'Intent' Inference – Changing The Future of B2B Sales & Marketing!

The biggest gainers of Intent Inference services would be B2B Companies. Today, B2B companies are struggling to find and nurture good prospects. They are dealing with customers who have enough means to find and educate themselves about a solution, much before they even zero -in on a specific vendor.

By using Intent Inference services, wooing such prospects to their sales funnel, nurturing them with the right content and accelerating the sales process would be quite easy.

Finding the Intent of a website visitor can change the entire game plan, let’s find out how?

For Sales – Insight into the prospect’s needs

An informed prospect usually does not warm up to ‘salesy’ pitches. He has done his research, he knows about your company and the solutions you offer. What he wants to know further is, if your solution can be customized to serve his needs and his budgets.

If your sales team is aware of prospects’ intentions – the solutions they have been looking for and which of your offerings piqued their interests, it will give them a lot of insight on the problems being faced by these prospects’. This gives them time to put some thought into their sales presentation, think on what combination of the Company’s solutions will best fit the needs of the prospects’, ensuring a more focused and fruitful conversation between the prospects’ and your sales team. The Prospects also feels more confident, of your company, because they feels you have managed to see through their problems and offered something which meets their requirements. Intent can help your sales teams to do away with guess work – which adds to the time taken for closing deals. Also, better matchmaking between prospects’ needs and your company’s offerings – increases the chances of conversion.

For Marketing – Creating a Customized Lead Nurturing plan

Most of the Lead nurturing process today is reactive. Marketing teams in B2B companies spend a lot of time and energy in nurturing a lead, converting them into prospects’ and then Sales.

Again the framework for Lead nurturing is devised in such a way that it follows the physical behavior of the lead over a certain period – The number of visits to the site, the time spent each time, the kind of resources he downloaded from the site, the number of emails sent by the company, that he opened etc. Based on each of these activities the next set of activities are planned.

If your marketing team had insights into the intent of a Lead, they could plan more proactive nurturing programs, customized to meet the requirements of the Lead. Providing him with information and literature which helps him in the decision making process, even before he expresses a need for them. Also, since the Intent of the Lead is known in the beginning, only genuine Leads come down the sales funnel of the Company. Intent inference will also shorten the time taken to nurture the Lead and make it sale-ready. Another value add could be reducing B2B spam.

From a Prospect’s perspective, this is an ideal situation to be in – his expression of interest is ensuring that instead of him spending time over research, he gets all the required information in his inbox. He can concentrate on taking the decision, rather than spend time hunting for the correct information.

For the Enterprise – No missed business opportunities

While all companies who use Marketing Automation solutions hope and want their website visitors to follow a certain pattern and give away their levels of interest in the company’s offerings, many a times the visitor to your website may not behave as expected and perform the number of activities predefined in your system for a sale-ready prospect. This is where you might end-up losing a good business opportunity.

If you know the intent of the visitor which is not governed by his activities or requests on your site but more by the time spent and his browsing behavior, the scenario would be quite different. Once your company is aware of such a visitor and his intentions, your sales team can go for the kill immediately. Since you are aware of the prospect’s intent your pitch can be customized to meet his requirements without much delay also your team’s timely action ensures, you do not miss out on the business opportunity.

Being able to find the intent of a website visitor will act as a boon for B2b companies. Since B2b decisions are driven by a lot of research, deliberation, negotiations and by multiple decision makers, knowing whats on your prospects’ mind will help companies to plan their marketing campaigns, Lead management programs around the needs of the prospect rather than their own solution. Actions can be taken in real-time and will save companies a lot of time and resources

Social media revolutionized the way B2C companies , did business, marketed their products and engaged with their end customers. It helped them understand the needs of their customers better.

‘Intent Web’ or ‘Intent Inference services’ will do the same for B2B companies – it will change the way they engage their prospects and pitch to them for business. Intent will drive customization at all levels, bringing the customer back into the focus, giving him only what is relevant to him, doing away with all the information clutter.