What is Signal-Based Selling?
A sales approach that uses real-time buying signals to prioritize outreach and personalize messaging based on prospect behavior.
Definition
Signal-based selling replaces spray-and-pray outbound with data-driven prioritization. Instead of working through static lists, sales reps focus on accounts showing buying signals: website visits, job postings for related roles, technology changes, funding events, intent data surges, content consumption, and social engagement. The signals come from tools like 6sense, Bombora, Common Room, and LinkedIn, and they tell reps which accounts to call and what to say.
Why It Matters
Cold outbound response rates have cratered below 1-2% for most B2B companies. Signal-based selling recovers response rates by ensuring reps reach out to prospects at the right time with relevant context. The shift from list-based to signal-based outbound is one of the biggest changes in B2B sales methodology in the past five years. Companies that adopt it consistently report 2-3x improvements in meeting booking rates.
Example
Your signal stack detects that Acme Corp posted 3 RevOps job openings, visited your pricing page twice this week, and showed intent data spikes for 'data enrichment tools' on Bombora. Your SDR gets an alert with this context and crafts a personalized outreach referencing Acme's hiring growth and the specific use case the intent data suggests. This converts at 5-10x the rate of a generic cold email.