Intent data, account based marketing, and orchestration are on (almost) every marketer’s “to-do” list, and all of these things work best in tandem with one another. A lot of marketers are using intent data, have an ABM platform and may even have some level of orchestrated campaigns. Marketers are missing the mark when it comes to taking that intent data and using it to fuel orchestrated ABM campaigns that can move prospects (based on intent signals) to different stages of the campaign. If you find yourself with intent data and an ABM platform – here are three ways you can start using those things together to create an orchestrated campaign.
One of the biggest challenges marketers face every day (besides overwhelming expectations with limited budget and resources) is knowing what accounts should be nurtured at what time. Intent-based targeting fills that gap. Marketing teams now have the power to create dynamic audiences based on intent-data that can fuel orchestrated campaigns. Intent scores can change daily, and utilizing dynamic audiences ensures you’re never missing out on accounts with high propensity to buy.
While it is common to see intent-based audiences in regular ABM campaigns, it’s not as often found in ABM orchestrated/multichannel campaigns. This is a missed opportunity because the value of intent is that it tells you who is interested in your product now. If you rely on a human to manually upload accounts/contacts and push them through stages, you will likely be a few steps behind where the prospect is in their purchase journey. ABM orchestrated campaigns can map accounts based on intent topics and then move them through a personalized buying experience, without the constant involvement from marketing.
Create and enrich actual leads
While creating dynamic audiences based on intent is a great way to begin targeting personas quickly within an account, getting to the individual decision-makers or contacts demonstrating intent to buy is the next piece of the puzzle. Knowing what accounts are looking to make a purchase can only take you so far – using intent to identify the actual buying group is what builds pipeline with a higher chance of revenue.
While you may already have an intent data provider that gives you visibility into what accounts are in a buying cycle, you will need to determine the people you need to reach. You’ve found the building, but now you need to find the people inside.
Intent-Based Personalization
Website overlays + pop-ups
One of the best ways to start using intent data is by personalizing your website with overlays and pop-ups based on known topics of interest. If an account is showing intent on one of the many offerings you have, segment the account and personalize the site so the next time they come to your website they are met with relevant messaging that guides them to the next step in their purchase journey. Intent is also a great way to choose who sees what type of pop-up CTA based on topics of interest.
Onsite messaging
Similarly to the website overlays and pop-ups, onsite messaging can and should be adjusted for prospects showing intent. Account behavior can be flagged before the account ever comes to your website. Based on their behavior, accounts can be categorized into different audiences based on topics or solutions of interest. Then when the accounts do come to your website the website content is altered to fit their needs and goals. Pro tip: even without intent you can use this tactic to change out content and imagery based on industry.
Knowing the best time to reach out is one thing, but knowing what to say when you reach out is the second piece of the puzzle. With intent-based orchestrations, you can see those signals and automatically trigger custom outreach resources like Triblio’s 1 to 1 landing pages (Triblio Smart Pages™). Sales and Business Development teams can use those materials, customize them and reach out with information that is relevant to the prospect’s goals. Another thing to remember is as the intent signals change, it’s important to respond by adjusting content to the new needs of the prospects. Pro tip: Across the Triblio customer base, outreach containing Smart Pages are 3x more likely to elicit a response than those without.
Trigger next best action for sales reps
Intent-based orchestrations can support your sales team by flagging when accounts are researching your product and service (or your competitors). When intent signals come in, it can send notifications to your sales team via email or CRM. So your sales team is getting a fuller picture of where prospects are in their buyer’s journey, even if they are not sharing that information. For example, sometimes prospects go cold and ghost your sales team. It may seem like the deal is lost, but other times intent signals show that they are still interacting with content on their Triblio Smart Page, or on your website. That is when an intent-based orchestration would identify that signal and push the prospect to another set of messaging that is aligned with where they are in their buyer’s journey.
Go Beyond Identifying New Accounts
Intent data is only powerful if you know how to utilize it throughout the entire funnel, beyond just identifying new accounts. It plays a key part in taking that a step further in ABM orchestrated campaigns by revealing what topics and solutions are of interest and should be prioritized with personalized content, and actions by the sales team. Intent data paired with ABM orchestration can be the foundation for a successful demand generation strategy. While both intent data and ABM orchestration are important on their own, together is where you see the multiplier effect.
Intent data can overwhelm Sales and Marketing teams. There can be a lot of data, with lots of detail leaving you unsure of what to do with it.
