One of the most important layers of the framework is picking up signals: knowing who is engaging with you, and with what. Companies are rightly careful not to break GDPR (opens in a new tab) rules. But signals can be collected entirely legally and with the buyer’s consent. Say in your privacy policy what you collect and why, and make opting out easy at any time.
Relevance, not surveillance
The point of signals is not to watch people. It is to be relevant.
Picture a man in his forties who keeps seeing ads for a teenage girl’s favourite make-up. He may well have a teenage daughter, but he won’t appreciate the message, because it isn’t really targeted at him. Most of us don’t mind targeted messages at all, as long as they are useful.
Give something to get something
To recognise a buyer, you usually need their email address. The simplest way to get it is to ask.
Don’t hide everything behind a form. But some content can sit behind one, and then it has to be genuinely valuable: a practical guide, a webinar, a newsletter worth reading, a calculator. Ask at the right moment, not on arrival, and people will usually say yes when they can see what they get in return.
Once a visitor is known, you can see what they read, for how long and what they did next. That is the online version of a buyer asking a salesperson for a reference case and the rep logging it in the CRM. Online, the CRM simply shows: “Read the reference case on Sunday evening.”
Signals outside your website
Your website is only one place where signals appear. On social media, paid tools such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator (opens in a new tab) follow the accounts and people you tell them to follow.
Don’t only watch reactions to your own posts. Say you run an accounting firm. You want to know when people write about bookkeeping headaches or tax deadlines, because those are conversations where you can help. We are back to value.
As a salesperson you can do this by hand, too. I regularly searched LinkedIn for the customer problem I was solving and filtered the results by posts. That let me join conversations, give advice and show expertise without selling. Each time, I logged the person and company in my CRM to build up an understanding of their challenges.
It takes some manual work. But if you are a key account manager, you should absolutely be doing it.
What signals make possible
When you know who is engaging with you, you can offer them information that helps them take the next step in their buying journey. The next layer is about exactly that: what to do with these leads once you know who they are.