What Is Intent Data and How Can It Improve Your Outbound Sales and Lead Generation?

So, what is intent data? There are so many definitions but read this:

What if you could know exactly which companies are looking for, showing signs that they need or moving towards needing what you offer, right when it’s happening, so that you can reach out to them right then?

That’s the value of buyer intent data. 

Throughout our years of experience in the outbound sales and lead generation landscape, we’ve seen many uses of intent data and read opinions about what it’s supposed to be. 

Most are either short-sighted or completely wrong about it (both the uses and the definitions). But that’s not even the biggest issue.

The issue is that being able to see and act on intent data in real-time (today) makes a considerable difference between a thriving sales pipeline and a stagnant one. 

Yet, most companies continue to approach outbound sales by blindly reaching out to prospects with little insight into whether they’re actually in the market for a solution. 

Or even worse, they only reach out to prospects they can find on general sales intelligence databases like Apollo.io or Lusha and call it quits. 

They have no information whatsoever about what intent data is or how it can help them catch low-hanging fruits to boost their sales. 

In this post, we’ll discuss everything about intent data and how to best use it. 

We’ll discuss the problems, why most sales and lead generation companies fail at it, and how our approach at Utmost flips the playbook and ensures proactive sales success. 

What is intent data and how do most sales and marketing teams get it wrong?

Intent data is information about web users’ content consumption and behavior that illustrates their interests, current needs, and ultimately, what and when they’re in the market to buy. 

It reveals digital behaviors that signal a prospect’s buying intentions before they ever fill out a contact form or speak with a sales rep. 

Now, most people hear “intent data” and immediately think it’s some magical list that tells you who’s ready to buy right now. But it’s not that simple. 

Not all intent data is created equal, and we believe understanding the different types can help you use it in a much smarter way.

Let’s break it down.

Different types of intent data (first-party intent data vs second-party intent data vs third-party data)

There are really three kinds of intent data you should know about: first-party, second-party, and third-party. 

Each type gives you different levels of insight into a buyer’s behavior, and each comes from a different source.

First-party intent data

First-party intent data is the stuff you collect on your own. It’s the clearest signal you’ll ever get because it’s based on how someone interacts with your website, your emails, or your product. 

If someone is reading your case studies, visiting your pricing page twice in one week, or downloading your sales deck, that’s intent. And it’s believed to be the strongest kind you can get, because the person is already on your website. They know you exist, and they’re paying attention. 

That said, it only works for people who are already engaging with you. You’re not reaching net-new leads here, just warming up the ones who’ve already knocked on your door.

Second-party intent data

Second-party intent data is basically someone else’s first-party data that you get through a partnership or integration. 

Think of review sites like G2 or TrustRadius. If someone’s comparing tools like yours on G2 and your product shows up in that category, you can sometimes access that behavioral data, especially if you’ve signed up for a premium package. 

The same goes for co-marketing campaigns. Maybe you run a webinar with another company, and their audience engages with your content; that’s second-party data. It’s more scalable than your own site traffic, and still pretty relevant.

Third-party intent data

Third-party intent data comes from specialized intent data providers that track activity across all sorts of websites and platforms. This is the most popular type and the one people think about when you mention intent data in marketing and sales strategies. 

These intent data providers, like Bombora or ZoomInfo, use things like cookies, IP tracking, and data partnerships to monitor which companies are researching specific topics online. 

So let’s say someone at a mid-sized SaaS company is reading articles about outbound sales automation across ten different sites. They haven’t visited your website, but third-party intent data tools will flag that company as “in market”. 

This type of third-party intent data is useful when you’re trying to uncover demand you wouldn’t see otherwise, but it’s also broader and sometimes less accurate. You’re getting signals, not certainty.

What’s tricky is that sales and marketing teams often treat all of this as the same thing. They’ll buy a list from a vendor and expect it to convert like warm leads, or they’ll over-focus on first-party behavior and miss out on early signals from the broader market. 

But when you understand where the intent data is coming from and how close it is to the buying decision, you can build smarter workflows. 