Like looking at your huge To-Do list, it’s best to divide things up into priority and delegate. You should work in the same way with intent data, except most of time we it’s not made simple for you to do that.
That has changed. Say Hello to intent data scoring, the easy way to prioritize the hottest leads and simplest way to understand where to devote your attention.
Scoring settings
The purpose of intent data is to understand who is a hot buyer right now, because they’re engaging a competitor or engaging with content related to you. Maybe they’re attending competitor’s events, the list goes on.
But to make it easier to understand who is hottest, we’ve added scoring to out system. Put simply, scores of 1 to 20 are low and a score of 100 is the highest.
If you downloaded all of the leads in your CRM, how would you know who the hottest leads are? Having a simple number by the side of each lead would help you understand quickly.
There are 3 main factors in how simple intent data lead scoring works. Here’s the crux of it…
Fit
You could have the best lead ever, who’s engaging with your competitor and was at their event last week. They’re looking at content, hungry for information. They need to be reached out to. But is their company or their role slightly away from what your perfect ICP.
That doesn’t mean they’re not a really good lead.
So reviewing the lead fit and the account fit and assigning a score to it allows you to spot the hot lead but be aware that they’re not the 100% perfect, 100 score lead. 85 is a great score and a hot lead, but clearly if the scale is up to 100 you’d know there is less engagement or the targeting is marginally away from your perfect ICP.
The same goes for accounts. If you want clients who are between 50 and 200 employees, an account who has 49 employees or 201 is still likely a good fit. There are lots of ways targeting like this can let good opportunities pass you by, so we make sure you can still see them but have visibility that they’re not 101% on target. Maybe just 99% in cases like this.
The behind the scenes of this is that job titles, seniority levels and the industry a lead works in decide how good they are as a fit for you. If the decision maker at C level is looking for a solution, this is more significant than a mid level manager looking. So scoring reflects this.
Similarly, the industry a lead works in may mean that they’re not quite the perfect lead. Non profits may not be your perfect customer, but they may still get great value from you. On the flip side, if you see a SaaS decision maker looking for a solution, this may be absolutely perfect for you.
And at an even more granular level, the specific roles you review should reflect scoring. We’ve seen it tons of times, the “VP Marketing” is the perfect buyer. But really, the person we want to talk to is the “Marketing Ops” person, for example. So if the exact, perfect job title’d lead is looking for you, this is reflected by a higher score than other roles would score at.
Trigger
There are lots of different trigger events that intent data captures. Clearly in some use cases, a prospect going to an event might be a huge trigger for one company and not so interesting for another. Scoring can be tweaked based on priority.
But usually a prospect engaging with a competitor is the biggest and best trigger event – worthy of the highest score.
Hiring decision makers and growing the team is also a big trigger event. This is similar to accounts winning funding or opening a new office – you’d know there is funds available and initiatives being worked on that you can tap into.
All of these triggers carry a higher score because they are genuine sales triggers, you could pass this context right to sales. Other trigger events like prospects engaging with
Account insight
Lots of activity happens every day, your intent data provider will capture that. But actions taking place over a number of weeks count for more, there is more intent there if you’re a repeated engager. So, that should be counted for in the scoring.
On the flip side, a brand new lead is engaging with your competitor for the first time, so they’re on the first touch. That’s not as serious as a 15-touch lead. So we’ve built our scoring to reflect how accounts showing more intent count for more than first-timers.
This is especially important when you consider an account could have engaged with your Q4 campaign continuously, but then did not engage again once it finished. Over time, that lead is not as hot as it once was. Scoring should tell you this.
Action
So, what do you do with leads who have particular scores? Not every lead requires immediate Sales follow up. This is difficult to talk about without considering how different one company is to the next, with different Sales team sizes and Marketing functions. Deal sizes will impact how you’ll take and engage these leads, but generally speaking we operate by this guide:
1 to 40 score
These are the leads that usually need more Marketing nurture before Sales should touch them. These leads have lower scores because your data has higher priority contacts you should focus on, which does not mean 1 to 40 score leads are weak or bad.
They need nurture. Share top of funnel, easy to use content with them. Generate opt-in and nurture them through your funnel. Go for cheat sheets and webinars, not whitepapers and case studies. Educate these leads, get them interested in your tone and message over your brand and differentiator. It will pay off later.
