The Ultimate Guide to Buying Signals for Chief Revenue Officers

200% annual growth? It's more likely than you think.

You can double your revenue every year. I know because Proxycurl has done it for three years running. No VC funds, no grants, no angel investors, just pure bootstrapping and profitability.

Ever since I established Proxycurl in 2019, the company has achieved 200% revenue growth year over year. I plan to do the same with Sapiengraph, our Google Sheets add-on which is basically Proxycurl for non-developers.

In the beginning, we relied on cold emails to get to our first million. It was a grueling process. Successful, but grueling. Since then, we built our user base and refined our sales processes to evolve beyond that initial grind.

Over the past 12 months, we’ve hit 5M ARR and still remained profitable. I think it’s safe to say that we’ve gotten better at spotting buying signals that convert well.

I’m not interested in gatekeeping knowledge, so I’m going to tell you what worked for us and how we tracked them. Feel free to steal our playbook and try it out.

5M$ worth of buying signals

Knowing what drives your sales is crucial for CROs. In today’s fast-paced business environment, it’s easy to get lost in the noise of marketing trends, customer feedback, and competitive pressure. Having a clear understanding of what drives sales in your company will focus your efforts in the right places.

Since 2023, I’ve noticed that these are the signals that drove the highest percentage of our sales. If you’re a CRO looking to scale up your business, these are the ones that provide the most value.

Past Champions

Over time, our conversions have shifted to past users instead of cold calls and emails. Now, 31.7% of our sales come from past champions. Why wouldn’t it? After all, people will always recommend good products to others regardless of where they go.

Our former users are familiar with our products. They know how it works, its strengths and weaknesses. So when they move to a new company, they can quickly assess whether our tool fits the needs of their new company.

Here’s what’s fascinating: there’s a ripple effect of familiarity. The old workplace continues to use Proxycurl because they’ve already integrated it into their routines and workflows. Meanwhile, the new workplace starts to hear about our products and considers exploring it as a new tool. We don’t lose old clients, but we continue to get new ones.

After that first million, it didn’t take long before we realized that we could capitalize on people’s familiarity with our product to drive our sales momentum. Whenever one of our users changes jobs, we give them a little nudge and to see if they are interested in continuing our partnership.

Most of the time, they leap at the opportunity because they know that we can provide the value they need. I’ve always believed in investing in people and I think I’m not the only one. Tracking where people go and what they do is a huge part of reading buying signals.

How we do it

This might sound like an ad, but we can’t claim to be a great product if we don’t use our own API to track this. After all, I built Proxycurl with the goal of providing data solutions based on LinkedIn. It wouldn’t make sense if I built a tool, and then didn’t use it.

Job Change Monitor

I’d like to think that we made looking up people’s jobs changes super easy because we offer fully automated job change monitoring. Internally, we use the same thing, automating tracking for all of our key contacts in our user base using our own API.

We associate the LinkedIn URLs of our clients to our CRM (if we don’t already have it), and code Python to alert us if there are any changes in the recent 29 days. If you want to do the same, just make sure to specify ‘if-recent’ in ‘use_cache’. That way, it will refer to the most recent version if there is one. If data is older than 29 days, then the API will bypass the cache and look for new data.

import requests
api_key='YOUR_API_KEY' headers ={'Authorization':'Bearer'+api_key}
api_endpoint='https://nubela.co/proxycurl/api/v2/linkedin'
params={
 'linkedin_profile_url':'https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-mraz/',
 'use_cache':'if-recent'
}
response1=requests.get(api_endpoint,
params=params,
headers=headers)

# 30 days later, repeat the request
response2 = requests.get(api_endpoint,
params=params,
headers=headers)

# check for title differences in both profiles
if response1.json()['experiences'][0]['title'] != response2.json()['experiences'][0]['title']:
pass # This person changed roles!

if response1.json()['experiences'][0]['company_linkedin_profile_url'] != response2.json()['experiences'][0]['company_linkedin_profile_url']:
pass # This person changed companies!

Sapiengraph Extension

Or you can try out our Google Sheets extension for non-developers. We built Sapiengraph to be a low-code alternative to Proxycurl for people who don’t like staring at black screens.

All you need to do is add the Sapiengraph extension to your browser and enable it. Once it is enabled, you should see a small green button that says “Monitor Job Change” on LinkedIn profiles. Click that button and we will email you whenever this person changes their job. You can track up to 20 profiles for free.  

If you’re not a fan of extensions, you can also track job changes manually in Google Sheets. All you need is a list of profiles and the consistency to run the formulas every month. When you compare the data between last month and this month, you can easily spot who moved up in the ranks or who changed companies.

New product activation

First impressions matter. This is a universal truth and it applies to products too. You have a limited amount of time to turn new users into long term customers.

In my opinion, the first week after product activation is one of the most crucial; it is when most people decide to sign up or sign off.  You need to activate and acclimatize your users quickly so that you can acquire them for the long term. Users should be able to seamlessly integrate your product into their workflow as soon as possible. This means a gentle learning curve with detailed documentation.

