Buyer Intent Signals

A practical example

Example: a team receives weekly account-level intent reports flagging companies researching its category, cross-references them against its CRM, and routes matching open opportunities to sales for timely follow-up.

What to evaluate before investing

• Ask exactly where third-party intent signals originate (which networks, co-op or bidstream data) and how accounts are matched to your CRM.
• Check granularity: is intent at the account, buying-group or contact level, and how fresh are the updates?
• Verify how first-party signals can be combined with third-party data in one scoring or routing workflow.

Limitations and tradeoffs

Intent signals indicate research activity, not readiness to buy; treating every spike as a sales trigger wastes rep time, so signals work best as one input among several in prioritization rather than as a standalone trigger.