Firmable AI Targets Buyer Intent to Revolutionize APAC B2B Sales

MELBOURNE, Australia – January 21, 2026 – By Stephanie Kelly

Firmable, the AI sales intelligence platform founded by the successful team behind Aconex, has launched a powerful new feature designed to give B2B sales teams in the Asia-Pacific region a significant competitive edge. The new tool, named 'Search Intent', was officially released to customers this week, promising to pinpoint exactly which companies are ready to buy and when.

This launch marks a critical step in the evolution of sales technology, moving beyond static databases and into the realm of dynamic, predictive intelligence. By integrating external search behavior with its existing internal buying signals, Firmable aims to provide an unprecedentedly clear view of buyer readiness. The move is a strategic play by a leadership team with a proven track record, including Leigh Jasper, Paul Perrett, and Karthik Venkatasubramanian, who famously sold their previous venture, Aconex, to Oracle for $1.6 billion. Their latest venture now seeks to solve one of the most persistent challenges in B2B sales: identifying genuine intent amidst a sea of digital noise.

The New Frontier of Sales Intelligence

At its core, Firmable's 'Search Intent' addresses a fundamental limitation of traditional sales prospecting. Sales teams have long relied on 'internal' signals—events happening inside a target company, such as new executive hires, recent funding rounds, or departmental expansions. While valuable, these signals only tell part of the story. The new feature adds a crucial second layer: external search behavior.

'Search Intent' reveals what companies are actively researching on the web, providing a direct window into their current needs and priorities. For example, a software provider selling CRM solutions can now receive an alert when a target account not only hires a new Vice President of Sales (an internal signal) but also shows a spike in employees searching for terms like "customer relationship management software" or "sales automation tools" (an external signal).

This dual-signal approach transforms a lukewarm lead into a high-priority opportunity. Co-CEO Paul Perrett explained the significance in a recent announcement. "Buying signals have already helped sales teams bring more relevance and better timing to their outreach, and search intent takes that further by showing which companies are actively researching right now," he stated. "When internal movement and external search behaviour line up, it's one of the strongest indicators a buyer is ready to engage."

The technology is more than just a keyword tracker. The feature set includes company-level surge ratings to quantify the intensity of research, weekly trend indicators to monitor evolving interests, and ICP-aligned topic insights to ensure the signals are relevant to the seller's ideal customer profile. It also offers net new demand discovery, helping businesses identify potential markets they hadn't previously considered. All this intelligence is designed for direct CRM activation, seamlessly integrating into existing sales workflows.

A Strategic Play for APAC Dominance

The launch of 'Search Intent' is not merely a product update; it is a calculated strategic move to solidify Firmable's position as the leading sales intelligence platform specifically for the Asia-Pacific market. The company has consistently argued that global data providers, despite their scale, often fail to capture the nuances of the diverse APAC business landscape. These platforms can struggle with the accuracy and depth of local data, from verifying company registration details to obtaining correct mobile contact numbers and navigating disparate privacy regulations.

Firmable was built from the ground up to address this gap, boasting a database of over 3 million verified APAC companies and 25 million decision-makers. The platform emphasizes its localized data enrichment, including regional mobile numbers, business registry mapping, and industry classification codes tailored for markets like Australia and New Zealand. By developing 'Search Intent' with a focus on third-party signals from within the ANZ region first, Firmable is doubling down on its promise of delivering superior local context.

This regional specialization positions the company against global giants like ZoomInfo, Bombora, and 6sense. While these competitors have powerful platforms, Firmable's value proposition rests on the premise that in APAC, localized accuracy trumps generalized scale. The credibility of its founding team, renowned for building a global leader from Australia, lends significant weight to this strategy, attracting both customers and investor confidence in their vision to build a dominant, region-specific tech powerhouse.

Navigating a Booming Market for AI-Driven Sales

Firmable's launch is timed perfectly to capitalize on explosive growth in the sales technology sector. The global sales intelligence market, valued at USD 3.5 billion in 2022, is projected to surge to nearly USD 10.9 billion by 2030. Critically, the Asia-Pacific region is identified as the fastest-growing market within this sector.

This growth is fueled by several interconnected trends. Widespread digital transformation across APAC businesses has created an unprecedented volume of data, forcing organizations to adopt more sophisticated tools to make sense of it. Simultaneously, the integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning is no longer a futuristic concept but a foundational capability. Industry analysis indicates that AI can increase sales productivity by up to 30% and revenue growth by 15%, making its adoption a competitive necessity.

Sales teams are under increasing pressure to deliver more with less, moving away from high-volume, low-yield tactics toward highly targeted, intelligence-led engagement. The market is demanding solutions that don't just provide data but also surface actionable insights, automate tedious research, and enable real-time decision-making. Firmable’s synthesis of internal and external signals is a direct response to this demand, offering a smarter way to navigate the complex B2B buyer's journey.

From Data Points to Deals: The Practical Impact

For frontline sales professionals, the implications of this technology are profound. The daily reality for many account executives involves sifting through extensive lists of potential accounts with little indication of who is genuinely in-market. This often leads to wasted hours on outreach that is poorly timed and irrelevant.

With a tool like 'Search Intent', a salesperson's workflow is transformed. Instead of starting their day with a static list, they are presented with a dynamic, prioritized queue of accounts that are actively demonstrating buying behavior. This allows them to focus their energy where it matters most, crafting personalized messages that speak directly to a prospect's observed needs. The conversation shifts from a cold interruption to a timely and helpful consultation.

This intelligence-driven approach promises a significant return on investment through improved efficiency and effectiveness. By concentrating efforts on accounts with a higher probability of closing, sales cycles can be shortened and conversion rates increased. It allows sales teams to become proactive advisors rather than reactive sellers, building stronger relationships based on a genuine understanding of the customer's challenges at the precise moment they are seeking a solution. This shift represents the future of B2B selling, where the winners will be those who best leverage data to achieve relevance and timing.