Top buying signals to track in 2024 for B2B sales teams

Top-performing B2B sales teams incorporate intent data and buying signals into their prospecting flows to focus their efforts and cover more ground. 

In the increasingly competitive world of SaaS sales, it’s more important than ever for sales and marketing teams to stay aligned if they wish to close more deals. By using intent data and buying signals to capture and score leads, marketing can provide sellers the data they need to make informed decisions about when to reach out to prospects and accounts — making cold outreach a bit warmer.

Interested in learning more about buying signals and how SaaS sales teams can use them to win more business? Keep reading to learn more about the top buying signals you should be tracking — and the easiest way to capture them. 

What are buying signals?

Buying signals are behaviors that indicate a potential customer is ready to make a purchase. These signals include requests for product demos, pricing inquiries, downloading case studies or ebooks, roping decision-makers into discussions, or facing time-sensitive business challenges. By tracking buying signals, it’s easier for sales teams to reach prospects at the right time with the right message.

Types of buying signals

In the world of B2B SaaS sales, there’s no shortage of buying signals that reflect a customer’s readiness to make a purchase. These signals include a variety of factors, including customer profile fit, company opportunity signals, intent data, and verbal or written cues — each of which offers unique insights into the buyer’s journey.

Customer profile fit

Customer profile fit measures the alignment between a potential customer and the ideal customer profile (ICP) defined by the seller. When a prospect account matches the ICP, it suggests that the company’s industry, size, and paint points align with the products and services you sell.

Company opportunity signals

Company opportunity signals — like launching new projects, unveiling new products, announcing mergers, acquisitions, or expansions, and hiring new leadership — can suggest potential business opportunities inside the customer’s organization. Such signals can indicate an ideal time to present your products as the solution to problems or a beneficial asset that will help the organization accomplish their new objectives.

Intent data

Intent data is a powerful buying signal in B2B SaaS sales, offering insights into a prospect’s active interest and engagement with your products and services. By tracking actions like website visits, content downloads, and webinar signups, sales teams can prioritize and personalize their outreach efforts based on prospects who are most likely to be interested in your offerings.

Verbal or written cues

Verbal or written cues — explicit requests for pricing, demos, or proposals or statements conveying an urgency to solve a problem or meet a deadline — often indicate a prospect’s willingness to make a purchase.

10 top buying signals in 2024

By understanding specific buying signal data, B2B sales teams can identify when prospects are ready to make a purchase — enabling them to spend their time and energy more efficiently. In this section, we examine 10 key SaaS buying signals that can help you target your outreach more effectively.

1. Downloading buyer’s guides

When a prospect downloads a buyer’s guide, it demonstrates they’re taking a proactive approach to research and are committed to understanding their options and making informed decisions. This signal suggests a readiness to engage with solutions that align with the prospect’s needs and preferences, positioning them as a quality lead in the sales funnel.

How to capture this signal: Implement tracking mechanisms and lead capture forms on your website

Buying signal strength: Medium to high

2. Actively using the free version of your technology

A prospect that is actively using the freemium version of your software is showing that they’re interested in it and trust its capabilities. Since they’re already using your products, there aren’t any education issues to overcome. Simply put, this signal presents an opportunity to nurture the prospect’s engagement further by showcasing the value of premium features or services and potentially converting them into paying customers. 

How to capture this signal: Leverage analytics tools to track user engagement and behavior with your product, monitoring metrics like frequency of usage, feature adoption, and number of users

Buying signal strength: High

3. New fundraising announcement

Since companies that raise money are eager to put it to use, organizations that announce new fundraising rounds are telegraphing the fact that they may be eager to invest in new products and services. This signal suggests that the company may have additional resources available to explore new solutions, address existing challenges, or simply equip their team with new tools that will help them accomplish more.

How to capture this signal: Monitor news and press releases for companies in your target market that match your ICP

Buying signal strength: Medium to high

4. Company growth and target team expansion

When a company is hiring like crazy or you’ve noticed that the target team has added headcount, it often demonstrates increased organizational needs and a higher likelihood the prospect is willing to adopt your solution to support their evolving business requirements. This signal suggests the company is scaling operations, which can present an opportune moment for sales teams to offer tailored solutions that align with their growth trajectory. 

How to capture this signal: Monitor news, press releases, and social media updates; keep track of job postings and similar announcements

Buying signal strength: High

5. Viewing product and competitor pages

Viewing product and competitor pages indicates a prospect is actively evaluating solutions by comparing different offerings to make an informed decision. This signal suggests a need for thorough research and consideration, which presents an opportunity for sales reps to strategically engage them, highlighting the unique value propositions of your products while addressing any gaps the prospect identified during their research.

How to capture this signal: Use website analytics tools and intent data to detect prospects; implement lead capture forms on product pages  

Buying signal strength: Medium to high

6. Browsing product review sites

When a prospect is browsing product review sites like G2 and TrustRadius, the behavior reflects their inclination toward gathering insights from user experiences and opinions before making a purchasing decision. This signal indicates the prospect is conducting a thorough evaluation of potential solutions to their problems, which can give reps the opportunity to address concerns or reinforce positive attributes the prospect read about in reviews.

How to capture this signal: Use web analytics tools to track traffic coming from these platforms to your site; set up alerts and notifications for mentions of your products; work directly with the review site to capture leads 

Buying signal strength: Medium to high

7. Following your company or executives on social media

Anyone who’s following your company or its executive team is signaling their interest in keeping tabs on your organization’s activities and any thought leadership you publish. This signal gives reps an avenue for nurturing relationships and engaging with prospects in a more personalized manner, offering opportunities for further education, trust-building, and eventual conversion. 

