Why Signals-Based Prospecting Is Pointless In 2025 (And What To Do Instead).

If you’ve spent any time on LinkedIn you’ve probably seen advice espousing the power of signals based prospecting. The idea is simple and appealing. Figure out a “signal” that shows a business or a prospect is ready or likely to buy from you.

Here are some common example: Target companies with custom messaging who have just received their Series-B Funding or Target companies who are increasing their headcount.

It’s an appealing promise but does it actually hold up in practice? I won’t keep you in suspense: I don’t think so. I think this strategy worked really well for a few years, but then everyone started doing it and it quickly lost its effectiveness. Signals are useful and can help you build a qualified list of prospects, but from a messaging perspective they are not particularly useful in 2025 and they are definitely not a magic solution that will automatically result in new customers.

In my opinion, signals-based prospecting fails for three simple reasons:

1. Fog of War—the idea that we never really know what’s going on in a business until we ask.

2. Contrived—this approach to prospecting relies on a handful of possible “signals” that reduce a person to an activity or a particular state based on a very presumptive read of their business. The examples people give are always so obvious and fulfilling but completely impractical in practice.

3. Market Sophistication—getting a signal based outreach the first time is a very cool feeling. Twenty years ago a prospect might have said: “Wow, I can’t believe this person researched me and discovered this!” But now that same prospect has seen a signals-based approach dozens if not hundreds of times.

Signals-based prospecting is what I call a “pseudo-conversation”—at first glance it seems like a reasonable and effective approach until you actually sit down and try it and see how flat it is. Instead of just having a conversation with the prospecting you’re talking at the prospect. So why do people still do it? In my opinion they see results because of the sheer volume of outreach they are doing. But they are probably getting replies in spite of a signals-based approach rather than because of it.

Instead, I would recommend stripping down your approach and simplifying completely. Instead of trying to logically deduce what might be happening inside a company or a prospect’s life—just ask them. Make a clear and direct ask and let people self-triage.

We live in an information age where buyers can self-educate. Yesterday I saw a video of a car-buyer in Texas who purchased a Tesla and the car drove itself out of the factory and into the purchaser’s driveway—by itself.

Our job is not to do make assumptions about the state of a buyer’s life, it’s simply to get in front of them with a clear question and clear USP that can help them solve a problem. For most businesses, TAM (total addressable market) is already much smaller than they think—artificially shrinking it to a pursue a signals-bases strategy in order to drive messaging is just not effective or efficient.

So what does this look like in practice?

1. Write a conversational message to a prospect. Not a BS, carbon-copy signals-based email they’ve seen a million times but an actual conversational message where you demonstrate you’re a human being. Make a genuine observation about them or your business and then tie it back to yourself as a human being.

2. Don’t treat conversations over email like these rational logic puzzles. People, even in the C-Suite, buy on emotion and justify with logic. Your USP (unique selling proposition) ideally moves people emotionally and then educates on the back-end.

3. Further to point two, don’t spend much of your time educating. You can agitate a problem that you deal with, but don’t presume they are dealing with it. You don’t need to set up a case or a logical chain of thought that leads them to a conclusion—this is one of the great sins of signals-based prospecting and messaging. As I alluded to above, it creates an extremely contrived and repellant scenario that clients will find repulsive and presumptive.

4. Let people self-identify and self-triage—your job is to connect emotionally, while being as clear and as credible as possible. You don’t need to be clever and you don’t need to build a logical airtight case, they can connect the dots. Give your prospect credit. If people can watch complicated TV shows like Severance, they can follow the implicit premises of your USP and business argument.

In one sentence: focus on authentic conversations and speak to people the way you would want to be spoken to. In other words: instead of trying to connect with people based on a contrived signal that 99% of your competitors will be using, just actually connect with the person you are speaking to. Demonstrate that you’ve done your homework. Speak about their niche, tie it back to something you know—be human! Drop the logic and stop talking like a robot.

The great paradox here is that by simplifying your approach and going as direct as possible, you are going to have far more success than a so-called “strategic” and technology-driven approach. Scale and automation are the siren song of the 21st century—the real winners focus on the proven fundamentals.

A question you can ask yourself to apply this right away: What message would I actually respond to? What would feel human? What would feel natural? What would connect with me? And then focus all your energy and effort on writing that.