41 to 70 score
Depending on your team structure and if Sales is super hungry for leads, you’ll either pass them the 50, 60 and 70 score leads or decide to nurture them all. Again, top of funnel content is best to push in front of these people. You need to be generating opt-in so that they’re warmer for your Sales team. If they opt-in and have a score of 65, the lead is probably ready to be spoken to. They won’t need much more content from here on in.
71 to 100 score
These are the leads Sales wants. Engaging with competitors, totally on target with your ICP and engaging right now. Reach out to them right now. Use great context, you have the timing, now you just need to deliver the right message.
If you want to try out intent data for yourself, try LeadSift Buzz for free. We’ll deliver insights to your inbox when your target accounts are winning funding, creating new content, winning awards and hiring.
Cold emails are a pivotal part of revenue generation today. Writing great cold email copy and getting higher response rates is HUGE for hitting quota for a B2B sales pro.
We’re going to share the advice 7 cold email experts gave us to ensure you increase response rates and amaze prospects.
To get you thinking before you dive into the practical cold email tips we’ve got for you, here’s John Barrows’ thoughts on how he uses cold email in his prospecting.
Make the messaging as relevant to your prospect as possible. One way I do this is by looking at the prospect’s LinkedIn profile. I look for 1 or 2 specific things in their bio or job description that I can relate back to how my product can help them. Then I will literally copy/paste that part of their profile into my cold email.
If I can’t find anything specific on their profile that I can use, they might not be the right contact – so I’ll use a more specific boolean search on LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find someone else. Or I’ll find a job posting on LinkedIn that the company has for an SDR, sales ops person, SFDC admin, etc. Again, I’ll find something relevant and copy/paste it from the job posting into my cold email, relate that to how my product can help and hit send!
This video is gold. Sales pros face constant rejection and the cold shoulder every day. Cold emails, cold calls generally offer good success for Sales pros but there are a lot of ways to improve your response rates and lower the level of rejection. The cold email subject line is a key part of this. If it sucks, your odds of response are tiny. Good cold email subject lines are not click-bait or misleading, but are not boring. It’s a difficult art to master, this video nails it.
#2 Bonus!
As a CEO, I get a few prospecting emails and outreaches quite regularly. I also conduct a lot of outreach myself to new accounts. Being in this position has taught me a few things about what really good outreach looks like – that I try and put into practice. Here’s a few things I have noticed and tried out myself…
Some of the things I have experienced that makes a great cold outbound email you must have a captivating subject line that grabs your prospect’s attention. One that has generated high open rates for me is “Correct Person”. First off, this makes the prospect stop and think. It sparks curiosity. So now you have done your job by forcing them to open the email. It’s not about “We can do X for you”.
Now that you have your prospect’s attention and you have a small win of them opening your email now you need to have a compelling framework for messaging. When I send out an email to a prospect asking if they are the correct person to speak with I will have in the first line “Hey John, I was wondering if you would be the correct person to speak with regarding XYZ” you want this to be the first thing that your prospect reads because now you have them thinking am I the right person or is Sally in Ops better.
Cold email copy
Your body of the email is extremely important because your prospect inbox is flooded with email. So if you don’t have a compelling message then your email will end up deleted. You want to keep your email direct and concise, make sure any links you include can be viewed on a mobile device. Keep your jargon to a minimum. Add a clear CTA don’t make your prospect have to think of what next steps should be.
Context
If you want to ensure that your email is resonating with your prospect and they will actually take the time to review it, you need to start embedding video into your email playbook. That’s because I personally find that at times context can be lost in the written word. Plus, you can start to form a relationship with your prospect via video and provide more information that they can consume on the way to a meeting or in between meetings. This would be instead of having to take the time to read a bunch of information.
Lastly, email is like any other channel you need to be consistent, persistent, personable. And I don’t mean “hey we know XYZ or went to this school” – allow your personality to show and that will resonate with your prospect, and always add value. Don’t spam your prospect because it simply will not work out – and stop sending emails with the subject lines “breaking up” with them.
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There is no one-size fits all answer to what makes a killer cold email. The goal of any copy is to get the person you are looking to engage to keep reading and then take action. Whether its one-line or ten and this will vary based on your audience and solution. A couple of characteristics we have seen from our successful emails are being personable in tone, the less jargon and industry speak the better. Avoid being assumptive, share knowledge of experiences but don’t assume they apply. Avoid trying to find the perfect nugget to personalize, spending more than 5 minutes on research leads to dimensioning returns. In summary, be yourself and don’t overthink it.
A killer cold email is a balance of reaching out at the right time, personalization, understanding your buyer’s pain and breaking through the noise of their inbox.
