Buyer Intent for Sales: Strategies You Need to Know to Accelerate Revenue

Introduction

“You can’t hit a target you can’t see…” is a sales quote every rep is familiar with. We’ve heard it “ad nauseam” (until we’re tired of it) from sales managers and executives our entire careers.

This quote has come to represent everything from identifying target customers and overcoming objections to closing deals and hitting sales quotas. No matter what they’re referring to, they’re correct in the assumption that understanding the end state is key to unlocking a path to achieve it.

This is where buyer intent data comes in…

It’s like having a map that guides you through the complex landscape of your customer’s mind. Recognizing the buyer’s intent and taking action on it could lead to great deals, consistent sales and commissions, and rewarding customer relationships; ignoring them could lead to failure and missed (OR) lost opportunities.

Today’s sales intelligence solutions integrate buyer intent data that enables teams to identify signals indicating a prospect’s readiness to buy, allowing for a tailored approach that improves the sales process – which is what we’re going to cover today. Additionally, B2B intent data provides insights into businesses actively researching specific topics, enhancing sales and marketing strategies for user engagement and relationship building.

Key Takeaways

1. Unlocking Sales Success with Buyer Intent: Buyer intent is the key to recognizing when potential customers are ready to purchase. Leveraging property and best sales intelligence tools and analyzing account (firmographic, and technographic) data, and contact data, sales teams can craft tailored strategies that truly resonate.
2. Diverse Data Points for Enhanced Insights: Different tools track different data points, providing a comprehensive view of buyer intent. For instance, Convex tracks properties, accounts, and contacts in the US, whereas Cognism tracks those requiring GDPR in European markets. Leveraging these diverse types of intelligence and buyer intent data, sales teams can unlock valuable perspectives that personalize their outreach and refine their sales approach.
3. Supercharging Conversion Rates: Integrating buyer intent data with CRM systems and automating sales processes can significantly improve conversion rates and make sales efforts more efficient. This integration enables sales teams to personalize their communication tactics and increase the chances of converting leads.
4. Selecting the Best Sales Intelligence Tools: Choosing the best sales intelligence tools is crucial for enhancing sales processes. These tools help identify promising prospects, refine B2B sales strategies, and simplify decision-making for sales professionals by offering curated lists based on expert recommendations.

Understanding Buyer Intent for Sales

What is Buyer Intent?

Imagine that you’re on a mission to find the perfect customer. You’ve got a great product, but you need to find someone who’s ready to buy it.

Buyer intent data gives you the “signal” that someone is ready to purchase. By gathering hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of datapoints online you can gain a deep understanding of someone’s needs, their pain points, preferences, potential budget, timeline (or urgency), and much more.

Why is Buyer Intent Important for Sales?

Let’s go back to our map analogy for a second. Do you know how, in every pirate movie, the main characters either search for a map to find treasure or use that map to dig up the treasure? Buyer intent data is the same thing for sales. It’s like a GPS to what the customer wants. This knowledge helps sales and marketing teams create relevant strategies tailored to what potential buyers want.

Sales intelligence tools are the key to unlocking buyer intent.

Platforms like Convex leverage property, sales intelligence, and intent data to identify high-quality leads and refine sales strategies. Tools like LinkedIn’s Website Demographics feature enable targeted marketing, while sales intelligence platforms enhance B2B sales strategies by automating processes and providing competitive insights. Platforms like 6Sense and Demandbase use AI and machine learning to analyze buyer intent data and predict purchasing patterns. Sales intelligence software is essential for managing sales activities and optimizing strategies through accurate and real-time information.

Which brings us to our next topic:

Unlocking Buyer Intent Through Different Data Types

There are several “types” of buyer intent data that can help you boost sales. Behavioral intent data, firmographic data, and technographic data each provide unique insights into what consumers are up to.

