In 2014, when I was building social selling programs at LinkedIn, the typical B2B buyer contacted a salesperson early in their process. They had a problem, they Googled a few solutions, and they reached out to three vendors. The sales cycle started when the buyer picked up the phone.
None of that is true anymore.
Today's B2B buyer is 60-70% through their decision process before they ever speak to a vendor. They do not want a demo. They do not want a discovery call. They want information that helps them make a better decision. And they gather that information through digital channels you may not even know you appear in.
The question is not whether your buyers are researching you digitally. They are. The question is whether you are capturing the signals they leave behind.
The Five Stages of the Digital Buyer Journey
Every B2B buyer follows a predictable path. The stages are universal. The signals at each stage are specific. Learn to read them, and you know exactly when and how to engage.
The buyer encounters your content in their feed, in search results, or through a colleague's share. They read it. They might like it. This is the first signal — someone in your target audience has become aware you exist. Track content engagement from your ICP and log it.
The buyer visits your LinkedIn profile. They are checking your credibility, your experience, and whether you are worth their time. A profile view from someone who engaged with your content is not curiosity. It is evaluation. This is the single most actionable signal in social selling.
The buyer saves your post or article for later reference. This means your content passed the credibility check and was valuable enough to keep. Someone who saves your content has already decided you know what you are talking about. They are building a case for why they should reach out.
The buyer leaves a comment that goes beyond “Great post.” They ask a question, share a perspective, or add their own experience. This is the verbal hand raise. They are not just consuming your content — they are participating in the conversation you started.
Either they reach out to you directly, or you reach out to them with full context from their engagement history. At this stage, the conversation is not cold. It is the natural conclusion of a relationship that has been building through signals.
“A profile view from someone who engaged with your content is not curiosity. It is evaluation.”
— Koka Sexton
Why Traditional Sales Misses These Signals
Traditional B2B sales runs on a different model entirely. It starts with a lead list. Sales development reps call down the list. They qualify based on budget, authority, need, and timeline. The conversation is cold because the context is absent.
This model worked when buyers did not have access to information. They needed a salesperson to explain the product, walk through features, and justify the price. But today, the buyer already knows your product, your competitors, and your pricing before you know they exist.
The salesperson who reaches out with a generic “I see you are in [industry], would you be interested in [solution]?” is offering information the buyer already has. They are adding zero value to the conversation.
The salesperson who reaches out with “I noticed you saved my article on pipeline attribution last week — what specific metric were you trying to improve?” is starting a real conversation. They are referencing the buyer's demonstrated interest. The value is in the context.
The digital buyer leaves a trail that tells you exactly when they are ready to talk. The challenge is not finding buyers. The challenge is building a system that captures the signals they are already sending.
The Cost of Missing Signals
Here is a number that should concern every B2B leader: the average B2B sales cycle now involves 6-10 decision-makers, each of whom conducts independent digital research before the group ever speaks to a vendor. That means for any given deal, you have up to ten people forming opinions about your company based on what they find online, and they are doing it without your knowledge.
If you are not capturing the signals these individuals leave behind — the profile views, the content engagements, the search behavior — then you are flying blind through the most important part of the buyer journey. You do not know who is researching you. You do not know what they care about. You do not know when they are ready to talk.
And here is the part that really bothers me: the data already exists. LinkedIn shows you who viewed your profile. It shows you who engaged with your content. It shows you who commented and what they said. The signals are sitting in your notifications tab right now. The only missing piece is a system for capturing them and acting on them with consistency.
Building Your Signal Intelligence System
You do not need complex technology to start capturing buyer signals. You need three things: content that generates signals, a process for tracking engagement, and a cadence for following up with context.
Start with content. Publish material that is useful to your specific buyer. Not thought leadership for the industry. Useful frameworks for the person who signs the check. When someone from your target audience engages, note it. When they view your profile, prioritize it. When they comment substantively, start a conversation.
This is the system I built when I created my approach to social selling. The foundational insight was that buyer behavior is data — and data can be systematized.
The three-touchpoint rule provides the engagement framework: three meaningful interactions before any ask. The buyer engages with your content (touchpoint one). You engage with their content (touchpoint two). You comment on a shared connection's post (touchpoint three). Then, and only then, do you reach out directly.
The digital buyer is not hiding. They are signaling. Every profile view, content save, and comment is data telling you who is in-market. The companies that win are the ones that build systems to capture those signals — not the ones with the biggest ad budgets.
What I Actually Think
Here is my contrarian take: most B2B companies are over-investing in outbound and under-investing in signal capture.
I see it everywhere. Teams spending six figures on Sales Navigator licenses, intent data platforms, and SDR headcount. Meanwhile, nobody on the team is publishing content that generates signals. Nobody is tracking who engages. Nobody is following up with context.
The result is absurd: companies are paying to generate demand through cold outreach while ignoring the demand that already exists in their LinkedIn notifications.
When I was at LinkedIn, I saw the internal data on how B2B buyers actually behave on the platform. The average B2B buyer views 7-10 vendor profiles before ever contacting sales. They engage with 5-7 pieces of content from vendors they are considering. And yet most vendors never notice any of this activity.
The companies that will win the next decade of B2B sales are not the ones with the biggest outbound teams. They are the ones that build signal intelligence systems that capture the demand buyers are already expressing.
The Evolution of Social Selling: 2014 to Signal GTM
Social selling in 2014 meant having a complete LinkedIn profile and sending connection requests to prospects. It was better than cold calling. It was not sophisticated.
The signal intelligence approach works because it aligns with how buyers actually behave — not with how sales teams wish they behaved. Buyers research. They compare. They evaluate. They do all of this digitally, before a single conversation happens. The companies that capture those digital footprints are the ones that get the conversation. The companies that ignore them are the ones sending “just checking in” emails to prospects who already chose a competitor two weeks ago.
Today, social selling has evolved into Signal GTM — a systematic approach to generating, capturing, and converting buying signals across the entire buyer journey. The content creates the signal. The system captures it. The salesperson converts it. Every piece has a role, and the whole system works together.
For more on the specific signal definitions and how to act on each one, read my Social Selling 101 guide. You can also explore Harvard Business Review's research on modern executive presence and see how LinkedIn Sales Solutions thinks about the digital buyer journey.
