The Ultimate Guide to B2B Buying Signals

If you’re in B2B sales and aren’t using buying signals, your sales process isn’t optimized.

There are no exceptions to this rule.

Buying signals give you real-time insights into the behaviors and actions of potential buyers. They also give you a picture of what’s actually happening in every deal and with every rep. Not just what reps are telling you. And not just what’s in the CRM.

What’s actually happening. And what actually matters.

AI sales tools have unlocked these new tactics, increasingly known as signal-based selling. Sales leaders need to be tracking and taking advantage of signals, or they risk falling behind.

Read on to learn examples and strategies for using buying signals to achieve your revenue goals.

Understanding Buying Signals

Each buying signal can offer you a valuable piece of insight into the prospective client's buyer journey. These signals can help you identify the exact stage where the prospect is in the buying process. They can also alert you to deals at risk, reps falling behind in their performance, or other anomalies in your sales process.

Ultimately, they let you navigate the complex maze of the B2B sales, sales data analysis, and sales activity tracking.

B2B Sales Pipeline

A B2B sales pipeline represents the journey from a cold lead to a finalized sale. It begins with the initial contact or detection of a lead, proceeds through the stages of engagement, qualification, proposal, and negotiation, and ends with the closing of the deal. Different buying signals may show up at each stage of this pipeline.

Recognizing the buying signal at each stage is vital for effectively navigating your prospect through the pipeline. The quicker and more accurately you can identify these signals, the more efficient your sales process becomes. 

For instance, a deal where a champion hasn’t been identified by Stage 3 indicates a deal at risk. The manager or other sales leader might need to step in. Or, at the very least they should guide the rep through that risky deal.

Or, if a rep has struggled to get VP contacts to attend their meetings or make contacts in multiple departments, you should coach them accordingly before it becomes a bigger problem.

Positive buying signals are worth tracking too. In particular, look at the buying signals that your top reps trigger most often. That lets you know what other reps should be doing, as well as what milestones you should be tracking.

Common Types of Buying Signals

There are many different types of buying signals, each indicating different levels of engagement with your product or service, or different stages of the sales pipeline.

• Buyer Engagement Signals: This refers to the level of interaction your potential buyer has with your sales team. The interaction could be in emails, meetings, or calls, but the signal isn’t just that the activity happened. It’s who the activity was with (what persona, department, and level of seniority). It’s when the activity happened (at what stage and with what milestones already hit?). It’s what topics were discussed (did objections or competitors get brought up?). There’s a goldmine of insights in these interactions. You just need the right tools to unlock them.
• Sentiment and Topic Signals: You can decipher these signals from the issues your potential buyer talks about. For instance, if they often mention improving operational efficiency, these customers might respond to certain solutions you offer in that area. Pain points, objections, and similar topics also contain a wealth of signals.
• Persona Signals: These are signals that help you understand the kind of person your potential buyer is. You can get these clues from their professional social media profiles like LinkedIn. It can reveal their job role, seniority level, and their professional interests. But the more automated — and the more that data is centralized and made available — the better. It’s also important to note if a decision-maker, economic buyer, or champion — as defined in a sales framework like MEDDPICC — is engaged and to what extent.
• Document Signals: These relate to any documents that the prospect views, downloads, or sends in the sales process. This could be sales collateral like case studies or 1-pagers. But the higher intent signals lie in things like proposals, NDAs, and purchase orders.
• Time-Based Signals: These signals come from the timing and frequency of your prospect’s activities and your sellers’ responses. A quick response from a decision-maker after a demo is a great sign of purchase intent. On the other hand, a delayed response could indicate a sandbagger, or slow follow-up from a rep might be a sign that they need additional coaching.

Finding the Buying Signals That Matter for Your Unique Sales Process

Not all buying signals are created equal. The importance and relevance of each category of buying signals may vary based on your unique sales process, the type of product or service you offer, and the market you operate in. 

It is therefore crucial to identify and prioritize the buying signals that truly matter for your unique sales process. This requires a deep understanding of your buyers’ journey, and the ability to map relevant signals to each stage of that journey. By doing so, you can align your sales strategies effectively with your prospects’ needs and preferences, leading to improved sales outcomes.

Sales performance analysis can give you clues about the top signals you should be tracking for reps. Deal analysis or pipeline analysis can also show you the deal milestones you should monitor. Either way, you need a solid foundation of sales data to do the initial analysis and ongoing tracking. 

Tracking Buying Signals

By tracking buying signals effectively, you equip your sales team with essential information that can help propel your buyer down the sales pipeline.

