The introduction of signals has made it easier for businesses to analyze buyer intent.
The internet has evolved over the years, and so did our marketing strategies. The primary reason for the evolution is changing consumer behavior. The way prospects discover new products has changed drastically in the last decade. As a result, sellers had to reinvent a lot of strategies. Most of which directly resulted from improved technology.
If your sales team knows which prospects are ready to buy the product, this could be a game-changer for your company. Instead of chasing prospects that might not be interested, you connect with only those who show intent to purchase, saving you time and resources.
There are multiple types of trigger signals you can track to accomplish just this. Here are some of them.
Technographics
Technographics is profiling different target accounts based on the technologies they use. This can be used to identify and profile the behaviors of potential customers and understand which of these segments would be viable targets.
Questions about business problems
If you see a prospect commenting on a news feed post about a business problem that your product can help solve, well, consider it your lucky day. This not only creates a great context to reach out honestly to the prospect, but it easily enables a challenger approach to sales where you can educate the prospect on how their problem can be solved.
News about expansions
An article stating that a target account is expanding to another country provides a variety of opportunities to strike up a conversation. Furthermore, various pain points come with having to target a new market. Therefore, it is not difficult to creatively envision how your solution might help and to express a potential lead.
Mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions often lead to significant leadership changes. This means that new decision-makers will often be entering positions with renewed budgets and a will to make an impact, making them perfect sales targets.
Financial signals
Various financial signals may indicate purchase intent in a prospect. For example, cost-cutting, revenue growth, or losses may all be viable opportunities for which to approach a lead with your solution.
New product announcements
New product announcements can give insights into where there is a budget to spend and within what categories the company is hoping to sell to or focus on.
Asking for a price or feedback about your product
This is known as a hard trigger signal and is quite obvious. For example, if you see a potential lead asking for a review about one of your products or pricing information, that clearly shows an intent to purchase that makes outreach worthwhile.
Engaging with a competitor
This is a good opportunity to point out why your solution is more effective or worthwhile as the purchase intent is there from the prospect. Trying to be quick and concise without seeming too competitive can be a good approach here.
If you observe a prospect asking questions online about a similar company, this would indicate that they are on the hunt and would be worth reaching out to. A very common area to observe professionals interacting with companies is on Twitter, and following relevant hashtags can facilitate this type of prospecting and research significantly.
New decision-maker hires
If a company hires a new executive in a department that may be a target group for your product, this provides a two-fold opportunity for sales.
First of all, the new hire may be looking for ways to make an impact quickly or use their new budget, so they will be more open to new solutions. Furthermore, this can also mean that there is a movement within this department and potentially more readily available budgets to spend on new solutions alongside the new recruitment.
Industry-related content
If you see prospects writing on industry-related social posts that are connected in some way to the solution you offer, you can reach out to see if they are facing difficulties you may be able to help them with.
Engaging with your brand on social media
Again this is a hard signal, but this can be oftentimes overlooked. If your prospect is following your brand and commenting and liking your posts, even if it may not be with solution-related content, this presents a good opportunity to outreach.
Solution-specific Linkedin or Facebook Groups
Joining social media groups related to topics from your industry can be an excellent place to find deeper insights into what your prospects are looking for. Threads in these groups can often become quite open and prospects may dive deep into what they are currently experiencing in their job role and company.
Conclusion
Intent signals may feel complicated at first, but over time they bring a good ROI. For example, you may notice that targeting prospects based on demographic and firmographic signals doesn’t result in much engagement. But prospects collected through content consumption result in good sales, so you can focus your efforts there.
Sales cycles are usually lengthy. Using compelling event signals will ensure you reduce the time and help brands focus efforts only where they are effective.