Behavioral Intent Data: Understanding Prospect Engagement

Behavioral intent data illuminates a prospect’s needs, preferences, and engagement levels, offering key insights about their level of interest, unfamiliarity with areas, and progress in the buying journey. Recognizing sales buying signals is crucial in understanding prospect engagement, as these signals can lead to meaningful conversations with decision-makers.

For example, analyzing website interactions and potential whitepaper or other resource downloads can reveal a prospect’s level of interest in a particular product or service. Additionally, identifying buying signals in sales can enhance collaboration between sales and marketing teams, leading to more meaningful interactions with potential customers and increasing the chances of closing sales.

Firmographic Data: Segmenting Potential Accounts and Customers

Firmographic data helps us categorize potential customers based on things like their industry, company size, or where they’re located. This makes it super easy to target specific groups. When sales reps understand the roles of their potential buyers, they can create messages that really resonate with the key players in those companies.

Technographic Data: Revealing Technology Usage

Technographic data shows us what technologies or software solutions a company is using, which gives us a good idea of how ready they are for certain products or services. When sales teams dive into this data, they can spot gaps in tech usage and customize their solutions to fit what customers really need.

Unlock Sales Success by Recognizing Key Buying Signals

So you know that buying signals are like the secret sauce for sales, but how do you use them? Let’s take a quick look at our own tool, Convex, to show you how this works.

Say that you sell and service backup generators and your best customers are hospitals. You’ll start by:

1. Log in to Convex. Then, check the Signals (our proprietary buyer intent data) category to see who is ready to buy in your market.
2. Then, search for a hospital, contact name, job title, account name, property address, or tenants to identify who to contact.
3. With just two clicks, you can use Generative AI trained on their buying signals, as well as your own company and contact data, to send them an email or draft a script for a phone call.
4. Set up an automated follow-up or reminder, or add to your pipeline.

It really is that easy!

These data points are like hints that show a prospect is ready to convert and make a purchase. When sales teams can spot these signals, they can adjust their approach and messaging to connect with customers and help them take that buying leap.

For instance, when people check out review sites, it’s a sign they’re hunting for unbiased product feedback. Sales teams shouldn’t overlook this! Engaging these prospects and sharing extra info can build trust and create a positive vibe, which increases the chances of “sealing the deal.”

Also, keep an eye out for when prospects start asking for case studies or referrals—this means they’re trying to figure out how reliable and effective your company is. It’s a clear signal that they’re quite serious about purchasing.

When sales reps pay attention to these signals and tweak their strategies, they can really increase their chances of closing deals. This not only helps boost conversion rates but also improves overall sales performance by aligning better with what customers are looking for at each stage of their buying journey.

Integrating Buyer Intent Data with CRM Systems

Incorporating intent data into your CRM will greatly improve the entire customer lifecycle—but let’s start at the beginning:

You looked at the buying signal and sent the prospect a message. Now, what do you do with them?

This is where a customer relationship management (CRM) system vastly improves the experience over using a sales intelligence platform alone. Incorporating these two tools offers data enrichment that can greatly improve the detection of potential customers who are in the buying cycle.

By leveraging real-time behavioral insights, sales strategies can better align with buyer interest, allowing for more personalized communication tactics. When this integration is done effectively, it increases the chances of converting leads by ensuring interactions occur when potential buyers are most receptive.

Integrating and maintaining high-quality intent data within sales processes presents obstacles that could hinder its successful application to boost sales efforts. Utilizing CRM platforms eases these challenges by automating the gathering and processing of such data while enhancing precision in monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs)—ultimately boosting conversion rates and enhancing collective results from their selling endeavors.

Enhancing Sales Outreach with Buyer Intent

Sales teams can improve their conversion rates by understanding buyer intent and customizing their engagement strategy accordingly. Sales intelligence data plays a crucial role in this process by empowering sales teams to make informed decisions, automate processes, and deliver targeted messaging.

Through the analysis of behavioral, firmographic, and technographic information, a robust view of a prospect’s buying signals is achieved, thus boosting the efficacy of sales initiatives.

