TL;DR: A signal is something a buyer (or buying committee, or company) did that suggests they might want to talk to you. Replies, job changes, demo views, LinkedIn posts about your category, ad impressions, form fills — all signals. Every lead in your workspace got there because of one.
The model
Unstuck Engine doesn't ask you to upload a list of accounts and run filters on them. It starts from the other end: buyer behavior in the wild → signal → qualification → record.
Each signal carries four things:
- Who — the person or company the signal is about
- What happened — the action (replied, viewed demo, posted, changed job)
- When — a timestamp
- Where — the source (LinkedIn, your CRM, Smartlead, Vidyard, a custom webhook)
A signal alone is not a qualified lead. The signal's payload gets piped into your ICP and Persona rules; the record qualifies only if it matches. This is why signals + ICPs + Personas are inseparable — each on its own does nothing.
Why this matters
Most "lead lists" are stale within a quarter. Companies move, people change jobs, the contact data goes bad. A signal-first pipeline produces a different shape of lead — every record has at least one recent observed behavior tied to it. That's what makes outreach work: the message can reference the signal.
Signals also feed back into themselves. Reply rate, meeting rate, signup rate, and LTV per signal type flow into the Insights view. If Demo Viewed consistently converts 3x better than Page Followers, your enrichment waterfall and ranking get reweighted automatically.
What you actually do with signals
Three things, in increasing depth:
- Turn signals on. Each signal type has its own row on the Signals page. Toggle status to Running, point it at a source (LinkedIn account, CRM, sequencer), and it starts capturing.
- Wire signals to autoqualify. Each signal's
Autoqualifytoggle runs every captured record through your ICP / Persona rules automatically. Off, and you see the captures but no qualification runs. - Trace records back to signals. Open any lead detail — the
Activitypanel shows the signals that flagged this person, in order, with timestamps and the underlying source.
What's NOT a signal
Things that look like signals but aren't, in the Unstuck Engine sense:
- A firmographic field on a static list. "Companies with 50–500 employees" isn't a signal — it's a filter you'd apply inside an ICP or audience.
- An aggregate trend. "More activity in EMEA this quarter" is reporting, not a signal. Signals are per-record observations.
- A guess. Predicted intent without an observed behavior isn't captured as a signal. The system always traces back to a real event.