Unlocking the Power of Signals with Saad Khan (Aligned)

Pocus hosts “Ask Me Anything” sessions with GTM experts to share best practices, frameworks, and insights on this emerging category. These AMAs are an opportunity to ask leaders any question — ranging from hiring to sales compensation to tech stack — in a low-key, casual environment.

The AMAs are for members of the Pocus Go-To-Market Community, the place to learn, discuss, and connect with go-to-market (GTM) leaders at product-led companies. The goal of the community is to bring together the most thoughtful and innovative GTM leaders to build the next generation of sales together.

Interested in joining? Request an invite here.

Meet Saad Khan, Director of Sales and Business Development at Aligned 👋

Saad Khan has always been curious about what makes people buy. He grew up in a family of salespeople and, even while pursuing his degree in marketing, was intrigued by the psychology of selling. After an early career in traditional marketing that left him less than satisfied, Saad took his first role in sales as a BDR for Clio. From there, he was all in on selling, eventually moving to Dooly where he grew the Business Development team. 

Based on his success at Dooly, Saad was eventually brought on at Aligned, as the Director of Sales and Business Development. He has become known across LinkedIn as a huge advocate for signal-based selling and even advises GTM teams on how to integrate signals into their outbound strategy. 

We recently sat down with Saad for a Pocus Community AMA to learn more about his signal strategies. In our AMA we covered:

• Why Saad is so bullish on signals
• His framework for getting started with signal-based selling
• How Aligned’s own platform can generate valuable signals for sellers

Discovering the value of signals

In Saad’s first sales role as a BDR at Clio he was lucky to have a marketing team that gave him access to tons of data about how leads were engaging with the brand.  Saad used these data points to have more targeted conversations and found it led to a much richer understanding of why buyers liked the product. From that moment, he was sold on the power of signals.

“When I reached out to leads I wasn’t cold-calling; I was sharing context around their needs.” 

Saad continued to tap into these “hidden cues” from buyers as he progressed in his sales career. When he eventually joined Aligned, years later, he noticed that people were starting to talk about the power of “signals” instead of just relying on lead scoring, and everything clicked. This was exactly what he’d been doing throughout his career, but now he had a name for it: signal-based selling.

The power of signals vs. personalization

In the past, personalization has been touted as the holy grail of selling strategies. The problem is that too few sellers spend the time necessary to create truly personalized content, instead leaning on low-value information like first name or job title and calling it a day.

Saad explained that we’ve now moved past the era of buyer personalization into a new stage: buyer contextualization. Contextualization uses buyer signals to tell the story of the specific pain points and problems the buyer is facing, and how your product can help. 

So, what are signals? In short, they’re a combination of pieces of information that can be used to create warmth and drive buyers closer to purchasing. It’s rare that you’d want to use one signal on its own when crafting your outbound. The more signals you layer together, the more warmth and intent you can build. (We’ve written in detail about this process before!)

Saad shared an example of what the signal layering process looks like for his team at Aligned:

1. Monitor which prospects are visiting Aligned’s website.
2. Of these prospects, identify which have individual user accounts with Aligned already.
3. Layer in social signals from LinkedIn or other platforms.
4. Reach out to the warmest prospects from this list.

The results of this signal layering were pretty incredible, generating leads that convert 37% faster than standard inbound demo requests. The reason is simple: using all of the contextual information from these signals, Saad’s team is able to generate outbound that really resonates with the buyer and address their needs.

Don’t have visibility into who is browsing your site? Pocus’ Website Visitors tool de-anonymizes your site traffic and surfaces the data directly to your team so you can build your own signal layering process.

Getting started with signals

Adding signals to your outbound strategy can seem overwhelming at first, but it’s best to start simply. Saad shared his framework for quickly building out signal-led efforts with your team. (For a more detailed breakdown of how to build a signal strategy, check out our Crawl, Walk, Run method.)

1. Get your house in order. Before getting started with the practice of signal-led outbound, set the proper foundation. Make sure you have sales and marketing alignment on strategy and which pieces of the process each team will own. Get your CRM organized to prevent data roadblocks as you get up and running. 
2. Hone in on your ICP. In order to see the most impact from signal-based sales, be sure you have clarity on your ICP. One of the easiest ways to do this is to evaluate who your best customers are, and then build a list of look-alikes to target.
3. Identify your best signals. Think about which consistent actions your ICPs take before buying. This can help you identify which key signals are most important to track.
4. Start small. Choose just a few signals to get started with. The specific signals available to you will depend on your GTM motion and tech stack. Saad recommends tracking website visitors as an effective signal for almost all businesses since you can use information about the pages visitors are viewing to build context around the solutions they might need.
5. Build a feedback loop. As you dive into using more signals in your outbound, be sure to create reporting that provides visibility across the team on which signals and strategies are most effective. 

Remember that experimentation and iteration are part of the process. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. The power of the signal is that you have in-the-moment relevance, but finding which outbound message and strategy performs best will require a bit of trial and error.

“There’s no magic pill. A signal requires a bit of detective work to determine what’s going on for the lead before you reach out.” 

If you’re not sure which signals to tackle first, you can check out our database of over 100 signal playbooks to help you brainstorm where to start.

Strategies to explore with signal-led outbound

With years of signal-based selling experience under his belt, Saad let us in on some of his best-performing strategies that teams can use as a starting point:

• Use signals at the top and bottom of the funnel. Signals are effective for both warming up cold accounts and for helping to push active deals closer to closed-won.
• Signals aren’t just for connecting with decision-makers. One of Saad’s most effective tactics is to reach out to ICs on LinkedIn who have used Aligned or visited the website. In this outreach, he aims to find out what the IC is looking to get out of their product.
• Multi-threading works best. After connecting with an IC, Saad asks for information about who the decision-maker is and asks to kick off a conversation with the IC copied on the email thread. This strategy is often more effective than traditional cold outreach.
• Test unique outreach formats. Saad has seen success recording videos for prospects that speak specifically to the pain points they’ve written about on LinkedIn. He’s also tried tactics like customizing websites to catch a lead’s eye. In short, don’t forget your “account-based” basics.
• If you don’t get a response, keep following up! And make sure your follow-up also uses signals to add context and personalization to your messaging. Consider layering signals, like sending a product tour to see if the prospect will engage with it and warm up.

Aligned: A Pocus Signal Partner

Ready to get even more out of your sales deal rooms? Aligned is an official Pocus Signal Partner, providing Pocus customers with easy access to all of the deal risk and intent signals captured in their Aligned deal rooms. These signals can help reps move deals forward faster, as well as capture expansion opportunities and retain more customers. 

Saad offered a great example of the power of Aligned’s signals. In December, he and his team were about to close a deal that ultimately fell through. Saad knew the opportunity still had potential and kept an eye on his deal room. A few months later, Saad noticed that the account’s CEO had visited the deal room to review content, and he reached back out to kick off conversations. A sale that might have otherwise been lost is now moving to closed-won. 

Learn more about implementing signal-based playbooks

Curious about how Pocus can help you turn signals into revenue? Book time with a Signal-Based Selling expert on our team.

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