The Silent Difference Between Interest and Intent

Your sales pipeline is filled with "interested" prospects. They replied to your email, downloaded your whitepaper, and even said your demo was "very interesting." Yet, these deals go nowhere. They stall, they ghost, and they die. The problem is that sales teams are fundamentally misreading the signals. They are confusing polite interest with genuine buying intent. Understanding this silent difference is the key to cleaning up your pipeline and focusing on deals that actually close.

A person window shopping (interest) versus a person at a cash register (intent).

What "Interest" Looks Like

Interest is passive. It is a sign of curiosity, not commitment. It is cheap.

• Vague compliments: "This looks cool."
• Information gathering: "Can you send me some more information?"
• No commitment to next steps: "We will review this internally and get back to you."
• Focus on features: They ask a lot of questions about what your product does, but not about how it solves their specific problem.

A prospect showing interest is essentially window shopping. They are browsing, but they have no immediate plan to buy.

What "Intent" Looks Like

Intent is active. It is a sign of a real, painful problem that needs to be solved. It is expensive.

• Specific, problem-focused questions: "How would this integrate with our Salesforce instance? We have a problem with data syncing."
• Willingness to commit resources: They are willing to bring other stakeholders (like their boss or the head of IT) into the conversation.
• Asking about implementation and onboarding: They are thinking about the practicalities of using your product, not just the features.
• Discussing price and ROI: They are trying to build a business case.

Interest is when a prospect asks what your product does. Intent is when they ask what your product does for them.

How to Test for Intent

Your job as a salesperson is to test for intent. You must move the prospect from passive interest to active commitment. You do this by asking for small, incremental commitments.

• Instead of sending information, ask to schedule a 15-minute call to walk them through it in the context of their business.
• Instead of accepting "we'll review it," propose a specific next step with a date: "Great. Does it make sense for us to schedule a follow-up for next Tuesday to discuss your team's feedback?"
• Instead of answering endless feature questions, pivot back to the problem: "That's a great question. Before I answer, can you help me understand why that feature is important for what you're trying to accomplish?"

Conclusion

Stop filling your pipeline with "interested" leads. It gives you a false sense of security and wastes your time. Be ruthless in qualifying for genuine intent. A smaller pipeline filled with high-intent prospects is infinitely more valuable than a large pipeline filled with polite curiosity. It is the only way to build a predictable revenue engine.