Is Signal-Driven Sales the Future? What it Means for Company Leaders

The CEO of Hubspot, one of the world’s largest CRMs, recently made waves with a LinkedIn post that began: “RIP cold outreach. Welcome, signal-based prospecting.”

For most GTM leaders, this isn’t a new concept. Signal-driven sales is already a tool in their arsenal; but it’s one that’s been hard to master. Difficulty identifying signals, defining clear follow-up actions and tracking success across the customer journey mean cold outreach remains a strong revenue-driver for many organizations; even as AI is changing everything we know about building successful go-to-market operations.

We’re not here to tell you that cold outreach is dead. But the real reason many organizations haven’t converted entirely to signal-driven pipeline is simple: successfully integrating signal-driven processes into the GTM requires a level of alignment across systems, people and process that most organizations lack.

So, what’s the big deal with signal-driven sales, and what should revenue and sales leaders do about it? We’ll break it down in this blog.

What is Signal-Driven Sales?

Signal-driven selling (also known as intent-based selling or trigger-based selling) is a strategy that involves tracking prospect behaviors and events to identify signals of buyer intent, then targeting those prospects with sales outreach tailored to their signals. Signals can be anything from a job or leadership change to a website visit; any event that indicates a buyer is facing a challenge that your solution solves.

This strategy is nothing new, but buyer opportunity signals have traditionally been challenging and time-consuming to track; now, AI is breaking the arena wide open. With new technologies, companies can automate tracking of account-level changes, contact activities and market shifts, intelligently surfacing potential sales opportunities.

The question is: will their teams know what to do with that data? Even as signal-based selling rises in popularity, many leaders are not sure how to solve that question in practice.

Why is Signal-Driven Sales Becoming Popular in B2B?

As information access increases, buyers are moving through the funnel more independently than ever before. When an organization identifies a challenge, they go searching for solutions – without ever making contact with a salesperson.

According to 6sense, the average B2B buyer in 2025 made their first contact with sales about 61% of the way through their decision process. By the time that first sales contact happens, buyers already have a shortlist – and 95% of the time, the bid winner comes from that shortlist. Four out of five deals are won by the pre-contact favorite.

You read that right – four in five B2B buyers are essentially making their purchase decision with zero sales contact at all. It sounds grim, but that doesn’t mean scaling back your sales team is the right call.

Even if you are the lucky vendor that wins four in five sales without lifting a finger, that might not be the best strategy for your long-term revenue. We know that the sales process is vital for both the seller and customer to set expectations on outcomes, understand the core challenge the solution is solving, and lay the groundwork for a strong implementation and renewal process.

Enter: signal-driven sales. Force Management has long emphasized the importance of beginning negotiation from the start of the sales process; by responding to buyer signals, your go-to-market team can start aligning the customer’s required capabilities with your solution’s differentiation early on.

It’s not just about sales, though. Signal-driven selling aligns with another trend company leaders will recognize from recent years: the emergence of a holistic go-to-market system approach to driving revenue over the traditional siloed, sales-focused strategy. Let’s examine how the two trends work together.

The Importance of Alignment for Signal-Based Selling

Signal-driven sales raises the bar for alignment across the go-to-market organization. In the buyer-led journey, there’s very little room for inconsistency. If the value story a prospect encounters in marketing doesn’t match BDR outreach or the narrative they hear in the first sales conversation, your team risks losing the deal before they ever get the chance to compete.

In a signal-driven environment, alignment isn’t just helpful; it’s foundational. Signals move quickly, and buyers expect immediate relevance. That requires every team touching the customer journey to share a common understanding of why a buyer might be engaging, what problem they’re trying to solve, and how your solution uniquely addresses that challenge.

Without that shared understanding, even the most sophisticated intent data struggles to create momentum. Alignment across messaging, process, and roles is what turns signals into meaningful conversations and creates the conditions for signal-driven strategies to succeed.

The Risks of Signal-Based Sales Strategies: Why Intent Data Fails to Drive Revenue

As more organizations make big bets on signal-based sales, leaders are discovering that access to intent data doesn’t automatically translate to better outcomes. Those who have invested in intent tracking tools may find themselves asking:

• Why isn’t our intent data actually driving revenue?
• We’ve invested in tools like 6sense, so why isn’t pipeline increasing?
• Why does our sales team struggle to convert intent-driven opportunities into pipeline?
• How should pipeline created from buyer signals show up in our forecast?
• How do we clearly demonstrate revenue ROI from signal-driven selling investments?

Without the right foundation, signal-driven initiatives risk adding more noise in an already crowded tech stack and more chaos to the constant scramble to make the number.

One common challenge is activity without impact. Signals create urgency, and teams respond by moving fast – but not always effectively. Without clear guidance on who owns which signals, how to respond in a value-driven way, and how progress should be measured, teams spin their wheels without meaningfully improving pipeline quality or revenue outcomes.

Another risk emerges when signals outpace alignment. Marketing, BDRs, and sales may all be working from the same data, but interpreting it differently. A signal that marketing sees as early-stage awareness may be treated by sales as buying intent. When teams use inconsistent language to address customer problems and use cases, outreach feels disconnected and buyers disengage.

The clearest risk for leaders is shifting and inaccurate forecasts. When signal-driven opportunities don’t follow a consistent path through the pipeline, forecasting becomes harder. Sellers and managers may inaccurately assess deal quality by relying on intent data over true discovery. Over time, confidence in signal-based pipeline can erode, making it harder for leaders to plan, invest, and grow with certainty.

In most cases, the issue isn’t that signal-based strategies are ineffective – it’s that they’ve been layered onto existing sales motions without redefining execution, management, or value delivery. Signals identify opportunity, but they don’t replace the need for clear process, aligned messaging, and disciplined leadership.

How Leaders Operationalize Signal-Driven Sales to Drive Predictable Revenue Growth

So, is signal-based selling the future? In many ways, yes. But the elements that determine whether signal-based strategies succeed are the same ones that have always driven durable revenue performance: alignment around customer value, disciplined execution, and strong leadership at every level of the organization.

For leaders, the real promise of signal-driven sales isn’t just better engagement; it’s greater confidence. In an environment where buyers move faster and pipelines evolve more dynamically, leaders are under increasing pressure to forecast accurately, allocate resources effectively, and defend results to the board.

Successfully driving growth with signal-based sales strategies requires leaders to:

• Establish well-integrated systems and processes for tracking buyer signals and translating intent data into consistent actions and measurable pipeline movement
• Define clear triggers, actions, and value-based messages for each signal and customer-facing role, so teams know how to engage buyers in ways that advance deals
• Equip managers to coach and evaluate signal-driven execution, enabling reinforcement of what wins, early course correction, and clear visibility to revenue impact

Leaders who are driving repeatable wins right now with intent data don’t have more sophisticated technology; they have a solid organizational foundation. They’ve implemented a fully aligned go-to-market motion; they embed intelligent insights into execution; and they measure their success in terms their board actually cares about: revenue, predictability, and growth.

That kind of transformation doesn’t happen by accident. It requires a clear framework for how people, process, and technology work together to drive consistent outcomes – especially as new signals, tools, and AI capabilities enter the mix.

If you’re looking to take a more systematic approach to turning buyer signals into predictable revenue, our Predictable Revenue Framework ebook outlines how leading organizations are building that foundation.