Sell to in-market buyers and improve your close rates

But here’s the problem—most SDRs miss the mark. They waste time chasing the wrong prospects or connecting when it’s too late.

So, the first step in identifying warm or ready-to-buy accounts is to configure your intent topics. In Cognism Sales Companion, admin users can choose 12 intent topics from the 11,000+ we have available.

So, for example, in this scenario, we’re interested in tracking companies that are trending against topics such as ‘B2B Data’, ‘Cognism’, or ‘Sales Intelligence’—this makes it clear who is in the market for a solution like ours.

Once your admin configures the intent topics, Sales Companion automatically populates your dashboard with intent signals.

You’ll see:

• Intent scores for each topic.
• Upward search trends.
• Key locations driving the intent.

With insights into what your accounts are searching for—plus the frequency and recency of their activity—you’ll intercept buyers earlier in their journey, long before they start exploring competitors.

Intent indicates the accounts you need to prioritise, but it’s just one piece of the puzzle. To make an impact and truly select the highest-intent potential customers, you need to know who to contact and have a compelling reason to reach out.

Job join signals are a powerful way to reconnect with new hires who already know your solution. Since you know which accounts show purchase intent, targeting advocates at their new company gives you an easy way to break in and start the conversation.

In your Sales Companion dashboard, you’ll find the contact information for new hires in the high-intent accounts, based on the job join signals your admin set up. You’ll also get an AI-powered list of top-recommended contacts you should prioritise in the account.

This is a quick way to identify other buying committee members and effortlessly multi-thread the account. Each contact record includes the correct mobile and email for that individual and can be easily exported into your CRM or sales engagement tool.

When you have your intent data and job signals, use them to identify the decision-maker. Depending on your route, you can send different outreach messages to the high-intent customer, which we've outlined below.

Now, it's time to turn these intent signals into results. Instead of the generic ‘saw you were researching our tool’ (which hundreds of SDRS would normally do), try this approach. Although these templates are for email here, they can also be used on LinkedIn if this is your prospect’s preferred channel.

If you opted for the job join triggers, use alternative methods like gifting to engage new joiners and discretely tie the gift back into your pitch.

FAQs for high-intent customers

What is a high-intent customer?

High-intent customers are those actively looking to make a purchase or take action, such as requesting a demo, showing they are likely to convert. Typically, as an SDR this is a tiny market segment, but it’s worth knowing the signs. High-intent prospects are usually problem and solution-aware, so they're highly likely to turn into closed-won revenue.

How can I find high-intent potential customers?

To find high-intent potential customers, you need to be able to identify sales triggers and other signs a target account is in market. These include high-intent searches for a specific brand or answer to a pain point. Sales intelligence tools are handy for helping sales teams to uncover this type of insight.

Why target high-intent accounts?

SDRs targeting high-intent accounts are likelier to see them turn into closed-won revenue. Although it's impossible to base an entire outbound strategy on this since the market size is small, it makes sense to prioritise these accounts whenever they crop up over ones in a longer nurture journey.

Find more GTM Plays for SDRs in the hub. 👇