Tools and Technologies for Tracking Buying Signals

Plenty of tools and technologies are available to help sales teams effectively track buying signals. The CRM holds valuable information about past and current deals. Of course, you need proper CRM data hygiene for that to yield the right results. Good Salesforce reporting might require an intensive CRM data cleansing process or Salesforce contact management overhaul. That’s especially true if you’re in the midst of a Salesforce data migration.

Meanwhile, specialized sales activity tracking software can help monitor buying signals. Be on the lookout for sales AI that makes use of machine learning in sales. This can help automate the tracking and analysis of signals. All the better if the tools use something like ChatGPT in sales to deliver insights in natural language via smart deal alerts or other notifications.

Traditional Methods for Detecting Buying Signals

Historically, sales teams have relied heavily on manual methods for detecting buying signals. That could include listening to call recordings, drilling into the CRM, or digging through other sales tools. 

Those methods are time-consuming and unreliable — and it still doesn’t capture the more valuable buying signals. They often miss subtle cues about a prospect's intention to buy, and they rely heavily on the salesperson's skill and intuition, which lacks consistency and can result in missed opportunities.

Moreover, the rise of digital marketing and e-commerce platforms as well as the increasing complexity of the B2B sales process have made these traditional methods less effective sales optimization strategies. The need for a more data-driven, automated, and sophisticated methodology for detecting buying signals has become apparent.

How AI Is Helping to Detect Buying Signals

Alongside these traditional tools, advancements in sales AI provide a significant boost to the process of detecting buying signals. AI and machine learning algorithms can analyze vast amounts of sales data from various sources, picking up nuanced signals that human analysis might miss.

AI-powered tools can track and analyze behavioral patterns, natural language, and social sentiments to provide insightful data about a prospect’s buying intent. From identifying patterns in email conversations to scanning call transcripts for sentiment and topic signals, AI helps sales teams interpret these signs with speed and accuracy.

Tracking buying signals accurately and timely is as crucial as understanding them. Fortunately, AI makes sense of these signals and makes them actionable. With notifications and alerts, AI can send just-in-time insights to sellers and managers when and where they need them.

Leveraging Buying Signals for Sales Success

Equipped with a clear understanding of buying signals and the means to track them, it's critical to leverage this knowledge for sales success. It’s not enough to collect data and uncover signals. It’s about how you incorporate these learnings into your sales strategies, coach your sales reps based on the insights, and compare deal success with buying signals.

Incorporating Buying Signals Into Sales Strategies

Buying signals can guide your sales approach, but only if deployed correctly. Reps should be trained on best practices according to the signals that best correlate with success in your sales process. That’s what AI-powered sales enablement is all about. From there, sellers should get notifications that prep them for meetings and help them keep deals on track. 

Similarly, managers should keep sellers on track by guiding their behaviors to be in line with what top performers are doing. And, when it comes to deals, managers should get alerts when negative buying signals arise. That way, they can intervene and get the deal back on the path to closing. helping tailor strategies that align with the prospect's position in the buying journey. 

Equally important is understanding when to step back. Not every interaction signal indicates readiness to buy. Part of a robust sales strategy is knowing when to nurture a lead further before attempting to close.

Coaching Reps Based on Buying Signals

Buying signals can serve as excellent coaching opportunities for sales reps. Sharing these insights with your team can highlight the prospective client's needs and expectations, enabling them to tailor their outreach accordingly. They can then develop their sales techniques to better fit the customer experience.

Train your salespeople to remain alert for buying signals during their interactions with prospects, using them to adjust their communication and sales techniques. Sales reps should be notified of buying signals, understand their relevance, and respond in a way that effectively addresses the prospect's needs and concerns.

Tracking Deals Based on Buying Signals

Data derived from buying signals can also be instrumental in tracking the success of deals. Not only can it offer insights into what strategies are working, but it can also help identify potential gaps that may be hindering sales progress.

Leveraging buying signals allows you to align sales strategies with your prospects' buying journey, coaching sales reps to better understand and respond to customer needs, and tracking the progress and success of deals for constant optimization that even the best sales closing techniques can’t match. These practices combine to create a highly efficient and effective sales process geared for success.

Navigating B2B Sales Through Buyer Signals

Navigating the world of B2B sales involves decoding any signals buyers send out. Understanding buying signals is crucial for sales leaders looking to maximize B2B sales. They offer real-time insights into the behaviors and actions of potential buyers, revealing their readiness to make a purchase or their need for further nurturing.

Looking ahead, the role of buying signals in B2B sales is likely to increase in importance. With the ongoing advancement of AI and machine learning technologies, the detection and interpretation of these signals will become even more precise and insightful. Integrating these developments into your sales strategies will ensure you stay ahead of the curve.