WHY INTENT SIGNALS AREN'T MAKING YOU MONEY

• An intent signal doesn't mean an account is ready to buy. It means someone inside that account has started exploring a problem.
• Most teams respond to signals as if they're sales-ready leads. They aren't; they're at the beginning of a buyer journey that takes time.
• 61% of the B2B buying journey happens before a vendor is even selected – in a phase where the buying group is still deciding if the problem is worth solving.
• Fixing intent ROI calls for using signals to support a buying group's deliberation, not to interrupt it with a pitch.

An intent signal tells you someone inside an account has started researching a problem you solve. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

“But wait,” we hear you say, “I thought signals show a group’s close to buying, that they want to speak to Sales?” You’re not alone: in most B2B go-to-market teams, signals = sales readiness.

The account shows up in the dashboard, gets exported to a spreadsheet, routed to an SDR, and who sends bottom-of-funnel content for a deal that hasn't opened yet.

Nine times out of ten, those account-based marketing efforts get ignored, causing teams to write off opportunities that just needed a little more time. And this is why the "intent data doesn't work" conversation keeps happening in marketing leadership meetings everywhere.

We’ve got to shift how we see signals – they’re just the start of the story, not the final chapter.

When a signal fires, the group is almost always stuck in this phase. They're not comparing vendors. They're not building a business case. They're still figuring out if the problem is real and worth prioritizing.

What do most marketing teams do at this point? Send a case study. Push an SDR call. Run a retargeting ad for a demo.

All of that content – and all of that outreach – is designed for a buying group that’s already answered both questions above. But reaching a verdict takes a buying group (a lot of) time. And it’s why we’re not getting through to them with our current approach.

When we jump the gun, the result is ignored emails, skeptical SDRs, and a very expensive intent tool with questionable impact.

A budding buying group is a delicate thing. It’s slow to come together and fast to fall apart. It starts with someone, somewhere in an account spotting a problem – long before any official project is acknowledged. Then, there’s some traction, as others get involved in sizing up the issue.

But a buying group needs to reach an internal consensus before it moves forward with any serious decisions. And when the signal fires to show they’re circling a category, it’s your job to help them get there.
That means providing deeply personalized revenue content for every person in the group, not just the one person who hit up ChatGPT looking for a solution.

In a typical buying committee, you’ll usually find:

The champion

The person with the problem.
They need conviction that the problem is worth solving and that your category is the right one to solve it.

The economic buyer

Usually a CFO or VP.
They need ROI logic and risk framing, not a product tour.

The technical evaluator

The person in charge of making the stack run smoothly.
They need to know your solution fits in and won't create new problems.

The skeptic

Every committee has one.
They need proof it's worked for someone in a similar situation.

When signals fire and every one of these people gets the same generic nurture email or the same PDF instead of B2B personalization, it actively causes friction. Instead of aligning around a problem, every member is still struggling to get answers they need to feel confident that their needs and concerns are going to be met.

And when the group spends time squabbling about competing priorities, you can bet it’s more likely they’ll break up than move to the next phase of the buying process. 40-60% of buying committees disband before reaching a decision – partly because no one on the seller side helped them move through deliberation together.

No, disharmony between Sales and Marketing is a symptom of poor intent data ROI, not a cause.

Sales say Marketing sends them bad leads. Marketing say Sales don't work their leads properly. Both are right in some ways, wrong in others.

The actual issue is a measurement mismatch. Marketing is being judged on sales-readiness signals – like MQL thresholds, intent scores, and lead volumes. But those metrics measure activity at the top of the buying journey, not readiness to buy. Sales get handed accounts that hit an arbitrary intent score threshold, expect a warm lead, find a cold lead, and bin it.

When the measurement framework changes – from "are we sending Sales enough leads?" to "are we helping Sales understand and move the buying group?" – the whole conversation shifts.

Sales stops complaining about lead quality because the leads that come through come with context: who's engaged, who's missing from the committee, what they've read, what they skipped. That's a surefire way to get Marketing and Sales back in each other’s good books.

Step 1: Check what happens in the first 24 hours after a signal fires

Does content go to the specific people inside the account who are likely researching the problem? Or to whoever is in your CRM for that account? Or straight to an SDR's call list?

Step 2: Look at the content being triggered

Is it buying-group-aware – different assets for different roles, different messages for different stages? Or is it the same regardless of where the group is at in its deliberation?

Step 3: Ask Sales what they do with intent alerts

If the answer is "check the score and the company name, and reach out", the signal isn't doing what it should be. A useful handoff includes who's engaged, who isn't, what topics held their attention, and what they ignored.

Step 4: Pull the conversion rates from intent-flagged accounts

Compare accounts where an intent signal fired and triggered immediate sales outreach vs. accounts where it triggered a nurture journey first. If your data lets you see it, the gap is often bigger than you’d expect.

Most intent data ROI conversations are about volume and accuracy: are we getting enough signals, are they reliable, which intent data provider has the best coverage?

Those are real questions. But they're ignoring what needs to be addressed if we want our signals to fuel action that drives commercial growth.

We’ve got to ask ourselves “when a signal fires, what does the buying group need to align – and are we giving them that?”

That question changes the entire activation workflow. Instead of using signals to push leads to Sales before they’re ready, you build experiences for every member of the committee based on their role, their concerns, and their behavior.

That’s what it takes to help groups align, agree, and decide – and to turn intent data into a key lever in closing the revenue gap.