Rank your buying signals in three tiers

What it does

Timing beats volume. The right message when a buyer is ready beats a thousand early ones. A signal is anything that tells you a company is about to be in market: a job post, a new leader, a funding round, a public complaint. This playbook turns a long list of possible signals into three tiers, with how you catch each one and how fast you act on it.

What you need

• What happened before your best deals (see find the signals behind your wins)
• A database that tracks job posts, funding and job changes, like Apollo, Clay or Instantly’s lead finder
• A spreadsheet, or the free template on this page

How it works

1. 1

   List every signal you could watch

   Start with your own wins. Then add the usual ones: new funding, a hire for a role your product supports, a new leader in the buyer’s seat, a change in their tools, visits to your pricing page, engagement with your posts or a competitor’s, trouble at a competitor, and a lost deal whose reason has changed. Then the ones most people miss: “can anyone recommend a tool for X?” posts on LinkedIn, Reddit or Slack groups, past champions who change jobs, and job posts that name a competitor or the manual process you replace.

2. 2

   Sort them into three tiers

   • Tier 1, the pain is happening now. They’re hiring for the job your product does, a hire for it just left, they say the problem out loud, they ask for recommendations, they drop a competitor, or they engage with you.
   • Tier 2, a growth moment that creates pressure. New funding, a new leader in the buyer’s seat, a milestone, a launch or a new segment. Launches on their own are too common to act on.
   • Tier 3, fit and warmth. The right tools already in place, a past champion at a new company, a lost deal whose reason has changed. Use these to rank, and as a warm way in.
3. 3

   Decide how fast you act on each

   Signal	Tier	Act within
   Asks publicly for a recommendation	1	24 hours
   Posts about the problem	1	48 hours
   Hiring for the job your product does	1	A week
   A hire for that job just left, or the role is reposted	1	Two weeks
   New funding	2	Two to four weeks after
   A new leader in the buyer’s seat	2	Two to four weeks after they start
   A past champion at a new company	3	A few weeks into their new job

   Speed pays most in tier 1. In a Harvard Business Review study of inbound leads, companies that responded within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as those that waited longer (2011). Tier 2 moments take a few weeks to turn into a project, so time those instead of rushing them.

4. 4

   Stack them

   One signal is a hint. Two is a reason. A company that fits your aim, with a tier 1 signal plus one more of any tier in the last 30 days, goes on the short list you work by hand every week. Everyone else stays in your long-term campaign until a signal fires.

5. 5

   Leave out the noise

   Generic third-party intent topics, single visits from unknown companies, “congrats on the round” messages, and launches on their own. They’re noisy, and they burn goodwill.

6. 6

   Open with the reason, then re-rank

   When a signal fires, the message opens with why it’s being sent now, in one line, and asks one question. After 20 to 30 closed deals, check which signals they actually had, and move signals up or down the tiers.

What good looks like

A one-page signal list that says how you catch each signal and how fast you act, and a short list every week of companies with two signals stacked. Your first lines write themselves, because each one starts with the reason.

Mistakes to skip

• Treating every signal as a trigger. On its own, one signal is mostly noise. Stack them.
• Acting on tier 1 a week late. Someone asking for a recommendation today has a shortlist by Friday.
• Congratulating people on their funding. Everyone does it, and it says nothing about them.
• Never re-ranking. Check which signals your closed deals actually had, and move them up or down.