Sales Triggers vs. Intent Data

We like to think of the insights sales triggers offer more as pre-intent data, and so should you! Sales triggers get you in the game one step earlier than intent data, arming you with facts sooner.

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What is intent data?

Intent data is data that captures signals of a person's or organisation's behaviour that indicate a potential interest in purchasing a product or service.

This data is generated by analysing the digital footprints that people leave behind as they interact with various digital channels and assets, such as search engines and websites.

Types of intent data

There are two main types of intent data: first-party and third-party. First-party intent data is generated by a company's own digital channels and assets, such as their website or social media accounts. This type of data is particularly useful for understanding how customers interact with a company's products and services.

Third-party intent data is generated by external sources, such as data providers or publishers. This type of data is useful for understanding broader industry trends and identifying potential customers who are outside of a company's existing customer base. Intent data can be collected through a variety of methods, such as website tracking, IP address monitoring, and social media analysis.

Some companies use cookies or other tracking technologies to follow a person's online behaviour and build a profile of their interests and intentions. Other companies use natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to analyse text-based data, such as social media posts or email communications, to identify signals of intent.

The benefits of intent data

The benefit of intent data is based on the premise that a person's online behaviour can reveal their interests and intentions.

For example, if someone searches for "best CRM software" or visits a CRM software vendor's website, it can indicate that they are interested in purchasing a CRM solution. This type of data is particularly valuable for sales and marketing teams, as it can help them to identify potential customers who are actively researching solutions or are ready to buy.

Why use intent data?

Intent data can be used to serve a number of purposes. Perhaps most obviously, sales teams can use intent data to identify potential customers who are actively researching solutions and prioritise their outreach efforts accordingly.

Marketing teams can also use this data to personalise their messaging and content to better align with a potential customer's interests and needs, while product teams might use intent data to inform their product development decisions, prioritising features and functionality to align with customer needs. However, intent data does have its limitations.

While perhaps a tried-and-test approach might appeal, intent data is fairly old-school in the sales industry now. Although it can provide valuable insights into a person's interests and intentions, this doesn't necessarily indicate that they are ready to make a purchase.

For intent data to be reliably useful, it needs to be used in conjunction with other types of data, such as demographic and firmographic data, which enable the user to build a more complete picture of a potential customer. And this is not a one-size-fits-all scenario either. With everyone in sales now looking for an edge that will take them to the next level, intent data is sadly being left behind.

Just because you read a blog to learn about how to write the perfect outbound email or the optimal ad frequency for LinkedIn, it doesn’t mean you’re interested in email outreach products or ad agency.

Getting the right balance of intent data, relevant to your company and sales team, needs a lot more focus to have any value. Sometimes there is no black and white way to measure someone’s interest in your product, so for success you’ll need to start looking outside of the box.

What are sales triggers?

Sales triggers, event triggers, or sales trigger data, refers to a range of events that happen to a company, triggering an opportunity for a business change.

For a sales professional this can be gold dust as any such trigger can indicate the potential for upselling, new business, and customer acquisition.

Types of sales trigger

At Selligence, we provide the industry-leading answer to sales triggers. We currently track 45 unique sales trigger events - but we go further than that too.

Within these individual triggers, we also recognise a further 71 sub-types. That means we can be delivering 116 sales trigger types to you on a daily basis.

To find out more about every trigger we track, click here.

The benefits of sales triggers

Sales triggers alert you to outreach opportunities, so you can reach out as soon as ideal buying conditions arise for your prospect. They offer the earliest step in the customer journey for relevant outreach but can also offer market intelligence for competition monitoring too, providing insights and market trends for those monitoring their industry’s position.

Sales triggers are revolutionising the way companies approach sales and customer relationships. Understanding sales triggers, and being able to track them, is paramount to staying ahead in increasingly competitive times and is quickly becoming an integral part of the sales industry. In fact, using sales triggers, you can expect a 3-5x higher outbound success rate compared with other lead gen tools.

Why use sales triggers?

We like to think of the insights sales triggers offer more as pre-intent data, and so should you!

Sales triggers get you in the game one step earlier than intent data, and they arm you with the facts earlier than any other data can.

Sales triggers highlight when a business will be going through function spend in the next three to six months. So, rather than waiting for a prospect to show ‘intent’, sales triggers let you know in advance when you can expect to see that intent, allowing you to act on it earlier.

There are many advantages of using sales triggers, not least that they help you to separate hot leads from cold ones and help you avoid waiting in line for a piece of the action.

Reaching out to a company at the right time allows you to speak to decision makers when they have a need for a service or product, rather than trying to get them to consider spending when their need is unrealised or not as great.

Sales triggers get you into the action ahead of an intent data trigger – meaning you can beat your competition to the line with a three-month head start.

Get 50% of your time back to focus on building relationships

Sales triggers get you ahead of the curve right from the off. By presenting pre-intent data, you and your team can be aware of a company’s intent before they even start displaying trackable indicators.

With sales triggers you can save yourself the hours on manual searching for news and leads too. Having a system that will track the sales trigger events you’re interested in for you will help you halve the time you spend on prospecting. Imagine having 400 more productive hours in a year than your rivals.

With all that extra time on your hands, reaching out and building relationships can become your main focus, so tedious research and admin becomes a thing of your past.

Make the right impression with a timely, personal approach

Gone are the days of cold calls; using sales triggers, every call you make can be informed, friendly, and insightful.

Only 13% of buyers believe a salesperson understands their needs, so using sales triggers will keep you informed on a business' growth strategies and pain points.

