How to identify buying signals in 2025

What is a buying signal?

A buying signal is an action or indication from a prospect that shows they may be ready to make a purchase — like downloading a product white paper, requesting a demo, or reading asking specific questions in the buying process. 

In today’s challenging sales environment, tracking these signals is critical because it helps them identify high-interest leads and prioritize outreach more effectively, increasing the chances of closing deals.

There are two different kinds of buying signals:

• Marketing buying signals, which tend to be broader and reflect interest at an earlier stage in the buying journey — like signing up for a newsletter or engaging with content.
• Sales buying signals, which indicate a prospect is closer to making a decision — like signing up for a free trial, requesting a one-on-one demo, or asking for pricing information.

By understanding the distinction between these different signals, marketing and sales teams can adjust their approach to ensure they deliver the right messages at the right time in the buyer’s journey. 

Buying signal examples

While we discussed the top buying signals to track in 2025 previously, we wanted to share a high-level overview of buying signal examples as well. Broadly speaking, there are three different categories of buying signals, which we’ll examine in this section. 

1. Circumstantial buying signals (aka fit buying signals)

Circumstantial or fit-based buying signals indicate how closely a prospect matches the characteristics of your ideal customer profile. Examples include:

• Industry match. If a prospect operates in your target industry, they’re most likely to need relevant products and services.
• Company size. Businesses with a specific number of employees or revenue may be ready for your offerings and have the budget needed to absorb the costs.
• Geographic location. If a prospect works close to where your business is or within a region you operate in, conversion may be more likely.
• Tech stack. Prospects using a tech stack that’s compatible with your products suggests they may stand to benefit from buying from you.

2. Intent buying signals

Intent buying signals are active behaviors that indicate a prospect’s potential interest. Some common intent signals include:

• Repeated website visits. Regular visits to key pages — like product or pricing pages — demonstrate ongoing interest.
• Content downloads. Downloading resources like white papers, eBooks, and one-pagers shows a prospect is highly engaged.
• Demo or consultation requests. A prospect that requests demos is likely keen on learning more and thinking about buying your solutions.
• Comparing solutions. If a prospect is exploring your comparison guides, they’re probably evaluating options and considering your offer. 

3. Verbal and nonverbal buying signals

Verbal and nonverbal cues can also indicate a prospect’s interest. Examples include:

• Positive affirmations. Verbal responses — like That sounds great! — suggest a prospect is interested.
• Body language. Leaning in, nodding, and actively taking notes shows engagement during presentations.
• Budget discussions. If a prospect starts talking about costs or budget, they’re likely serious about making a purchase.
• Expressing urgency. Mentioning timelines or deadlines often indicates a prospect is eager to move forward.

How to identify buying signals

Buying signals can help sales teams work more efficiently, targeting their efforts at prospects that are most likely to convert. By recognizing these signals — regardless of which type they are — sales reps can operate more effectively and close more deals by reaching the right person with the right message at the right time. 

Here’s how.

Using technology to identify marketing buying signals

Marketing signals — like repeatedly visiting key pages on your website and downloading gated assets — typically happen before a prospect fills out a form or gets in contact with your sales team. 

Using software like Google Analytics, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and HubSpot can help you surface these signals, tracking things like repeat website visits, time spent on product pages, and engagement on social media. Together, this data helps your team gauge a prospect’s interest level early on — enabling you to personalize your outreach to their interests. 

There are also solutions like RB2B that help de-anonymize website visitors so you can see if a specific prospect is visiting your site quite a bit.

Using technology to identify sales buying signals

The right tools can also help you identify sales buying signals — like opening sales emails multiple times, scheduling meetings, and visiting product pages following a call — which often materialize after a prospect’s interacted with sales. 

Tools like Outreach, Groove, and Salesforce can help you identify these cues, providing insights into how often a prospect opens emails and follows up on conversations. This enables sales teams to prioritize leads that demonstrate high intent, helping them engage with prospects that are most likely to convert.  

Using intent data to identify buying signals

Intent data offers valuable insights into buying signals by tracking behavioral patterns that indicate potential interest in your offerings. This data includes content downloads, web searches, engagement with industry articles, and visits to comparison pages. 

Using intent data helps you identify new opportunities or prioritize high-potential leads by understanding their current needs and interests. Intent data tools like 6sense, ZoomInfo, and Bombora are built to capture and analyze these signals, allowing businesses to target folks already researching relevant solutions.

Using contact data to identify buying signals

Sales teams generally use contact data to connect with potential leads and initiate conversations. However, this data can also be used to identify buying signals — especially if your contact data provider has contact tracking. 

For example, when existing champions switch companies or a new decision-maker joins a target account, it may indicate new sales opportunities. Additionally, a lead getting promoted can also signal potential decision-making power, perhaps indicating their readiness for a purchase. 

By analyzing contact data, sales teams can identify and approach high-potential leads with decision-making power more strategically, increasing the chances of conversion.

How LeadIQ can help your team identify buying signals

LeadIQ can help your team identify buying signals by capturing valuable contact data and giving you contact tracking capabilities that notify you when champions, power users, and prospects change jobs. 

By leveraging our Chrome extension, your team can enrich contact data directly from LinkedIn and company websites, adding layers of data that might signal interest or readiness to buy — including job role changes and company growth. 

At the same time, LeadIQ can provide insights into engagement trends, allowing your team to gauge prospect interest based on activity and interactions over time. As a result, sales teams can determine which leads are the highest value and come to the table with a deeper understanding of potential needs.

To find out more about how LeadIQ can help you identify buying signals and win more business because of it, start your free trial today.