Something like a Giphy, a cute animal or a video can be effective ways to stand out in people’s crowded inboxes.
When it comes to personalization it’s important to take into account something that is relevant to why you might be reaching out and not something like their dog’s name that you found by creeping on their social media. Things that are good for personalization would be snippets directly from their Linkedin, a blog post or podcast they were featured in and recent company news.
Overall I have come to learn that a single piece of outreach is rarely going to catch someone’s eye and that it is about persistence in your outreach for them to see the personalization and research you have done to understand them and what their goals might be that you can help with. Remember that there is no such thing as a silver bullet and we are all human so something that group A of people may love group B may hate that email.
Utilizing research done by leading sales companies like Salesloft showing the optimal email only has 20% personalization and scheduling emails to go out at optimal times and InsideSales.com showing the best time for opens being 4-6pm on Mondays and Wednesdays
Remember the goal of a cold email is not to have someone completely sold but just that you are looking to grab someone’s attention enough for them to be willing to discuss with you more about their goals and for you to see if there is an opportunity for you to help them achieve those goals.
I want to make one thing clear, there is not one practice that works for everyone or every time. But these are 5 things I remember every time I send an email that have worked for me…
1 – Personalization
Duh. The fundament of a strong email. The more content you can work with, the better. Looking at your prospect’s LinkedIn, company website, etc doesn’t take longer than 5 minutes to get good content to work with. Work history, management tactics they might mention, mutual connections, company mission, all fair game. If they mention they like dogs, you’re golden… Ask the right question to who you’re reaching out to. If your questions are templated, they won’t affect your prospect. Everyone cares about different things. Do your best to find what’s important to your prospect and touch on those pain points.
2 – Know your audience
I’ll just say this. Don’t send a meme to 60 year old Susan. It most likely will not work, but hey – stranger things have happened. We work tirelessly for engagement from other people in professional settings. Sometimes, being less formal would work with 27 year old Johnny who lives in a metropolitan city. It won’t work for everyone. Understand who you’re speaking to, and act accordingly.
3 – Video
Vidyard (my personal choice), Wista, Soapbox, whatever you might use. I use it, it’s worked for me. Include a 30-60 second video introducing yourself, your pain that you solve, and why they’d benefit from a discovery call. People appreciate the effort and human component. It catches them off guard. A tip for creating personalized videos is to keep it personal & genuine. If you’re putting on an Oscar winning performance, it probably won’t land. Be you, people like you for you. (Below is something I’ve made that prospects loved and got me a handful of great demos.)
4 – Persistence
You can mention where your prospect’s child went to summer camp and they’ll still ignore your email. Just being personalized isn’t enough. Remember to follow up, and don’t show up empty handed. Always include relevant content that will resonate with that prospect’s mission within the company.
5 – Be human!
Understand that you’re reaching out to other humans. Humans that have bad days. We have good days. We have complex emotions. There won’t be one thing that will work every time. There’s one thing humans do that most other living things don’t do, and that’s taking risks. Shoot your shot. Be creative. Take a risk.
One of the cold email tactics that I use (and demandDrive recommends) is taking the initiative to send out calendar invites during the prospecting cadence. I’ve found that it accurately displays my assertiveness (in a non-intrusive manner) and reflects my interest in having a meeting with the prospect. Sending cold invitations catches the prospect’s attention in a way that emails and calls can’t.
This isn’t something I do with every account (and you definitely shouldn’t) – it only makes sense when you know they match your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This is a very targeted and specific message, and not something you do with all prospects. I recommended using it after receiving a referral recommendation and not being able to speak with that prospect on the phone.
Roundup
It’s pretty clear that everyone here thinks about personalization before sending any emails. Blanket emails are done almost purely to make up the activity numbers Sales reps. Taking time to show that you’re a person behind the keyboard sending amusing, interesting emails improves your responses dramatically.
It sounds obvious, but it’s not always practiced! If you want to practice sending personalized emails to leads with a bunch of context, get 100 free leads looking at your competitors on us.
LeadSift doesn’t like to just talk about the next generation of data in sales and marketing.
We use our own proprietary Buyer Intent Data so that we can define the best practices and help our clients innovate their processes, too.
It’s our duty to report on what is working and what is not, when we find it.
In our sales prospecting efforts, we’ve unearthed a few emails that demonstrate the real power of using our data to hit the right prospect at the right time with the right message.
