Reaching new customers at the moment they want to buy

Every sales director knows the feeling. Your account managers are calling companies that don't need anything right now, while a competitor gets in just in time with a customer who was actually looking. The same offer to the same company can come to nothing one time and, a few months later, be the start of a major order. The difference lies in what is going on at the customer at that moment, a moment that signal-based marketing and sales helps you see coming sooner.

Most companies in your market are not buying anything right now. Research by John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for the LinkedIn B2B Institute estimated in 2021 that around 5% of business buyers are in the market in any given quarter, and that the other 95% will only need you later. Yet almost everyone chases that small group of 5 per cent, with the same ads and the same cold outreach. Meanwhile, the companies that will buy a year from now are already deciding which suppliers will make their shortlist when they are ready to buy.

Marketing can do something sales can't. Marketing makes sure that the 95 per cent already know you, so you are in the picture as soon as they do start buying. Buying signals then tell sales when a conversation makes sense. At Partout, we believe this approach only works when marketing and sales work on the same market and the same list of companies.

What is signal-based marketing and sales?

Signal-based marketing and sales is a way of working in which marketing and sales align their efforts around the same buying signals. A buying signal is an event or behaviour that suggests a company is moving towards a purchase. That could be a new director, a vacancy that has been open for months, or three people from the same company visiting your website in one week.

Marketing and sales each do their own work within this, based on the same list of companies. Marketing builds awareness among the companies that are a good fit for you, long before they start buying. Sales watches for the moment such a company starts to move and then gets in touch, with a reason the customer recognises.

For directors and management, this is above all a commercial working agreement. Which companies get attention from sales this month follows from signals that marketing and sales agree on together. The weekly meeting then puts company names on the table, each with the signal that prompted it.

How does signal-based marketing relate to signal-based selling and ABM?

In English-language articles you come across signal-based marketing and signal-based selling as separate terms. In signal-based selling, sales uses signals to decide whom to call and when, while signal-based marketing targets ads and content at the companies that are on the move. We treat them as one approach, because a signal only pays off when both departments act on it in the same weeks.

This approach has a lot in common with account-based marketing (ABM). With ABM, you choose a fixed list of companies and approach them with content and ads tailored to their situation. Signal-based marketing and sales uses a list like that too, but adds timing. Of all the companies on the list, only those where something is changing get extra attention from sales this month.

Reading signals across a DMU instead of from a single buyer

In B2B, a purchase is rarely decided by one person. You are dealing with a Decision Making Unit (DMU), a group of people who decide on a purchase together. In a manufacturing company, for example, that might be the operations director, the managing director, a production team leader and someone from procurement.

Everyone in that DMU pays attention to something different. The operations director looks at capacity and costs, while the team leader wants to know what a change means for the people on the shop floor. You can read how to map the decision-makers in a DMU like this in our article on creating a B2B buyer persona.

That spread across several people shows up in the buying signals too. One visitor to your website says little, but three people in different roles at the same company viewing your content within a few weeks does say something. In B2B, you therefore follow the company as a whole.

On top of that, a B2B market is smaller and easier to oversee than a consumer market. It comes down to a defined number of companies that you can put on a list by name and follow one by one. How to sharpen that list is explained in our article on defining your ideal customer. With the potential value of your market, you then calculate how much revenue that list holds.

Being in the picture before the shortlist is set

A B2B purchase starts long before anyone calls a supplier. In the buying processes we map out with clients, we keep seeing four phases. In practice those phases sometimes overlap, but the sequence does help you decide which signal belongs to which moment.

1. First thought: Something is getting stuck, such as staffing, capacity, quality or growth.
2. Looking around: People are thinking about a solution, while there is no project and no supplier yet.
3. Actively searching: A plan takes shape and the customer approaches the suppliers the company already knows.
4. Deciding: A few parties make a proposal and the customer chooses.

The shortlist, with the names of companies the customer already knows, is formed as early as the first two phases, which means a supplier that is still unknown at that point is rarely called in phase 3. Cold outreach and traditional lead generation usually only pay off in phase 3, when the customer already has a preference. By then you are too late. Signal-based marketing and sales aims to spot earlier which companies are in phase 1 or 2, so you are already visible to those companies before the shortlist is set.

For companies that sell through partners, such as integrators, installers or dealers, this matters even more. In phase 3 the customer calls their integrator or installer, who chooses the brand, unless the customer already knows you and asks for your brand themselves.

Which events give a company a reason to buy?

We call the change that moves a company from the first to the second phase a trigger. A trigger has to affect the reason, the timing or the choice to buy. To be able to weigh triggers, we divide buying intent into three forms. The more of those forms are present at one company at the same time, the closer that company is to a purchase.

