Buyer intent

A 120-person cybersecurity company has just finished its SOC 2 audit. Two weeks later, several employees from the same 600-person fintech visit its compliance pages, read about vendor risk, and compare the company with a competitor on G2.

That account deserves a closer look. It does not deserve a sales sequence yet.

This distinction is where most buyer intent programs go wrong. Teams either treat every page view as a buying signal or ignore anonymous research until someone fills out a demo form. Both approaches waste good information.

Buyer intent is evidence, not proof

Buyer intent describes the behavior a prospective customer shows while researching a problem, category, or product. Buyer intent data is the record of that behavior.

The useful question is not, “Does this account have intent?”

Ask:

What is the account researching, who is involved, and why might this be happening now?

A single visit to a blog post tells you very little. A finance leader visiting pricing, an engineer reading API documentation, and an operations manager reviewing an implementation guide tell you more, particularly if the company has just changed systems or hired someone responsible for the problem.

Intent is strongest when several pieces of evidence point in the same direction:

• The account fits your target market.
• More than one person or department is involved.
• The activity relates to a product, competitor, or urgent business problem.
• Something external gives the research a plausible reason and timeframe.

The signal is still not a confirmation that a project exists. It is a reason to investigate.

Not all activity deserves the same response

A person reading an introductory guide on compliance training may be learning about the category. A finance leader checking pricing and integration pages is closer to a purchase decision. Someone comparing your product with a named competitor gives a rep a much better reason to look at the account.

G2 separates buyer activity into Buying Stage and Activity Level. Buying Stage runs from Awareness to Consideration to Decision. Activity Level reflects the depth and frequency of the activity, from Low to High. G2 updates these classifications daily based on the signals available through the company’s subscription. 1

Those labels are useful for sorting accounts. They are not facts about what a person intends to do. A high activity level could mean serious research. It could also mean a consultant, student, competitor, or job candidate spending a lot of time on a page.

My view is simple: an intent score without the underlying evidence is mostly decoration. Reps need to see the topic, pages, people, timing, and account context. Otherwise, “high intent” becomes an excuse to send the same message to every company on the list.

What a useful signal looks like

Consider a 70-person payments software company that sells reconciliation software to finance teams at businesses processing significant monthly transaction volume.

Its sales team cares about accounts with finance and operations leaders, a recent change in payment processing, and enough transaction volume to feel the problem. The account should be large enough to need a proper reconciliation process but not so large that it is likely to build the whole system internally.

Now imagine a target account showing this activity over 30 days:

1. An operations manager reads an article about reconciliation controls.
2. A finance director visits the integration page twice.
3. A technical lead reviews the API documentation.
4. The company announces a new processor partnership.
5. Nobody submits a form.

The first visit is weak. The combination is not.

There is account fit, a plausible trigger, activity from several functions, and research that maps to the product. The processor partnership may create new reporting or reconciliation work. The mix of finance, operations, and technical activity looks more like early committee research than one person browsing out of curiosity.

That account should move up the research queue. The SDR should identify the likely project owner, check whether the processor change affects the company’s workflow, and map the people who may be involved. The SDR should not send, “I saw you were checking out our integration page.”

Your ICP still does the first filter

Intent does not replace an ideal customer profile. It sits on top of it.

A company can spend weeks researching identity management and still be a poor prospect because it is too small, operates in the wrong region, lacks the required technical environment, or cannot buy through your sales model. Intent tells you who may be looking. Your ICP tells you whether the account is worth pursuing.

This is another common failure: giving every signal the same task. A pricing page view, an early category search, and a competitor comparison should not all create an immediate call task for an SDR.

A category search may justify monitoring or a useful educational resource. A pricing visit from an account that already fits your market may justify checking for other activity. A competitor comparison may justify direct research, especially if multiple stakeholders are involved and there is a recent business trigger.

First-party and third-party data answer different questions

First-party intent comes from your own channels: website visits, email clicks, downloads, product usage, demo requests, and CRM activity. It is usually easier to connect to a known contact, but it only shows what happened on your properties.

Third-party intent comes from activity elsewhere. Review sites, publisher networks, search behavior, professional networks, and public company announcements can show that an account is researching a category before it visits your website.

Each source has limits. Website activity may show brand familiarity. A G2 comparison page may indicate that the account is evaluating alternatives. A funding announcement, merger, or executive hire may explain why the problem has become timely. None of these signals should stand alone.

HubSpot’s buyer intent reporting shows how this works at the account level. Its tracking code can associate website activity with companies, including visits, unique visitors, last visit, and top pages. Its wider signals can include research topics and company news. Reports can be filtered by timeframe, traffic source, and intent criteria, with website activity available within a 90-day window. 2

The catch is that account-level activity does not automatically identify the decision-maker. A company may be researching while the person you contact has no connection to the project. LinkedIn Sales Navigator separates these two questions by showing account activity alongside the lead or group of leads associated with it. 3

Turn the evidence into a sensible next step

Start with fit. Then inspect the activity itself: which pages or topics appeared, how recently, how often, and which departments were involved. Finally, look for an external event that could explain the timing.

For a Tier 1 account, that may mean building a short map of finance, operations, and IT stakeholders before contacting anyone. For a lower-priority account, adding it to a monitored view may be enough until the activity becomes more specific.

The message should match what you actually know. Suppose a company has just hired a chief information security officer and several employees are reading audit-readiness content. You can reasonably ask whether the new security program is creating operational work across compliance, engineering, or vendor management.

If all you know is that someone visited a category page, do not invent a problem. Say less, or wait.

That is where cold outreach often falls apart. Reps call a company name and a page title “personalization.” Neither tells the prospect why the message is relevant. A better opening connects a real trigger to a likely business problem, then asks whether that problem is on the account’s agenda.

Review intent alongside pipeline results. If competitor-comparison activity rarely produces opportunities, the signal may be too broad or the follow-up may be poorly timed. If accounts with several engaged stakeholders produce better meetings, give that pattern more weight.

Buyer intent earns its place when it gives a rep a defensible reason to research one account before another. The score is secondary. The evidence and the next action are what make it useful.