Prospects Are Sending Purchase Intent Signals—Are Your Resources Properly Aligned?

You are already doing Market Segmentation, which is a great start, but how do you rank accounts within your segments to find the best opportunities? Arriving at a list of target accounts is a multi-step process based on ideal fit, spending potential, buyer intent, and sales insights.

Maximizing Your Account Segmentation Efforts

 

Within your identified segments, you want to look at your biggest and most likely to purchase customers and prospects. These accounts can be determined by defining an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) using unique Propensity-to-Buy Factors such as demographic information, past purchases, industry trends, and so on. Each account receives a score based on the ICP factors, and in combination with the prospect or customer’s spend potential, you generate a targeted list of prioritized accounts.

Check if you are aligned to Account Segmentation best practices with this Rapid Diagnostic. Then check out this Purchase Intent Modeling tool to maximize your segmentation efforts.

Have a deep understanding of customer’s ability to spend (over what time frame) for a competitive advantage when making allocation decisions against market opportunities.

You now have a Prioritized Account List. So what? How do you fully maximize the time and effort it took to produce it?

SOS Signals

 

Now that we know which customers and prospects have the greatest potential spend and fit our Ideal Customer Profile, we need to evaluate purchase intent. Is one of our prioritized customers taking an action that signals to us they have intent to purchase our product or service, and does this indicate it is the right time to reach out and speak with them?

Similarly to account, market, and buyer segmentation, you must pull together data from various sources to best understand which factors have the largest impact.

Identify customer purchase intent by tying together all data points related to user behavior. Relying on just one or two indicators is like asking one or two customers for feedback on how to market to the rest of your customers and prospect. It may work in some instances but will be nowhere near as comprehensive to your entire target audience.

Learn more about how to effectively leverage your data through this blog on AI in Marketing.

Key Indicators of Purchase Intent

 

Channels and platforms where prospects might interact with your product or service are only increasing, and you want to get ahead of the game.

First, you need to know which are your most popular channels of interaction, and where most of your purchases are made. Then we can ask the following questions:

• Where is the prospect in their buying process?
• Have they made the initial visit to your website?
• Are they beginning to read up on your products and services?
• Have they signed up for your content or a demo of your product/service?
• Which platform did they last interact with you?
• Have they spoken with one of your sales reps?

   

Some of the common channels to monitor these actions include search, email, and your website. Each traditionally indicates a different level of intent:

• Search is known as a high level of intent because rather than coming across your product or service through an ad while scrolling through a web page, they intentionally searched for you.
• Pages of your website vary in content, and thus, intent. For example, if someone visits your ‘home’ or ‘about’ page, they are likely just learning about your product or service. However, if they are visiting your pricing page, then they probably have a higher purchase intent. Remember, the frequency of visits to any of these pages is another important factor.
• Email can also indicate a high level of intent since this means they are interested enough to provide their contact information to you. This can also vary based on how prospects provide their email – was it through learning more about a specific product or service, or did they just subscribe to your blog/content?

   

Once you have your prioritized list of accounts AND your Purchase Intent Model, you must now assign the right resources in place to execute and win deals.

Prevent Flying Blind When Allocating Resources

 

Many companies fly blind as they allocate their resources. You want your top resources aligned and dedicated to your top accounts.

This may take some adjustments and modifications, but Purchase Intent Modeling will help align sales with your buyer’s journey and allow you to move forward to this next step in your strategy.

Having a deep understanding of a customer or prospect’s ability to spend (and over what time frame) gives you a competitive advantage when making allocation decisions against market opportunities.

You want to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time. In leveraging Purchase Intent Modeling, you will improve conversion rates, expedite deal velocity, lower customer acquisition costs, and create stronger synergies between marketing and sales.

SBI’s Purchase Intent Modeling Tool can help you get started on your competitive positioning strategy.

Now that you’ve learned all about how to align your top resources to your top accounts, revisit our Rapid Diagnostic and check out other areas of SBI’s Revenue Growth Methodology to continue to improve your sales strategy and make your number.