Signal-based selling replaced spray and pray. What does the best version of it actually look like?

The clearest short statement of what changed: from ABM owned by marketing to account-based everything driven by shared signals, with the actual signal sources (product usage, firmographic, intent, technographic, hiring) and the stack named.

The new account-based playbook with Kyle Poyar (Growth Unhinged)

From Pocus by Kyle Poyar 12 min read

• Argues for ABX over ABM: the same motion but owned jointly by sales, marketing and product rather than siloed in marketing.
• Stack five signal types: product usage, firmographic, intent, technographic, and growth signals like job posts and funding.
• Names the working stack as Clay, Keyplay, Sales Navigator, Warmly, Pocus and Parabola.
• Use AI at top and middle of funnel (fit, research, personalization) and keep humans for sales-ready accounts.

The build order, stage by stage: TAM and stakeholder mapping, account research, CRM cleanup and enrichment, then signal tracking. Note that the unglamorous data hygiene comes before any clever play, which is exactly where most teams skip ahead.

How to build a modern ABM engine

From Growth Unhinged by Dan Rosenthal 20 min read

• ABM is worth it at roughly $50k-plus ACV with an addressable market under 20,000 qualified companies.
• Your target account list should capture 90 percent or more of TAM to work properly.
• A full TAM map with account research easily costs $2,000-plus across data providers, Clay and AI credits.
• Order your AI qualification prompt exclusions first, then qualifying evidence, and expect 30-plus custom data points as CRM properties.

Settles the LinkedIn versus email versus phone argument with one team's real logs: 451,895 calls, 149,376 emails, 39,679 booked meetings, and the exact channel split behind them. Rare to see a vendor publish its own SDR numbers this openly.

State of Outbound 2026

From Cognism 30 min read

• Across 449,933 SDR calls the answered rate was 13.3 percent, nearly matching AEs calling warm at 14.4 percent.
• Email replies split hard by role: AEs at 28.38 percent versus SDRs at 8.98 percent, against a ~5 percent industry average.
• 196,470 prospects produced 39,679 meetings, a 16.06 percent conversion with an 85.94 percent held rate and 3.36 touches each.
• Activity mix was 57 percent calls, 27 percent LinkedIn, 15 percent email.

Common Room's growth lead runs signal based outbound as his day job, so he gets specific about which signals are worth acting on, how fast you have to move after one fires, and who owns signal quality when a bad feed starts producing confident nonsense.

Matzen Shirley: LinkedIn Signal-based Outbound

On Marketers in Demand by Matzen Shirley 43 min