A live chat is an effective option to keep a close eye on your website visitors. It is a remarkable opportunity for one-on-one communication that forever changes the way you generate qualified leads. The technology is based on a proactive approach which helps you offer a customized solution right when your prospects need it. Fact is if you don’t reach out to these visitors as soon as they land upon your website, most of these prospects will disappear, and you’ll never see them again. This makes the live chat an essential sales tool that is vital to ensure your site visitors become a lead, and then eventually become a sale.
However, like every new technology you have to learn to use it well. If you don’t pay enough attention, it becomes an annoying little pop-up that distracts your website visitors and becomes an instant turn-off. To address this mess, we bring an exciting webinar where Jack Kosakowski extensively discusses the process of lead generation with two experienced pros. Amir Reiter, CEO of CloudTask along with Tom Jenkins, sales chat specialist share their experience to generate thousands of qualified B2B leads by using sales chat as an integral part of the process. Here are some quick takeaways from the value-packed webinar.
Are inbound sales replacing outbound sales?
Both inbound and outbound sales have their unique advantages. Utilizing a combination of both is the recipe for the best results. If you’re getting inbound leads, but you’re not reaching out to the right people, there is no point in having those leads. Similarly, if you engage in cold calling all day and don’t invest in high-quality content, prospects would never have an idea what to do once you’re over the phone.
In other words, if you cold call your prospects, and they already know what you do, the sales rep can have a better discussion and a higher closing ratio. That’s why if you combine inbound and outbound, it is much easier to move from the consideration stage to the awareness stage. When there is perfect alignment, sales reps will sound like an expert – which is always an added advantage.
How to use your website as a tool for the sales process?
Modern websites have smartly evolved into a retail store. Like a shop owner, you have to understand when prospects come to your site, are they immediately ready for sales?
For instance, if someone comes to your website and doesn’t want to talk to anybody and remains rather inactive, means they want to be nurtured. They probably want a newsletter once a week to explore your offerings further. This is where marketing comes into the picture. However, if they want answers today, the sales team will have to take center stage.
Let’s assume someone comes to your website and wants specific answers. To begin with, politely ask them the purpose of their visit. By asking this first question, you can figure out people who are just browsing and the ones that are actually looking for answers. Those first set of questions will help you with the offline conversations. It also gives you the necessary ammunition for the rest of the process. Just figure out what people want. Once the prospect is ready to have a chat, your sales team needs to be immediately prepared to respond and have the answers ready for them. That’s how relationships are built. This personal connection is also the reason why some prospects only look for specific reps they have interacted with before.
The role of marketing content
You need content to get people onto your website, and it has to be positioned in a way that your prospects can consume it as per their preference. It’s also important to continually analyze data and keep improving your messages. Naturally, all of this falls under the purview of the marketing department.
Marketing is always responsible for the content and the messaging. For instance, sales can provide the top 5 rebuttals they get every time they’re talking to prospects. Then it’s the responsibility for the marketing team to design content around those objections and help salespeople cross that problematic hurdle. It’s all about using these messages at the right time when the prospects need it. So when you have targeted content, salespeople can use it to close deals, which is what matters in the end. It’s all about giving the qualitative ammunition to your salespeople. The sales and marketing alignment is the most important aspect here, and tighter you get, better it is for the overall process.
Concluding thoughts
Having a live sales chat is a dominant upper hand that helps you offer support and generate leads at the same time. If you’re paying Google, LinkedIn, and Facebook for every click, you should definitely measure the vital parameters correctly. That’s how you accurately gauge your success. If you’re still separating sales and marketing as two different departments in your mind, you’re losing the ability to calculate the ROI from both the departments. Once you know the right methods to align marketing and sales together, you’ll know how to measure a “conversation qualified lead” – which is the ultimate aim if you’re trying to create high ROI from a sales chat process.
These takeaways are just the tip of the iceberg. Amir and Tom also shared a few practical examples of how to leverage a live chat for your sales process.