If you can get people to use it, they are more likely to choose it. The extent of product usage during trial periods or the initial activation is a huge indicator of who’s likely to buy your product.

As of now, 22.1% of our sales comes from new product activation. I like to think that we got here by knowing our users and giving them what they want. Proxycurl was built by developers for developers. We let our users test it in Postman and when they’re convinced, they can sail through our easy onboarding process. Combined with our extensive API documentation and sample codes (shell and Python), users find it easy to get started and pick up momentum.

We track product usage for the first couple of weeks after product activation by keeping track of credits used. Essentially, the faster they use the credits, the more they’re using it. Users who purchase more credits within the same day are most likely to subscribe because they know what they need. These are the people we need to keep on your radar. We stay in contact with them and address any concerns they have as soon as possible. We also reach out to see if there’s anything we can do to help. By reducing the friction needed to get help, our prospective customers find it easier to slide into the flow of using our products.

How we do it

First of course, letting people play with our APIs in Postman.

Not everyone is interested in writing code right off the bat. Most people want to see what kind of data they can get before getting invested. We find that by letting people test the extent of our database, they’re more confident in committing to a long term plan.

1. Create Proxycurl account
2. Create Postman account
3. Paste Proxycurl API key into Postman and hit ‘Save’
4. Start using APIs
   

The Postman interface is simple. Check the box, type a value, hit send, get fresh data. Quick and easy, it doesn't take a lot to get people on board with it.

We also use Posthog to track how long it takes for people to go from registration to performing their first API call. On average, our users get Postman or Proxycurl up and running in about 10-15 minutes and start using our Endpoints immediately after. Some power users get going in under five minutes, which I think speaks volumes on how easy the process can be.

Next, we track how many times the user has topped up their credits in the first few days. We have flexible pricing plans for all sorts of users. Using Salesforce, we can deduce our most promising leads by looking at who quickly reloaded with PAYG credits in the beginning.

For us, we noticed that our converting users are those who use up their PAYG credits within 7-10 days. They either go on to subscribe to a monthly plan or our annual plans.  

We also track the number and type requests made by an account via our own private call logs. A couple months ago, there was a new lead who used the Person Profile Endpoint several hundred times in an hour. It turns out that she was working for a small HR company who was having trouble tracking applicants. We directed her to our other product Sapiengraph because we already have an Ultimate Applicant Tracking Sheets Template that makes tracking prospective employees so much easier.

New funding events

Think back to your first allowance as a kid. I’m betting your first thought wasn’t on how to stick it in a bank for the long term. No, I’m betting that your first thought was of candy, ice cream, and toys. You thought about spending it.

People earn money to spend it. It’s a truth that applies in both B2B and B2C outreach. The trick is to figure out who’s got the money to spend. One of the buying signals that we identified early on was funding events.

It doesn’t matter if these funding events are recently announced or recently completed; companies gather funds because they are in the market to buy something. You just have to prove that your product is worth their time and money.

When a company is securing funding, there’s a sense of urgency. They want to implement solutions that can deliver immediate value. These are organizations that want to expand their teams, explore new markets, and implement new solutions. That is why I consider fund acquisition a big buying signal.

In the past 12 months, 19.6% of our sales have been connected to new funding events. As soon as we find out about a new funding round from one of our ICPs, the sales team reaches out to these companies and highlights how Proxycurl can fulfill their data needs. We invite them to try out our products and let data take the wheel.

How we do it

We built an API that allows you to search for companies based on criteria. Of course we’re going to use it shamelessly. We use our own Company Search Endpoint API to generate a list of our ICPs who have recently gotten funded.

Here’s an example of how we look up companies that have been funded since the end of 2023 in Postman and in Sapiengraph.

Website visits

The internet made things easier for a lot of us. Gone are the days where you have to call up number after number to ask for information. There are a lot of ways to find what you need especially when it comes to online.

Which is why website visits are more than just numbers on a dashboard; they are a powerful buying signal that can reveal a lot about customer intent. If someone lands on your site, not a random click, it’s an indication that they’re interested in what you have to offer. Let’s be frank, it’s kind of hard to randomly stumble across a data company’s website anyway.

Safe to say, people click on us looking for something of value and we deliver. Why else would 15.5% of our sales come from website visits?

Data is how we understand visitor behavior. When we notice a spike in traffic to certain pages, we know those particular topics or pages resonate with our audience. With that knowledge, we optimize our content to align with interests and nudge people in the direction of micro-conversions.

In general, people come for our Free Reverse Email Lookup Tool and stay for the fresh data. A lot of our traffic comes from people who have an email they want to reverse search, or people who want to find LinkedIn data.

How we do it

We use a combination of Plausible, Postshog, and Looker Studio to see what’s happening on our websites.