You can treat first-party signals like hot leads, use second-party data to open the door with relevant content, and lean on third-party data to find accounts that are just starting to look.

The key isn’t just having intent data, it’s knowing what kind you’re looking at, what it tells you, and how to use it without jumping the gun.

Utmost Agency’s definition of intent data

Now, everything we’ve discussed so far is beautiful and true. It is, however, a general definition of intent data and we believe there’s more to it, especially with our experience at Utmost Agency. 

We believe intent data also represents specific events, news, company-wide actions that tools don’t record that indicate a business is in the market for a solution or moving toward needing to make a purchase. 

Unlike the limited conception of intent data that suggests simple interest of web users in a topic, content consumption or things like that, we’re talking about actionable intelligence that suggests a company is either having or will be having conversations about making a purchase for your solution.

The problem is that these types of intent data are not always obvious as setting up a tool to tell you who visits your website and that’s why most marketing and sales teams aren’t equipped to see or act on them (more on that to come).

The problem with traditional outbound sales/lead gen and why intent data matters

Most B2B sales teams are still relying on outdated, inefficient approaches that waste resources and yield disappointing results. 

Spray and pray

The traditional outbound sales model typically follows this pattern:

1. Build a list of companies that match basic firmographic criteria (industry, company size, location)
2. Find contact information for potential decision-makers
3. Send outreach messages to everyone on the list
4. Hope some percentage responds
5. Repeat the process 

This approach is flawed because it ignores the most critical factor in any purchasing decision: timing. And that’s why equipping your campaigns with intent data is valuable. 

Even the most perfectly matched prospect won’t buy if they don’t have a current need or aren’t actively looking for a solution. 

The best case scenario here is that they’ll tell you to circle back. If not, you just won’t receive any response whatsoever which means wasted time, efforts, and resources. 

Cold outreach cold reception

Several researches out there consistently show that cold outreach typically yields response rates below 1%. The conversion rates are even lower. This makes sense when you think about it. 

We believe when sales teams reach out to “cold” prospects—those who haven’t demonstrated any interest or need— with “cold” messages, conversion rates are just bound to be crickets and rightly so. 

Why? You’re interrupting busy professionals with a “cold” message about something they aren’t looking for or need right now. 

This approach creates a lose-lose scenario: 

• Prospects feel interrupted during their busy day
• You waste time on people who aren’t ready to buy
• Your company spends money with little return

Having and leveraging intent data in this context helps take the cold out of your message and ensures you’re reaching out to the right target audience. It’ll provide you with context about their current business situation, and you’ll be able to personalize your message. 

So, not only will the outreach be relevant, because having intent data helps you filter out the list, you’ll also be able to create messages that resonate with them because you have insights into their needs. 

The resource drain

This outdated approach doesn’t just yield poor results, it also wastes valuable resources:

• Your sales reps spend countless hours researching and reaching out to prospects who have zero current interest
• Your company invests in expensive tools and databases without the intelligence to make them truly effective
• Your sales cycles stretch unnecessarily as reps struggle to generate interest rather than addressing existing demand

The fundamental problem isn’t that you are targeting the wrong prospects. It’s that you’re targeting them at the wrong time, with the wrong message, and without insight into their current priorities.

When you don’t know what your prospects are actually interested in, you’re essentially throwing darts blindfolded and hoping to hit the target. This approach costs more, takes longer, and frustrates everyone involved.

Intent data solves this problem by showing you exactly who’s actively looking for solutions like yours and providing you with unique data to create great messages, and thus allowing you to effectively focus your efforts where they’ll actually make an impact.

Why you can’t SOLELY rely on tools for intent data and signals

First of all, tools are definitely useful. If you’re launching a cold outbound campaign right now, we would recommend using some tools to collect “intent data” to identify companies, inform your cold messages so that they’re more relevant and timely for your target accounts.

Fun fact, we even considered adding a section about the best B2B intent data tools to use. But we came to the conclusion that no standalone B2B intent data tool out there is great at providing valuable intent data. 

