Most outbound teams treat buying signals like a checklist. Company raised funding? Add them to the list. Someone changed jobs? Send a congrats message. It does not work because signals are not binary. They are probabilistic. And probability compounds when you stack them.
Here is exactly how we evaluate signals before a single message goes out.
Why One Signal Is Almost Never Enough
A company posting a sales job does not mean they need what you offer. It means they are hiring. Context changes everything.
The same job posting combined with a recent funding event and a founder LinkedIn post about "building our outbound motion" is a different animal entirely. That combination tells a story: they have money, they have momentum, and the person making decisions is actively thinking about the problem you solve.
We built our scoring system around this principle. Individual signals get a base score. Combinations get a multiplier. The account only moves to active outreach when it crosses a threshold that accounts for both.
A single strong signal is worth less than two medium signals together. Stacking signals does not just add evidence, it removes alternative explanations. An account with three aligned signals has almost no plausible reason not to be in a buying motion.
The 5 Signal Categories
Hiring Activity
Job postings are the most reliable and scalable signal we track. We monitor them through Apollo's job change feed and Apify scrapers on LinkedIn, looking for roles that indicate budget and priority alignment.
The roles that matter most to us: Head of Sales, VP of Revenue, Sales Development Representative, Business Development Manager, Growth, and Demand Generation. When we see three or more of these posted within 30 days at the same company, that is a strong buy signal regardless of anything else.
What we also watch: Director and VP-level job changes at existing accounts. When the decision-maker who was never going to say yes leaves and someone new comes in, the conversation resets.
Base score: 4–9 depending on recency and volume
LinkedIn Activity from Decision-Makers
When a founder or sales leader posts about a problem you solve, they have almost certainly already decided to do something about it. The post is not the start of their thinking, it is the conclusion.
We run daily keyword searches through Serper.dev against patterns like "scaling outbound," "building pipeline," "too much manual work in our sales process," "need to fix our follow-up," and "growing the sales team." Any post from a decision-maker at an account in our ICP pool gets flagged for review.
This signal has the highest conversion rate of anything we track. When someone publicly describes the exact problem you solve, they have already done the job of qualifying themselves.
Base score: 8
Funding Events
New capital means new objectives and a 90-day window where leadership is actively building systems to hit targets they committed to investors. Series A and B are the sweet spots. Seed-stage companies usually are not ready to invest in outbound infrastructure. Series C and beyond usually have the headcount already.
We track funding through a combination of Crunchbase alerts and Clay enrichment. When a relevant funding event surfaces, we cross-reference it with the other signals before moving the account up the priority list.
Base score: 7 (within 90 days of announcement)
Tech Stack Changes
Adding a CRM, a sales engagement platform, or a sequencing tool signals that a company is actively investing in their go-to-market infrastructure. We track this through Clay's tech stack enrichment and Builtwith.
A company that just adopted HubSpot or added Salesforce is in a different buying posture than one that has had Salesforce for five years. The new adoption signals they are building, not maintaining.
Base score: 6
Web Mentions and Community Activity
Reddit posts, G2 reviews, Quora answers, and founder community activity are underrated signals. When someone posts "what are people using for cold email?" in a founder Slack or Subreddit, they are at the beginning of a buying journey.
We monitor this through Serper searches against keyword patterns specific to each client's ICP. Volume is lower than the other channels, but conversion when we catch someone at this stage is high.
Base score: 5
The Scoring Matrix
Threshold rules:
- 12 or above: Active outreach pool. These accounts get sequenced within the week.
- 8–11: Watch list. We revisit in two weeks and re-score with fresh data.
- Below 8: Research queue. Not ready yet.
How We Apply This in Practice
Every week, the signal detection layer pulls fresh data across all five categories for every account in our client's ICP pool. It scores each account, updates the priority ranking, and surfaces anything that crossed the threshold.
Accounts that just crossed the threshold get moved into the active pool and sequenced that week. See how we run this day to day. Accounts that were on the watch list and scored higher get re-evaluated. Accounts that had a signal two months ago and nothing since get downgraded.
What We Do Not Track
This matters as much as what we do. We do not track signals that do not correlate with buying intent:
- Company headcount growth alone (growing does not mean buying from you)
- Being in the right industry (vertical is a filter, not a signal)
- Company revenue estimates (static data, not behavioral)
- LinkedIn profile views of a contact (vanity metric, not predictive)
Signals are behavioral. They are things that happen in the world that tell you something changed in the account. Demographic data is just a filter. Conflating the two bloats your list with accounts that look right but are not ready.
Run your current target list through this matrix. Score each account honestly. If most of your list is scoring below 8, that is not a sequencing problem. That is a targeting problem. Fix it before you launch.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you get signal data at scale without a data team? We use Clay for enrichment and waterfall data, Serper for Google-based monitoring, Apify for LinkedIn scraping, and Apollo for job change feeds. Most of this runs automatically on a cron schedule. The output is a scored, ranked list we review weekly. The manual time is less than two hours per client.
What if an account scores high but you already reached out? That is what the exclusion list handles. Any account where we have reached out in the last six months with no response gets filtered out regardless of score. Sending again without a new, stronger signal just trains people to ignore you.
How do you know the scoring weights are right? We calibrated them against accounts that converted, working backward from closed conversations to see which signal combinations appeared most consistently at the top of the funnel. We adjust the weights quarterly based on reply-to-meeting conversion data by signal type.
Do signals decay? Yes. A funding event from seven months ago is not a signal anymore. It is background noise. We refresh scoring weekly specifically because signals have a shelf life. We set expiry logic on each signal type: funding (90 days), hiring (60 days), LinkedIn post (30 days), tech stack (90 days), web mention (14 days).
A single signal is a clue. Three aligned signals in the same account is a buying motion. That distinction is what separates a good list from a great one.
We run this scoring on every client's ICP before a single message goes out. See how it works for your ICP.