Real quick: I’ll be working on implementing a signals based sales motion with a client in the near future. I’ll share my process and hopefully crowdsource ideas and solutions.
In this post I’ll hit on:
- The current state of play
- Signals 101 – Understanding the basics.
- How to dip your toes into the world of signal based selling.
- A few caveats before you jump in with both feet.
- The mindset shift required
- Parting thoughts and what’s to come.
I think we’re at or nearing an inflection point where using data to make objective business decisions is no longer optional, making the the data you capture that much more strategic. For those that have there data house in order, it’s opportunities like Signal Based Selling (SBS) that you’re in a great position to move on. If you’ve got some patchwork to do on your data, no fear, maybe something like this will be the impetus for getting serious about your data.
Regardless, there are thousands of data points you could potentially collect, but what will actually help you acquire new customers and grow revenue? What are the indicators that a prospective (or current) customer is ready to buy, or has a desire to expand their account and purchase additional services? When should you reach out, and what’s the right message?
Signal Based Selling is dare I say the most fashionable talk in the marketing world these days. While still in its infancy, it’s already being dubbed the future of sales and a natural evolution of the more recent work being done with intent based selling (to be fair, they’re sort of two sides of the same coin and compliment one another). Take a scroll through LinkedIn or google “signal based selling” and see for yourself – it’s popping up everywhere, and has the potential to revolutionize the way companies go-to-market.
Am I a believer? Yes, but with the caveat that you don’t necessarily need to buy expensive software platforms to adopt a signal based sales strategy, and while having some type of smart signal aggregator could be helpful, it’s only going to be as good as the data you collect. If you’re still trying to get companywide adoption of a CRM, or have highly inconstant data, I think it’s going to be more difficult to jump right in to SBS. This isn’t meant to discourage anyone from trying it out, but I think those with fairly good data integrity will see the most immediate results.
Siloed orgs need to unsilo ASAP
Not to mention that most of the platforms that are starting to pop up, or existing SaaS that’s pivoting/adding signals are targeted at the enterprise customer, which puts them in the ballpark of $20k+/year (probably on the low end as an entry point for many). It’s also worth noting that while this strategy is still nascent, best practice on tracking signals seems to be using a custom object in your CRM (seriously, this is so new that there really aren’t best practices yet). So what you say? Well, most CRM’s require an enterprise subscription to access custom objects (assuming they’re available on the platform). I still think it’s worth exploring, as there may be some “perfect is the enemy of pretty good” going on here, but worth keeping in mind.
My caveat regarding buying expensive software to dip your toes into the world of signal based selling is primarily due to the fact that while there are a lot of people writing about signals, very few companies have seems to have cracked the code on how to implement it, especially at scale. Almost all the signal talk is theoretical, with a number of companies testing, experimenting, and iterating, in an effort to incorporate signals into their GTM market motion. The software that is tackling SBS is still too young to know if it’s working (outside of their own testimonials). Other popular buyer intent based platforms like 6Sense and Demandbase (and many others) are excellent providers of signals in the form of aggregated signals that make up intent, and could certainly be helpful in adding 3rd party signals with deep intelligence. My take is that these are nice to haves not need to haves, especially if you don’t have your CRM in order (yes, that’s a consistent theme)
If you’ve got to ask the cost…A screenshot from the pricing page of Zoominfo
What’s the Deal with Signals?
So, what’s the deal with SBS? Basically, the idea’s that prospective customers give off a large (potentially hundreds) of signals that indicate their level of buying intent. Intent based selling is nothing new, there’s been a movement underway to use various intent data to to identify, capture, and convert customers by into pipeline. Most of these Intent based companies layering and/or integrate onto your CRM, and enrich the data you’ve already got, help identify new accounts, and then sound the alarms when a target account is “in market” so that someone in sales can do something. Signals adds a new element to intent based selling, in that not only are you measuring a buyers propensity to buy, you’re analyzing the nuanced signals that represent broader indicators from potential customers (email opens, form fills, event attendance, Google’s a competitor, job changes, title changes, engaging with your social media, commenting on your post, looking at a certain page, etc..). You get the point, there are a ton of potential signals.
As a basic analogy, signals are the things you see that suggest someone is interested in buying, like looking at the menu outside of a restaurant. Me looking at the menu of a restaurant is a high intent signal that I may eat at that restaurant. Me making a reservation is an extremely high intent signal. Signals are the clues, and a lead could have dozens of signals associated with it over the course of a sales cycle. Intent, by contrast, involves a deeper analysis of the various signals to gauge a prospects intention to want to engage with or make a purchase from your business.
One of the many signal based selling posts ads on LinkedIn. There’s a noticeable pivot from identifying intent to spotting and aggregating buyer signals. And, in an unofficial study by yours truly, ~63% of the LinkedIn posts related to signal based selling are coming from software vendors that sell intent data software. I’m not saying they’re wrong, just be conscious of their bias.
Implementing a Signals Based Strategy 101
A modern day CRM. Basically.
