No one ever said finding new B2B sales leads is easy. It's not enough to find companies that match your Ideal Customer Profile, you also have to know when they are ready to buy to catch them at the right time. For that, use insights from buying signals.
This is simply because many changes within a company (recruiting, funding round, expansion, new product release, merger or acquisition) open up a window of opportunity to do sales. If you aren't quite yet convinced read through these instant benefits we've witnessed when companies follow buying signals.
1. You Find the Best Prospects
Offering recruitment services?
Look for companies that expand and are about to open up an office in a new location because they will need to increase their head count.
Working in the transport industry?
Look for companies initiating a new construction project or that open up a new production facility.
Selling in the real estate industry?
Look for companies that recently hired many new employees or, on the contrary, recently were forced to do significant downsizings. They might just both need a new office space suitable for their current organization.
Once you find a correlation between a happy new customer and a signal you'll easily find a large number of warm, actionable leads.
To find the events that indicate the best opportunity for you, take a look at your existing customers. What happened in their organizations before they became customers? If you can identify an actionable lead through one or a series of signals, using this data should be the basis of your sales prospecting. Once you find a correlation between a happy new customer and a signal you'll easily find a large number of warm, actionable leads.
Construction companies initiating a new constructing project
2. You Prioritize Right Companies
When you already have a long list of leads, buying signals can help you know what companies to prioritize now. Start by looking at your current customer base, see what buying signals preceded them signing a deal with you. You can later use these signals as criteria for filtering actionable leads out of a longer list of leads.
Many buying signals have a best-before date. In Vainu you can do detailed searches, filtering companies with specific features and buying signals that occurred in a specific time frame. For instance, you can find all companies that moved to a new office last week or who recruited a new Head of HR in January.
The prospect will feel like you understand their business.
3. You Carry Out Smarter Conversations
Customers are getting smarter and more selective, meaning you have to make your sales tactics smarter right along with them. Signals don't only help you find the right companies to contact now, they also help you carry out smarter conversations with them. By knowing what’s going on with the companies you can tailor your pitch based on their current situation. The prospect will feel like you understand their business, which is valuable for building trust.
Higher meeting conversion rates and shorter average sales cycle.
Companies going through a merger or acquisition in January
4. You Find the Right Timing
In Vainu you can search for companies (with or without set features) going through a specific change. In addition, you can create a target group of companies that match your ideal customer profile and receive a notification by email as soon as a signal indicating a need for your product or service occurs. By systematic tracking of companies’ lifecycle events you can reach out to your leads with better timing and as a result you’ll get higher meeting conversion rates and shorten your average sales cycle.
Get notified when something happens with a company in your target group
Bonus Tip: Identify Warm Leads through Negative Search
Not all signals indicate a great time to contact a company, rather the opposite. Some tell you when you should not reach out. For example if you’re a real estate company don’t call those who just moved to a new office to offer them assistance on finding a new one.
If you have a longer list of prospects you can always exclude the companies that are not likely to buy from you by using our negative search function. Want to try it out?
Exclude companies that recently moved to a new office from your search
