Decrease Sales Cycles by 25% with Intent-Based Sales Processes
Jake Dunlap
“One of the biggest elements missing from the sales process today, one that none of the major methodologies are addressing, is understanding a buyer’s level of intent.”
Today I want to talk about one of the best ways to accelerate deals that’s actually tackling a larger issue in the sales process.
That is, the one-size-fits-all approach that puts everyone through the same buyer experience and journey, disregarding their level of intent and how fast they’re looking to move.
I’ve talked about intent-based sales cycles before, and it’s a pretty simple concept if we’re willing to break the old methodologies and change this current mindset that we have to put everyone with different intent levels through the same steps.
Understanding buyer intent can build sales processes that move people through the process faster, decrease sales cycles by up to 25%, and help buyers gain the speed they’re looking for.
In today’s session, I break down the three intent buckets of buyers (cold, educated, and vetted) and give some very clear tactics around what treating these buyers should look like in a modern sales process.
- Understanding Buyer’s Intent Levels
- Moving Buyers from Cold to Educated to Vetted
- Offering a Frictionless Path and the Need for Speed
Recap: Decrease Sales Cycles by 25% with Intent-Based Sales Processes
The important bits
- 1:47 – We need to understand people’s intent level before we can understand what they want to buy or how they want to buy.
- 4:45 – One of the biggest elements missing from the sales process today, one that none of the major methodologies are addressing, is understanding a buyer’s level of intent.
- 5:25 – Everything that happens in the B2C world ends up happening in the B2B world.
- 6:53 – There are three ways people come in. The first is the “vetted” buyer or those with super-high intent. They do their own research and come into the process prepared.
- 7:28 – The second level is the “educated” buyer, and the third is the “cold” buyer
- 8:45 – We’re consistently finding that nobody has a different process to deal with the different ways people want to buy.
- 9:18 – How this differs from traditional lead scoring – attending a webinar or downloading a piece of content does not equal intent.
- 11:00 – People don’t want homework. But here’s how to get them from cold to educated before the meeting.
- 13:00 – We are obsessed with this concept that people coming into the funnel must be decision-makers, but they don’t.
- 15:00 – If you don’t have a process to get people to the educated level before you meet with them, your sales cycle will be weeks or months longer than it needs to be.
- 16:20 – First questions should establish intent. Ask questions that get buyers to demonstrate what they already know.
- 19:02 It’s okay for buyers to be talking to the competition. That means they are actively looking to make a purchase.
- 20:32 Buyers increasingly prefer speed over price. But often, we sellers are artificially dragging out the sales process.
Understanding Buyer’s Intent Levels
One of the biggest elements missing from the sales process today, one that none of the major methodologies are addressing, is understanding a buyer’s level of intent. This is a huge gap because we need to understand their intent level before we can understand what they want to buy or how they want to buy it.
Buyers fall into three levels of intent: high, medium, and low, which, when it comes down to it, you can think of as vetted, educated, or cold (respectively).
“Vetted” buyers are the people that have taken the time to do their own research. They’ve probably talked to peers, they’ve already met with a competitor, they’ve researched your offerings, they have an understanding of pricing, and they’re looking to meet a clear timeline.
Meaning this buyer has already vetted YOU. You are not vetting them.
More and more buyers today are “vetted” buyers. They come inbound with super-high intent because they are not at square one or just thinking about it.
So the question is, how does your sales process deal with these people? Do you treat everybody the same? Do you send buyers with high intent through the same process as your cold buyers?
Or are you creating different intent-based sales cycles to adapt to how educated a buyer already is about your product/service and send them down the right path for them?
Speaking of how educated a buyer is. That’s the next level. Educated buyers have researched your offering, have a clear business outcome, and have a timeline.
They know they need a solution but aren’t to the point of vetted, and they’re still doing their due diligence.
Notice that I did not include downloaded a white paper or attended a webinar. How determining intent is different from traditional lead scoring is that a number of actions calculate lead scores, but someone downloading a white paper or attending a webinar does not equal intent. It hardly lends itself to accurate scoring anymore. You can’t tell if a buyer has researched a competitor or if they are ready to have a serious conversation from a form.
Cold, obviously, hasn’t done much research or candidly even knows if it’s the solution they need.
But for these first two buckets, as more and more people fall into them, we have to change how we interact with buyers in our overall processes.
Related Content:
Intent-Based Sales - What You Need to Know
Moving Buyers from Cold to Educated to Vetted
So this concept of intent-based sales is that people are coming to you with either low, medium, or high intent (or cold, educated, or vetted). Now that we know what it is, it makes sense; how will we use this understanding to put buyers through different processes and change the conversation?