Here are six real-life examples for you to enjoy…
Example 1: New hire in the marketing team
Prospect:
Chris ****, VP Marketing and Sales Development
Outcome:
Meeting booked after 1st email. Deal closed within 30 days
My email outreach:
Hi Chris,
Imagine getting the contact info of any prospect that engages with competitors like Market Track or 360pi, or when they share industry content.
Just looking at this week’s data – I see there are 27 target accounts for you guys to go after. In fact Clever Age or MARKABLE would be a couple great accounts for you to go after in the next few days.
We are already helping some of the fastest growing companies like Looker and Vidyard to identify and reach the right accounts and would love to have you guys onboard.
Would you be interested in learning more?
Here is a link to my calendar – please let me know if you have 20 minutes and I will send an invite.
Thanks
Alex Field | Growth Manager
LeadSift
902-880-4146
Chris’ reply:
Alex,
give me a call on *** *** ****
Very few prospects will ever tell you what worked in your sales outreach messaging or why, but we’re sure that having the data on this company and their competition and being able to reference it in the email was the main reason Chris took a meeting.
This was data he did not have and information his team needed. Maybe it was a curiosity factor that made him take the meeting.
Example 2: Engagement with our competitor
Prospect:
Robert *****, Director of Marketing
Outcome:
Meeting booked after 3rd follow-up email. Deal closed within 60 days
Tukan’s email outreach:
Hi Robert,
Just because someone has the specific job title at your target account does not mean they need your solution.
With LeadSift you can now figure out when ***** is top of mind based on Intent Triggers and engage them proactively. No more cold reach outs – only talk to people who want to listen to you.
See how we helped Vidyard re-engage cold leads and identify new ones to increase their pipeline.
Would love to learn more about your current outbound sales process and tell you how LeadSift can help you identify and reach your target accounts everyday!
Thanks,
Tukan
Robert’s reply:
Hi Tukan,
Thanks for reaching out. Do you have any time to talk today?
Thanks
If a prospect is interested in your competitor, why would you not want to show them why you’re better?
The problem is, most sales people find out a competitor is involved way too late in the deal. It’s an objection.
In this case, we used it as a trigger. A trigger that told us to reach out and win a deal.
Example 3: Prospect attended industry event
Prospect:
Shohil *****, Digital Marketing Manager
Outcome:
Meeting booked after 1st email. Deal closed within 60 days
Tukan’s email outreach:
Hi Shohil,
Its almost a month since ****** attended Dreamforce. Did you generate enough new leads and/or opportunities from the show?
Imagine getting the contact info of any prospect that attends an industry event or better yet, engages with competitors like Apigee Corp or SnapLogic.
With LeadSift you can now figure out when a prospect is attending an industry event and engage them proactively. No need to spend big bucks on a booth – reach out and talk to people who want to listen to you.
I would love to tell you more about LeadSift and how we can help you turbo charge your prospecting process. Will you be interested? Let me know and I will put something on the calendar
Tukan
CEO
Shohil’s reply:
Hey Tukan,
Sounds intriguing. Would love to learn how you guys do it: “With LeadSift you can now figure out when a prospect is attending an industry event and engage them proactively.”
Thanks
Industry events are a great trigger for all sales people.
If you go to a Salesforce event, you might be interested in buying or using Salesforce. So naturally, there are variants of this situation for all industries.
We can identify when your prospects meeting your buyer persona engage with industry events. That’s before, during and after the event.
When the seller digs deeper into this insight, they can see that the person was there or if they are engaging way ahead of the event. LeadSift’s Behavioral Intent Data can help you identify that something more complex is happening. This data informs our messaging.
Example 4: LeadSift data suggested a lead to us
Prospect:
Chip ******, VP of Marketing
Outcome:
Meeting booked after 1st email. Deal closed within 60 days
My email outreach:
Hi Chip,
Since I reached out to you a couple weeks ago, we have identified 81 new prospects for *******, based on how they have engaged with your competitor and industry content in the past week.
I’d love to show you over a quick demo and get your feedback.
Here is a link to my schedule over the next few days – let me know if you have 20-mins
P.S. There is absolutely No obligation for you if you don’t find it useful. Just getting your feedback would be valuable in helping us build our product.
Chip’s reply:
Hi Alex,
We had been using you indirectly via ****** ***** (outsourced sales outreach firm we were using).
We’re no longer working with ****** *****, but like your stuff. Can we set time up to talk?
Any time this week…afternoons (Eastern time) are better than mornings, schedule-wise.
