A signal occurs when a prospect performs an action to demonstrate the likelihood of them getting interested in the product or service you’re providing. This is the time for your sellers to take advantage of the situation and engage such trigger signals. These compelling events are essential for a company since they may help you identify potential areas in your Total Addressable Market and save you time in the B2B sales process.
Due to these signals, you can cut down on time you’d spend on a push approach and complete the customer journey faster because it lets your sellers focus on activities that have a higher chance of resulting in a completed deal.
It’s not difficult to spot these trigger signals if you know where to go and what to search for. Some indications appear when companies hire new executives, others appear throughout a discussion or meeting, some may occur within their organization, and more can be found within your industry in the form of competitive signals.
Here are some ways on how to incorporate these signals into your day-to-day sales and marketing routine:
1. Know where to find Signals
The first step in incorporating signals into your workflow is to figure out where the data comes from.
“Prospecting is a left and a right brain motion. On the left brain, it’s asking you: ‘where do you gather that intelligence?’”
Jamie Shanks, co-founder of PipelineSignals
As it turns out, a few solutions on the market are geared to provide companies with this additional data. All you have to do now is figure out what’s best for you.
Tracking trigger events can be done in a variety of ways. Signing up for a tool that provides such data can give helpful information about a company’s investments, fundraising activities, recruiting, and more. These indicators might assist you in figuring out if a company is likely to devote investments in your product or service.
You may also set up notifications for when a specific search phrase is referenced on Google. Simply type in the names of your prospective customers. Then you’ll receive an email whenever a company is referenced in the news or on the internet.
LinkedIn also offers a tool that allows you to set up notifications whenever a company’s positions are listed. This may serve as a warning of upcoming staff changes. It’s an excellent way to get your foot in the door for a sales presentation.
There is a slew of social listening tools available to assist you in figuring out when someone is talking about your company or something relevant to your product or industry.
PipelineSignals specializes in identifying Compelling Event Signals. We are the first in the B2B industry to do so, and we are confident that understanding how these Signals work and acting on them will offer your sales team a significant competitive advantage.
2. Identify and understand the Signal
Compelling event signals are events that could result in a sales opportunity. Some examples are new financing rounds, mergers and acquisitions, C-level employees, corporate layoffs, and reorganizing people. Additional trigger events are gains and declines in funding and corporate growth through new employment or corporate offices.
The most crucial aspect of learning to understand signals is becoming aware of them. Being aware of your prospect not only demonstrates that you are paying attention and that you understand their requirements, but it also allows you to decipher the compelling event signals that revolve around their words, actions, and staffing changes.
Their verbal and nonverbal cues will inform you if you’re on the right track. However, if you don’t identify them early enough, they may not become evident until it’s too late to save the sale.
Compelling event signals convey information about your account or lead uniquely. They can be combined with other data (such as buying intent) to provide a complete picture of where they are in the buyer’s journey. You’ll be more likely to generate messaging, sales presentations, and product offerings that resonate with your prospects if you pick up more signals.
Download our Signals eBook to find out what compelling events you should be monitoring.
3. Use Signals to prioritize critical accounts
While many B2B sellers and marketers appreciate the advantages of conventional lead scoring, the fact is that many are having difficulty developing scoring models that work for both sales and marketing.
To address these issues, some forward-thinking sales reps are incorporating new predictive capabilities into the scoring systems currently in place inside their marketing automation systems to assist sales activities on the most likely to acquire prospective accounts.
A good blend of traditional and predictive lead scoring techniques to prioritize accounts, according to these B2B sales teams, may be the key to success.
“Part of my daily routine is to leverage those signals to reprioritize my top five accounts, and I say to myself, ‘I can’t call everyone today,’ so which five accounts have a compelling event that is [so] strong?”
Generating themes for content marketing strategies customized according to trigger signals, coupled with account lists, ideal account profiles, and buyer persona criteria, are among the most prominent uses of B2B data when prioritizing clients. These operations are essential for converting signals into demand generation and sales funnels. These measures also assist in achieving excellent sales-marketing alignment.
When organizations are on the same page about which leads to prioritize and when to execute, they are most productive.
A great sales situation is when every B2B lead on your list is converted. But it likely isn’t going to happen. Your potential clients and prospects in your TAM will be at various phases of the purchase cycle and will always have circumstances that set them apart from the rest.
A bespoke lead scoring system may assist you in establishing suitable standards for prioritizing and investing in leads so that you can convert them into high-value clients.
4. Tailor your marketing campaigns using Signals
B2B clients today want more than customized emails addressed to them by name. They want information and offers that are specifically tailored to them. Let’s not forget that B2B and B2C accounts both have individuals in them. Compelling events can help sales and marketing teams develop successful go-to-market plans, segmentation, and targeted communication to the relevant individuals or businesses in their TAM.
Companies that don’t employ predictive signal intelligence are just responding to buying intent data from their website. Still, their potential buyer has probably been attempting to solve a problem for weeks. B2C clients are always expecting individualized experiences from the companies with whom they buy. It should be the same for B2B clients.
You may use trigger signals to figure out where an account is in the purchasing process. Then you may send the right message, offer, and content to them. Let’s assume you have five different recommendations to provide. You track intent on similar subjects to figure out which one a specific account is interested in.
Your marketing team may then send them an email with further information about the product they’re interested in. Of course, the content you transmit will be influenced by your level of purpose, which we’ll discuss next.
5. Engage the Signal
When it comes to reacting to trigger signals, you must act quickly. While your prospects may not yet be looking at your products or services in the early buying process, you must aspire to be more proactive even before they express buying intent. That’s only when you can assure that you are their first choice.
Once you have successfully engaged them using trigger signals, with the help of other data such as their buying intent, you can then focus on them, so you don’t risk losing their business. Give them no opportunity to have buyer’s regret. Act promptly and address all their worries and inquiries before they even emerge to make them feel more at ease with the deal.
When the buyer is ready to purchase, they will inform you. It is the salesperson’s responsibility to listen for indications actively. To enhance your understanding of the distinct purchasing signals and start interacting correctly with your prospects and finally complete a transaction, sellers need to detect these buying signals and reply appropriately.
Keep in mind that if you don’t take action, someone else will.
Conclusion
If you operate a B2B company, recognizing when you need to change might benefit your revenue. Make sure your sales team understands who your company’s target audience is, how to identify compelling event signals, and how to act on them to guarantee your company never misses out on a potential pipeline lead.
This method will provide your sales team—and your company—a competitive advantage, allowing you to complete more transactions and do it faster, saving you time and money.