How sales can 5x their success using marketing intent data

If your sales and marketing teams feel like they’re working on different planets, you’re not alone. Misalignment between these functions is one of the most common and costly challenges in growing a B2B SaaS business.

In this post, we’ll walk you through how Rocket SaaS has been building a lean but powerful strategy to align sales and marketing. We call it “ABM Lite”, a practical, scaled down version of account-based marketing built specifically for small B2B SaaS companies.

Why sales and marketing misalignment is killing your growth

Cold calling and spray-and-pray emails aren’t getting the job done anymore. People don’t answer unknown numbers. Cold emails often go straight to the bin. And even if you do get through, giving the same old pitch to everyone is a losing game.

Meanwhile, your marketing team is over here publishing blogs, running ads, hosting webinars, and the sales team doesn’t even know who’s engaging with it. That disconnect leads to wasted time, missed opportunities, and a huge gap in your revenue potential.

The solution? Give your salespeople better conversations to have with prospects who already know who you are and have shown signs of interest.

Introducing “ABM Lite”: Intent-driven selling without the enterprise price tag

Traditional account-based marketing (ABM) is often pitched as the holy grail for aligning sales and marketing. But let’s be honest, full-blown ABM programmes require budget, resources and tech stacks that most small SaaS teams simply don’t have.

ABM Lite is a scaled approach. Instead of targeting a small handful of enterprise accounts with bespoke campaigns, you focus on a larger, pre-qualified pool of companies showing signs of intent. Then you layer in sales outreach at the right time with the right message.

Start with the fundamentals: consistent, quality content

All of this starts with something very simple: content.

If your business isn’t consistently producing high-quality content across blogs, webinars, social and newsletters, your sales team has no warm signals to act on. You can’t skip this step.

Think of content as the foundation for generating demand and building brand awareness. When you push that content out via paid ads and organic channels, it starts to build familiarity with your brand across your target audience.

This means that when your salesperson does reach out, the prospect is far more likely to say “Oh yeah, I’ve seen your stuff” instead of “Who are you?”

Building your “known world” of target accounts

Once the content engine is humming, the next step is to define the audience you want to influence.

This doesn’t mean a tiny list of perfect-fit accounts. That’s where many ABM attempts go wrong because they’re too narrow. Instead, build a broader universe of companies that are a strong potential fit. They may not all be in-market today, but they’re in your zone.

Tools like Clay can help you identify companies based on hiring signals, funding events, industry, tech stack and more. These signals help you decide who to market to and when it’s worth getting sales involved.

This becomes your “known world”, the audience your brand should be showing up for week in, week out.

Stacking intent signals to find your warmest leads

One LinkedIn ad click isn’t a strong signal. But five different actions from one company? That’s gold.

This is where intent data comes in. When you start collecting and layering intent signals, you give your sales team a crystal clear view of which accounts are warming up. For example:

• They’ve clicked on a LinkedIn ad
• They’ve visited key pages on your site (like use cases, case studies or pricing)
• They’ve signed up to your newsletter or webinar
• They’re hiring for roles related to your solution
• They’ve recently raised funding

When you combine these actions, you start to see which accounts are moving through the buying journey, even if they haven’t filled in a form yet.

And when those accounts are passed to your salesperson, they can craft a message that hits exactly the right tone and topic.

Turning insight into outreach: what changes for sales?

This shift changes everything for your sales team.

No more blind dialling. No more one-size-fits-all pitches. Instead, reps are reaching out to prospects who already know the brand, have engaged with the content and are likely to be in an active research phase.

It’s no longer “Hi, I’m from [company]” and crossing your fingers. It’s “I saw you engaged with our recent webinar on SaaS marketing strategy and wanted to share something I think might be helpful.”

This approach doesn’t just increase conversions. It improves morale, too. Reps enjoy better conversations, build stronger relationships and don’t feel like they’re fighting an uphill battle with every call.

The role of technology (without needing a massive stack)

You don’t need a dozen expensive tools to get started with ABM Lite.

At Rocket SaaS, we use tools like Clay, Zen ABM, Sync and HubSpot to track signals and route warm leads to our sales team. These tools help surface the data, but it’s the process and coordination between sales and marketing that makes the difference.

The key is simplicity. Put the right data in front of your sales rep, in the tools they already use, at the moment they need it.

It’s all about timing (and trust)

There’s one last piece to this puzzle: timing.

Not every company showing intent is ready to buy today. But if your brand stays visible, relevant and trustworthy, they’ll come to you when the time is right.

That’s why this approach isn’t about hard selling. It’s about building familiarity and staying top of mind. So when that buying moment arrives, your SaaS is the first one they think of.

Final thoughts

Sales and marketing alignment doesn’t have to be a massive, months-long transformation. With ABM Lite, you can make simple, smart changes that create immediate improvements in your outbound performance.

Build consistent content. Define your known world. Track intent. And feed the warmest leads to sales with the right context and message.

It’s not just more efficient. It’s way more enjoyable for everyone involved.

Want help implementing this in your SaaS?
Book a free strategy call with Rocket SaaS and we’ll walk you through the exact process we’re using to drive better, faster growth.

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By Ryan James

Founder of Rocket SaaS