Thanks!
Andy
Truthfully, there’s nothing that special about this outreach.
The reason I reached out was because we have identified a customer that we closed with a similar role and similar type of company (size, industry, keywords about what they do in their bio) which is why our data suggested this lead to us.
I reached out knowing what the problems are and goals these folks face.
This is why we got the deal.
I didn’t know anything about this prospect before being shown that this prospect would be a good prospect to reach out to. That’s the power of Behavioral Intent Data!
Meeting booked on 1st email. Deal closed within 45 days
My email outreach:
Hi Adam,
Imagine getting the contact info of any prospect that engages with competitors like Contently or NewsCred, or when they share industry news about Content Marketing.
We are already working with a select group of B2B SaaS companies like Sysomos and Vidyard to help them identify the right prospects at the right time and would love to have you guys onboard.
Would you be interested in learning more? Let me know and I will put something on the calendar.
Adam’s reply:
Hi there,
Yes I am. We have our company conference next week but I’d love to learn more the week after.
Best,
Adam
Like many sales professionals, we use Outreach.io. It makes not a great deal of difference if you use Salesloft, or any other similar tool for this.
In this instance, we leveraged LeadSift’s Behavioral Intent Data to first identify the right prospects and then we entered them into our email cadence, customizing the messaging to mention the competitors we found their ICP engaging with.
With this email I sent to Adam, we programmed the algorithm to search for prospects who engaged with Marketo.
The reason why I did not send a hand-written, uber customized email is that there are tons of people who engage with Marketo every week.
It’s a best practice to straddle the line between customization and volume here. We ran an email nurture from Outreach.io to a large number of leads engaging with Marketo, mentioning the data we found in our own system. It was our job to customize the email to reflect this.
Example 6: Prospect engaged with competitor
Prospect:
Andy *******, Marketing Director
Outcome:
Meeting booked after 1st email. Deal closed within 30 days
My email outreach:
Hi Andy,
Imagine getting the contact info of any prospect that engages with competitors like VoltDB or NuoDB, or when they share industry content.
We are already helping some of the fastest growing companies like Looker and Vidyard to identify and reach the right accounts and would love to have you guys onboard.
Let me know if you’re able to share 20-minutes to learn more and I will send an invite.
This prospect engaged with some content from one of our competitors, so we wanted to try and educate them on the challenges they are facing and see what their goals were.
We reached out to three people from their marketing team, and the Director or Marketing responded.
Andy was one of the contacts the Behavioral Intent Data suggested we reach out to, based upon our target buyer persona listed in the LeadSift algorithm.
What have we learned?
The key takeaway from this sales prospecting activity is that context is key to success.
Anyone can send a random cold email and follow up until the end of time, but without great reason for contact, why are you emailing? It makes it far easier for a prospect to disregard you as a pesky sales person.
The answer is to have highly specific context for your outreach: great timing and a great understanding of what is going on in an account and what they are trying to do.
If you want to see replies to your prospecting efforts like we have seen above, book a meeting with me and I’ll give you 100 free leads. They’ll be exactly like the ones we prospect from…
Your sales team cannot sustainably call up prospects with no idea about their life, business, and problems and wing a conversation using a script.
You can still prospect using proper sales intelligence and context using any medium you choose.
Behavioral Intent Data is the newest sales intelligence. It is real time data at the individual level, telling you which executives are looking at which competitors and when.
The trouble is, nothing will ever be a silver bullet in sales.
Maybe this is a bronze bullet, but you can’t just call decision makers and ask them why they haven’t bought from X competitor yet.
In sales, nothing comes that easy. You have to work for your commission like you would usually with this data.
But with Behavioral Intent Data in hand, your sales team won’t need to employ useless tactics like guessing or using their “intuition” or praying for divine intervention to work out which prospects to reach out to and when.
Step 1: Examine your intelligence
At LeadSift, we’ve produced thousands of sample reports looking at different sectors and who is looking at specific players in those spaces, but this is an illustration what my team is looking at.
In this example, Alex Field is sharing MarTech content.
Big deal? Well, read the content he has shared.
It’s about MarTech that can offer very deep marketing insights.
Why did that interest him? It’s what his company offers, and it is what he as an individual is interested in.
What are the items your sales team should notice when you see this data?
Who is engaging with what
Their social profile links
The content they have shared and its relevance to them as a person
Job title
Other stakeholders in the account
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Step 2: Find common ground
The key part of this outreach is finding and playing on common ground you have with the prospect.
