The highest-intent leads in B2B aren't searched for. They surface as life events: someone changed jobs, got promoted, raised funding. Each of those moments creates a 30-90 day decision-making window.
This article covers how to extract those signals from LinkedIn at scale.
The 5 signal types worth tracking
- Job changes (highest intent). Someone moved companies. New environment, new vendors, new tools.
- Promotions. Bigger remit, often new budget. Reorganization opportunities.
- Funding announcements. Series A/B/C means expansion budget. Especially valuable for sales-tools, marketing, HR vendors.
- Hiring spikes. Companies adding 5+ headcount in a function are scaling that function. Tools follow.
- Company expansions. New office, new market, new product line. New systems needed.
Why signals convert at 25-40%
- Time-sensitive. The decision window is open NOW, not generally.
- Context-rich. Your message can reference the specific event ("Congrats on the new role at X").
- Low competition. Most outbound is generic; signal-based outbound is precision.
- Acknowledged-as-relevant. Recipients understand why you're reaching out now.
Which plan you need for this
Worth being straight about this before you read further, because signal work sits higher up the plan ladder than the other sourcing methods.
- Free and Basic give you manual extraction: run a search yourself, import the results, export the CSV. You can do signal-based prospecting this way, you just have to spot the signals yourself.
- Diamond Pro adds auto-sourcing across all eight methods, so searches run on a schedule and feed your audiences without you opening LinkedIn.
- Diamond Plus adds Signal Radar, the intent monitoring that watches for these events continuously and surfaces them as they happen.
If you are testing the approach, start manual on the free plan. The technique works before the automation does, and finding out whether signals convert for your market costs nothing.
Finding signals manually, before you automate
Every one of these events leaves a public trace you can find by hand.
- Job changes. LinkedIn surfaces "started a new position" updates in your feed and on company pages. The People tab of a target company, sorted by recency, shows recent joiners.
- Promotions. Same mechanism, different wording in the update. These are easy to miss because they generate less fanfare than a move.
- Funding. Announcement posts get heavy engagement, which means the reactor and commenter lists on those posts are full of people in that company's orbit.
- Hiring spikes. A company posting five roles in one function is scaling it. Their jobs page tells you before any database does.
- Expansions. New office or market announcements, usually posted by the company page rather than an individual.
Manual signal hunting is slower but it teaches you which signals actually convert in your market, which is knowledge worth having before you pay to automate it.
Why the window closes so fast
Signal-based outreach works because you arrive while a decision is genuinely open. A new head of department is choosing tools in their first month, because after that the stack they inherited becomes the stack they own, and changing it means admitting the previous choice was wrong.
The same logic applies to funding. Budget approved in month one gets spent on things already on the list. By month four it is committed. You are not trying to be persuasive, you are trying to be early.
This is also why generic follow-up sequences perform badly here. The signal is the reason for the message. If you are still sending in week six, the reason has expired and you are just another cold email with a stale opening line.
What goes wrong
- Congratulating without a point. "Congrats on the new role" with no follow-on is the most-ignored opener on LinkedIn, because everyone sends it. The congratulation buys you one sentence, so make the next one count.
- Wrong person at the right company. A funding round is a company signal, not a person signal. You still have to work out who owns the budget.
- Treating every signal as equal. A job change into a buying role is worth ten hiring-spike signals. Rank them rather than working the list in date order.
- Automating before validating. Signal monitoring on the wrong ICP produces a fast, tidy stream of irrelevant leads.
Privacy and GDPR
Everything here is public: profile updates, company announcements, job listings. There is no private data involved and nothing is unlocked that a person could not see by browsing.
Under GDPR, contacting someone about their professional role can rest on legitimate interest, provided you identify yourself, are honest about why you are reaching out, and stop when asked. Referencing the signal openly handles the second point, which is another reason the direct approach works better than a vague one. Data is processed on EU infrastructure and your prospects stay in your account.
Step-by-step in Leadsforlinked
Step 1: Configure signal types
In the Leadsforlinked dashboard, open Sources and choose which signal types to track: job changes, promotions, funding, hiring and expansions. Scheduled sourcing is a Diamond Pro feature; on lower plans you run the same searches manually.
Step 2: Set ICP filters
Filter signals by: industry, company size, geography, role function. Without filters, you get noise.
Step 3: Schedule daily harvest
On Diamond Pro and above, Leadsforlinked checks the signal sources daily and adds matching events to your audiences automatically. Each entry carries the person, the signal type, the date and the profile data. On free or Basic, run the same checks yourself and import the results.
Step 4: Outreach within 7 days of signal
The window is short. Day 1-7 reply rates are 35-40%. Day 30+ drops to 12-15%.
Templates by signal type
Job change:
Hi {firstName}, congrats on the new role at {company}. First 30 days are usually the busiest. We help new {role}s ramp on {workflow} fast. Open to a 15-min call?
Funding:
Hi {firstName}, congrats on {company}'s {Series X round}. Series {X} usually means scaling {function}. We help with {specific outcome}. Worth a chat?
Promotion:
Hi {firstName}, congrats on the promotion to {new title}. Bigger remit usually means rethinking the {tool stack}. We work with several {peer companies}. Want a 10-min call?
Tap into time-sensitive signals.
100 free leads on signup, no card. Manual extraction works on every plan; scheduled auto-sourcing starts at Diamond Pro and Signal Radar at Diamond Plus.
Start freeFAQ
Where do these signals come from?
LinkedIn's "What's happening" feed, profile activity, company page updates, and public job-change announcements. All public data, scraped at human rates.
How fresh is the data?
Daily refresh. Signals from yesterday land in your dashboard this morning.
Do I need a paid plan to do signal-based outreach?
No. Manual extraction works on the free plan with 100 leads and no card. What paid plans add is automation: scheduled auto-sourcing from Diamond Pro, and continuous Signal Radar monitoring from Diamond Plus.
How long is a signal worth acting on?
Roughly the first week for job changes and promotions, and the first month or two after a funding announcement. Past that the event stops being a reason to make contact and the opening line reads as stale.
Does anyone get notified that I tracked a signal?
No. These are public profile and company updates, and nothing is sent to anyone during extraction.