In sales, intent is the signal you need to go deep

Top sales performers spend 10% less time selling. This seems counterintuitive, especially in this uncertain macroeconomic environment when 68% of organizations reported that they missed their sales targets in July 2022. But, it’s actually a simple trick. Top sellers excel because they invest a significant amount of their time upfront in a sales cycle, not only understanding the “who” and “what” behind buying decisions, but more importantly the “when” and “why” – and the most effective way to do this is by using critical buyer intent signals.  

We’re doubling down on helping sellers uncover and understand buyer intent by providing insights that can change the game for sales teams and create a culture of top performers. Over the next few years, we’re going to introduce new products and features to help change behaviors across sales organizations so that sellers reach the right people, at the right time, with the right messages. 

With a commitment to member privacy, we are using artificial intelligence to combine signals and activities on our platform to help more efficiently connect sellers with possible buyers. And, today, we’re excited to start bringing deeper buyer intent insights directly into your Sales Navigator experience to make it as easy as possible to know when an account may be showing “high interest” in your product or service.

Insights to Help You Prioritize the Right Accounts 

When they aren’t selling, top performers are using sales technology to keep track of key moments, like organizational growth or decision-maker job changes, so they aren’t simply knocking on more doors, but rather knocking on the right doors. To help your teams find those welcoming buyers, we are launching a new Account Dashboard where your sellers can see their list of saved accounts and their level of interest, based on a number of signals. Your team will also be able to monitor interest levels over time so they can determine the best time for outreach and the message that is most likely to resonate. 

With new alerts about accounts showing intent in the Homepage Highlights section and a Buyer Intent filter in Search, your teams will now have buyer intent information as part of their day-to-day Sales Navigator workflow, making it as easy as possible to prioritize the right accounts at the right time. 

Insights Across the Buying Journey 

For those of us in B2B, we know that timing plays a huge role in identifying and reaching audiences, and buyer intent is important to spot in-market buyers. Our research shows that only 20% of buyers are in-market for services in a given year, and just 5% in a given quarter. So, it’s really important to ensure you are utilizing buyer intent to target the right audiences at the right time with the right types of messages to help influence their buying decisions.

Prospective buyers can express their interest in a variety of ways—by engaging with your ads or content on our platform or elsewhere, researching your product category, visiting your website, or submitting their information as a lead. Whether your organization is focused on increasing brand awareness, unearthing quality leads, or building relationships with new decision makers, we are here to support you with a full-funnel view of how your audiences are moving through the buying journey. And, this is just the beginning as we continue to introduce new insights and help you translate them into opportunity.

The Road Ahead 

Understanding the signals that reveal a buyer’s intent coupled with account and relationship intelligence are the key drivers in helping more of your sellers be top performers. With our community of more than 850 million members connecting, learning and sharing information each day, your teams can unlock possibilities, build relationships and drive results based upon people-powered data and insights.

This is only the beginning of our multi-year journey to bring intent information to life in our products and services. We believe understanding intent can make a significant difference in the effectiveness of your go-to-market strategies and we look forward to embarking on this path together with you.