selling: how B2B intent data improves sales output

Signal-led selling represents a fundamental shift from traditional outbound approaches. 

At its core, it's about leveraging buyer intent signals and AI-powered insights to identify and engage prospects at the perfect moment. 

As Nicolas puts it,

"Signal-led selling ensures better timing and a clearer understanding of needs. By leveraging data, you can craft relevant, personalized outreach that stands out. It solves the “spray and pray” problem by focusing on prospects who are more likely to engage."

Prioritizing best-fit buyers means sellers can be more strategic in their time management and focus their efforts around outreach tasks that are most likely to bring results.

Instead of ‘spraying and praying’, they can be more confident that their outbound efforts are geared towards hitting their opportunity targets, meeting bookings, and other revenue Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Examples of intent signals in action: a case study

To illustrate the effectiveness of this approach, Nicolas shared a compelling case study from the pharmaceutical industry. 

His client was offered a solution to help firms find patients for their clinical trials quickly and cost-effectively.

His team was able to pin-point their target market by identifying companies struggling with patient recruitment for clinical trials by scraping specialized pharmaceutical industry databases. He explains:

"We found pharma companies still recruiting patients for clinical trials with approaching deadlines. This clear need and urgency allowed us to craft a highly relevant hook, turning a cold lead into a valuable customer."

This shows that you can pull buying intent signals even if you’re tackling the most niche industries or audience segments. 

In fact, the more specific your signals, the more relevant and specific your pitch will be to your target audience, and you’ll waste less time going after unqualified prospects.

The takeaway: focus on the signals most relevant to your target audience, the problems that they’re trying to solve, and their typical buying behaviors.

Check out this blog for more ideas on which buying signals you might consider. Don’t forget Amplemarket’s Duo AI Copilot will scan your chosen signals for you, so it won’t add to your prospecting workload!

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Transforming technical buying signals into conversations

Once you’ve identified which signals you want to go after, the next step is to convert your buyer intent data into authentic conversations. 

Nicolas explains it’s essential to make your insights sound human and authentic when you work them into your outbound messaging. 

"Focus on data that highlights a prospect's problem or opportunity—something your product or service can solve. Frame it naturally and sympathetically to evoke emotion and demonstrate understanding, without being pushy."

Fear-mongering isn’t the goal here. Leveraging a known pain point is important for driving urgency, but your aim in early conversations is to spark curiosity and leave prospects wanting to learn more.

“Always keep the tone simple, relatable, and respectful.”

A good rule of thumb is to write as if you’re talking to a colleague so you avoid sounding too formal or overbearing. 

If you’re ever unsure about your copy, try reading it out loud to see if it reflects the way you’d normally speak.

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5 overlooked intent signals (according to Nicolas)

Signals are a great way to stay ahead of your competition because you can spot opportunities outside of traditional channels.

Of course, your choice of signals will depend on your solution and your go-to-market strategy, but Nicolas shared with us his examples of 5 signals that are most overlooked by sales teams:

1. Website technology implementations – gives you an insight into which tools would integrate welll in the prospect’s existing stack.
2. Underperforming marketing campaigns – indicates a clear pain point in the team’s processes – in this case, pipeline growth – which you might solve with your solution.
3. User behavior on e-commerce platforms – provides you with an insight into online buying journeys, common sticking points, and how your solution can make purchasing cycles smoother and faster.
4. Engagement with industry thought leaders – demonstrates your prospect is interested in the topics that the thought leaders are talking about and gives you a great hook to start a conversation.
5. Employee growth or job changes – these are strong indicators that your prospect company is expanding or adapting, potentially with new priorities or challenges. This presents an opportunity to congratulate them on their growth or role and demonstrate how you can support their scaling efforts.

The role of AI in selling with signals

“Signal-led selling often requires complex and time-consuming data work like scraping and analysis. At Scalum, we approach this in a very customized way, focusing on specific use cases to uncover actionable insights.” 

Nicolas isn't wrong about signal-led selling. But the good news is… it doesn’t have to be time-consuming or hard!

Tools like Amplemarket make it easy for you to leverage sophisticated signal-led selling strategies whilst actually saving you time on your prospecting. 

As Nicolas says,

“What’s amazing about Amplemarket is how it democratizes this process by focusing on key signals, making signal-led selling more accessible for everyone. This combination of customization and accessibility is incredibly powerful.”

Duo AI Copilot scans hundreds of signals for you to bring you a daily list of qualified leads, so you don’t have to invest any effort in expanding your prospecting research.

And because you’re provided with leads that are showing signs of purchase intent, you know that your outreach efforts are more relevant, targeted, and strategic. In other words, you’re automatically prioritizing your most qualified leads and making the most out of your time.

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Implementing a signal-led strategy: practical next steps

If you’re ready to kick off – or improve – your signal-led selling, here’s a framework to get started:

1. Audit your current approach: Ensure you're not falling into the common traps Nicolas identified, particularly around email volumes and personalization!
2. Identify your key signals: What buyer intent signals matter most in your industry? Start with one or two key indicators relevant to your buyer behaviors and start experimenting.
3. Build a signal-based workflow: Create a systematic approach to monitoring and acting on intent data. Remember, Nicolas’s team uses signals in 80% of their outreach – that's no accident.
4. Focus on authenticity: Even as you scale your signal-led approach, maintain the human element in your communications. Technology should enhance, not replace, genuine relationship-building, so don’t neglect your messaging.

Looking ahead with signal-led selling

Sales is only getting noisier. But the winners aren’t those that send the most cold emails; nor are they the ones who buy the most expensive AI tools.

The best sellers of this era will be those who know how to convert technological insights into authentic relationship-building – and signal-led selling, done well, is one of the most powerful tactics for this.

Remember Nicolas’ core message: successful signal-led selling is about using data to create more relevant, timely, and human connections with potential customers.

No more spray and pray!

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To learn more about Amplemarket’s exclusive signals (that your competitors won’t have access to!), click here or sign up for a demo to see Duo AI Copilot in action!

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