Tracking Buying Signals: What Clay and Lead Intelligence Detect

The question: who spots it, who interprets it?

A founder wants to know when an account changes situation: a new executive, a funding round, a hiring wave. Two tools answer, with two philosophies. This article compares only what is detected, how often, and who interprets. To tell whether a signal is real or a vanity signal, read B2B buying signal: telling the real from the vanity. For the method of signal-based prospecting, see Signal-based selling to transform your prospecting.

What Clay detects

The Clay documentation on custom signals, read on September 29, 2026, describes tools that track changes in your team's data sources on a recurring schedule. Clay offers prebuilt signals (new hires, promotions, job changes, LinkedIn brand mentions, news and fundraising) and custom signals on websites, social media, technology adoption, compliance changes or RSS feeds. Setup consists of picking the source, configuring it, setting the frequency, then optionally adding enrichments such as a Slack notification or a Salesforce update. Results arrive through enrichments attached to your tables, with a detection timestamp.

It is a workshop: flexible, but you design the flow and you decide what triggers an action.

What Lead Intelligence watches

When you create a mission, you choose the signals to watch. The engine scans them daily on the pool's accounts. Eight families exist: funding; hiring wave; new offer or product launch; repositioning or new market; leadership change; partnership; news, certification or public tender; and technology migration. Four are on by default: product launch, hiring, leadership change and funding. You can add up to six more, written by you, for events specific to your market.

The signal is attached to the account and explains why to act now. A signal without a source link is not delivered as proof. A daily briefing can be sent to you by email or Slack at the local hour of your choice.

Who interprets the signal

A job change does not mean a buying need. In Clay, interpretation depends on the flow you built. In Lead Intelligence, the tool links the signal to the account and proposes an action, but you review every action before sending. The rule is the same whatever the tool: treat each signal as a hypothesis, check its source and date, and write only if the link to your offer can be stated in one sentence.

Choose Clay if you have a technical or RevOps profile that wants to compose its own triggers. Choose Lead Intelligence if you want a signal catalogue already tied to prioritized accounts and a reviewed action, without building a flow.