You’re drowning in leads, but not all of them are worth your time. If you’re in sales or sales ops, you know the real challenge isn’t getting contacts—it’s figuring out who’s actually interested and who’s just kicking tires. This guide is for anyone using Buyerdeck who wants to stop chasing ghosts and start focusing on real buyers.
Let’s get practical about tracking buyer intent signals, filtering out the noise, and making sure your sales outreach lands where it counts.
Why Buyer Intent Signals Actually Matter
Here’s the deal: Most so-called “hot” leads aren’t hot. If you treat every click or email open as gospel, you’ll waste hours chasing people who don’t care. Buyer intent signals are about reading between the lines—figuring out who’s just browsing and who’s actually ready to buy.
A good intent signal isn’t just activity. It’s meaningful activity. Think “asked for a demo” or “shared your deck company-wide,” not “clicked a link at 2 a.m.” Buyerdeck can help surface these signals, but you need to know what to look for and how to act on them.
Step 1: Set Up Buyerdeck to Track the Right Signals
Before you start, make sure your Buyerdeck account is set up to actually track what matters. Don’t just flip every switch and hope for the best.
What to track: - Deck opens and re-opens: Is someone coming back to your materials more than once? - Shares and forwards: Are they looping in colleagues, or does the deck just sit there? - Time spent per slide: Did they skim the first slide and bail, or dig into the details? - Specific asset downloads: Are they grabbing pricing sheets or case studies? - Questions/comments in the deck: Actual engagement, not just silent clicks.
What not to obsess over: - Single brief opens (especially after a mass email) - Non-decision-maker views (unless they start passing it around) - Generic page views, especially if they come from bots or random sources
Pro tip: Customize your deck links for each prospect or account. This gives you much cleaner tracking and helps avoid “who opened what?” confusion later.
Step 2: Spot Real Buyer Intent (Not Just Noise)
Not all activity is created equal. Here’s how to separate wheat from chaff:
Real Signals You Should Prioritize
- Multiple opens over several days: Indicates ongoing interest, not just an accidental click.
- Shares with multiple stakeholders: If a prospect passes your deck around internally, that’s a strong buying signal.
- Engagement with pricing or contract info: If someone spends time on the pricing slide or downloads terms, pay attention.
- Direct questions or comments: If they’re asking for clarifications or next steps inside Buyerdeck, that’s gold.
Common Red Herrings
- One-time opens: Especially if it’s right after a campaign blast. People are curious, not committed.
- Short view times: If they’re in and out in under a minute, they’re not reading.
- Opens from weird locations: Sometimes people forward decks to their personal email or open from home. Sometimes, it’s just noise.
Honest take: If you chase every micro-signal, you’ll burn out. Focus on patterns, not one-off events.
Step 3: Score and Prioritize Prospects
Don’t just eyeball activity—set up a simple scoring system in Buyerdeck or your CRM.
A Simple Intent Scoring Model
Assign points for high-value actions: - +5: Deck shared with 2+ stakeholders - +4: Multiple opens across several days - +3: Downloaded pricing, case studies, or technical docs - +2: Left a comment or question - +1: Spent over 2 minutes on key slides
Subtract points for low-value activity: - -2: Only opened once, under 30 seconds - -1: Opened from a generic/unverified email
Keep it simple: The goal isn’t to build a perfect AI, just to filter out the tire kickers and focus on real leads.
What works: Manual review for your top accounts. Automated scoring for the bulk of leads. Don’t waste time trying to predict everything—use your judgment.
Step 4: Sync Buyerdeck Data with Your Sales Process
Even the best intent data is useless if it stays siloed in Buyerdeck. Make sure your team can see and act on signals fast.
Best practices: - Integrate with your CRM: Push key intent signals (like deck shares, time spent, downloads) into Salesforce, HubSpot, or wherever you live. - Slack/Email alerts: Set up real-time alerts for high-value actions, but don’t overdo it—nobody wants 20 emails a day. - Update opportunity stages: Use intent data to move deals forward (or mark them as cold when interest drops off).
Don’t bother with: Over-complicated dashboards nobody looks at. If your reps aren’t using the insights, simplify.
Step 5: Act on Signals—Don’t Just Watch
This is where most teams drop the ball. If your process ends at “ooh, they opened the deck,” you’re missing the point.
How to act: - Follow up fast: When someone shows real intent, respond within hours, not days. - Personalize your outreach: Reference the specific content they engaged with. “Saw you spent time on our pricing slide—happy to walk through options.” - Bring in the right people: If the deck was shared with legal or finance, pull in your experts early. - Disqualify cold leads: If someone ghosts after one click, move on. Don’t clog your pipeline with wishful thinking.
Pro tip: Use intent signals to time your outreach, not to write your entire script. People still want a human conversation, not a creepy play-by-play of their clicks.
Step 6: Review and Refine Regularly
Intent signals aren’t static. What worked last quarter might not work now, especially as your product or sales cycle changes.
Simple ways to iterate: - Review closed deals—what signals did real buyers show? - Talk to your reps—which signals actually led to conversations? - Drop signals that never pan out (e.g., “opened at 1 a.m.” almost never means interest). - Adjust your scoring and alerts every quarter.
Skip: Chasing “perfect” data. The goal is to get a little better every month, not to build a crystal ball.
Wrapping Up: Don’t Overthink It
Intent tracking in Buyerdeck isn’t magic—it’s just a way to spot who’s actually paying attention so you can focus your time. Start simple, ignore the noise, and let the data guide you to real conversations.
Keep your process tight, listen to what actually works, and tweak as you go. Most of all, don’t let the promise of “perfect intent data” distract you from the basics: follow up fast, personalize your outreach, and move on when the signals just aren’t there.
Get out there, track what counts, and spend your sales energy where it’ll actually pay off.