The study every signal-based selling page cites says the opposite of what they cite it for
I was writing a plain explainer of signal-based selling and started by reading what everyone else says it is.
The definition is consistent across the whole first page of results. Fit tells you who could buy, signals tell you who is buying this week. Stop working a static list, work the accounts where something just happened.
The second half of that bothered me. A funding round is not a purchase decision. Neither is a job posting or a new VP. Those are changes in a company's situation, and calling them buyer intent is an upgrade nobody measured.
So I went to the research the category leans on.
It is 6sense's 2025 Buyer Experience Report, nearly 4,000 B2B buyers, median purchase between $200k and $300k. Three findings get quoted constantly. 94% of buying groups ranked their preferred vendors before contacting any of them. 95% of the time the winner was already on the Day One shortlist. Four out of five deals went to the pre-contact favourite.
Then I read how those get used. Paraphrasing one of the pages ranking for this phrase, the finding becomes proof that the first vendor contacted wins around 80% of deals, therefore respond to every trigger within minutes.
That is a different sentence. Pre-contact favourite means the buyer had already picked before anyone got in touch. It is not a statement about who made contact first. The research is being used to sell reaction speed, and what it actually describes is prior credibility.
Useful either way, just not the way it is sold. Same report puts first contact at 61% of the buying journey, moved up from 69% the year before. Buyers do come out sooner than they used to. They still do most of the work before you know they exist.
Where I landed. A signal is a public dated event that makes an account worth looking at now rather than later. It changes the order of the list, it does not tell you the answer. Which makes using signals to build the list the mistake, because a signal on a company you could never serve arrives with a reason attached and is therefore more convincing than plain noise, not less.
The other half of the piece is the boring half that actually decides whether any of this works. A signal has to be attached to the right company, carry the date of the event rather than the date you noticed it, and exist at all, which below a certain company size it mostly does not.
Good write-up. What would you do differently if you started again?
Solid lesson. Which channel has worked best for you so far?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
Good write-up. What would you do differently if you started again?
Solid lesson. Which channel has worked best for you so far?
How did you decide this was worth building in the first place?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Solid lesson. Which channel has worked best for you so far?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
Good write-up. What would you do differently if you started again?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
Clear and practical, thanks. Did anything surprise you along the way?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Solid lesson. Which channel has worked best for you so far?
Good write-up. What would you do differently if you started again?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
How did you decide this was worth building in the first place?
What made you pick this stack over the alternatives?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
What made you pick this stack over the alternatives?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
How did you decide this was worth building in the first place?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
Solid lesson. Which channel has worked best for you so far?
Good write-up. What would you do differently if you started again?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
Clear and practical, thanks. Did anything surprise you along the way?
Really good writeup, thanks for sharing it. What's the next thing you're planning to try here?
Really solid approach — I'm juggling something similar myself (building Xstream4K on the side), what's been the hardest part for you so far?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
Clear and practical, thanks. Did anything surprise you along the way?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Solid lesson. Which channel has worked best for you so far?
What made you pick this stack over the alternatives?
Good write-up. What would you do differently if you started again?
Solid lesson. Which channel has worked best for you so far?
Interesting approach. What was the hardest part to get right?
What made you pick this stack over the alternatives?
Clear and practical, thanks. Did anything surprise you along the way?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
How did you decide this was worth building in the first place?
Good point. Did you test that with users before committing to it?
This is useful. How are you finding your first users so far?
Really good writeup, thanks for sharing it. What's the next thing you're planning to try here?
Thanks, glad it was useful. Next I want to dig into the part the piece only touched on, what happens with smaller companies where public signals mostly don't exist. If fit has to carry more of the weight there, I'd like to understand how far it can go on its own. Curious if you've run into that gap yourself.