October 4, 2025 | Read online​

Using Your Inbound Signals to Fuel Strategic Outbound

by Kevin 'KD' Dorsey

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If you’ve been in the trenches of B2B the last 12 months, you’ve felt it.

Inbound doesn’t hit like it used to.

Cost per lead? Up.
Connect rates? Down.
Zero-click searches? Eating your lunch.

And yet, walk into most companies and you’ll still find the same broken setup:

• Marketing runs inbound.
• Sales runs outbound.
• Two different universes. Two different dashboards. Two different sets of KPIs.

They never talk. They never leverage each other.

And here’s the punchline: your best outbound play is probably already sitting inside your inbound funnel.

Why the Old Playbook Broke

Inbound used to be the dream. Throw up a blog post, toss out some gated content, spend a little on ads - boom, pipeline.

Not anymore. Buyers are smarter, channels are noisier, and competition is brutal.

Here’s what’s changed:

• Attention fragmentation. Your buyers are bouncing between LinkedIn, G2, Slack communities, and podcasts. By the time they hit your site, they’ve consumed 5 other vendors’ content too.
• Research-first behavior. 70%+ of the buying cycle now happens before a rep is ever looped in. Prospects are ghost-shopping you long before you know they exist.
• Buying committees. It’s no longer one decision maker—it’s 6–10 people weighing in. Inbound usually only catches one of them.

Inbound is not dead. It’s just not enough on its own.

Outbound isn’t dead either. But it’s damn near impossible if you’re just firing off cold emails into the void.

The game now? Merging inbound + outbound into one GTM motion.

The Hidden Gold in Your Inbound Signals

Every click, download, or page visit is a buying signal. And yet, most teams ignore it.

Let’s make it concrete:

• Whitepaper download → That’s a prospect raising their hand to say, “We’re working on this problem right now.” Your outbound team should be building lookalike lists around that exact pain point.
• 3 visitors from the same company hitting your pricing page → That’s not casual browsing. That’s a buying committee forming in real time.
• Competitor comparison page visit → They’re not just curious. They’re in evaluation mode today. And you’ve got a sneak peek at what objections are coming.

Inbound signals are a treasure map. The problem is, too many companies never follow it.

What Most Teams Get Wrong

I see the same mistakes over and over:

1. Treating inbound and outbound like enemies. Marketing guards inbound leads like “theirs.” Sales reps pound cold accounts with zero context. Nobody shares data.
2. Surface-level follow-up. SDRs get an inbound demo request and send a generic “Thanks for booking!” email without digging deeper into why that prospect came in.
3. Ignoring the buying signals. That whitepaper download? That pricing page view? It just gets logged in HubSpot and dies there.

Meanwhile, the best prospects are literally telling you what they care about—and your reps are still sending “just checking in” emails.

Outbound with Context (a.k.a. How to Stop Spamming)

Here’s what happens when you connect inbound + outbound:

Instead of cold outreach into the void, you’re reaching out with context.

Example:

That’s not spam. That’s service.

It’s timely. It’s relevant. And it lands because it’s built on real buying behavior, not guesswork.

Why This Matters Right Now

The average B2B buyer is getting hit with 120+ emails a day. They don’t have time for “hope you’re well” or “circling back.”

But you know what they do have time for?

A message that proves you understand exactly what they’re working on.

This is why inbound + outbound needs to be one motion. Not separate funnels. Not “marketing owns this, sales owns that.”

One engine.

• Inbound provides signal.
• Outbound provides scale.
• Together they provide revenue.

How ZoomInfo Powers the Merge

Let’s keep it real - this whole strategy falls apart without data.

It’s one thing to know someone downloaded your ebook. It’s another to know who else at their company is engaging, who sits on the buying committee, what other tech they’re evaluating, and what signals the rest of the market is giving off.

That’s where ZoomInfo’s GTM Copilot changes the game.

Instead of random cold outreach, your reps are armed with:

• Company-level intent data (who’s in-market right now)
• Contact-level triggers (who downloaded, visited, or searched)
• Buying committee insights (who else you need to involve in the deal)
• Market-wide trends (signals beyond just your site traffic)

Outbound stops being a guessing game. It becomes a continuation of a conversation the buyer already started - just in a different channel.

How to Apply This Week

Want to see this in action? Here’s a simple 4-step play you can roll out now:

1. Audit your inbound signals. List your top behaviors (downloads, repeat site visits, pricing page views).
2. Map signals to outbound triggers. For each behavior, define what outbound action it should trigger. Example: 3+ visitors from same domain → outbound sequence targeting 2nd-level stakeholders.
3. Train your reps on context-first messaging. Stop the “just checking in” emails. Start with: “I noticed you ___” or “Teams like yours use ___ when they’re evaluating ___.”
4. Use ZoomInfo to expand. Take that one inbound lead and build the full buying committee. Identify lookalike accounts showing the same intent.

Done right, this turns inbound into the most powerful outbound fuel source you’ve got.

Stop Thinking in Silos

Inbound and outbound aren’t rivals. They’re dance partners.

Inbound tells you who cares.​
Outbound makes sure you reach them (and their whole team) before your competitors do.

Your inbound funnel is already full of signals. The only question is: are you listening?

Because the companies that are?
They’re not complaining about “inbound being down.”
They’re building pipeline while everyone else is still arguing about attribution models.

Does your team already connect inbound signals to outbound plays, or are you still running them as two separate games?

KD

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