Implementing a signal based selling strategy is likely a fundamental shift for most companies, and represents a shift from the predictable revenue model (RIP), amassing the most leads possible, cold outreach, and the idea of a linear buying journey. From what I’ve seen, most orgs have moved to some type of ABM/ABX go to market strategy (even if doing so unintentionally), and SBS should enhance your ABM motion. That said, SBS likely requires rethinking some of the KPI’s you measure, could reach deeply into operations, org charts and even comp plans. Doing SBS effectively requires an integrated go-to-market team that doesn’t think in terms of a sales or marketing win but a company win. This is a mindset shift towards departmentally agnostic data-driven decision making, and a departure (finally!) from a more traditional, intuition based approach where data is an afterthought.
Now that you’ve made the decision to pursue SBS, it’s time to figure out which signals actually drive a specific outcome and which don’t.
I’ve linked to a helpful and practical LinkedIn post below, which can help you get off to a quick start in identifying the signals that matter to your business. This is a pretty analog way of doing it, but it won’t cost you anything more than time and it’s an exercise I’d encourage all companies to go through. You’ll likely have to sift through a lot of data and get a group from across the company together to make the most out of this exercise. Look for the high intent signals, and a combination of which signals is basically a hand raiser ready to buy. Try to measure signals against outcomes – which signals are high intent, possibly inexpensive to lean into, and have the highest likelihood of becoming closed won? If you can correlate some set of signals to a specific outcome, you should be able to develop a workflow that raises a flashing red alert that an action should be taken quickly capture the high buying intent of a customer. At the same time, you should be noting the signals that existing customers send when they’re high intent for expanding their account. This could be anything from adding seats to a subscription, an ad-service for an architecture firm, or go from booking pet boarding by the day to buying larger packages.
You’re basically trying to figure out the most impactful signals to streamline your sales efforts and make data driven decisions, while at the same time figuring out which signals are low intent and not worth paying attention to.
Now, operationalizing this is where things get a little trickier. Most CRM’s aren’t set up very well for tracking numerous signals and linking them to an deal, lead, contact or campaign. I’ve heard of some people who’ve attempted to Jerry-rig an out of the box objects into a signal aggregator, but it’s just not a clean fit, especially when it comes to cross object reporting and the non-linear nature of the buying journey. It would seem that this is the perfect use case for a custom object, which could have 100+ different signal types attached to it but unfortunately many SMB’s don’t have an enterprise CRM plan that gives them access to custom objects. One way or another, there has to be a way to measure the impact of the signal against.
Using a custom object may be the most practical solution to measuring signals :/
I have a client that I’ll be exploring this with in the near future (like next week), and will report back as we go. His company uses Hubspot, and while he has the Professional Sales and Marketing subscription, he’d need to upgrade (at a relatively significant cost) to have access to custom objects. Definitely open to hearing how others have addressed this challenge from an operationalization standpoint.
A recent post by Kevin White on LinkedIn, breaks down how anyone with an understanding of their target customer can start to identify the key signals. I like how Kevin uses the term “dark funnel” for the mostly top of the funnel signals that are often vitally important but more challenging to measure.
From Kevin White’s post on LinkedIn (linked above).
Priorities
Be honest, which side is your data?
While it’s still in its infancy, it seems that there’s consensus that to take advantage of the SBS opportunity, you’ve got to have data integrity.
If your CRM is rife with incomplete data, deals with no contacts, fields that are filled out on 25% of the objects, and haven’t been putting in the work to talk to your clients and learn from them how they’d like to be sold to, I’d advise that you get the fundamentals before spending resources on SBS. Maybe the promise of a better way to shorten sales cycles and target in-market buyers is the impetus you needed to get your data straightened out.
Intent and Signal Based Selling cannot (that I know of) be solved with a tool if the underlying data is iffy, and that’s a pricey lesson to learn if it’s your pocketbook. Tthese tools are only going to be as good as your underlying data, and at a minimum having all of your target accounts in your CRM, using it to consistently to track activities, and having 360 visibility across the entire customer life cycle are minimum system requirements. First, fix your CRM.
“Estimate Your Pricing” – I’m sure this isn’t going to drop me into an automated sales sequence :/
Parting Thoughts
My take is that reorienting your business model around first party customer research is the initial unlock for exponential growth and an appropriate entry into the world of signal based selling. You can’t effectively do signal based selling without truly knowing your customer. But it’s not enough to just do the research, the research has to inform the strategy, which then informs the tools and tactics.
Signals are here to stay, so it’s just a matter of when you’re ready to make the leap. My assumption is that SaaS is all over this, both developing signal based businesses and rearchitecting their go-to-market to incorporate (or at least start testing) a signal based approach. More traditional industries, especially professional services, will be slower to adopt this approach which leaves an opportunity for trailblazers to gain a competitive advantage.
Lastly, you may know who’s interested and when they’re ready to buy, but you still need a great message and killer creative. There’s no use in doing all the work to build a state of the art GTM machine to serve up a well designed creative. There’s still that little issue of what do we actually say when we have their attention? Which takes you back to the fundamentals of marketing – knowing your customer, product market fit, brand strategy, value prop and so on. Demand creation shouldn’t be forgotten.
Thanks for taking the time to check out my post. I’m putting it on the record that I believe SBS will be the marketing trend over the next 6-18 months, and the companies that can make the shift will have a significant advantage over those that continue with business as usual.
In the meantime, I’ll be documenting my work with my clients who are ready to explore signal based selling and hopefully we’ll figure some new things out, potentially using a solution that doesn’t involve custom objects.
If you’d like help exploring signal based selling, don’t hesitate to reach out.