How to capture this signal: Use social media monitoring tools to track followers and engagement metrics; set up alerts for new followers or engagement with company or executive posts

Buying signal strength: Medium to high

8. Asking about price or talking about their budget

When a prospect starts asking about price or discussing their budget, it’s a clear indication that they’re considering making a purchase and are evaluating the financial impacts. This signal provides an opportunity for sales teams to craft their offerings and negotiations to align with the prospect’s financial constraints or preferences, facilitating smoother decision-making and potentially expediting the sales cycle.

How to capture this signal: Track interactions during sales calls, emails, or meetings where pricing-related questions are raised; monitor emails, chats, and CRM notes for related data

Buying signal strength: High

9. More stakeholders joining the sales process

Whenever more stakeholders are roped into the conversation, it indicates that there’s a growing interest for your products and services — and a need for broader buy-in across the organization. This signal indicates that the decision-making process is becoming more complex. It also highlights the importance of addressing diverse perspectives and personas to successfully convert the prospect.

‍How to capture this signal: Actively engage with the initial contact, using CRM tools to track communications with other stakeholders

Buying signal strength: High

10. Inquiring about specific deal details

Prospects that inquire about specific deal details are demonstrating a deeper level of interest in your products and a greater willingness to move forward with a purchase. This signal indicates the prospect wants to learn more about how the proposed solution aligns with their unique needs, giving reps the opportunity to strike the hammer while the iron is hot.

How to capture this signal: Track interactions during sales calls, emails, and meetings; monitor CRM notes and chat transcripts

Buying signal strength: High

How to identify buying signals

Whether you’re trying to identify buying signal data for cold outreach prospects or are more interested in understanding how committed a warm inbound lead is, different buying signals can help your company scale its understanding of what makes a good customer for your business.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some modern tools you can deploy to identify buying signals and supercharge your sales efforts.

Top technology to help identify buying signals

Tracking buying signals is much easier when you’ve got the right tools in place. Read on to learn about some solutions you can use to identify buying signals with ease.

Customer profile fit

To track customer profile fit buying signals, you can use a variety of tools, including:

• A customer relationship management (CRM) solution like HubSpot or Salesforce to store and manage customer data, including information related to demographics, industry, company size, and pain points.
• Data enrichment services like ZoomInfo and LeadIQ to capture contact data and enhance your existing customer data with additional information, helping you better understand customer profiles and identify suitable prospects.
• Social media monitoring tools like Hootsuite and Buffer to monitor platforms for mentions, interactions, and discussions related to your ICP.

Company opportunity signals

Looking to track company opportunity signals? You can use CRM tools and social media monitoring platforms to keep tabs on discussions and news items about target companies. You can also use tools like Google Alerts to receive notifications that include specific keywords relating to company announcements — like fundraising rounds, expansions, mergers, acquisitions, or leadership changes.

If you have tools like LeadIQ and Salesloft in your tech stack, you can also track individual job changes along with job changes within an account. Whenever a buyer or champion ends up at a new organization — or a target account grows or hires a new decision-maker — it may be the perfect time to target them.

Using LeadIQ Scribe Insights as a research tool, you can also pull up recent prospect and company signals, including LinkedIn and social activity, podcasts, events, company news, financial statements, job postings, and more — giving you the information you need to reach out at the right time with a message that’s relevant without taking up too much of your time. 

In case you’re unfamiliar, Scribe is our AI-powered writing tool that enables sales teams to personalize outreach at scale. Learn more about Scribe.

Intent data

Incorporating intent data into prospecting flows enables sales teams to get a better idea of what prospects are thinking as they move through your sales funnel. By tracking intent data — things like website visits, gated asset downloads, and webinar signups — reps can better identify prospects who are most likely to convert.

You can collect some intent data from the web properties you manage, including website visits, email marketing engagement, form fills, and product usage metrics. You can also leverage second-party intent data — or borrowed intent data — captured through partners and review platforms like G2 and TrustRadius.

Since intent data can have a significant impact on sales outcomes, it comes as no surprise that there are also companies dedicated to providing this valuable information, including Demandbase, 6sense, and Bombora. To learn more about intent data providers, check out our roundup of the 8 buyer intent data tools B2B sales teams should know about.

Verbal or written cues

To track verbal or written cuers in sales conversations, emails, and other interactions, you can use a variety of tools, including:

• CRM software, where you can log and track interactions with prospects and customers, including notes about verbal or written cues.
• Email tracking tools like HubSpot and Marketo that can notify you when recipients open your emails and click on links or respond to your messages expressing interest. 
• Call recording software like Gong that enable you to record and analyze sales calls, capturing verbal cues like objections, questions, and expressions of interest.
• Surveys and feedback forms on your website, email campaigns, and after sales calls to gather valuable insights and collect written cues about needs, preferences, and pain points.

LeadIQ helps sales teams identify prospects with buying signals data

Teams like Gong, Smartly.io, Clari, Rockset, and Wrapify use LeadIQ because it enables them to easily identify prospects with buying signals — making it that much easier for sales reps to hit their numbers.

With LeadIQ in the center of your prospecting hub, your sales team can easily understand multiple buying signals, including customer profile fit, company opportunity signals, and — after you’ve engaged with a prospect — written cues. 

Simply put, LeadIQ makes finding new prospects that meet your ICP and starting to track their buying signals a breeze. 

Plus, we also integrate with solutions that can also pull buying signals, including Gong, Salesloft, Salesforce, Outreach, and HubSpot, making life even easier.

Ready to see how LeadIQ can increase sales effectiveness? Try our platform for free. 

Any questions? Talk to a LeadIQ team member who will be happy to assist.

To smarter prospecting!