The Two Types of Intent Data
The first type of intent data is the type of sales intelligence that is mainly available and shows which accounts are actively researching third-party sites – called third-party intent data. A provider of this type of intent is (among others) G2.
When an account actively looks at your software and that of competitors, G2 marks this activity as high on intent.
Another type of intent data is the information collected directly from your prospects and their willingness to buy. This is called first-party intent data. It neatly captures their activities and interactions with your brand and helps sellers understand how to move the needle and turn this activity into a sale.
What Is First-Party Intent Data Exactly?
First-party intent data is information about a person’s behavior online and in your pipeline. They are based on behavioral insights that indicate when best to approach a prospect, in what way, and in what product or service they are most interested.
The power of intent is that it allows salespeople to prioritize the prospects that show the most engagement, for example, based on different triggers.
Example triggers for intent:
- Visits on your pricing or demo page
- Downloading various resources
- Frequency and time spend on web pages
- Levels of engagement on emails, calls, meetings,…
- Sharing content with other people
This can then be ranked by importance. Suppose you never use email and don’t have any white papers to download. In that case, you can lower their importance in the calculation, giving you more accurate intent data for your specific business.
What Are the Benefits of Intent Data?
One of the biggest benefits of intent data is the increase in conversion rate and having insight into how invested your prospects are, even when you are not in a conversation with them.
Intent data, along with artificial intelligence, ensures that you meet the buyer where they are and never lose deals because you don’t know when and how the prospect will contact you. This gives you a huge advantage over your competitors.
Meet the Buyers Where They Are
Most B2B buyers are halfway through their purchase cycle when they ask for more information or request a meeting with your team. With intent data at hand, your salespeople can better lead them to the decision without being pushy. You can sufficiently engage them with what they respond to most. This helps you to:
- Speak to your customers before they approach you
- Better tailor your messaging
- Build visibility during their buying process
- Create more relevant content
- Coordinate with intent data
Intent data in your cadencing allows you to personalize your outreach. It allows you to monitor all channels and customize buyer journeys. No more emails with: “have you been able to view the previous pdf?”. Now you can engage in different ways with a multi-channel approach and personalize, minus the effort.
How Will A Seller Improve With Intent Data?
Sellers can improve their approach in several ways, all resulting in more efficient and thoughtful reps. By understanding a buyer’s interests and needs, sellers can tailor their messages and offer relevant solutions that meet their requirements. Preparing their emails and pitches will be easier than before and could even take them less time to prepare.
Because of first-party intent data, you could also prioritize the prospects based on their interaction with your company. By focusing on the most qualified leads, sellers can improve their conversion rates and optimize their sales funnel easier than before. Timing goes hand in hand with this, as a seller’s outreach will always be aligned with the amount of interaction you get from a prospect at a particular time.
How Will Sales Managers Become Better Managers With Intent Data?
Sales managers can also use intent data to improve their management, which can greatly help inform sales coaching sessions. By analyzing intent data with their team and providing insights, sales managers can identify areas for improvement and coach their team on better engaging with potential buyers.
Intent data can also provide valuable performance metrics to sales managers, such as the number of engaged leads, conversion rates, and sales cycle length. By monitoring these metrics, sales managers can identify areas of their sales process that need improvement and adjust their strategies accordingly.
Forecasting is clearer than before, as insights into the likelihood of deals closing are based on potential buyers’ behavior. Sales managers can make more accurate predictions than before. Complimentary to forecasting would be the competitor analysis in case of the use of third-party intent data. Third-party intent data can provide insights into the buying behavior of competitors. Using intent data from multiple sources, sales managers can better understand the competitive landscape and help their teams win more deals.
How to Use Intent Data in Sales
Modern sales teams use intent data to build a more effective go-to-market strategy and ensure they are talking to the right prospect at the right time, with the right level of personalization.
Companies that do not (yet) exploit this intelligence are limiting their options. Focusing only on revenue-generating activities in the current economic climate is more important than ever. While these teams often have to analyze interactions manually and hope they are talking to the right person.
Here are the core strategies in using intent data most effectively:
- Identify early buyer interest
Leveraging multiple intent sources can help your team capture and identify prospects early in their journey. - Personalizing communication
How often have you heard, “you call me at a good time”? Indeed, not very often. You will hear this more often with intent signals because you know exactly what someone is interested in when you talk to them. - Prioritizing prospects
Gone are the days of manual lead scoring models. If you choose an intent-driven system, they will crunch all the numbers for you and lead you to the right prospects every time. No two prospects are the same; that is where a point system fails for sellers. - Retaining customers
Account managers can also use real-time insights into your pipeline and activity to see what current customers are doing or whether they are exploring more of your solution. Never again will you be surprised by customers not renewing or comparing you to competitors.
Collecting First-Party Data for Sales Departments With Leadinfo
By gathering data on the intentions of potential customers from various sources and consolidating it into a single platform, you can streamline your sales process and make it more manageable. The intent data sources may include your internal customer relationship management (CRM) system, emails, and website activity.
You will receive an indication for each lead in your sales funnel using our lead scoring settings and the data we gather. This score will enable you to prioritize your leads and focus on the most promising ones, increasing your chances of closing deals.
Our extension allows you to collect information from emails and track customer activity in your inbox and CRM. Our website code is fully compliant and monitors website activity and forms, allowing you to automatically send leads to your pipeline and enabling your sales team to follow up quickly.
Why Shift From Sales Engagement or CRM to a Platform Like Leadinfo
Businesses looking to improve their sales process may consider shifting from a traditional Sales Engagement or CRM platform to a separate intent platform. With such platform, businesses can leverage intent data to identify and target high-intent prospects based on their online behavior and interests. This results in enhanced targeting and increased efficiency for sales teams, enabling them to achieve a higher return on investment.
Businesses can also improve engagement by tailoring messaging and content to the prospect’s interests and needs, resulting in higher click-through and conversion rates. Also, delivering relevant and personalized experiences can foster stronger customer relationships and increase loyalty.
Conclusion
Intent data is not always needed in every company. However, intent data is becoming increasingly necessary in companies selling complex products as it radically improves discovery. You glimpse the prospect’s mind before they have even said anything. Salespeople who use intent data start a mile ahead of those who don’t have access to that information.