To build a consistent sales pipeline you’ll need a steady flow of leads coming in from various sources. But it’s natural that sometimes, your pipeline might dry up owing to your sales team scaling up quickly, marketing leads not coming in, or your outbound BDRs struggling to hit your quota. Here’s where passive buyers come to the rescue.
What is a Passive Buyer?
A passive buyer can be defined as a business or decision-makers with a need for a product that they haven’t realized yet. They possess a passive intent to purchase the product without outwardly looking for it. Yet they have an inherent need for it based on their circumstances.
For example, managers that are using Excel sheets to manage their team’s tasks may not be aware of dedicated project management software that can be a lot more efficient. Such a prospect might readily be interested in such a product once they’re made aware of it.
The Difference between Active & Passive Buyers
Active buyers are the buyers that actively go out and search for a product/service to purchase. These leads are aware of their business obstacle and are searching for a solution to their problem.
Meanwhile, passive buyers are those that have a business problem but aren’t aware of it. Hence, they might not be looking for a product to solve their problem, even though they may have a use for it.
Active buyers are easy to detect because they are actively searching for a solution to their problem. They can easily be identified as they score the internet searching for resources, solutions, and products.
A passive buyer, however, isn’t actively on the lookout for solutions or products to purchase because they aren’t yet aware of the problem. This makes them harder to detect and thus, most SDRs end up missing these leads. There are some indicators that you can use to find passive leads that we’ll cover later in the article.
How Will Passive Buyers Help My Sales Pipeline?
A productive sales pipeline will not only focus on high purchase intent buyers that are ready to buy, but also unaware passive buyers that need to be nurtured. Why?
The typical sales pipeline can be divided into 5 stages. If businesses primarily target high purchase intent leads (AKA buyers), they’ll only fill up the last two stages of their pipeline. This causes pipeline gaps, meaning you constantly have to be on the hunt for new buyers.
Adding passive buyers to your lead generation process helps give you a steady flow of leads, ensuring your pipeline always has more to give. This will come in handy, especially during those tough months when deals are hard to come by.
But how do you discover these passive buyers, and how do you turn them into active leads?
Let’s take a look at both those things below. First up: how to find more passive leads.
How Do You Find Passive Buyers?
You can use buying intent indicators that have been picked up by your website analytics software or a third-party provider to discover passive buyers for your company.
Here are some types of indicators you need to keep an eye on:
1. Firmographic Indicators
Firmographics are the simplest way to identify well-to-do companies from within your ICP. TAM, financials, mergers, acquisitions, funding, and number of employees are some firmographic indicators that can help identify a passive buyer.
For example, you could look at your existing customer list and build out an ideal buyer persona. You can then seek out all other prospects that fit the persona to see if your product/service can help them.
2. Technographic Indicators
Analyzing leads based on the technology they use is possibly the most accurate way to find passive high-intent leads. A prospect’s tech stacks can give you insights into how they spend their money on tech products.
You can find passive buyers that:
- Use products similar to yours
- Have used products similar to yours in the past
- Use products that supplement or integrate with yours
- Have a contract renewal coming up for a competitor’s product
3. Psychographic Indicators
Psychographic indicators help you identify the following:
- Which decision-makers are unaware of their need for your product
- Where their interests lie
- What they want to hear from you.
By understanding the psychographic make-up of a lead, you can discern whether their interests, activities, values, attitudes, lifestyle, social status, opinions, and other personality traits align with your product. You can then use contextual insights around the pain points of the prospect and gaps in their company’s tech stack to position your product as the solution to their current needs.
What Is Passive Lead Generation?
Passive lead generation is the process of targeting passive buyers via appropriate trigger events that help them realize their inherent need for your product. This helps you catch potential customers at the earliest stage and initiate their journey across your pipeline.
Having the right marketing, sales, and other functional processes in place will help you identify, attract and warm up these leads. These processes will differ from business to business and across industries.
Passive Lead Generation and Prospecting Strategies that Work
There are many ways that you can find passive leads. Some passive lead generation and prospecting strategies include:
- Making your SDRs directly reach out to passive leads
- Building out marketing email campaigns to warm up passive leads
- Running focused social media ads and retargeting campaigns on this list
- Sending passive leads invites to events or gifts that might initiate their interest
- Seeing if your team/customers have personal connections with the passive leads and getting a warm introduction from them
Ready, Set, Flow
We hope this article helped you understand the importance of building a gap-free pipeline that’s inclusive of passive buyers. But if you’re still having trouble uncovering these seemingly invisible leads, and need a helping hand, you can always count on Slintel. Slintel’s intent-based GTM insights platform 😉
Also, Slintel’s Chrome Extension can aid you with contact data and sales insights to find and qualify passive buyers. You can access the entire software stack or technographic and firmographics of a prospect’s company to find if they fit your ICP, gauge their budget, and understand their spending behavior.
The extension also shares the desire to buy or the buying intent score and psychographic data that can help you figure out what topics are popular within your prospect’s company. You can also unlock the contact data using free credits.