For Alex, if you’re a fan of marketing technology or have a marketing strategy wizard’s hat in your wardrobe, then that is perfect.
And if you don’t, that’s OK.
Find Alex’s Twitter link in your data. His Twitter bio mentions he is a Quarterback. Which team does he support? Which QB in history did he try and model his game on? If you like watching the NFL, then there is common ground for a prospecting conversation to draw upon.
If you’ve attended the same University as Alex, use that. If you know someone or follow someone who Alex has done some work with, if you see Alex likes their content or has created content with them, use that in your prospecting outreach.
Little nuggets of information and thoughts you can collect on this are helpful for your email subject line and opening words, something attention grabbing for a voicemail, and also a social connection message.
Step 3: Plot your messaging sequence
Looking at Alex’s social profiles, he appears to actively check his profiles and feeds daily or most days of the week at least.
Alex is LeadSift’s Growth Manager, which suggests that he will likely be occupied with numerous calls daily.
Perhaps the most efficient way to contact Alex first time is by email.
Now, having researched Alex for a few minutes and identified my personal common ground with him based upon his social profiles and the Behavioral Intent Data insights, this is an email I would write:
Could you craft a better cold email?
Next, I would follow up with a direct outreach via social media.
In the email above, I referenced the content that Alex has shared with James. It would be strange to not actually engage that content, wouldn’t it?
I’d like the post, then leave a comment that poses a question to both people involved with the post.
As an example, for this post, I would ask the following question in this comment:
“Hi @Alex Field @James Buckley, awesome video. That’s a smart strategy for standing out and being really authentic. Can you share a rough success rate and share any stories of prospects who responded really well to this strategy?”
My strategy with the message above is to tag both James and Alex so each person receives a notification.
I also want both people to see I liked the post as well; that’s two additional notifications. Then, the fact I have left a comment is also a notification.
Do you think I’m getting their attention? Maybe a little?
Leaving praise in my comment is a good way to get a response, and it was important to ask a question that both Alex and James could answer.
I can’t ask them for the names of people who they got an appointment with using the strategy mentioned in the post, but I can ask them roughly how many times out of 10 it works and if they’d like to share any success stories with it.
When I got a response from them, I would move to connect with them on LinkedIn, sending a personalized connection request that referenced our conversation, of course.
If we were already connected, I’d send a message to further the conversation from there privately.
Regardless of whether I received a response from this action or not, I would absolutely call Alex the day after I left my initial comment.
Key: What not to do
Each of the steps I have described above revolves around leveraging the information I have that Alex is interested in MarTech.
This is my initial starting point, and this is where your sales team needs to begin, as well.
Next, I used some more personal information and context about the lead, who is showing intent towards this particular keyword in order to make a personal connection.
Finally, I’m making an offer to have a valuable conversation about our shared interest.
The absolute worst practice I’ve seen many sales teams commit is to take the valuable insights offered by Behavioral Intent Data and call the prospect directly, and clumsily.
You can’t just take this data and call Alex saying, “Hey, I saw you’re looking at MarTech. Do you want to take a look at ours? It’s great at X, Y, Z!”
Successful sales prospecting doesn’t work like that.
Behavioral Intent Data provides your sales team with low hanging fruit to leverage and engage target prospects into conversation before they (target prospects) begin researching competitors and potentially get down the inbound marketing funnel (or worse, sales funnel) of another company.
Want to better understand the competitive advantage that Behavioral Intent Data provides?
Take some time on my calendar (or Alex’s calendar if you write him an email like the example above) and we will walk you through everything that Behavioral Intent Data is, and what it is not.
Because you’re somewhat interested in it if you read this far!
It may seem like there’s always a new, popular sales and marketing term that catches on in business circles.
Words like pivot, disrupt and intuitive. Don’t even get us started on “hustle” and “grind”.
One term you may not be familiar with, but could be the most powerful tool that has become available to you is Behavioral Intent Data.
Are we talking about serial killers? FBI Behavioral units? No, we’re not talking about Silence of the Lambs here.
But Dr. Lecter would appreciate the data. Because it’s all about the data. And it’s all about helping you make more sales to people who already want to buy.
Because Behavioral Intent Data tells you when your prospects are in market and are ready to buy.
The timeworn sales and marketing methodology is to take internal data that has been compiled and analyze it from there to predict what prospects/clients MIGHT do based on the info.
Behavioral Intent Data, however, is REAL TIME sales intelligence, telling you what prospects are looking to do NOW.
