It’s sufficient to destroy any gross sales skilled’s quarter: that prospect your staff has spent months partaking — scheduling demos, addressing issues, evaluating options — instantly decides they’re not prepared to purchase in any case.
You may’t cease each account from getting chilly toes or misreading their firm’s urge for food for brand spanking new options. However right this moment’s best-performing go-to-market (GTM) groups are more and more utilizing intent information to focus their efforts on the accounts which are the probably to shut a deal.
With intent information, your gross sales staff can determine the highest-value prospects available in the market and prioritize their outreach to match the account’s place within the shopping for journey.
In a market that rewards effectivity, scalability, and automation, intent information may be the ingredient that helps GTM groups of all sizes unlock their potential and win sooner than ever. Right here’s the way it works.
Understanding Intent Information
Intent information captures the digital footprints left behind when prospects analysis services and products, producing indicators that assist inform gross sales, advertising and marketing, and enterprise technique selections. This info may be analyzed to determine account intent, or how seemingly prospects at a specific firm are to have interaction with a specific vendor.
Intent information may be collected from quite a lot of sources throughout the net, together with evaluate websites, information articles, and product analysis. When these indicators are sorted into distinct subjects, with excessive quantities of exercise interpreted as “spikes” in intent, sellers could make way more knowledgeable selections about their audience’s wants and pursuits.
For instance, if a number of folks inside an account are searching content material tied to the time period “greatest B2B gross sales software program distributors,” you possibly can infer the corporate has comparatively excessive intent to make a purchase order in that sector.
Methods to Incorporate Intent Information in Your Gross sales Technique
Analysis by McKinsey discovered that greater than 70% of companies are keen to modify distributors if their “prerequisites” aren’t met throughout their shopping for journey. Top-of-the-line methods to keep away from this frequent pitfall is guaranteeing a customized shopping for expertise for each prospect — one thing that gross sales reps can obtain through the use of intent information.
There are 4 key approaches gross sales groups ought to think about when searching for to implement intent information: ongoing account prioritization, customizing speak tracks, figuring out upsell alternatives, and understanding market traits.
1. Ongoing account prioritization
By analyzing web site visits, search conduct, and engagement with advertising and marketing supplies, intent indicators may also help prioritize the accounts that present the next propensity to purchase.
For instance, you seemingly have extra goal accounts than your gross sales reps can observe up inside a given timeframe, so it’s worthwhile to prioritize a very powerful ones. Incorporating intent information as part of a lead scoring mannequin may also help precisely section your leads into excessive, medium, and low precedence teams.
It’s essential to notice that even prospects with excessive intent might not convert in the long run. Nonetheless, specializing in accounts which are additional alongside within the shopping for course of will finally enhance your staff’s possibilities of success.
2. Customizing speak tracks
By assessing a potential account’s on-line conduct and interactions with advertising and marketing supplies, intent information can reveal precious info — which product options or advantages they’re curious about most, the largest challenges they’re going through, and the objectives they’re attempting to realize. This allows gross sales reps to customise their speak tracks to go well with every prospect’s wants.
“A chilly dialog will get very heat whenever you’re centered on an viewers that’s researching a couple of ache level, or a product, or an issue to be solved,” says Will Frattini, a principal strategic account supervisor at ZoomInfo.
If one group of accounts has comparatively little intent to buy, you possibly can ship them thought management supplies that deal with frequent issues. If one other group of accounts has sturdy intent to buy, reps might ship them solution-focused content material and direct response presents, like “get a demo” or “begin your free trial.”
By customizing speak tracks, gross sales reps can construct stronger relationships with prospects and enhance their possibilities of closing offers.
3. Figuring out upsell alternatives
Intent information can even proactively determine upsell and cross-sell alternatives with present clients, permitting gross sales groups to prioritize these accounts.
Let’s say you’re a gross sales rep for a B2B software program firm that sells venture administration options. You may have a buyer who’s been utilizing your primary software program bundle for some time now, however intent indicators present that they lately began researching extra superior options.
With this context, you possibly can attain out to the shopper with a focused supply to improve their bundle. In doing so, you not solely enhance your income, however you strengthen your relationship by providing them an answer that meets their particular wants.
Intent information can even present a rise in exercise on sure subjects which will point out threat at a prime account, comparable to subjects associated to severance pay choices or layoffs. Seeing these indicators in actual time earlier than the information breaks provides your staff a heads as much as strategize and put together for any sudden challenges alongside the best way.
Through the use of intent information to anticipate clients’ wants and providing them related options, gross sales reps can enhance income, construct stronger relationships, and differentiate themselves from the competitors.
4. Understanding market traits
Intent information provides gross sales reps a real-time view of what’s occurring of their trade, together with what their opponents are as much as, which services and products are in excessive demand, and what traits are on the horizon.
Let’s say you promote a variety of cloud-based options for companies within the finance sector. Through the use of intent information, you possibly can determine which industries are displaying essentially the most curiosity in these companies and which particular options are most in demand. This may also help you tailor your gross sales pitch to the wants of every trade and spotlight the advantages of your particular options.
Intent information can even assist gross sales reps keep updated on rising traits and modifications of their market. For instance, if you happen to’re promoting to the healthcare trade, intent information may also help determine modifications in laws or new applied sciences which are prone to impression your clients’ wants.
Right here’s one other instance from ZoomInfo CEO Henry Schuck. Through the use of intent information, you possibly can see how key phrases comparable to “mergers and acquisitions” spike forward of a significant deal announcement. With real-time insights, your staff might be updated with the most recent information, market modifications, or traits which are occurring in your trade.
Find out how to Convert A-Listing Accounts Utilizing ZoomInfo Intent
We launched our personal proprietary intent characteristic with the objective of resolving two of the most typical challenges related to conventional intent information: qualifying precise intent and figuring out which firms are spiking on these subjects.
ZoomInfo Intent is fueled by world-class pure language processing (NLP) expertise, which helps weed out information which may in any other case mistakenly present intent that isn’t actually there.
Let’s say we arrange an intent sign for “ZoomInfo.” Our NLP expertise would robotically analyze content material that mentions the corporate and decide if an article is targeted solely on ZoomInfo, or solely mentions it in passing,, like an article that discusses a number of tech-company shares.
Our IP-to-company graph can even convey whether or not a small or giant group of individuals at any given firm location are exploring the intent subjects being tracked, and present how that exercise compares to historic traits.
The most effective half? The information is delivered when and the place it’s wanted, giving gross sales reps quick notification when a key prospect is displaying a excessive degree of curiosity in a selected subject.
“Having ZoomInfo is like having night-vision goggles. It provides the reps the power to see what’s happening, who’s displaying intent, who we must be speaking to, and the place the chance of conversion is way increased,” says Daniel Reeve, director of gross sales and enterprise growth at Esker Inc.
Key Takeaways
Including intent information to your gross sales technique may give your staff a strong edge, offering real-time insights into the pursuits and behaviors of your goal market and illuminating the most effective time to have interaction — in addition to what messages or presents might be most related.
By leveraging intent information, your gross sales staff can:
- Prioritize the highest-value prospects
- Ship extra related, customized experiences
- Determine crimson flags and upsell alternatives together with your clients
- Keep knowledgeable in the marketplace traits and information that might impression your pipeline
Whether or not you’re seeking to speed up the customer’s journey, enhance conversion charges, or just keep forward of your competitors, integrating intent information into your gross sales technique is a should for any trendy enterprise. See how ZoomInfo Intent may also help your GTM staff unlock insights right this moment.
