How to leverage intent data to close deals faster

Guest post by Alex Greer, Senior Director, Head of Sales Development at Bombora

In last week’s article, I covered the new functionality of Bombora’s Intent-driven tasks in Outreach for Account Based Selling.

After the initial excitement of seeing this new feature, sales leaders often ask me three excellent and important questions:

1. I have these Intent-driven tasks. Now what? Who should we reach out to?
2. Do you have templates of what we should say?
3. How do I measure the effectiveness of using Intent data for Account Based Selling?

I’ve written this follow-up post to answer those questions head-on! Let’s dive in.

Who to Prospect

Newcomers using Intent data often get hung up on who was doing the research leading to the Intent. That’s an understandable initial thought, but it turns out that is not as important as you might think.

The best way to think about this is to use the Intent data to:

1. Prioritize the accounts you reach out to
2. Hand-select the best personas you want to meet with
3. Reference the Intent topics you’ve detected to ask if there is an initiative happening within the business

More specifically, these are the people you should try reaching out to:

• Existing leads/contacts in your CRM
• Key personas you want to meet with

What to Say in Sales Email Templates

Your email templates can vary wildly depending on how many times your business has iterated on building Outreach sequences.

If you’re starting out with Outreach, you may have one general prospecting template that captures the overall value propositions for all personas. If you’re more experienced, you may have had time to build more specialized sequences.

The good news is, in either event, I've seen customers enjoy success with the following straightforward approach:

Subject

{{org.name}} for {{! topic 1}} and {{! topic 2}} at {{company}}

Body

{{! Intro}}

We have data that suggests your business is actively researching {{! topic 1}}, {{! topic 2}}, and {{! topic 3}}.

If you're not familiar with us, our customers love {{org.name}} because we:

• {{! Value prop / challenge solved for topic 1}}
• {{! Value prop / challenge solved for topic 2}}
• {{! Value prop / challenge solved for topic 3}}

Do any of those bullet points resonate with key challenges or objectives you're currently facing?

{{! Close}}

Measuring Effectiveness of Account Based Selling with Intent-Driven Tasks

Ultimately, you want to make sure the investment in budget and effort in Intent data is moving the needle for your business. Totally understandable.

It’s important then to measure the two areas where acting on Intent data is providing the most lift:

1. Reply rate
2. Meeting booked rate

PREREQUISITE: You must first measure these rates using your existing methods, or you won’t have anything concrete to measure against.

Step 1: Benchmark your reply rate and meeting booked rate for outbounding into accounts based on the methods you're using thus far

Example:

• Average Reply Rate YTD = 5%
• Average Meetings Booked / Month YTD = 10

Step 2: Measure the reply rate and meeting booked rate to accounts targeted using our Intent-driven tasks

Example:

• Reply Rate from Targeted Accounts Since Pilot Began = 15%
• Meetings Booked / Month with Targeted Accounts Since Starting with Intent = 18

Step 3: Compare results

Example:

• Change in Reply Rate with Intent = 50%
• Increase Change in Meetings Booked / Month Rate = 80% Increase

Closing Thoughts About Intent Data

Intent data, when harnessed correctly, is absolutely transformational to your sales organization’s approach for Account Based Selling.

You will now be equipped with two key facets of finding your next deal and resonating with your prospective customer:

• Timing
• Relevant Message

Honing in on the right mix of Intent topic selection and messaging in your sequences is an iterative, ever-evolving process that your Bombora and Outreach customer success managers are delighted to assist you with.

The most important thing is to get started, so let’s go!

For more information on how to measure success using Intent data, download our new ebook Close Deals Faster Using Automation + Intent. If you would like to try Bombora’s Intent data for free in Outreach, register here.