Plausible offers us a birds eye view of who’s coming to our website and from where. Most of our accounts are from people based in the USA, so we focus our efforts on data in that region. There are seasons where our traffic spikes, usually at the end of the second quarter when people are looking to close accounts or bring in new people. Those are the seasons when we have to be on the top of our game to capture the interests of prospective customers.

We use Posthog to track people at a deeper level. We look at session recordings to determine where users leave the journey and where they’re most likely to be captured. Posthog can record heatmaps, page entries and page exits to tell us where our users drop by and where they drop off. The ability to refine our funnels also help us determine where users are feeling the most friction.

For SEO performance, we use LookerStudio to check which of our pages are getting the most clicks. They also provide a detailed breakdown of which queries are getting the most traffic. Based on these results, we can constantly refine our content and build our credibility through backlinks.

New hires and promotions

New people bring new ideas. The world is filled with competition and job security is never a guarantee. In the current fast-paced business environment, new employees are frequently driven by the urgency to make their mark and hit the ground running.

I’m not talking about C-suite executives in a company. While the CEOs and CFOs are the ones who have the final say in making major purchase decisions, they shouldn’t be your sole focus.

We often overlook the people closer to the ground. Mid-level managers or team leaders have more power than you think. They are the backbone of an organization and are in charge of executing strategies. They can influence how your products or services are implemented in the workflow, making them game-changers.

In March, we noticed that someone new had taken the place of senior analyst at one of our ICPs. We pitched Proxycurl to him in an email. After he tested our APIs for a month, he recommended us to his team. Two of his colleagues signed up for a free trial and by June, we had a new contract with his company.

In the same manner, we’ve gotten about 9.8% of our sales from watching out for new hires and promotions at our ICPs. You can as well.

How we do it

New hires and promotions are a little harder to track than the other buying signals I’ve listed. But if you have the time and effort, it’s worth the ROI.

I’m gonna walk you through how we do it.

New Hires

1. Use Jobs Count Endpoint API to check ICPs for new job openings.
2. Use Job Search to list jobs of interest.
3. Re-run the call monthly (Use 'use_cache': 'if-recent' in Python) to see if there’s a change in numbers or target jobs.

New Promotions

For new promotions, this is similar to Job Change Monitoring. The only difference is that we look up the role first to see who is in our target post, and then check back every month to see if the person associated with the role has changed.

1. Use Lookup Role to find who is in our target posts
2. Re-run the call monthly (Use 'use_cache': 'if-recent' in Python) to see if there’s a change in the LinkedIn Profile being returned.

Save time, money, and energy with better buying signals

There are a lot of articles about buying signals on the internet. If you dig deeper, you could probably find a list of 100 signals to track. That's 100 different places for you to spend your money, time, and energy.

If you want to double your revenue every month, you need to pick your battles.

We’ve tracked things like chat enquiries, abandoned carts, and keyword mentions across social media as well but I’ll be frank; they didn’t do much for us. I consider these buying signals weak at best, a sign that someone doesn’t know what they want or do not want.

One of the worst ones I can think of is social media engagement. Sure, getting likes, shares, and comments are always exciting. However the truth is that they don’t translate into actual sales.

To be frank, I think social media is a distraction. It’s easy to get caught up in seeing the numbers tick upwards and think they’re going to convert soon. In reality, people use social media to have fun. Let’s face it, very few people open up X at the end of a work day just to see a data company tweet. It’s more likely that they want to scroll through images of cute animals or funny memes.

Don’t get me wrong; social media has a place in building brand awareness in the long, long haul. I also think we need to be honest about the effort it takes to turn followers into leads. The ROI for that kind of engagement is painfully slow and often, just not worth it.

Consider carefully whether you have the time and resources to craft perfect new social media posts month after month. Honestly, small to mid-sized companies would benefit more from focusing on strategies that yield more direct results.

The same goes with chat enquiries. I’m referring specifically to live chats because despite the push towards AI and automation, people do still prefer a human connection. I dare to say that for most small to medium B2B companies, live chat is just another form of busywork. You put in a lot of effort and get close to zero in returns.

People will click on chat and say “Hi, I have a question” and then either get caught up with work and forget to reply, or they slowly realize that this isn’t what they wanted. If you’re in the B2B industry, 70-80% of your prospects already know what they need and they should be able to find the required information on your website. Whatever details they can’t find from your website can be addressed in an email during working hours instead of having a dedicated someone sit there 24/7 to answer questions. Trust me, your time and money is better spent elsewhere.

Buying signals that are bang for your buck

Conclusion

Growth is about doing more with less. It’s about maximizing the amount of return we can get with the least amount of resources.

Your time is limited. Your funds are limited. Your energy is limited. Few people can afford to go off on their own and explore every avenue at a leisurely pace. The truth is, our modern world moves at a breakneck speed. Last year’s cutting edge technology is next year’s obsolete dinosaur.

Don’t waste your time looking for signs that don’t become sales.

Use this playbook. I’ll see you at 200% next year.