With a timely, personal approach that you can back up with a solid knowledge of their business and market, you’ll definitely be making the right impression.

Rather than waiting for a situation to arise, sales triggers let you know when to reach out so you can demonstrate your understanding of their needs at the most optimum point in their growth journey.

Stand out from the crowd by getting there first

Sales event triggers can give you instant alerts so that you can act on these signals immediately, increasing your chances of being first to the post. Waiting for intent data can actually cost you hugely in this respect.

Take, for example, a key person change trigger. Most new hires in decision-making positions will spend 70% of their budget in their first 100 days. So, using this market trigger will allow you to reach out today and put your product or services in front of the right person at the right time just as they are thinking of spending that budget.

By waiting for intent data to tell you when it might be the right time, you’ve actually missed months of opportunity. Get ahead of the competition (and the curve) by acting in advance and you’ll start increasing your close rate immediately.

How different teams use Selligence

Easily build your ideal workflow with end-to-end features.

Fuel your pipeline with higher outbound success rates

Selligence enables you to start conversations with buyers as soon as the ideal buying conditions arise, increasing your chances of winning by arming you with relevance.
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Build a bigger pipeline that drives more predictable revenue

Selligence enables you to target and engage with ICP buyers as soon as the ideal conditions arise, increasing your chances of building pipeline and generating revenue by arming you with relevance.
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Protect and grow your hard-earned revenue

Selligence enables you to stay on top of every account day in day out, without research and admin, so you never miss a growth opportunity or potential cause for churn.
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Empower your teams to get ahead of the competition

Selligence gives your teams the ability to reach out at the right moment, armed with relevance, boosting their revenue attribution.
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Sign more clients and win more exclusive roles

Selligence is the AI driven staffing intelligence platform that connects you to clients looking to hire before vacancies go live, putting you months ahead of your competition.
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How different teams use Selligence

Easily build your ideal workflow with end-to-end features.

Sales

Selligence enables you to start conversations with buyers as soon as the ideal buying conditions arise, armed with relevance, increasing your chances of winning.

  • Take advantage of 3-5x higher outbound success rates

  • Get back 50% of your time spent on lead gen and prospecting

  • Build trust and reputation to get ahead of your competitors

Marketing

Selligence enables you to target and engage with ICP buyers as soon as the ideal conditions arise, armed with relevance, increasing your chances of building pipeline and generating revenue.

  • Make creating and capturing demand the easy bit

  • Start seeing record engagement and conversions

  • Stand out in the most saturated market ever

Customer Success

Selligence enables you to stay on top of every account day in, day out, without research and admin, so you never miss a growth opportunity or potential cause for churn.

  • Avoid churn taking you by surprise

  • Never miss an opportunity for account growth

  • Reconnect with champion users ready to buy

Revenue Operations

Selligence gives your teams the ability to reach out at the right moment, armed with relevance, boosting their revenue attribution.

  • Boost your sales teams' success rates by 3-5x

  • Unlock record engagement and conversions for your marketing team

  • Help your customer success team protect hard-won revenue

  • Put your teams months ahead of their biggest rivals

Staffing

Selligence enables you to start conversations with clients and candidates as soon as the ideal conditions arise, primed with relevance, increasing your chances of winning.

  • Book 3-5x more meetings with your ideal clients

  • Halve the time you spend on business development

  • Set yourself apart from the competition

The Nudge Group achieve 12.5 x ROI in 12 days

“The results speak for themselves. Within 12 working days we had secured five exclusive SDR roles fitting our ICP and with terms all signed!

This has meant the product has already paid for itself. That means we’re looking at £50k with all roles filled. That’s 12.5x ROI in 12 working days.

12.5x ROI

in 12 days

£50,000

Estimated fees achieved

Tom Greenwood
Director of Sales, Technology, and Product

eSift achieve 45x ROI in just five months

"Since I’ve been using the platform, I’ve already had five secured leads and have a whole host of networked clients primed ready for future deals.

Five months into working with Selligence, and I would estimate that the new leads we’ve secured will generate anywhere up to 45x ROI for us."

45x ROI

in 5 months

£140,000

Estimated fees achieved

Kath Quinn
Talent Acquisition Manager

Hamlyn Williams achieve 8x ROI in just two months

“Since using Talent Ticker, from January 2022 I have brought on four new solid accounts to the business.

From these, multiple placements have been done with just under £50,000 in the first eight months of using the platform – solely from business obtained from Talent Ticker."

8x ROI

in 2 months

£50,000

made in 8 months

Jamie Watts
Management Consultant

McNeal & Payne make their first placement within two weeks

“The successes speak for themselves. We made our first placement in two weeks and during our onboarding process.

It was for a contract role, which means every time the contract is extended, McNeal and Payne will make a recurring fee. We’ve saved time and secured over $7,000 on our first placement."

2x ROI

in 2 weeks

$7,000

made in 1 month

Robin Payne
Partner

Source Technology find their most active client

“In a nutshell, I found a leading Cyber Risk Analytics Management provider via the lead/vacancy finder, contacted them and they are currently my most active client.

We used the Chrome extension alongside LinkedIn and found that the platform was much better for us in the US market ."

8x ROI

year to date

£100-150k

made in fees

Francis Alexander
Principal Consultant

Zeal Management reduce time spent candidate sourcing by 85%

"Using the platform has reduced our sourcing and recruiting by approximately 85%

Our internal processes have been refined by about 80% and, in turn, this has allowed our leadership to focus on other aspects or goals relevant to the company’s success."

1.5x ROI

year to date

80%

increase in efficiency

P. Lyn Anthony
CEO