Nothing is more valuable than knowing what a prospect really wants. Fortunately, B2B marketers are growing increasingly adept at discovering intent and leveraging it to accelerate revenue. Analyzing Google AdWords keywords, specific page visits and content downloads are just a few of the ways that marketers discover what prospects are interested in. We then target our messages to prospects' interests and nurture them until they are sales-ready.

But wouldn’t sales benefit just as much, if not more, from the same knowledge?

Many B2B companies don’t ultimately close deals online. Rather, deals are closed over the telephone by inside sales reps. If reps can access this data in context, they can then solve customer pain points quicker and have more successful sales conversations as a result.

As marketing and sales at B2B companies become increasingly aligned - and are at times even managed by the same executive - sales enablement will only grow in importance. Marketers need to refine their processes for providing inside sales reps with the right data at the right time, while adopting tools and strategies that facilitate data-sharing between Marketing and Sales.

Here are three ways that marketing can enable sales by delivering customer intent data.

1. Create and Optimize Sales Content Engagement Alerts

Marketing automation platforms such as Pardot give marketers granular insight into a wide variety of prospect behavior, ranging from web form conversions to website visits. All too often, however, marketers set up lead scoring on site content and assume sales teams will eventually contact prospects that rack up high scores.

By then, of course, it’s far too late to influence B2B buyers. By some estimates, customers making B2B purchase decisions are 70% completed with their research by the time they contact companies to ask questions or see a demo.

Let’s imagine that your company offers content or media that is designed for buyers that are comparing solutions - for example, a buyer’s guide e-book or solutions comparison whitepaper. Any prospect downloading that content should be considered red hot. Accordingly, sales should be notified immediately, and the prospect should be contacted within an hour of the download.

Content alert email notifications should include the name of the content in the subject line, so that sales immediately understands what the prospect is interested in. This is critically important. In addition, the alert should include campaigns that the prospect is associated with, as well as a history of other content the prospect has engaged with, including website page visits.

2. Display Marketing Data in Context During Phone Calls

It’s all too common for reps to lack the data they need to solve customer pain points. According to the TAS Group’s Dealmaker Index Global Sales Benchmark Study, only 61% of reps feel secure in their ability to understand customer problems. And the proof is in the pudding, as the same study reports that more than two thirds of reps don’t hit their individual quotas.

Marketers have a powerful opportunity to improve inside sales reps’ success with every inbound call by delivering contextual data about each lead’s preferences. A good way to accomplish this is by sharing call tracking data in real-time with sales reps. Call tracking is a process that has been used by marketers for decades to report the volume of calls from particular online and offline sources. By provisioning unique numbers that are associated with efforts like web content pages, social media channels or even paid search keywords, marketers can know which efforts are driving inbound calls as they come in. By sharing this data with reps in real time, they can see the source of calls before even picking up the phone to take a sales call.

Imagine, for example, that you sell several different types of business software including accounting software. With a call tracking solution, you could not only measure the ROI of your AdWords campaigns for each individual product, but you could also automatically route the call to an accounting software specialist and let them know which product they were interested in based on the AdWords campaign or ad group that led them to call. This offers the potential to save your customers and your reps valuable time.

To accomplish this, you could build a custom CTI “screen pop” that shares call tracking data with sales reps at the moment of inbound calls. Additionally, my company, RingDNA offers a pre-built solution that shares call tracking data with inside sales reps in Salesforce.

3. Deliver Social Intent Data To Sales Reps

Every day, individuals are using social platforms like Twitter and Facebook to share brands’ content, discuss customer experiences and broadcast pain points. Social-savvy marketers should be employing tools in order to keep a watchful eye on prospects’ social activity. For example, Brandwatch reads through and summarizes what is being said about brands and products across social platforms, and monitoring tools such as Salesforce Radian6 can be configured to help marketers scan social platforms for keywords and hash tags that might be signals of commercial intent.

After identifying social intent, the key to success is then sharing that data with sales reps. If your business’ sales reps aren’t already interacting with customers through social media channels, it’s well-past time to get them involved. Imagine that a customer downloads your company’s e-book, The Definitive Guide to 3-D Printers, and shares a link to it on Twitter. Marketing should be able to quickly identify that a prospect tweeted about your product, and sales should be alerted. The rep could thank the individual for sharing the e-book and offer assistance in case they are looking to purchase a printer.

One tool that automates the process of sharing social leads is Salesforce Radian6. The product can be utilized to monitor social channels for very specific conversations, such as your competition’s customers complaints or industry-specific pain points. Those conversations can then be routed to sales reps.

The time is now for marketers to enable sales by delivering customer intent data in the right context and at the right time. Doing so will empower more reps to hit their quotas, more businesses to meet their quarterly revenue targets, and will enable Marketing to work with Sales to accelerate the actual revenue accrued from every marketing effort.  

Howard Brown is Founder & CEO of RingDNA. RingDNA’s inside sales solution maximizes sales performance and is 100% built for salesforce customers.

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