Buying Signal & Trigger Tracker

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name: buying-signal-tracker
description: Use when you need to decide WHO IN YOUR ICP TO HIT NOW based on timing and trigger events rather than static fit — "who should I reach out to this week", "what's a good reason to reach out", "track buying signals", "find trigger events", "champion changed jobs", "they just raised a round", "new VP just started", "they're hiring for X", "they installed a competitor", "intent data spiked", "why now opener", "warm up our outbound", "score and prioritize accounts by signal". Workflow: enumerate the six signal categories (company triggers, people/job-change triggers, hiring reqs, technographics, third-party intent, first-party engagement), map each signal to a "why now" opening line and the play/sequence it should fire, then rank accounts with a fit×signal scoring matrix so you work the hottest first. Do NOT use for defining who fits in the abstract (firmographics, personas) — use [[icp-persona-builder]]; do NOT use for the tool mechanics of pulling/saving signals — use [[apollo-prospecting]].
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# Track Buying Signals & Trigger Events

Fit tells you WHO could buy; signals tell you WHO TO CALL TODAY. The single biggest lever in outbound is not a better list or a cleverer line — it is timing. A perfectly-fit account contacted in a dead quarter ignores you; the same account contacted the week a new VP inherits a broken process replies. ICP is static and slow-moving ([[icp-persona-builder]]); signals are dynamic and perishable. This skill is about catching the perishable window.

The common trap is treating all signals as equal and "spraying" the whole ICP whenever any signal fires. Signals vary wildly in strength: a champion who moves to a new in-ICP company is near-deterministic (someone who already bought you, now with budget and a mandate). A third-party intent surge is directional noise at best. Weight them, decay them by recency, multiply by fit — then work the top of the ranked list, not the whole thing.

## When to use this skill
- You have an ICP and a list but no sense of which accounts are *ripe* right now.
- A specific event just happened (funding, exec hire, layoff, job change) and you need the right "why now" angle and play.
- Your outbound is high-volume, low-reply and you suspect it's a timing problem, not a copy problem.
- You want to build a repeatable account-prioritization score instead of working alphabetically.

Do NOT use this to define firmographics or personas — that's [[icp-persona-builder]]. Do NOT use it for the click-path of saving signals in a tool — that's [[apollo-prospecting]].

## The workflow

1. **Enumerate the six signal categories and their strength tier.** (1) *Company triggers* — funding rounds, exec/leadership hires, M&A, new office/expansion, layoffs, earnings/10-K commentary [medium–strong]. (2) *People triggers* — **job change of a known champion [strongest]**, new-in-role (first 90 days = mandate to change things) [strong], promotions [medium]. (3) *Hiring signals* — open reqs reveal initiatives, tooling, and team growth [medium]. (4) *Technographic* — installing or removing a competitor/complementary tool [medium–strong]. (5) *Third-party intent* — topic surges, account-level, noisy [weak, directional]. (6) *First-party engagement* — site visits, content downloads, repeated opens [strong, because it's *their* action].

2. **For each live signal, write the "why now" opener.** The signal must be visible in the first line and must be about *them*, not you. "Saw you just brought on a VP of RevOps — usually means the comp/territory model is getting rebuilt" beats "I wanted to reach out about our platform." If you can't write a non-creepy "why now," the signal is too weak to act on.