If you’re in B2B sales or marketing and feel like you’re guessing when someone’s ready to buy, you’re not alone. Chasing every “hot lead” is a waste of time. You want real buying signals—actual signs that a company’s looking for what you offer, not just another form fill from a bored intern. This guide is for people who want to cut the fluff and use tools like Echobot to spot signals that matter.
Here’s how to use Echobot to spot buyers in your target market, what’s actually useful, and what to skip.
What Are Buying Signals, Really?
Before you jump into tools, let’s get clear: a buying signal isn’t just someone visiting your site or downloading a whitepaper. Real buying signals are actions or changes in a company that mean they might actually need your product soon:
- New funding round or leadership change
- Expansion to new markets
- Job postings for skills related to your solution
- Public complaints about their current vendor
- Announcements about new projects or products
If your “signals” are just people opening emails, you’re wasting your time. Echobot helps surface signals that are a bit more concrete—if you set it up right.
Step 1: Get Your Target Market Straight
Don’t skip this. If you feed Echobot broad, fuzzy criteria, you’ll get broad, fuzzy results. Define:
- Industry: Be specific. “Tech” is useless. “SaaS HR platforms with 50-500 employees in DACH” is better.
- Company size: Headcount, revenue, or both.
- Location: Where can you actually sell?
- Tech stack or other specifics: If your product only works with Salesforce, filter out the rest.
Pro Tip: If your ICP (ideal customer profile) is just “anyone with money,” you’ll get garbage signals. Narrow it down.
Step 2: Set Up Echobot for Real-World Signals
Log into Echobot and ignore the shiny dashboards for a second. Head for these features:
1. Company Monitoring
- Add your exact target companies, or upload a list.
- Set alerts for relevant changes—funding, legal changes, executive hires.
- Don’t overdo it. Too many alerts = noise.
2. News & PR Monitoring
- Set up keyword alerts for projects, product launches, or pain points.
- Use negative keywords to filter out junk (e.g., “NOT charity” if you keep getting irrelevant news).
- Focus on sources you trust. Local trade magazines sometimes beat big newswires.
3. Job Postings
- Track new job ads at target companies for roles that hint at upcoming needs (e.g., “Cloud Migration Specialist”).
- Combine with news alerts for stronger signals.
4. Financial Triggers
- If available, track balance sheet changes, funding events, or profit warnings.
- These rarely give you an exact buying timeline, but they can show when a company might be open to change.
What to Ignore:
Don’t bother with generic “website changes” or “social media likes.” Most of it is noise unless you sell social media tools. Focus on events that are hard to fake or ignore.
Step 3: Filter for Signal, Not Noise
Echobot’s default settings will drown you in notifications. You want fewer, higher-quality signals.
- Refine your filters every week. If an alert type feels useless, kill it.
- Prioritize by impact. Major funding or a C-level hire > vague news mention.
- Batch alerts. Daily digests beat real-time pings. You don’t need to jump on a news story at 2am.
Honest Take:
No tool is perfect. Echobot surfaces a lot, but you’ll still need to sanity-check what comes in. If you’re chasing every alert, you’ll burn out.
Step 4: Validate the Signal Before You Act
Not every signal means “ready to buy.” Before you hand anything to sales (or start cold emailing), do a quick gut check.
- Is the company actually in your buying window? If they just hired a new CIO, they may need to settle in before making changes.
- Does the news fit your solution? Don’t pitch cloud security if the signal is about a new office coffee machine.
- Is the trigger recent? Old signals are useless.
Pro Tip:
Google the company name + recent news yourself. Echobot is good, but it might miss context. Take 2 minutes to double-check.
Step 5: Build Your Outreach List
Now you’ve got a shortlist of companies with genuine buying signals. Export them from Echobot or sync with your CRM (if your CRM is any good).
- Segment by signal type: Funding event leads get different messaging than job posting leads.
- Add notes: What triggered the alert? Don’t make your sales team guess.
Skip the Spray-and-Pray:
If you’re tempted to email everyone the same pitch, don’t. Tie your outreach to the actual signal.
Step 6: Craft Outreach That Doesn’t Suck
Reference the signal. Be clear on why you’re reaching out. No one likes a cold pitch that feels, well, cold.
Examples:
- “Congrats on your new Series B. Teams in your stage usually struggle with X—does that resonate?”
- “Saw you’re hiring for a Cloud Architect. Are you expanding your infra, or is there a pain point you’re tackling?”
What Not to Do:
Don’t pretend you’re best friends because you saw a news mention. Be relevant, but not creepy.
Step 7: Track What Actually Works
This gets skipped way too often. Set up a feedback loop:
- Which signals led to a real conversation?
- Which ones were duds?
- Adjust your Echobot filters and outreach accordingly.
If all your “hot” signals go nowhere, change your definition of hot. Don’t blame the tool—refine your process.
What Echobot Does Well (And What It Doesn’t)
Strengths:
- Finds public info you’d miss otherwise (especially in DACH region)
- Pulls together news, jobs, and company data in one place
- Good for surfacing “trigger events” at scale
Weaknesses:
- Not every alert is a buying signal—lots of noise if you’re not careful
- Can’t read nuance. You still have to interpret the data.
- Limited outside Europe; coverage is best for German-speaking countries
Skip the Hype:
Echobot won’t magically find buyers for you. It’s a data source, not a sales rep. If your outreach is generic, you’ll get ignored—no matter how good the signals are.
Keep It Simple, Iterate Often
Don’t get lost in dashboards or try to automate everything on day one. Start narrow, watch what gets results, and tweak your filters every couple of weeks. Ignore the hype—real buying signals are rare, and that’s the point. You don’t need hundreds; you just need a handful of real ones to move the needle.
Focus on what’s actually working, drop the rest, and you’ll be ahead of most teams out there.