Most scoring systems measure what is easy to measure: opens, clicks, page visits. Those are digital, therefore available. Available is not the same as predictive.
Why clicks disappoint
An email open tells you one thing: the subject line was tolerable enough to click. It says nothing about budget, authority, or whether the buyer already chose someone else and is comparing purely for procurement's sake.
The classic failure: a contact lands in the 'hot' segment because they opened three emails. On a call two weeks earlier they said they have an incumbent and are gathering comparison quotes. That never reached the system, so the system still treats them as a priority.
Scoring built only on digital behaviour measures politeness, not purchase intent.
Four signals that do predict
Signals with genuine predictive value are spoken in conversations and usually sound entirely ordinary.
- Budget named specifically. Not 'we have funds' but 'we have around a hundred thousand allocated this year.' The gap between those two sentences is enormous.
- A decision-maker identified by name. 'The board decides' is an absence of information. 'Anna, our COO, decides, and she already knows about this' is a signal.
- A deadline tied to an event. 'Sometime this year' means little. 'We need this before the March audit' is a deadline that enforces itself.
- A blocker stated plainly. A buyer who tells you what stands in the way generally wants it removed. A buyer with no concerns at all is often simply not engaged.
That last one is counterintuitive
It is worth pausing on objections, because intuition points the wrong way here. A call where the buyer raises three concerns feels worse than one where they like everything.
In practice it is usually the reverse. Concerns mean somebody is genuinely picturing the implementation, which is why they can see problems with it. A polite 'looks interesting, we'll be in touch' is most often a courteous decline.
Scoring should therefore treat a named blocker as positive information rather than penalising it. A deal with no objections after three conversations is usually not a deal.
Turning that into a number
The Signal Score in Luminote is a 0-10 rating computed after each call across four dimensions: budget, decision-maker, timeline and blockers. It lands in a custom field in your CRM, so you can sort the pipeline by it and build your own rules on top.
It does not replace behavioural scoring — it sits alongside it. A contact who clicks and scores highly on conversation signals is a completely different situation from one who only clicks.
Key takeaway
The best buying signals are spoken, not clicked. If your scoring cannot see them, it is measuring courtesy instead of intent.