It takes the guesswork out of prospecting.
Sure, the old-school sales model consisted of sales reps ripping pages out of the phone book and dialing, buying leads to start “spray and pray” prospecting, or canvassing industrial parks and playing hit or miss (or hide and seek) with unsuspecting prospects.
When prospecting cold leads like this there is no guarantee that your product or service is top of mind, or if it’s even on your prospects’ radar.
With Behavioral Intent Data, you have a level of confidence that there is relevancy in your proactive contact, based on discussions and actions observed in real-time.
Behavioral Intent Data tells you where your prospects are, what they are looking at and WHEN they are interested in buying.
Wouldn’t you want to know when your prospects are engaged in a buying decision, or close to buying?
The probabilities of closing go in your favor, and if you are the first one to make contact, then you have a much better chance at closing the deal.
Sales is all about having an edge. Behavioral Intent Data gives your sales team that edge.
If your sales team is properly trained to sell, getting this valuable info in their hands increases their chances of converting new clients, upselling existing clients, or preventing current current clients from being scooped up by the competition (reducing churn).
Behavioral intent data allows companies to focus their sales and marketing resources on buyers that are actively taking steps to research a particular service or product. This buying signal data can come in many forms:
Reading articles (product specific or industry related)
Social Media Posting (engagement, questions, hashtags)
Social Media Interactions (when decision makers engage with competitors on social)
Watching Videos (explainer, whiteboard and how-to videos)
Website Visits (searching competitors sites)
Signups and Downloads (whitepapers and webinars)
Event Attendance (Attending industry conferences and tradeshows)
Hiring Trends (change in senior functions, hiring for new roles)
The desire is there.
For example, if you sell artificial intelligence aimed at the trucking industry to make freight brokerage more streamlined and efficient, that’s a pretty tight market niche.
If you are able to leverage behavioral intent data about contacts or accounts searching online or discussing on social media about AI in the trucking industry, you know there is a high probability of buying intent on the searchers part.
If these same prospects are searching multiple competitor websites, asking questions on social media and downloading white papers – that shows interest. Remember AIDA? Attention Interest Desire Action?
A salesperson doesn’t need to create interest or desire; the buyer’s actions and behaviors are already shown to be there.
Behavioral Intent Data puts the most valuable information in the sales rep’s hands: the direct contact details of everyone who meets their target profile, and who is taking action anywhere on the internet that shows interest and intent to buy the products and services they sell.
Behavioral Intent Data allows you to better understand your clients, prospects, and leads. LeadSift’s Behavioral Intent Data helps you to understand what’s going on in your market by seeing what actions your leads and customers take outside of your own digital properties. Whether they interact with a competitor’s piece of content, engage in social media conversations about your industry, or followed a competitor on a social media channel — intent data keeps you in-the-know and enables you to take action.
Why you need it.
There are many tools in a salesperson’s toolbox, why not use the ones that eliminate guessing and give you the best chance of getting in front of prospects and target accounts at the time they are most likely to buy?
It’s the difference between throwing food in the cage during feeding time at the zoo and throwing some food in the cage when the animals are sleeping.
They may eventually eat it when they finally wake up, but it may take awhile.
Don’t be last. You want to have your offerings ready to sell when it’s feeding time.
Many times, the first rep who contacts a prospect will be the one who wins the deal. Most reps also know that a company’s needs can change at any time—a prospect can go for months without showing any interest in your product or service, and then suddenly start to shop for a solution because they’ve encountered a problem that needs to be fixed—NOW.
By collecting Behavioral Intent Data from all over the web and social networks—not just IP based data that leaves your sales & marketing team guessing—and providing that timely data to your sales reps, their productivity will be increased and it will help them engage the right people at the right time and win more deals.
LeadSift’s Behavioral Intent Data helps you to monitor conversations within your industry and allows your sales reps to provide information and value at the right time.
Behavioral Intent Data is not guessing, it’s not predictive. It’s knowing that an account has your target buyer looking at your website.
Behavioral Intent Data is about knowing when those real decision makers do something that shows their intent to buy, their intent to get information, and to get content. It’s real-time sales intelligence.
It’s feeding time and you’re the first one to offer a fat, juicy steak.
Being able to identify prospects who are asking questions and doing research within your industry lets your sales team initiate contact and position themselves as problem solvers and value-adders.To increase your odds of talking to prospects who are actively seeking out your solution, schedule a demo with the LeadSift team today.
