Everyone has to scale sales eventually. If you plan to grow your company, then you’ll want to scale sales.
That translates into hiring, onboarding, adjusting, and even mundane tasks like finding places for people to sit. But you need to be smart about it; the key is to grow without biting off more than you can chew. Fortunately, there’s a powerful tool that can serve as your best sales friend in the effort to scale – yes, we’re talking about intent data.
What does “scale” mean in sales?
To “scale” any business means to grow it. But the concept of scale is more nuanced than growth. While growth often means to plow ahead by using the investments that your company has in the bank or through the cash earned by sales, scaling is pre-emptive and measured.
Scaling sales is a challenge that is common to start-ups because they don’t have the cash in the bank to hire a big staff and support them until they get up to speed. On the other hand, startups need to reach milestones, so timing is a concern. When it comes to sales, scaling is the process of hiring just the right number of people to fit the present goals of the business.
Let’s say you’ve got a list of 100 prospects and a month to approach all of them. Having one person make every call might lead to them having a meltdown, while taking on 100 new salespeople might bankrupt your organization.
So, before the campaign begins, you hire people according to sales scale, the projected number of people that you think you need to handle a certain selling job within a certain period of time.
Then what happens?
Once the team has been recruited, they need to be paid, trained, and given all the tools required to work. Up goes the burn rate!
The challenge at this point is for the team to prove that they can produce what the company needs from them. Technically speaking, they must hit their sales productivity metrics. But remember that we’re often talking about newbies here, who might not have much experience with your product or even with sales in your industry. Plus, the clock is ticking.
Intent data: a sales shortcut you need to take
Probably the fastest way to scale sales successfully is to use intent data. It leads to advantages like efficiency, greater likelihood of hitting sales goals, finding the right lead at the right time, and maximizing the number of prospects in an omnichannel universe.
There are lots of ways to leverage intent signals. The wise salesperson will lean on at least a few of them to get prospects into the funnel and then use sales targeting to keep them going until conversion.
5 Tips for Scaling a Sales Team using Intent Data
Intent signals come in handy at every stage of the sales process, from lead generation to deal closing. Here are a few of the ways that they empower your sales team and help you scale sales:
1. Personalize Messaging
Information from first-, second-, and third-party data sources can be used to customize the messaging in all of your marketing communication channels.
Profiling signals based on third-party technographic information will tell you what products companies in your target market are purchasing. You can leverage this data to check out the messaging their vendors use to see what appeals to your potential customers.
First-party intent signals can also be used effectively to personalize messaging. For example, web analysis tools will indicate the popularity of on-site search keywords, landing pages, blogs, and other media. If you notice that visitors are leaning towards certain subjects, then more content creation, website optimization processes, and sales messages can be directed accordingly.
2. Prioritize Accounts
Another way first-party intent data is important to your sales team is that it might indicate strong levels of purchase intent. Direct engagement with your content, such as signing up for an email stream or a webinar, means that there’s a relatively high probability that a prospect is actively searching for the product you’re offering.
Is it time for a sales call? Maybe. But first, check out the interaction level related to the intent signal. Did they open or respond to emails, or actually show up to the webinar? If yes, the chance of a successful direct contact goes up.
Refining this engagement information can pay off nicely. You might take the time to examine exactly what subjects the lead is interested in. Did they attend your webinar on The Emotional Value of Chicken Rentals? Or was it the one on Chia Pet Franchises? The answer will tell you what materials, like case studies and testimonials, to arm yourself with for the pitch.
3. Analyze the Competition
There’s a good chance that your competitors are also using – and benefiting from–intent data. You might even assume that the results of their data insights are right there on their web pages, if you know what to look for. How do they order their product pages? Do you notice a certain theme in their content selection? What are their webinars about? All of these can give you an idea about their strategies so that you can react.
It’s also a good strategy to pick apart their mistakes. Maybe you notice that they have no case studies; your response could be to emphasize yours on the website and in your sales calls.
4. Prevent Customer Churn
Don’t forget that there are markets like B2B SaaS where the job of sales continues even after the customer makes a purchase. This is because software is often paid for on a monthly basis. To keep those subscriptions going, sales/customer support people need to track usage patterns.
But intent signals provide another means of watching for worrying patterns. When intent data shows that existing customers are searching for products that they already have – i.e. yours – it could mean that they are looking for another vendor. This is an opportunity to prevent churn by contacting the client and solving whatever issues they may have.
5. Grow Account Value
Staying aware of post-purchase intent signals can also pay off. Even after a lead has converted to a client, they still tend to interact with content, emails, and so on. You may notice that they have downloaded a white paper about one of your product extensions – this is a hint that they might be looking to make a follow-up purchase. Seize the day by cross-selling and up-selling.
Key Takeaways
- Scaling sales means increasing the size of the team according to the sales targets that you need to meet.
- Intent data is a great tool for enabling a scaled-up team to make sales faster and more efficiently.
- Some of the ways to use intent signals for closing deals include personalization of messaging, prioritizing accounts, analyzing the competition, maintaining interest, and growing account value.
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