In the classic sales drama Glengarry Glen Ross, the sales reps are handed leads (on physical cards) each bearing three pieces of data: name, address, and telephone number. 

And they didn’t need much more to have opinions, did they? The sales reps had an instant gut feel. They had a sense of the account history. They knew the neighborhoods. They understood intuitively which leads were “Glengarry” leads and which were “weak.” 

That sales instinct, bordering on superstition, is something marketers are finally beginning to harness to close deals in 2022. In this article, I’ll share how, with Qualified Signals, you can use buying intent to your company’s advantage. 

Why nobody trusts a marketing score

Until now, marketing scores have always had a flaw: Marketers had to build models on guesswork, not regression analysis. That is, they created models with simple addition or subtraction operators, deployed them, and didn’t return to update them. This created inconsistencies that led salespeople to distrust those scores. 

For example, is downloading an ebook (+10 points) always only one-third as valuable as attending a webinar (+30 points)? And is that ebook really ten times more valuable than reading an article (+1 point)? 

Marketing scores were guesswork. And salespeople knew. 

Then came predictive modeling, where data providers offered to scan all your current and past deals to assign “predictive” scores to tell salespeople which accounts and people to focus on. The problem? These scores weren’t explanatory. If a salesperson’s intuition came into conflict with the score, their intuition would prevail. If they believed that buyers without a LinkedIn profile would never buy, they’d ignore the lead, and thus it’d never amount to anything. Slowly, they’d become convinced the scores were wrong.

The predictive models could be flawed. And salespeople knew.

Then along came buying intent data. By now it was obvious that the most effective scores were actually a basket of metrics drawn from a range of sources, all of which salespeople could investigate for themselves. It was also clear that the most valuable signals were the ones that offered advance warning. 

The earlier marketers could help their reps understand that an account intended to evaluate, the better that rep’s chances. Buying intent data provided that. It showed sales reps whether prospects at their target accounts were “surging” by conducting early research across review sites and publications. 

The only problem? Aside from sending emails like they always did, there wasn’t much salespeople could do with that information. Until now.

Qualified Signals offers insight plus activation

The most powerful buying intent data is both accurate and actionable. Salespeople have to know and trust the score, but they also need a way to put that knowledge to use. That’s what we’ve built with Qualified Signals. 

Signals is buying intent data woven into Qualified’s conversational marketing platform. It captures scoring factors like website visits, unique visitors, chats with reps, chats with bots, and meetings booked, along with third-party buying intent data about whether visiting companies are a good fit, their buying stage, and what they’re researching. Then, it alerts sales reps when those accounts or individuals appear on the website, and allows them to chat with those prospects in real-time.

This is the culmination of all those years of trying to make marketing scores work: Reps finally have credible intelligence that helps them decide how to prioritize their time, but it also leaves room for their sales intuition. They can see, decide, and if it fits their intuition, engage. 

Signals offers the sort of insight that the stressed-out Glengarry Glen Ross sales team would have committed theft for. But luckily your reps don’t have to steal. They can just start chatting.