The insights garnered from intent data are instrumental in enabling sales personnel to identify prospects’ pain points and adapt their communication strategies appropriately.

By incorporating intent data into email marketing campaigns, companies can direct content towards leads with pinpoint accuracy based on individual preferences – this precision targeting tends to increase user involvement significantly.

Enhanced collaboration between sales and marketing teams via consistent dialogue and shared objectives surrounding buyer intent metrics fortifies overall alignment.

When messaging strategies are aligned between sales and marketing, customers have a smoother experience. This consistency makes their journey much better when they interact with both teams!

Predictive Analytics and Buyer Intent

Predictive analytics employs historical data to project future customer actions, allowing companies to better predict consumer desires and tendencies. Platforms like 6Sense utilize artificial intelligence (AI) and vast data stores to foresee shifts in user intent and purchasing patterns. Demandbase is another AI-driven tool that aids firms in detecting high-value prospects for focused engagement with tailored communications.

Lead Forensics specializes in uncovering the identities of unknown website visitors while delivering instantaneous insights into user behavior as they interact with a site’s content. In a similar vein, Leadfeeder identifies incognito users on websites, correlating them with established company profiles, which supports an increase in lead transformation efficiency.

By integrating these tools into their sales tactics, businesses can ensure more effective interactions with potential customers—leading to improved rates of conversion due to more accurately aligned promotional efforts.

Aligning Marketing and Sales Efforts

The synergy between sales and marketing teams improves lead quality and expedites the sales cycle. Through frequent collaborative meetings, both departments can exchange knowledge about consumer actions and market developments, guaranteeing a unified approach to their tactics. Employing intent data facilitates tailored interactions that maximize engagement with potential customers by addressing their unique behaviors and requirements.

Marketing departments benefit from using buyer intent information to fine-tune target audience identification, leading to more pertinent messaging, which boosts conversion rates. Incorporating technographic insights can advance account-based marketing techniques by enabling communications specific to each prospect’s technology profile.

When sales and marketing are synchronized using buyer intent data, customer acquisition expenses decrease significantly, and strategies for maintaining client loyalty improve.

Automating Sales Processes with Buyer Intent Data

Buyer intent data is a powerful tool for understanding what potential customers are looking for and can even automate much of the outreach process – but it doesn’t help anyone locked up in a server somewhere. With Google processing an average of 3.5 billion searches daily, this wealth of data provides a clear picture of consumer desires and needs. 

Think about the last time you felt sick—chances are, you “Googled” your symptoms to find out what could be wrong. This vast search data is collected anonymously and stored, offering invaluable insights into buyer behaviors.

Once enriched, this data becomes instrumental in lead generation.

Here’s how it works: by integrating buyer intent data into automated sales tools like sales intelligence software, businesses can create a more personalized experience for potential customers. These tools leverage the data to personalize communication and streamline sales processes, ensuring each interaction is relevant and timely. In essence, buyer intent data and automated sales intelligence work together to deliver highly personalized, efficient outreach that meets customers’ needs more effectively.

Case Studies: Successful Use of Buyer Intent Data

Convex was designed for commercial service providers. Our suite of tools, Atlas, Signals, and Engage, empower your sales reps to identify fresh, highly qualified leads, send them personalized messages, and close deals faster and more efficiently.

Emilie Gorzoch, Senior Director of Johnson Controls (JCI), uses Convex Signals to identify when prospects are “in-market” and ready to buy. This allows her sales team to leverage Convex’s property intelligence and buying signals to optimize outreach timing, improving sales efficiency by targeting the right customers at the right time and the importance of actionable data in sales strategy.

Convex Signals helps JCI focus on high-potential leads, increasing the chances of closing deals.

If you’d like to see the whole testimonial, click here to see the 2-minute video.

Choosing the Right Tools for Capturing Buyer Intent

According to G2, there are more than 85 tools dedicated to helping sales reps with sales intelligence, such as intent data. Selecting the right sales intelligence tool is critical for capturing buyer intent data.