Platforms like Leadfeeder, Bambora, ZoomInfo, and Cognism are good options for third-party intent data. But there is more to intent data than what they offer. 

So, the first reason we don’t believe you should solely rely tools to purchase intent data ties back to our definition of intent data. 

Let’s explain:

They mostly offer overly simplistic data

Legacy sales intelligence and marketing automation platform like ZoomInfo and Cognism offer simplistic data, like tracking and reporting on article views or IP address website visits. But that’s not always real intent data.

These are surface-level signals that only tell you that someone from a certain company visited your website or read an article. 

You don’t have any contextual understanding that details their specific pain points or suggests actual buying intent. 

We believe true intent data sales and marketing teams need focuses on key behavioral signals that indicate active research and buying consideration from the target accounts. For instance:

• Research patterns (like collecting data points) across multiple sites in your industry
• Engagement with bottom-of-funnel content related to pricing or product comparisons
• Consumption of competitor analysis and evaluation materials
• Activities that indicate an active buying committee has been formed, and thus suggesting they’re on a buying journey
• Surge in research volume from multiple stakeholders at the same organization

In other words, real sales intent data doesn’t just tell you someone’s looking; it tells you they’re looking to buy, and it gives you insight into what’s driving their search. You don’t always get this from tools.

Their definition of “intent” is not always accurate

Some tools (Bambora for example) work by establishing a baseline of normal content consumption for companies. 

When a company reads significantly more about a topic that’s outside of that baseline, the tool then flags it as “intent.” 

But that’s not real intent data or a signal that they’re in need for a solution or that they’re ready to buy. 

That can’t always be of any use for your sales and marketing efforts. Simply because someone is reading an article on a topic that’s outside they’re usual content consumption scope doesn’t mean that they want to buy. 

They only track content consumption on their partner websites

There are several regulations and data governance policies around business and personal data tracking, especially in Europe. 

Because of it, most intent data frameworks and tools only operate by tracking content consumption across a defined network of B2B websites. 

This means that they will be:

• buying signals that happen outside what tools can track
• if your industry is super niche, these tools might not cover the places where your prospects research or integrate “buyer intent data” that show your prospects want to buy
• even in covered industries, the quality of data is not guaranteed

Forget about the regulations or the number of websites that they tell you that they track, the mere fact that they’re operating on DEFINED networks is a limitation. 

The bottom line is that you will be leaving a considerable size of your TAM (total addressable market) for the taking. 

They don’t track data outside of web user behaviors and content consumption

The most important factor for us is that these platforms restrict their intent data analysis to content consumption and web user behavior alone. 

There are just events and behaviors that they don’t capture. And it’s mainly because they operate on pre-built intent data frameworks and it limits their offering. 

For example, they miss other critical signals like:

• Job postings that indicate new initiatives
• Funding announcements that create budget availability
• Leadership changes that often trigger new purchasing decisions
• Industry-specific events that tools don’t monitor

The most effective approach combines tools with custom systems and EXPERT INTELLIGENCE, designed to capture the specific signals most relevant to your offering. 

This gives you a complete picture of prospect intent rather than just a narrow slice based on article views, which takes us to our approach at Utmost.

The Utmost Agency’s approach: automated intent data at scale

Remember our definition of intent data from the start of the article? Let’s revisit and enhance it.

“What if you could know exactly which companies need what you offer right when they need it, and reach out at that perfect moment?”

“That’s the value of intent data.”

Now imagine this: 

What if intent signals triggered an entirely automated marketing and sales outreach system?

• The system automatically finds the data from the right source and scrapes it. 
• It checks each company against your existing customers or ICP to immediately qualify or disqualify them.
• It then identifies the right buyer persona, builds and enriches their profile, their potential pain points, and generates a personalized message by analyzing intent data without requiring any manual work.
• It automatically sends the message through email or LinkedIn based on the specific intent signal and persona.
• It automatically routes positive responses to your CRM or spreadsheet with instant notifications to your sales reps.
• The entire process happens automatically, and only requires your team’s attention when a qualified prospect expresses genuine interest. 
• It eliminates all the manual work involved in both intelligence gathering and initial outreach, so that your team could focus exclusively on engaged prospects actively seeking solutions.

