Definition
Buyer intent is evidence that a company is actively looking to buy something like what you sell. It can be direct, such as a demo request or several visits to your pricing page, or indirect, such as reading about a topic across the web. The more direct the evidence, the more it is worth.
Why it matters when you sell B2B
Most companies that fit your profile are not buying this quarter. Intent is how you find the few that are, and how you decide who gets a call today.
But intent is a guess about the future from what people did in the past. Some evidence is strong. Some is noise sold as a signal.
A worked example
Say you sell security software. Here are five kinds of buyer intent, from strongest to weakest.
Five kinds of buyer intentExample
- 01A demo request. They asked to talk.Strongest
- 02Pricing visits from three people at one company. Several people are looking at once.Strong
- 03A job ad for a security lead that names your category. An owner and a budget are on the way.Strong
- 04Topic reading in third party data. Someone researched the subject. It may not be a buyer.Weak
- 05Your email opened twice. Often an automated security scanner, not a person.Noise
The strongest intent comes from your own site and inbox, or from a public record the company wrote itself. Third party intent data is wider but weaker.
A trigger event is related but different: it shows a reason to buy, not the act of looking. Our approach to research uses both.
Common mistakes
- 1Treating every signal as equal. A demo request and a topic surge are not the same. Weight them differently.
- 2Calling on a single page view. One visit is curiosity. Several people, or several visits, is a pattern.
- 3Opening with what you saw. "I saw you visited our pricing page" makes people feel watched. Talk about their problem instead.
- 4Trusting topic data blindly. Ask how a reader was matched to a company. The match is often a guess.
- 5Forgetting fit. Intent from a company outside your ideal profile is still a poor lead.
Rank your intent signals
- List every intent signal you use.
- For each, check how many past deals had it before they bought.
- Check how many companies that never bought had it too.
- Keep the signals that separate the two groups.
- Route the strongest to reps first, and the weakest to marketing only.