Intent Signals vs. Pre-Intent Signals: What’s the Difference?

In sales, timing is everything.

Imagine spotting the smallest indicators that a prospect might need your solution—long before they even start looking. 

For instance, you're meeting a prospect who, on the surface, may not seem interested in what you offer. However, beneath that surface, data reveals subtle but powerful shifts in their business—hiring sprees, expansion plans, and strategic goal shifts. 

These changes, or “pre-intent signals,” tell a story that traditional sales data often misses. 

Contrast this with a prospect who’s on your pricing page for the third time this week, downloading a whitepaper—clear signs that they’re moving toward a purchase decision. Understanding and leveraging both pre-intent and intent signals allows sales teams to balance foresight with immediacy, guiding outreach that’s relevant and timely.

Today, I’ll unpack what makes intent and pre-intent signals distinct, how each can elevate your sales process, and how intelligent tools like Evabot can help you track and respond to these signals with precision.

What Are Intent Signals?

Intent signals are behavioral breadcrumbs that reveal when a prospect is actively considering a solution. These signals suggest a potential buyer is nearing a decision and ready to explore solutions that address their immediate needs.

Examples of Intent Signals:

• Downloading content like whitepapers or case studies
• Visiting pricing or product pages multiple times
• Signing up for product demos or webinars

How Intent Signals Elevate Sales:

1. Actionable Insights: Intent signals point sales teams to leads that are actively considering a solution, enabling precise targeting and prioritization.
2. Shortened Sales Cycles: Engaging with prospects who show intent signals can fast-track conversations, as these individuals are already primed for decision-making.
3. Mid-to-Bottom Funnel (MOFU/BOFU) Focus: Intent signals often emerge when prospects are in the later stages of their journey, meaning they’re more likely to be sales-ready and open to tailored pitches or product offers.

What Are Pre-Intent Signals?

While intent signals indicate immediate interest, pre-intent signals capture more subtle, early-stage signs that a prospect might need your solution down the road. These signals often correlate with broader changes or growth within a company that could indicate future needs.

Examples of Pre-Intent Signals:

• Recent funding rounds or acquisitions
• Job role changes, like hiring in certain departments (often indicative of growth)
• Industry trends, such as a shift toward digitalization or new regulatory requirements

How They Are Collected: Pre-intent data generally comes from external sources—think company earnings reports, LinkedIn hiring insights, news articles, and social media mentions. AI tools like Evabot can extract and analyze these signals, turning them into actionable insights.

How Pre-Intent Signals Improve Prospecting:

1. Nurturing Relationships Early: Pre-intent signals allow sales reps to engage with prospects ahead of the competition, building rapport before a need is fully realized.
2. Educational Outreach: These signals create opportunities for sales reps to share valuable, non-salesy content with potential buyers, helping them understand their own challenges and setting your brand as a knowledgeable resource.

Top-of-Funnel (TOFU) Advantage: Pre-intent signals work best at the top of the funnel, providing a competitive edge by allowing proactive outreach and brand awareness efforts long before buyers start their solution search.

Key Differences Between Intent and Pre-Intent Signals

1. Timeline in Buyer Journey:some text
   • Intent Signals: Indicate a prospect is closer to the decision-making stage, where engagement is conversion-focused.
   • Pre-Intent Signals: Appear earlier in the buyer journey, suggesting that nurturing and educational outreach will be more effective.
2. Signal Sources:some text
   • Intent Signals: Direct interactions like content downloads, email clicks, and pricing page visits.
   • Pre-Intent Signals: Company-wide indicators like hiring trends, M&A activity, or new funding that suggest possible future needs.
3. Sales Strategy Implications:some text
   • Intent Signals: Call for a more action-oriented engagement approach—demo offers, personalized pitches, and conversion-driven outreach.
   • Pre-Intent Signals: Favor softer, relationship-building strategies like educational resources, trend insights, and gentle awareness-building that lay the groundwork for future engagement.

How Both Signal Types Boost Your Sales Process

Combining intent and pre-intent signals within a unified strategy allows sales teams to connect with prospects at every stage of their buying journey.

1. Complementing Each Other:some text
   • Pre-Intent Signals: Help build brand awareness and start conversations early.
   • Intent Signals: Allow for targeted, conversion-focused outreach when a prospect is primed to make a decision.
2. Improving Sales Funnel Efficiency:some text
   • TOFU with Pre-Intent Signals: Leverage these insights to expand your pipeline and nurture prospects through educational, value-driven content.
   • MOFU/BOFU with Intent Signals: Prioritize outreach and personalize communication for prospects already interested, thus increasing the chances of conversion.
3. Personalized Outreach at Every Stage:some text
   • Early engagement through pre-intent signals enables rapport-building, while intent signals prompt immediate, tailored engagement based on real-time behaviors.

Leveraging Intent and Pre-Intent Signals to Enhance Outbound Workflows

Balancing short-term and long-term opportunities is key to a robust sales pipeline.

Strategies for Dual-Focused Prospecting:

1. Engaging Long-Term Prospects: Pre-intent signals can help your team identify accounts worth nurturing, allowing them to introduce your brand and solutions gently, without a hard sales pitch.
2. Capitalizing on Immediate Leads: Intent signals alert you to accounts primed for conversion, enabling more targeted, conversion-driven outreach.

Practical Tips for Implementing Signals in Sales:

• CRM Integration: Ensure that your CRM captures both intent and pre-intent signals, offering a holistic view of each prospect's journey.
• Aligning Marketing and Sales: Marketing can leverage pre-intent signals to pass qualified leads to sales, ensuring a smooth transition as prospects show stronger buying intent.

How to Implement Insights and Intent Signals in Your Outbound Workflows

Using insights and intent signals can transform your outbound sales strategy. Let’s explore how to seamlessly integrate these elements into your workflows.

Pre-Intent Signals / Insights
Pre-intent signals provide early indicators of potential interest before explicit actions are taken. Here’s how to leverage them:

• Use AI Tools: Platforms like Evabot scan publicly available sources such as 10K reports, earnings calls, news, social media, and interviews.
• Analyze Text and Transcripts: Evabot analyzes these sources for qualitative insights and scores them based on relevance.

Steps to Integrate Pre-Intent Signals:

1. Add Evabot Chrome Extension: Connect it with tools like Outreach or Salesforce.
2. Trigger Account Insights: Automatically gather and prioritize account insights.
3. Sort and Integrate: Automatically sort account lists and integrate with power dialers like Nooks for efficient dialing.
4. Automated Outreach: Use Evabot to send hyper-personalized emails with relevant insights to high-priority accounts or import them into your outreach tool.

Intent Signals
Intent signals are direct indicators of buying intent, invaluable for targeting prospects who are ready to engage.

Sources for Intent Signals:

• First-Party Data Platforms: Use tools like Factors.ai, RB2B, and 6sense to track information on website visitors.
• Social Listening Platforms: Monitor social media engagement data on your competition.
• CRM Data: Extract lists of people who have downloaded your content and are actively engaged.

Steps to Execute:

• Add Tools to Your Stack: Install the necessary Chrome extensions and link them with your CRM or outreach tools.
• Trigger Insights and Prioritization: Automate the process of gathering and sorting insights.
• Utilize in Outreach: Integrate intent signals across your outreach as communication enhancers.

Final Thoughts

When used together, intent and pre-intent signals provide a competitive advantage, allowing you to approach prospects with exactly the right message at the right time. As sales teams navigate an increasingly complex buyer journey, integrating these signals can improve targeting, timing, and, ultimately, your conversion rates.