Do I need Sales Navigator to find buyer intent?
No. LinkedIn’s native Posts search is enough for the playbook. Sales Navigator improves filters; it does not replace phrase search, scoring, or the ICP gate.
Signals playbook
Find the buyers who already said it out loud.
Six signal types. One Posts search. A 1–5 score before you spend a send.
Sourcing from LinkedIn buying signals means you do not start from a cold list and hope. You search Posts for decision phrases — recommendation asks, switch intent, stack rebuilds — filter noise, score intent 1 to 5, then pass fit work to ICP Scoring. That is what the Signals specialist runs every day.
- Search decision phrases, not category firehoses.
- Six signal types cover almost every serious ask.
- Comment threads often beat the original post.
- Score 1–5. Engage the 4s and 5s the same day.
- Intent without ICP fit is still a skip.
- Signals finds the reason. The team finishes the pipeline.
The system
Four moves that catch most of the queue.
A workable manual cadence is about two hours a week. Beyond that, automate search and triage — not mass DMs.
- 01
Build narrow phrase queries
Combine an intent wrapper (anyone using, asking my network, alternative to) with your category, a competitor, or a pain phrase. Run several narrow searches instead of one broad topic search. LinkedIn caps depth per query; narrow queries also stay cleaner.
- 02
Filter to Posts, then Latest
Prefer Past week, or Past 24 hours when you are monitoring. Skip company pages, reposts, and hiring spam. Read the post and the comments before you treat a keyword match as a lead.
- 03
Mine the high-traffic threads
Pick five to ten tool reviews, founder rants, or newsletter posts in your niche. Prefer comments longer than about thirty words. A recommendation post with forty comments is often forty people who opted into the conversation.
- 04
Score 1–5, then hand off
Five is an explicit in-market ask. Four is strong evaluation or switch. Three is real pain with a softer ask. One and two are noise. Route fours and fives into ICP Scoring before Voice Writer drafts a word.
Signal types
Six shapes of buying intent.
A keyword match is a retrieval clue, not proof. Confirm first-person ownership, fit, and freshness.
| Type | What it looks like | Strength |
|---|---|---|
| Recommendation request | Asking my network… Can anyone recommend… | Highest |
| Tool evaluation | Anyone using X? Evaluating A vs B | High |
| Frustration / switch | Outgrown X. Alternative to X. | High |
| Stack rebuild | Building our RevOps stack from scratch | High |
| Budget / timing | Q2 budget approved. Decision by month end. | Highest when explicit |
| Problem statement | Reply rates tanked. Pipeline is dead. | Medium — needs ICP fit |
Search wrappers
Phrases that surface decisions.
Topics return marketing. These wrappers return people with a live problem.
can anyone recommend / asking my network
Explicit peer asks. Highest reply rate when the category is named.
what do you use for / anyone using
Evaluation language recruiters almost never write. Prefer these over looking for when selling a product.
alternative to / switching from
Switch intent with the incumbent named for you.
evaluating / looking for a [category] that
Shortlist stage, or an open ask when they have not named a competitor yet.
Which specialist
Six specialists. This one owns the step.
Named faces, not a prompt pack. The handoff is the product.
See the full teamPrimary
Signals
Finds LinkedIn posts by keyword and captures people who engage with your posts.
- ICP ScoringScores fit 1–5 with reasons before you spend a send.
- Voice WriterDrafts a first touch that references their exact words.
- Follow-upRuns the sequence under approval and safe ceilings.
Outcome: warm leads that become contacted people, then qualified conversations.
Questions
The ones operators ask.
How fast should I reply to a LinkedIn signal?
Score 5 within a few hours when you can. Score 4 same day. After about 48 hours on a quiet thread, move on.
What usually looks like a signal but is not?
Recruiter posts that reuse intent vocabulary, consultants describing a client’s problem, engagement bait, reposts, and old posts resurfaced by the algorithm.
How does Zevari’s Signals specialist use this?
It watches keyword post sources and engagement on your posts, then routes candidates into ICP Scoring. Outreach still waits on your approval.