Finding Buying Signals: Best Alternatives for Clay

In the world of B2B sales, the biggest difference between closing a hot lead and chasing a cold one often boils down to one crucial skill:

Can your team detect buying intent before your competitors even know there's interest?

Most sales and marketing teams are aware of this. They understand that spotting buying signals early gives them a huge advantage. But when it comes to actually capturing those signals, many find themselves tangled in tools and integrations.

Clay, a tool that’s made a name for itself among sales hackers and automation geeks. On the surface, it’s impressive. But once you're knee-deep in API tokens, GPT blocks, and 47-step workflows, you start to wonder if it’s solving your problem, or just creating new ones.

Let’s unpack the truth behind buying signals, and how to act on them the smart way.

What Exactly Are Buying Signals?

Buying signals are behavioral or firmographic cues that suggest a company is actively in the market for a product or service like yours. Think of them as digital footprints left by potential buyers who are inching closer to a decision.

Some of the most common and valuable buying signals include:

• A company listing job openings for roles relevant to your solution (e.g., hiring a RevOps Manager suggests readiness for sales automation tools)

• Frequent visits to your pricing, features, or case study pages

• Recently announced funding rounds or expansion plans

• Technology stack changes, like adding Salesforce or switching away from a competitor

• Leadership changes like a new CMO or Head of Sales

• Engaging with competitor content or similar tools on LinkedIn

These aren't just random data points. They are the patterns. When used correctly, they can give your team a competitive edge. This helps you prioritize who to talk to, what to say, and when to reach out.

For example, let’s say your SaaS tool helps e-commerce companies scale operations. If you notice a company just raised a Series B, is hiring an Operations Lead, and recently added Shopify to their stack. You have a strong signal that they’re scaling and might need you.

But how do you pull this together without spending hours on LinkedIn and Crunchbase every day?

How Clay Users Try to Find Buying Signals?

Let’s give credit where it’s due: Clay is powerful. It offers advanced data enrichment, integrations, and automations. Here’s what most Clay power users do when trying to surface buying signals:

1. Use third-party APIs (like LinkedIn Jobs or Crunchbase) to pull in raw data

2. Use Clearbit or BuiltWith to enrich company profiles and tech stacks

3. Add custom GPT blocks to interpret intent from job descriptions or news articles

4. Write scoring formulas to prioritize leads based on relevance

5. Filter everything into Google Sheets or CRMs using webhooks or manual exports

6. Repeat for every new signal type or buyer persona

Is this impressive? Yes, but it’s also incredibly manual, fragile, and time-consuming.

Most Clay users are juggling multiple tools, browser tabs, and spreadsheet formulas just to answer one simple question:

Is this company worth reaching out to?

And when you add up the hours it takes to build, test, and maintain these workflows, plus the costs of all the APIs and tools involved. You’re looking at a serious investment of time and money.

Why Clay Is Overkill for Most Revenue Teams?

Let’s break it down. While Clay can technically do a lot, that capability often becomes a burden for teams without a full-time RevOps engineer. Here's what many teams end up dealing with:

Problem	Reality in Clay
Manual Setup	Each signal requires its own workflow, with custom APIs and logic
API Limitations	External tools like LinkedIn or Clearbit throttle requests or charge extra
Workflow Fragility	If any source changes format, the workflow breaks
Delayed Insight	Signals are available only after all enrichment + scoring is done
Data Silos	Output often lives outside your CRM in Google Sheets or custom dashboards

Even if your team pulls it off, it becomes a full-time task to maintain and that is not scalable.

Over time, many teams using Clay hit a wall. They start with ambitious workflows but quickly realize they’re spending more time debugging pipelines than actually generating pipelines.

This approach may work for data-savvy sales hackers, but for most GTM teams, it’s simply not practical.

Meet CuRA: Buying Signals in 3 Clicks, Not 30 Steps

CuRA is built for teams that want results, not spreadsheets and setup guides.

Here’s how CuRA delivers instant buying signal intelligence:

• Pre-Built Buying Signal Models: From funding rounds to job postings and tech changes, all buying signals are tracked natively and updated in real-time.

• Real-Time Scoring: No formulas or API headaches. Just prioritized lead lists based on actual intent.

• No Setup Required: Define your ICP, and CuRA shows you exactly which accounts are worth pursuing.

• Unified Platform: All firmographic, intent, and contact data are housed in one dashboard and easily synced to your CRM.

It’s like going from assembling IKEA furniture to getting it delivered, pre-built and ready to use.

And because CuRA continuously refreshes and scores data, your team is always working with the most up-to-date, relevant signals without lifting a finger.

Who’s Already Using CuRA?

Sales Reps & BDRs

They use CuRA to:

• Get a prioritized list of accounts already showing intent

• Personalize outreach based on live triggers like funding or new hires

• Spend less time researching and more time booking meetings

Marketing Teams

They rely on CuRA to:

• Build audience segments based on real-time engagement

• Enrich existing companies in the CRM with real-time intent data.

• Sync high-intent accounts into retargeting and email nurture flows

RevOps Professionals

They love CuRA because it:

• Syncs intent data and lead scores directly into their CRM

• Eliminates the need for spreadsheets and cross-platform hacks

Real-World Comparison: Clay vs. CuRA

Let’s say your team wants to find companies that:

• Use HubSpot

• Just raised a $10M Series A

• Are hiring a Growth Lead

With Clay:

• Connect BuiltWith, Crunchbase, and LinkedIn Jobs via APIs

• Create custom scoring logic for relevance

• Deal with rate limits and formatting issues

• Manually export and clean up the final list

With CuRA:

• Define your buying signals in natural language or let AI define the buying signals for you automatically

• Get a curated list of high-intent leads ready for outreach

It’s that simple. No code. No waiting. No errors.

Stop Overbuilding, Start Selling

Clay is great for people who love building. But most teams don’t need a sandbox, they need signals that convert.

With CuRA, you don’t have to worry about APIs breaking or workflows getting outdated. Everything you need is already built-in and fully automated.

If your sales or marketing team wants to:

• Reach out only to accounts that are actually in-market

• Stop wasting hours on prospecting and scoring

• Spend more time having meaningful conversations

...then CuRA is your unfair advantage.

No code.

No maintenance.

Just warm leads, ready to engage.

Want to Try CuRA?

See for yourself how easy it is to find buying signals that matter.

👉 Book a demo 👉 Start using CuRA for free

Start closing more deals with less effort. Let CuRA do the heavy lifting.