What if? 

That’s the value of working with us at Utmost Agency. We’ve developed a fundamentally different approach to how intent data should work.

While most companies rely on basic tracking offered by tools and sales intelligence platforms, we set up systems by combining Clay with PhantomBuster, n8n, Apify, Trigify, and more. 

Our systems automatically monitor and scrape various sources to detect real-time intent data and buying signals.

Our approach focuses on business dynamics rather than the surface-level website interactions you get from tools. 

We look for specific triggers that indicate a genuine buying opportunity—moments when companies are most receptive to the solutions our clients offer. Let’s explain: 

How we use intent data to identify sales qualified leads

Our intent data system operates through a solid, automated workflow:

1. Intelligent monitoring: We identify and continuously monitor the most relevant sources of buying signals for each client’s specific industry and offering (more in examples below).
2. Automated data collection: Our systems scrape and process these signals in real-time, 24/7 to turn them into actionable insights.
3. Contextual analysis: We search intent data and prioritize signals based on their relevance and buying intent strength.
4. Instant activation: When high-value signals are detected, our system automatically triggers personalized outreach. 
5. Continuous optimization: We constantly refine which signals yield the best results and adjust our monitoring accordingly. 

This entirely automated approach means we’re capturing opportunities that would be impossible to identify manually or with standalone intent data tools.

Let’s look at specific examples of how we put this approach into practice:

Example 1: SDR hiring signals

Taking ourselves as an example, we scrape LinkedIn job posts for SDR roles every day at 9AM. The job post is pushed into Clay, we automatically find the hiring manager and the department manager, and send them automated messages.

Why this works: Companies hiring SDRs are actively investing in outbound sales capacity. 

This is the perfect moment to introduce services that can enhance their sales effectiveness like ours. 

By automatically detecting these hiring signals, we can reach decision-makers right when they’re focused on improving their sales ops.

Example 2: Funding round triggers

If we’re working for a client that offers cybersecurity solutions and we see an IT company raise capital, that’s more than financial news. 

It’s a signal that they’re about to expand their team. It means that they’re likely going to be hiring more cybersecurity analysts and engineers. In other words, they’re moving towards needing our client’s solution.

So, we collect this data, find the right contacts, and initiate outreach automatically. This is important because sales teams would have a hard time monitoring and collecting such data manually online, let alone the time it will take them.

Example 3: Competitor acquisition alert system

If a competitor just got acquired, their customers might be looking for alternatives. 

This presents a perfect opportunity for outreach, as these customers are likely evaluating their options due to uncertainty about product roadmaps, support quality, or pricing changes.

Our system detects acquisition announcements, identifies the acquired company’s customer base, and automatically triggers outreach campaigns targeting these newly available prospects.

Example 4: Job posting intelligence

If a company just posted a job listing for a position related to your product, they might need your services. 

For instance, if a company is hiring a Director of Data Analytics, they’re likely investing in their data infrastructure, making it the perfect time to reach out about data solutions.

Our system monitors relevant job boards, categorizes postings by type, and triggers outreach to the appropriate decision-makers based on the specific role being advertised.

Example 5: Contact movement tracking

We can also set things up in Clay so that whenever a lead or a current customer moves to a different organization, they’ll likely use or need a tool/service (or one similar to what) they were using at their former organization, to hit them up with an offer for your solution.

This works because people tend to implement tools they’re already familiar with when joining new organizations. 

By tracking contact movement, we can proactively reach out when someone who already knows your solution moves into a decision-making position elsewhere.

Utmost Agency intent data insights case studies

The real power of our approach is that intent data sources are not always predetermined or set in stone. 

It all depends on what you offer and who qualifies as your ICP. We develop custom intent monitoring systems tailored to each client’s specific market and offerings. 

Here are a few case studies. 