1. The problem becomes urgent

The current way of working can no longer cope. Take a manufacturing company where the vacancy for a welder has been open for months. Work that has already been sold is piling up. Anyone who comes along with a solution to that shortage ties in with something the management notices every day.

2. Budget becomes available

There is money or an investment moment, and with it a moment to buy. A new factory hall, a large order or an investment round are moments when a company is making decisions about money and set-up anyway. Automation that goes into the plan at that point does not have to be defended later as a separate project.

3. The choice of supplier opens up

When the current supplier is up for discussion again, a new party gets a chance. A new operations director, a takeover by an investor or a machine that is due for replacement all unsettle existing arrangements. Someone who has just started as a director wants to show what can be improved in their first year, and looks at the suppliers too.

Developments that affect an entire sector

You find most triggers in the news, in vacancies and in public company records. Some of them apply to an entire sector at once. Triggers like these say nothing about one company, but they do increase the likelihood of a purchase across a whole industry.

One example is the Dutch Act on the Admission of Agency Workers (Wet toelating terbeschikkingstelling van arbeidskrachten), which comes into force on 1 January 2027. From 1 January 2028 the Netherlands Labour Authority will enforce it, and companies that work with an unlicensed employment agency will also be fined. Manufacturing companies that rely on agency staff therefore need to check whether their agency obtains a licence in time. We expect this to put the question of whether automation pays off now on the table across an entire sector at once.

Why is interest alone not yet a sales opportunity?

Companies that start working with buying signals usually look first at who visits their website and who responds to their LinkedIn posts. That information is valuable, but it does not tell you whether someone is going to buy. A visitor could just as easily be a student, a competitor or someone who won't need anything for another two years and is just browsing today. That is why we work with two types of signal that have to confirm each other.

A trigger at the customer

The trigger is the event at the company itself, as described above, which you find outside your own channels in vacancies, appointments, company news and permits. A trigger says a lot about the timing and little about you. The company that has just commissioned a new hall could just as easily end up with a competitor as long as it has never heard your name.

Interest in your company

You see interest in your own channels. People from a company visit your website, respond to your ads on LinkedIn, view your employees' profiles or click through in your newsletter. Signals like these show that the company knows you, but they don't tell you whether it is about to buy something. Someone who has followed you for years may simply enjoy reading along.

Software vendors call this kind of behaviour intent data. They also include companies' search and reading behaviour outside your own channels, such as visits to trade websites. Strictly speaking, a trigger such as a takeover or a new factory hall falls outside it, even though it says at least as much about timing.

Together, a reason to get in touch

A trigger plus interest within four weeks, at a company that fits your target audience, is what we treat as a sales opportunity. Sales then knows why the company is on the move and that the company already knows you. With those two pieces of information, the first conversation is a lot less cold.

At Partout, we apply that rule to ourselves too. For us, a trigger is a company that is merging or being acquired, where the shareholders want to grow and that goal cannot be achieved through sales alone. Interest means that several people at that company who have a say in the purchase see our ads, visit our website and view our employees' LinkedIn profiles within four weeks. When those two coincide, we get in touch with the decision-makers at that company who we know already know us.

Buying signals in the manufacturing industry: a practical example

In a working session with the sales team of an automation supplier in the manufacturing industry, we mapped out the buying signals for their market. This company sells largely through integrators and machine builders, who install the automation at the customer's site and decide per project which brand they offer. So the company has to be known in phases 1 and 2, before the customer calls the integrator.

The working session started with practice. Every account manager thought back to their last three to five deals won, starting from one question. What happened at the customer before an integrator was at the table? We set those experiences alongside news, vacancies and market developments, after which each signal was given a form of buying intent and a place in the buying process.

To the sales team, the last two rows felt like the strongest signals. And they are. But they come too late. When a company is looking for an automation engineer, the choice of brand has usually already been made. A production worker who can't be found and a new operations director are more valuable to this company, because they come up in phases 1 and 2.

What does the collaboration between marketing and sales look like week by week?

When a trigger and interest coincide, a fixed weekly plan kicks in, in which marketing and sales both know what to do and in what order. Every week they briefly go through the companies on the list with three questions. What has happened, who does what, and does the company stay on the list?

In the manufacturing example, the trigger is a vacancy for production workers that has been open for three months, while interest shows in two visits from the same company to the page about automating production processes. The problem is being felt and the company is looking around, so it goes on the list of companies that get personal attention this week.

The first phone call only comes in week 5 and is about the vacancies that aren't being filled and the orders that have to go out. By then, the decision-makers have already seen the supplier come by a few times on LinkedIn. The website visits don't come up in that conversation. That way the customer recognises their own problem and nobody feels watched.

