Sales signals: the main types, with scored examples

Most sales tooling covers the first three, and our guide to sales intelligence tools lists software for each. The fourth type, stated intent, shows up in public conversations, and it's the one you don't have to infer.

A funding round or a job ad is circumstantial evidence. It suggests a need exists, but a need isn't a plan. A company hiring a head of marketing might want your tool, or it might not buy anything outside its own team for six months.

On its own this signal is low to medium strength, and it's most useful for deciding who to research. Don't treat the event as the buying moment, because many events come a long time before a purchase.

Someone visits your pricing page three times in a week. A person opens every email. These signals show interest in you specifically, which is valuable, but they only exist after the buyer has found you.

The signal is medium to high strength if you can identify the visitor. The catch is anonymous traffic: you often know a visit happened without knowing who made it, and you never see the people who didn't find you.

A customer moves to a new company, or a prospect follows your account. Both give you a warm path in, and they are among the oldest sales signals there are.

The strength is medium, since the relationship carries the signal more than the timing does. Be careful not to assume the new employer has the same needs as the last one.

A stated signal is a public sentence in which a person says they want, need or are comparing something. HearBuyers reads this type on X and Reddit. Our scans show how common the sentence pattern is in service niches. Between 16 and 18 October 2026 we judged 1,875 public posts across 19 niches and found 700 people asking to hire or buy: 697 on Reddit and 3 on X (the research). Those posts came from searches built to catch requests, so the ratio is not a share of all posts.

The wording barely changes. Of the 241 anonymised requests we kept, 194 open with "I need" (how buyers phrase requests). That repetition is what makes them findable.

• A defined job rather than a topic.
• Context such as the tool they use or the size of the team.
• A reason to act soon, like a deadline or a renewal.
• A direct question, such as "who do you use?"

These are sample posts, not real ones, scored from 0 to 100 for buying intent the way HearBuyers scores each post.

• Sample scoring 94: "Our CRM renewal is next month and the quote doubled. Looking for something simpler for six reps, can spend up to $60 a seat." It has all four ingredients: a job, context, a deadline and a question.
• Sample scoring 71: "We've outgrown our spreadsheet for tracking client onboarding. What do other agencies use?" The problem is clear and the question is direct, but nothing makes it urgent.
• Sample scoring 38: "Curious how people handle client onboarding. Do you use a tool?" The topic is right. There's no sign of a problem.
• Sample scoring 12: "Just wrote a guide on client onboarding. Here are my favourite tools." This person is teaching, not shopping.
• Sample scoring 3: "We're hiring a client onboarding manager. Apply below." It contains the keywords and wants nothing from you.

The keyword "client onboarding" appears in every one, so keyword alerts treat them as equal. A signal is only useful when something sorts them for you.

• A job ad for a role mentions the topic, but nobody behind it is buying.
• When a vendor posts "DM me for the template", that's a seller fishing for replies.
• A student or curious reader asking "What is X?" wants to understand something, not buy it.
• A complaint with no decision attached is a feeling: "Our tool is annoying." Add the decision, "Our tool is annoying and we're done at renewal", and it becomes a signal.
• An old thread, like a post from eighteen months ago, tells you what someone needed back then.

1. Rank them. Reply to the highest-scoring stated signals first, set a threshold, and don't read below it.
2. Answer the question in public. A useful reply in the thread does more than a cold message.
3. Say who you are once. If you mention your product, say you work on it.
4. Wait before you DM. A direct message makes sense once they respond, ask for details or invite one.
5. Log the outcome. Note whether each signal turned into a conversation, and after a month you will see which phrases earn replies.

A person should approve every reply. HearBuyers drafts it and shows the sentence it scored. You edit the draft and post it yourself, and nothing gets sent automatically.

A stated signal goes stale fast. Someone who asks for a recommendation today often has an answer by tomorrow. A rough rule that holds in most sales work: the same day beats the same week, and the same week beats the same month. Check once a week and the best signals are already gone.

Reddit's public data access changes between 31 October 2026 and March 2027, so tools that read Reddit may cover less during that window. You can still search by hand, as our Reddit search guide shows.

Intent data usually means account-level behaviour, like companies researching a topic. A sales signal is broader and covers events, behaviour, relationships and what people say. See intent data for the account-level version.

Funding rounds, job changes, repeat visits to a pricing page, and posts like "any alternatives to Tool A?". That last one is a stated signal, the clearest of the four types.

By whether it names a defined job, gives context, has a reason to act soon and asks a direct question. Lead scoring covers the general approach. HearBuyers scores each public post from 0 to 100.

They're more direct, because the person says what they want. They're also rarer and need a fast reply. The best approach uses both: company signals to pick targets and stated signals to choose the moment.

Paste three recent posts from your market into the buying intent scorer and see which one deserves a reply today. After that, read 20 buying signal examples so you get better at spotting them.