Intent
activation
maturity

(a.k.a. how close you are to making magic happen)

Insights? Check. Content? Check. In-market accounts? Check.
So why don't intent signals feel like they're working? Because, despite our good intentions, we're not using them as intended.

Signals are telling you someone, somewhere inside that account is starting to explore a problem. That a buying group is budding. Not that they’re ready for a sales pitch.

Between signal and sale, there’s a whole set of steps we’re missing. 61% of the B2B buying journey happens in the selection phase, where a buying group is still wrestling with two questions:

1) Is this a big enough problem worth solving?
2) What category of product will we use to solve it?

When a signal fires, our job is to trigger a journey that convinces them:
1) Yes, and 2) The category your product sits in.

By using signals to arm buying groups with the information they need to align and decide, we boost our chances of securing the top spot on their vendor shortlist. Which is exactly where we need to be when crunch time rolls around, given that 77% of the time, the top provider on the list when the group moves from the selection to validation phase wins.

A big part of getting there depends on how advanced your intent data setup is. To get a clear picture of what activity and outcomes to expect as your setup progresses, we've broken it down into four intent activation maturity levels.

Intent
activation maturity

We’ve mapped out four stages of intent activation maturity in relation to how intent signals are handled and the outcomes they lead to.

Read on to find out what they are and what they entail.

Intent Activation Maturity

Signal-Aware

Intent data exists. The dashboard shows which accounts are in market. But the signal doesn't move beyond the dashboard, doesn’t help to drive growth. Marketing manually passes on insights, SDRs work from a spreadsheet, and every account gets similar (if not the same) content.

The buying group problem starts here. When 40-60% of buying committees disband before reaching a decision, a part of the problem is that no one in the seller's camp knew the committee existed in the first place – let alone who was on it. And committees don't buy from teams that can't see them. At this level, you're responding to accounts, not to the people inside them trying to align.

We have a kind of disconnect between the data we have in Marketo and the data in Salesforce because, as you can imagine, the contact and the account are enriched by the salespeople. This is the master data, and it does not always go back in Marketo.

40-60%

of buying committees disband before reaching a decision.

^Source^:^{Dixon, M., & McKenna,}^{T.. Stop losing sales to customer indecision.}^{Harvard Business Review.}
^{https://hbr.org/2022/06/stop-losing-sales-to-customer-indecision}

MATURITY LEVEL 1

Data at your fingertips.

Growth Marketing Lead
Enterprise SaaS company

Intent signals now trigger content distribution, like email sequences, ad targeting, or SDR outreach. Progress!
But the prospect still doesn’t get an experience that adapts to where their buying group actually is.

Signals don’t help Sales understand what the group is deliberating or who’s in it. A financial services company in the early selection phase gets pitched as hard as a technology company about to pick a vendor. Sales are trying to engage them with identical messaging, case studies, and proof points.

For a buying committee trying to align internally on whether the problem is even worth solving, the wrong content at the wrong time creates friction.
One slipper doesn’t fit all.
And when a committee winds up fighting (which happens 74% of the time), they’ll likely disband before deciding in your favour.

Signal-Responsive

One playbook for everyone.

Marketing was once a strategic business function – one that understood markets, sharped offerings, and had a seat at the table where direction was set. That function has been progressively replaced by a collection of specialist activities bound together by volume metrics. Is it any wonder the signals don’t convert? Nobody is reading them in context.

Dorothea Gosling
Executive Consultant, Inflexion Group

MATURITY LEVEL 2

74%

of B2B buying groups show "unhealthy conflict" during the decision process.

Most deals don't die at the end with the vendor. They die at the start with the buying group. When you deliver signal-triggered content that's generic, it deepens the deadlock.

Source: Stamford, C. 2025. Sales Survey Aug-Sept 2024 Findings. Gartner Inc.

Signal-Activated

Signals shape the buying group in real-time.

Here’s where things start to heat up. Intent signals trigger dynamic, buying-group-aware experiences. First- and third-party account intelligence combine to deliver tailored narratives for every member of the group (shaped by role, concerns, topics of interest, and where they are in the deliberation) in real time.

Those experiences help move the buying group (and pipeline) forward, and the insights they generate tell you who’s in the group, who’s still missing, which content is progressing things, and where consensus is forming.
That type of intelligence helps you move up their shortlist.

MATURITY LEVEL 3

Signal-Validated

The missing middle isn’t missing anymore because you know exactly what happened between signal and success, and (even better) you can replicate it.
At this level, intelligence is the infrastructure for your revenue machine.

Sales want more of what Marketing is flagging. Signals are being used to ignite deal progression, velocity, and closure. Engagement is tied to named accounts, named buying group members, and pipeline stages with full attribution visibility. The CFO can clearly see what you’re getting for your intent data investment.
It's a win-win for everyone.

B2B Marketers today face two persistent gaps: the lack of deep, account-level insights to make plans and messages truly relevant and the missing infrastructure to act on that insight at speed and scale. Closing both gaps is what unlocks better decisions, stronger performance, and ultimately a real competitive edge.

Christian Weiss
Director ABM & FM Center of Excellence, Autodesk

MATURITY LEVEL 4

Proof from signal to revenue

Where are
you actually
starting from?

Before reworking anything, get an honest baseline of where your intent setup’s at.

That baseline is what you'll get from these eight quick questions across the areas where intent activation usually breaks down: speed to engagement, stack integration, signal accuracy, buying- group visibility, and revenue attribution. The output is a clear score and a maturity level, so you know exactly where your setup is, and where it isn't.

When it comes to narrowing the space between signal and action, every team is at a different level.

Most teams sit at Level 1 or 2 of intent activation maturity. Others are further down the line.

Score	Level	What it signals
0-6	Level 1: Signal-aware	Intent data exists. It mostly sits in a dashboard.
7-12	Level 2: Signal-responsive	You react to signals, but everyone gets the same playbook.
13-18	Level 3: Signal-activated	Signals drive buying- group-aware experiences in real time.
19-24	Level 4: Signal-validated	Full closed loop. The CFO can see the line from signal to revenue.

Ready to find out your level?

Take me to the quiz