Our job in sales is to try to get more people from cold to educated and from educated to vetted, and vetted people are the ones who are actually going to move the needle. But moving people to at least the “educated” phase before the first meeting will also shorten the sales cycle.
How to do this?
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- The questions that we ask before the meeting. (Getting buyers from cold to educated before the meeting.)
- The questions that we ask during the first call. (Getting buyers from educated to vetted.)
The questions that we ask before the meeting.
True. People don’t want homework. But, if you send them something and say, “If you can watch/read this before the meeting for 1.5 – 2 minutes, it will help to expedite and speed up the first conversation,” buyers will do this “homework” almost every time.
Although people don’t want homework, if you can help them understand what’s in it for them and why they should do a little bit of research, they won’t look at it as homework.
This way, your team only interacts with people in the educated bucket. Which is all they should be interacting with. If a buyer is still at a cold state where it’s not a priority and they’re not sure, candidly, there isn’t a lot Sales can do about it.
The questions that we ask during the first call.
Your first questions on the call should establish intent. Don’t ask vague questions like, “how much do you know about us,” or “have you done any research?” Instead, ask questions that get buyers to demonstrate what they know. Ask them questions that make them talk.
For example, “Hey, John, I’m working with many VPs of Operations who handle different parts of the business. So, first, I want to understand your role in the day to day of XYZ topic.” Why do I need to know their role? Because I need to know the departments involved in the typical buying circle.
After I ask my role-based questions, before jumping into their top challenges or business priorities, which are still great questions, I’m going to ask, “So it sounds like as VP of Operations, you handle this… you do this… you do this great… Coming into the conversation today, have you all started to actively evaluate alternatives and tell me a little bit about where you’re at in that process?”
They’ll either say they’re just starting or they’ve already taken some demos.
What I’m getting at is asking questions that help you determine if they fit into the educated or vetted bucket and where they’re at in their evaluation process.
Don’t be afraid to talk about competitors. If they’ve spoken with competitors, that means they are probably ready to discuss pricing and budget.
One thing I want to make sure also to call out is vetted buyers are not necessarily decision makers. Don’t get stuck in the belief that somebody coming into the intent funnel has to be a decision-maker.
They don’t.
Almost zero companies make decisions in a vacuum where the decision maker is the person who has all the authority. Usually, there’s a decision maker, but there are also 15 people below that person who could also say “no” at any given time.
I’m not saying having them in the process isn’t important, but they’re not necessary. Many decisions are often made without the decision maker ever being a part of it. That’s just how people buy today.
Offering a Frictionless Path and the Need for Speed
Since more buyers today are vetted, they are coming to you already equipped with the knowledge they need. That means they are often looking for a speedier response time. McKinsey did an eye-opening study surveying 1,000 B2B decision makers that found buyers preferred speed over price by a significant amount.
The ironic part of sales is that we as sellers are often artificially dragging things out. Meanwhile, our buyers are saying, “no, no, I’ve already done all these things. Can we just go to step three, please?”
Think about how you buy in your everyday life. How many times have you picked an item on Amazon and then selected another one because the first one wasn’t going to arrive soon enough?
Everyone wants speed.
If you already behave that way in your personal life, the way you buy in your professional life will likely be the same. If you don’t think people will just click to buy a $30,000 piece of software, you are not paying attention to where the needle is going.
The click-to-buy process doesn’t mean we’re going to eliminate salespeople. They will still be here, but we really need to better define when we need to get the salesperson involved. Is there some type of education or way of raising intent that we can do early on so that by the time our buyers talk to us, it’s where a rep can actually make a big difference without slowing the process down?
I had the worst experience ever with Salesforce last year. We were trying to make an end-of-the-year purchase and didn’t know who our rep was. We reached out to support, and it took us two to three days to get to the right person. Then they wanted to hop on a call.
I told them I’m just trying to get this done before the end of the year, and it was a renewal.
This is where it gets crazy.
They told me I had to fill out a PDF and send it back to them. Salesforce. They had no place for me to click to buy my $40,000 purchase. I wanted just to run my credit card, and instead, I had to fill out a PDF and send it back to them after repeatedly saying I didn’t want to hop on a call.
More and more people are going to buy this way.
If your organization does not have an intent-based sales process, you are missing out on fast-tracking the 25% or more of your buyers who are already at that educated or vetted stage, and instead, you’re moving them at the same snail’s pace.
It’s time to audit your own process and see if you have a way to fast-track buyers who come in at a higher intent. The companies that will win in the future are the ones who get this. They are the people who say, okay, let’s go faster.