Signals to sequences: Unlocking the power of intent data for smarter outreach

Leveraging intent data to optimize outreach sequences

To win in today’s hypercompetitive B2B landscape, sales and marketing teams need to work together, leveraging intent data and buying signals to inform the messaging in their outreach.

At a high level, intent data refers to the behavioral signals and online activities a prospect takes that indicate potential interest in a product or service. This includes website visits, content downloads, keyword searches, social media interactions, and participation in industry forums or events, among other similar activities.

To help sales and marketing teams unlock the full potential of intent data, LeadIQ Director of Demand Generation Jacob Rouser recently hosted a webinar called Signals to sequences: Unlocking the power of intent data for smarter outreach that featured:

• Carli Cottle, director of sales development, mid-market at Gong;
• Casey Walsh, manager of business development at G2; and
• Sean Murray, director of sales development at LeadIQ.

The webinar explored the ins and outs of intent data, including how sales and marketing teams can identify and interpret sales signals, how to craft personalized outreach sequences that truly resonate, and how tools like G2 and Gong can streamline sales processes. 

Keep reading to learn some of the top takeaways from our star-studded panel of sales experts.

Tip #1: Learn the difference between first-, second-, and third-party intent data

Getting the most out of intent data starts with understanding what it is on the deepest level. Jacob kicked off the webinar by describing the difference between first-, second-, and third-party intent data.

“First-party intent is the intent data that you own,” he says. “So think of website activities, how you generate cookies through your forms, all those pieces.”

Jacob calls second-party intent data “borrowed intent.”

“I think the clearest example we have of borrowed intent is G2,” Jacob continues. “We take G2’s first-party intent and layer it into our own tech stack.” 

The last piece of the puzzle is third-party intent.

“That’s searched intent,” he says. “Think of your intent providers like Bombora, Demandbase, 6Sense where you’re really taking a look at the market at large, seeing what search terms they’re looking at, watching the trends data and oftentimes layering in a component of AI to try to score and understand where these buyers are in the market.”

Tip #2: Using intent insights for personalization

Everybody knows what it’s like to have their inbox flooded with messages that are overly general and aren’t relevant. If you want to build stronger relationships with prospects and increase the chances of conversion, you need to use intent insights to personalize your outreach.

“I think the more that you can personalize at the individual level, the more likely you are to get a response or to engage a prospect,” Carli explains. “One of the things I would also stress is really understanding your [ideal customer profile (ICP)], who your target prospect is, what they care about, and what’s most important to them.”

Far too often, outbound sequences are full of feature sharing, which doesn’t really resonate with most folks.

“We make it about our product and not necessarily what the prospect cares about and what they’re trying to solve and what their goals and business initiatives are,” she continues. “The more that you can make it prospect-focused and try to attach your product to what they care most about, the higher chance you have of getting them to respond.”

One way to make sure your outreach is truly personalized is by using a tool like Gong Engage to get an overview of previous interactions and surface what was relevant to the prospect in those conversations.

“I think any time that you can gather that information — whether it’s internal data that you have or external data through some third party or LinkedIn — being able to tie that to your conversation is just going to help the likelihood of your prospect engaging in conversation with you,” Carli explains.

Tip #3: Using intent data to figure out who to target

Most of the time, intent data isn’t entirely descriptive. If you’re using a platform like G2 to collect second-party intent data, for example, you won’t be able to learn the name of a specific individual who might be interested in your solutions. But you can get a pretty good idea of who that person might be by doing a little bit of reconnaissance. 

“What we can do is say someone at LeadIQ in Atlanta is researching buyer intent platforms, and then the sales rep or whoever’s doing the prospecting can figure out: I sell to someone in demand gen — I want to find someone in demand gen that works at LeadIQ in Atlanta,” Casey explains. 

The more intent data you capture, the easier it will be to personalize your outreach.

“I like all intent data,” Casey says. “It’s just more layers to the bigger picture. So obviously if you can build upon all of that and look at it all together, it’s going to give you a really clean picture.”

Tip #4: Working with RevOps to tier accounts

At LeadIQ, every rep has 6,000 accounts associated with them. That’s a massive number of companies any way you slice it. 

Of course, not every account is created equally. To increase the impact of their efforts, reps need to learn how to prioritize accounts and figure out which to spend more time on. The LeadIQ team does this by working with RevOps to tier accounts.

“Our RevOps team is tiering our accounts based on our ICP,” Sean explains. “Everything has to be based on your ICP. You need to know what industry your solution works best in, with what personas, and everything like that.”

Sean advises sales leaders to define their ideal customer profiles ICPs as granularly as they can and then rank accounts accordingly so reps know where to direct most of their energy.

“They’re very focused on their tier zero accounts, which is probably roughly 400 accounts, which is still a ton,” Sean says. “So, how do we whittle down that 400? By doing research on these accounts, looking for funding rounds, looking for product launches, looking for acquisitions, mergers, and stuff like that, which are good indicators that they have money to spend.” 

Once you’ve narrowed your focus from there, you can begin personalizing outreach — but again, only to folks who fit your ICP.

“At LeadIQ, we’re targeting SDR and BDR leaders, but sometimes we reach out to individual contributors,” Sean says. “I don’t want my team going in there and looking at what they had for breakfast and trying to personalize it. I was an enterprise BDR at Salesforce. If I’m going to reach out to a CIO at one of the largest health systems in the country, I better know what I’m talking about. I better understand the challenges that they’re facing.” 

Learn more about the wide world of intent data!

In addition to the tips above, the panel also shared a slew of other insights, including:

• Why you always need to know your ideal customer profile (ICP) and your reasoning for reaching out
• How your intent data-driven outreach might be “cold” for the prospect but it’s really warm since you’re doing your research
• Why sales and marketing need to be aligned and on the same team to build pipeline
• How there’s no magic bullet and why teams need to continuously test to see what works and iterate

To learn more about intent data and how you can use it to supercharge prospecting flows, watch the webinar in full. 

While you’re at it, get intent signals with LeadIQ Track for job change notifications and ask how you can bundle LeadIQ and Gong Engage together to accelerate your efforts even more.