Intent-driven sales: build stronger relationships and close more deals

Guest post by Jess Burns, Content Marketing Manager at Aberdeen

Without insight into who’s searching for their solutions, sales teams are chasing leads that aren’t actually interested in speaking with them, and missing deals that they could have been closing.

Third-party intent data tells you:

• What is being researched
• Who is doing the researching
• Where the individual is (at which company)
• When the research rises above the normal noise — indicating intent to purchase.

With this visibility, salespeople can tailor their messaging to optimally engage with the right companies at the right time and close more deals.

Prioritize Accounts That Are Actually In-Market

In accordance with its aptly nicknamed “Pipeline Quality” moniker, intent data helps increase the ability to qualify opportunities, and as a result, can help to accelerate sales and marketing processes. The more efficient those processes are, the more leads sales can convert, and at a higher rate.

Using intent data, sales teams can easily identify which specific businesses are currently in-market, with up to 91% accuracy. These intent-qualified opportunities (IQOs) allow sales to have access to a straightforward assessment of their various prospects, based on the prospects’ proven in-market intent.

With the right in-market accounts to pursue, sales teams can spend their time wisely and accelerate the aforementioned processes. As a result, salespeople are more effective in their jobs and have an increased likelihood of positive engagement and higher win-rates. In fact, an intent-driven marketing and sales approach can contribute to a better leads to close ratio, with up to 40x ROI.

Tailor Outreach Sequences with Intent Scoring

So with an intent-driven approach, your business knows who your prospects are — great! But how do you convert those leads into sales?

Using the same data, sales can get a head start by basing their outreach according to precisely where the prospects are in their buying journeys. You can tailor sequences for intent-scored opportunities: personalizing messaging and adjusting follow-up activities in accordance with each prospect’s intent score.

Engagement and meeting rates increase significantly with the improved alignment of sequence messaging and personalized content.

Aberdeen research has found tangible and replicable improvements in both engagement and conversion rates for businesses using third-party intent data: some companies that use advanced statistical analysis tools, such as the Aberdeen Intent App for Salesforce, have seen a 9.2% annual improvement in their profit margin per program. Higher engagement rates can also be seen through customer loyalty: companies using these analytic tools have achieved 7.8% annual improvement in customer retention rates.

Intent + Outreach = “The Secret Formula”

Intent takes the guesswork out of sequence building, enabling you to strategically develop marketing and sales outreach for a positive user-experience.

Outreach’s ability to seamlessly integrate with Salesforce gives you the means to tie this activity right back to your prospect’s profile so you can track their journey every step of the way. Aberdeen research has shown that only 17% of businesses are satisfied with their ability to use data to achieve their goals. Where do you stand?

Find out where you stand among your peers and get tips on weaving intent data throughout your sales and marketing efforts to transform missed opportunities into win-rates by taking Aberdeen’s 5-question benchmark assessment, How Much Do You Know About Intent Data?