Custom Signals for GTM => Dietary Preferences but for your Business

Dietary Preferences

You like to eat and drink what you prefer - it could be a combination of what food and drink your body can accept, and those you enjoy the flavors of.

Your company or business may not be very different after all.

If you serve customers of specific types with your products and solutions, your business is built to be most relevant to them.

Knowing who buys from you, what is going on in their world when they decide to buy from you, and why they buy from you are essentially GTM Superpowers!

This also means you are looking for specific Signals around your customers' and prospects' behaviour that indicate demand for your solutions.

Enter Custom Signals

The more specific your custom signals are, the better your engagement with prospects.

Example 1:

"When target accounts expand their production facilities, our solutions become valuable to them."

Example 2:

"When target accounts reduce their service team while shooting for more profitability, our solutions become valuable to them."

The sooner you discover what these custom signals are, the better it is for your pipeline.

How do you find, discover or identify them?

One great way to identify these is to look at your Closed-Won deals in the past year.

Go through these Closed-Won deals, and see if there is a recurrent pattern in the accounts that closed. This works great especially with upper mid-market and enterprise account deals.

Once you see some pattern(s) emerging, note them down.

Now, look at your Closed-Lost deals to see if there is an anti-pattern.

Quite often, you will NOT find those signals/patterns with the Closed-Lost.

Which all Segments benefit from knowing Custom Signals?

Now you know what Custom Signals should you look for in your target accounts - be they in Top of the Funnel or the ones in Opportunity. Heck, maybe even accounts your team is working on for Cross-Sell / Upsell Opportunities.

Who can use Custom Signals and how?

Discovering Custom Signals and educating your SDR/BDR Teams about these could be a shot in the arm for them - they know "exactly" why they should engage with a target account (or not).

Isn't that powerful?

These are no less helpful to your Account Executives (AEs).

AEs are often observed to work on all Opps in an equal fashion. But if you listen to some of the renowned sales coaches and trainers, they advocate the Pareto - 80% of your Quota will come from 20% of your deals.

The question is "which 20%" are those deals?

In addition to the engagement of the Champion, the Buying Committee and the evaluation / interaction so far, Custom Signals of compelling events taking place in the account are a very powerful indicator for you to prioritize.

These are akin to the foods that agree with you and that you enjoy :) - Now you see the analogy?

Just like there are pre-packaged diets or custom-prepared foods that serve you well, now you can do it for your target accounts as a repeatable process now with B2Brain.

Yes!

Can I set up prioritization based on Custom Signals?

You can now prioritize your entire Target Account List or segments of accounts (e.g. All Opps) periodically based on these Custom Signals.

Get your team to focus on really the accounts that can really move the needle for your pipeline.

I am getting ready for Trade Shows from Jan 2025 - How do I use these for preparation?

Imagine you're getting ready for one of the big events coming up in the next few weeks. You've received the list of accounts to pre-book meetings, or engage at the event venue.

Now is the time to apply the Pareto, prioritize accounts based on Custom Signals, and get ready with your A-list of accounts to engage.

Want to brainstorm?

Not sure how to identify Custom Signals, but want to do it? Schedule a session with me - connect / DM me on LinkedIn.

Some more references

I've written about discovering our own ICP here and here. Your journey may be different but your intended outcome may not be very different.