The Top Buyer Intent Platforms on the Market

These 14 tools are recognized for their effectiveness in providing buyer intent data and are highly rated on review sites like G2 and Capterra.

1. Convex – Convex offers an intent data solution for commercial service businesses, identifying accounts actively looking up services and solutions.
2. Cognism – Cognism provides buyer intent data, helping businesses identify accounts actively searching for their product or service and target key decision-makers.
3. Seamless.AI – Seamless.AI is a platform that provides AI-driven insights into buyer intent, helping businesses identify and engage with potential buyers.
4. Lusha – Lusha is a platform that provides buyer intent data and is known for its data enrichment capabilities.
5. Demandbase: Demandbase offers AI-driven tools for identifying high-value prospects and tailoring communications for more effective engagement.
6. Lead Forensics: Lead Forensics specializes in uncovering the identities of unknown website visitors while providing real-time insights into user behavior.
7. Leadfeeder: Leadfeeder identifies and matches anonymous website visitors with established company profiles, improving lead conversion efficiency.
8. InsideView: InsideView is an intent data platform that helps businesses identify buying signals across various digital channels to improve sales targeting.
9. Clearbit: Clearbit offers a product suite that provides company and contact information, helping businesses tailor their sales and marketing efforts based on buyer intent signals.
10. G2 Buyer Intent – G2 Buyer Intent captures enriched data about buyers researching products across G2, providing insights into the buyer journey.
11. LinkedIn – LinkedIn offers buyer intent data through its Sales Navigator integration, providing insights into companies actively researching products or services.
12. Apollo.io – Apollo.io provides buying intent data, helping businesses identify and engage with potential buyers through timely insights into online intent-to-buy behaviors.
13. Uplead: Uplead supplies a verified database of business contacts that facilitates targeted prospecting and bolsters lead-generation efforts.
14. LeadIQ: LeadIQ stands out as an automated tool specifically designed to create custom lists of prospective clients.

Choosing the right one requires some time, patience, a few demos, and some research. Look for a tool that integrates with your existing systems and aligns with your sales process. Additionally, consider the types of data available and the platform’s reputation for accuracy.

Training Your Sales Team on Buyer Intent Strategies

Returning to our tools list, look for solutions that offer team training. Knowing how to make the most of these tools will help your sales reps prioritize leads and engage with buyers effectively.

To do this, your sales teams should undergo regular training—not just on the platform you picked but also on how lead scoring and buying signals work.

Training in signals and sales prospecting techniques will provide the necessary insights to empower your sales reps with actionable data. Equipping sales reps with the necessary training and skill development empowers them to use buyer intent data to accelerate sales.

Measuring the Impact of Buyer Intent on Sales Performance

Tracking the impact of using buyer intent data to improve sales performance will help you assess the success of your sales strategy. You can do this by setting key performance indicators (KPIs) related to lead generation, conversion rates, and revenue generated from using buyer intent data or platforms that do.

Calculating the rate at which leads convert into sales is key for evaluating the effectiveness of the sales funnel. The cost associated with gaining a new client, known as Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), is an important indicator of spending efficiency.

It’s super helpful to determine a customer’s average lifetime value (CLV) to see how much revenue you can expect from them over time. Plus, keeping an eye on how many potential deals are coming into the sales pipeline gives you a good sense of how well your lead generation works!

When you look at these indicators together, they can really help shape and improve sales strategies. Teams can focus on the prospects that are more likely to bring in higher returns and tweak their approach to make the most of them.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, using buyer intent data in your sales strategies is key to boosting your sales performance. You’ll unlock new opportunities and enhance your overall productivity by leveraging great sales intelligence tools and aligning your marketing and sales efforts. Give these approaches a try to elevate your sales results massively! Ready to see how the latest software from Convex can give your team a competitive edge? Schedule a demo today. Let’s take your insights and sales to the next level.