Setting up signal-based marketing and sales in five steps

In many companies, marketing is steered on reach and leads and sales on revenue. They then don't look at the same list of companies, so a signal gets stuck in one department. For our clients, we set up marketing and sales as one commercial system, focused on the same market and the same customers, with the process and technology to sustain it. We do that in five steps, most of which you can also work through yourself.

1. One market and one list of companies

Together with management, marketing and sales, you decide which markets you want to grow in and which companies in that market are a good fit. Existing customers, partners and competitors come off. What remains is the list that marketing and sales both work with.

2. A working session with sales

Three quarters of an hour is enough. The working session runs as in the manufacturing example, with one extra rule. Each account manager writes down no more than two triggers that haven't been mentioned yet, so the list doesn't balloon.

3. No more than three triggers per market

For each market or product line, you choose no more than three triggers that you can genuinely track, giving priority to triggers that come up in phases 1 and 2 of the buying process. More triggers mean more alerts, and therefore more work that nobody picks up.

4. Setting up the technology

We set up Stairoids, connect it to your CRM and then add the chosen triggers. Partout is a Certified Partner of Stairoids. You can read which other software you need in the next section.

5. A fixed rhythm

The weekly meeting from the weekly plan above forms the basis. Once a month, you check together whether the companies at the top of the list were also the companies you wanted to talk to. If not, you adjust the triggers or the rule.

What software do you need for signal-based marketing?

The software follows the way of working. You want to see which companies in your target audience are showing interest, track the triggers at those companies and see both per company in your CRM. So only start choosing tools once the list of companies and the triggers are set.

For interest, Partout works with Stairoids. The platform picks up signals from the companies and decision-makers in your target audience, on your website and beyond. Stairoids links responses to your LinkedIn ads, your company page and your employees' posts to people and companies. For recognising website visits, the platform has its own tracking script, to which you can connect Leadfeeder if you already use it.

You connect Stairoids to your CRM, such as HubSpot, Pipedrive or Salesforce. For the Benelux, we believe this is the best and most cost-effective place to start, even if you later add the rest of Europe. Sales then sees the signals in the system it already works in. After that, you bring in the external signals, such as vacancies, appointments and company news.

How do you stay GDPR-compliant?

Even company-level recognition of website visits runs on IP addresses and cookies, so the GDPR and cookie rules already apply there. Responses on LinkedIn, visitors you link to a name and contacts in your CRM are personal data. For that data, you establish in advance the legal basis you are working on, which for B2B prospecting is usually legitimate interest.

If you don't collect data from the person concerned, you have to inform people about it. If you use it to get in touch, you do so at the latest at the first contact, as set out in Article 14 of the GDPR. You also need a correct cookie banner and privacy statement, a data processing agreement with every tool, a retention period for signals and an unsubscribe link in every email, plus a check on whether you need prior consent for email.

Run your set-up past your lawyer or privacy adviser before you go live. This article is not legal advice.

Common mistakes when working with buying signals

Most of the mistakes we see are about timing and about the lists marketing and sales work with. They keep coming up in working sessions, even at companies that have already set up their software well. Below are the four mistakes we come across most often.

1. Only looking at the final phase. A request for a quote or a tender is a clear signal, but by then the choice has usually already been made.
2. Letting marketing and sales work from two lists. Marketing targets ads at a broad audience and sales calls its own list. Then they don't reinforce each other and you can't see what marketing contributes to revenue.
3. Looking for signals without brand awareness. If you are still unknown in the market, you get few interest signals. A trigger without interest then leads to a cold call.
4. Using the trigger as a sales argument. Congratulating a new director and attaching a brochure to the same email backfires. Use the trigger to understand what is going on and come with something that helps with that problem.

How quickly does signal-based marketing deliver new customers?

Buying signals only work once the market knows you, so the build-up starts with awareness among the companies you want to win. According to the timeline in our B2B Marketing & Sales Playbook, you become visible to the companies on your list in the first quarter and notice around 6 months in that they recognise you. After about 9 months, more people respond to your content and the first questions and requests come in, after which, after a year, you have a predictable flow of sales opportunities and the sales cycle gets shorter. If your name is already known in the market, you will see trigger and interest coincide at a company sooner.

Start with the customer's moment

The companies that will buy soon draw up their shortlist in a phase when sales is not yet at the table. Signal-based marketing and sales makes sure you are known in that phase and that sales steps in at the moment something changes at the customer. That takes a few sharp choices about which signals count, plus a fixed agreement between marketing and sales about what you do with them.

Do you want marketing and sales in your company to work on the same market and the same customers? Get in touch with us. We will start with a working session with your sales and marketing team and then set up the process and technology for you.