Signals tell you who. Intros get you in.

By Shankar Ganapathy, Co-founder, Boomerang AI. Published November 12, 2026.

The 2026 State of B2B GTM report from Kyle Poyar and Maja Voje (300 software and AI companies, September 2026) describes a "GTM barbell": the teams winning are "exceptional at relationships and being exceptional at AI." (p.39)

Most 2027 plans fund one end. Signal-based outbound is the #2 place teams plan to increase investment, at 48%. Network and intros, the channel with the best ROI in the report, sits at 24%. (p.28)

That treats signals and relationships as rival channels. They work better as two halves of the same play.

What signals do well

Signals answer "who, and why now." The report shows which signals teams actually act on (p.30). For deals over $50K ACV:

• Content engagement: 49%
• Website visits: 38%
• Champion movements: 35%
• Leadership changes: 33%
• Product usage: 27%
• Third-party intent data: 24%

Signals narrow 5,000 accounts down to the 50 worth working this week. They do not tell you how to get a reply from someone who has never heard of you.

Where signals stall

A signal on its own usually becomes a cold email that mentions the signal. Buyers can tell. In the report's list of what did not work, respondents named things like "Cold email with superficial personalization" and agentic outbound sequences with "near-zero reply rate." (p.18) Agentic campaigns rank last of 16 channels for adoption, at 7%. (p.16)

The signal was right. The channel used to act on it was the weak link.

What intros add

An intro answers "how do we get in." It comes from someone the buyer already knows, so it skips the part where your message competes with every other vendor in the inbox.

That is why network and intros is the only channel rated "excellent odds of ROI" at every deal size in the report. (p.21) At Armis, executive meetings from warm intros converted at 3x their cold baseline. (case study)

Stack them

1mind, a Boomerang AI customer, runs both. Josh Carter, its Head of Revenue Operations, keeps a signals library that tracks things like how many sales engineers an account is hiring.

Boomerang AI maps the warm paths into the same accounts. An account with three warm paths and a live need goes to the top of the list.

Digideck takes it one step further and puts both ends of the barbell in one workflow. It connected Boomerang AI to Claude through the Boomerang MCP.

Claude queries 6,300+ customer and prospect relationships, adds public knowledge like parent companies and shared owners, and maps which customer knows which buyer. AI does the research; the relationship does the opening.

How to stack them yourself:

1. Let signals pick the account. Use the signals you already trust (champion moves, leadership changes, hiring, intent) to choose this week's accounts.
2. Check for a warm path before anyone writes a sequence. Who on your team, among investors and board, customers or partners, knows someone in the buying group?
3. Rank paths by evidence. Worked together and sat on a board together beat a LinkedIn connection.
4. Use the path. Ask the connector for an intro, or mention the shared connection in your own outreach.
5. Fall back to cold only when there is no path. Outbound stays in the plan. It just stops being the default.

A stalled deal is a signal too

Not every signal is about a new account. A buyer going quiet on an open deal is one of the clearest signals there is. Digideck uses relationships on roughly 40 open new-business deals: when a buyer goes quiet, reps find a customer the buyer knows and use that relationship to restart the conversation.

Signals need clean data

Signals only help if the people behind them are still there. During its proof of concept, Armis found that about 30% of the contacts it was targeting were no longer in their roles and 25% did not hold the right titles. It now keeps 1,700 key accounts current with the full buying committee, and has about 5 warm contacts per key account to work. (case study)

Champion moves are both

One signal is already a relationship. When a champion changes jobs, the signal (they moved) and the warm path (they know you) arrive together.

Over-$50K ACV teams act on champion movements 35% of the time, and $5K to $50K teams 31%. (p.30) The best response is rarely a new cold sequence. It is a note from the person who worked with them.

The barbell, balanced

If your 2027 plan has a line for signals and nothing for relationships, you are funding the half that finds accounts and skipping the half that opens them.

Read next: The intro paradox: the #1 GTM channel nobody plans to invest in and Why warm intros stop working after $10M ARR.

Sources

• 2026 State of B2B GTM report, Kyle Poyar and Maja Voje, October 2026 (N=300): pp.16, 18, 21, 28, 30, 39. https://stateofb2bgtm.com/
• 1mind case study: https://www.getboomerang.ai/customers/1mind-relationships-record-pipeline-weeks
• Digideck case study: https://www.getboomerang.ai/customers/digideck-claude-boomerang-mcp-abm
• Armis case study: https://www.getboomerang.ai/customers/scaling-smarter-inside-armis-agentic-ai-playbook-for-sustainable-pipeline-growth

Report figures are survey responses; quotes are from the report and our published case studies.