Case study 1: for a client with AI-Powered furnishing solutions

For a client offering AI-powered furnishing solutions, we monitor and scrape RSS feeds from sites like Multi-Housing News, Chicago Yimby, Property Week, and many other topically and contextually relevant sites.

Every time a new article is published, the article is pushed into Clay. We identify if the article was about an announcement of a new property development project, if so, what the name of the project is, who the developer is, and what their website and contact person is.

Then we find contact details, generate an email automatically, and send it to the contact person.

This highly specialized monitoring system captures opportunities at the exact moment when developers are planning furnishing needs for new properties—a perfect alignment of timing and need.

Case study 2: for a client with enterprise tax incentive solutions

We have a client that offers solutions to help enterprise-level businesses with tax incentives and find better ways to leverage profits to pay less taxes.

So, we set up Trigify to monitor and scrape Fortune 500 companies that have just had a huge boost in profit margins. 

Those are unique opportunities, and we find the contacts and reach out to them in real-time—automatically.

Most sales teams wouldn’t think to be actively looking for such data, but we see it as a critical intent signal. 

Companies with sudden profit increases have an immediate tax optimization need, making them highly receptive to solutions that help preserve those gains.

How to build your intent data strategy

If you’re considering to integrate intent data in your sales functions, here are key considerations and tips we recommend that you consider:

1. Understand your offering, your ICP and what your unique intent signals should be

You need to deeply understand what you offer and how the need for it comes about at a company. That’s how you’ll know what tools and data sources to consider as well as what intent data to prioritize and set up for. It’ll also help you define your standard for data quality.

Think beyond content consumption and consider specific events, news, or behaviors that most strongly indicate buying interest for your particular solution. 

These should become your priority monitoring targets.

2. Use the right tools

So many companies and tools sell intent data. But most often, you don’t need intent data tools, but rather a set of data monitoring and scraping tools connected to the right sources.

So, here again, understand what intent data means for you and use the right tools. 

3. Invest in an automation infrastructure

The value of intent data is time bound. It’s only valuable because you can see it and act upon it before your competitors. 

So, building systems that automatically detect and act on intent signals is the most important thing for capturing their full value. 

4. Connect the data to personalized outreach

Your intent data should drive not just who you contact, but also how you contact them. 

Tailor your messaging to the specific signal that triggered the outreach for maximum relevance and personalization.

5. Monitor results and refine

Nothing is set in stone. It’s all about continuous testing and tweaking. 

So, track which intent signals generate the highest quality conversations and conversions, then continuously refine your monitoring to focus on the most productive signals.

6. Hire for the technical expertise required

Building effective intent data systems requires specialized technical knowledge combined with outbound lead generation and sales expertise. 

So, we believe you should consider whether to develop this capability in-house or partner with experts who know how to put these systems in place.

Work with Utmost Agency to build an automated intent data workflow for your business

We believe that with AI and so many new ways to conduct online research, gain insights, and capture sales opportunities right now, markets are only going to grow more competitive and automated intent data systems currently represent the best way to stay ahead of the curve in B2B sales. 

The best sales processes and systems now have to ensure that their outreach is perfectly timed, highly relevant, and genuinely valuable to prospects and that’s where we shine.

We identify high intent accounts and use intent data to inform our strategies and turn them into potential customers before they even start their buyer journey.

We don’t just set up systems to improve sales results; we transform the efficiency and effectiveness of your entire sales function. Here is why you should work with us:

• Higher conversion rates

Our clients typically see higher response rates compared to traditional cold outreach.

• Shortened sales cycles

Intent-based outreach eliminates the time normally spent creating interest and establishing need. Since prospects are already in-market, conversations immediately focus on solutions.

• Improved ROI on sales activities

Sales teams focusing on intent-qualified prospects spend significantly less time on unproductive outreach and more time on meaningful conversations with genuine prospects.

• Competitive advantage

By reaching prospects during their active buying process and often before competitors even know they’re in the market, our clients gain a significant first-mover advantage in competitive deals.

• Scalable growth

The automated nature of our system means results scale with minimal additional resource investment. It creates a predictable and efficient growth engine.