Intent Signals
What the domain covers
Intent signals are observable behaviors or data points that suggest a contact or account is moving toward a decision. The candidate must distinguish first-party intent (activity on owned properties - site visits, content downloads, demo requests) from third-party intent (off-site research, review-site activity, or aggregated topic interest), and understand how signals are scored, decayed, and combined.
Concepts to master
- Signal strength tiers: explicit requests (demo, quote) > repeated high-value content consumption > single low-effort actions.
- Account-level intent: aggregating multiple contacts at one company to detect buying-committee interest.
- Topic vs. action intent: interest in a subject vs. a concrete step toward purchase.
- Decay and recency: intent is perishable; a spike two months ago is weaker than steady activity now.
- Noise control: bots, internal traffic, and accidental clicks inflate raw signals.
Traps in questions
Questions often overstate a single signal - one page view is not intent. Another trap is conflating engagement (opens, clicks) with intent (research depth, repeated visits to decision-stage pages). Watch for third-party intent being treated as definitive: it indicates interest, not a committed buyer. Also beware of ignoring account-level aggregation when the question involves a multi-stakeholder purchase.
Worked example
Three contacts at one company each visit a comparison page within ten days, and one submits a pricing form. Rule of thumb: the form submission is the strongest single signal, but the cluster of three contacts on a decision-stage page elevates the whole account. Score the account higher than any one contact alone, and apply recency decay so the cluster's weight fades over the following weeks.
Key points
- First-party intent is stronger than third-party intent.
- Explicit requests outrank passive consumption.
- Intent decays; recency matters.
- Account-level aggregation reveals buying-committee interest.
- Single signals are weak; clusters are strong.
- Filter bots and internal traffic from signal data.