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Virtually every company wants more sales but it’s rare to find a company that can consistently come up with the magical recipe for continued sales growth. In a world where business is evolving at a breakneck pace, how can companies keep up? What works right now and what will continue to work in the future?

Our Case Study with Macro

When we began our engagement with Macro (company name changed for privacy reasons), the primary focus was to increase opportunities and optimize the funnel for all deal sizes. The key metric driving opportunities was the number of meetings booked. Our assignment: book more meetings. Macro had been using a bot software for 17 weeks before we began the engagement; during this period of time, Macro was able to schedule 115 meetings.

Macro could foresee the potential for increasing web-generated meeting counts, but also knew there was more that could be done. The company decided to bring in our company, ChatFunnels as a premier digital conversation optimization solution. We ran an analysis on their current bot set up, developed a strategy for bots, implemented said plan, continuously recorded the results, and iterated to optimize. Macro’s meeting count increased by 193%, exploding from 115 meetings to 338 meetings over the first 17 weeks post-engagement (to keep the timeframe consistent with pre-engagement date range).

You may be thinking to yourself, “Anyone can increase numbers by triple digits in the initial stages of implementation. What happened to meeting counts after the 17 weeks?” Over the nine months that followed, meeting counts continued to rise (as shown in the chart below).

Had Macro continued with the same meeting count trend they experienced during the first 17 weeks of using a bot software, nine months later they would have booked around 350 meetings. In large measure, there were three tactics we used to drive success at Macro and obtain over 1,200 meetings in the first nine months of the engagement.

So what caused the number of meetings booked to skyrocket?

1. Love for (and close attention to) the data

Overall, we gave online meeting scheduling a LOT of love and attention. This included—among other things—daily conversation review, regular metrics reporting, and the implementation of science and data to optimize processes. Some companies have the time and resources to do this themselves; others will choose to hire consultants or an agency. Regardless of the path you choose, we highly recommend having a person or team birddogging the scheduling of and the data behind online meetings.

2. “Free Trial” or “Free Demo”?

Prior to the engagement, there was a button on Macro’s home page that offered a “Free Trial” of their product. When the site visitor clicked the button, a bot would pop up with the goal of obtaining contact information and scheduling a meeting with a sales agent. Next, an agent would meet with the site visitor to get the free trial set up; during certain points in the trial period, the agent reconnects with the potential customer to help them through the process of becoming a paying customer.

We were interested in testing the wording on the button to see if the copy would affect conversion rates. With everything else remaining the same, we changed the button from “Free Trial” to “Free Demo” and compared bot performance with historical data. We discovered that the number of conversations per meeting booked dropped from one meeting every nine conversations to one meeting every 4.8 conversations. (Wow!!)

3. Behold: the Power of a Pricing Button

Before Macro’s engagement with ChatFunnels, a button for pricing was used to direct site visitors to a landing page where they filled out a form. The form was explicit that pricing is customized for each customer, so an agent would be reaching out at a future date in order to give appropriate, customized pricing.

The third strategy we used was adding a pricing bot to the top menu of the website. Similar to the button offering a free demo, this button activated a bot which would set up a pricing meeting. This additional option for site visitors dramatically expanded the top of the funnel by firing 338 times per week in contrast to the 51 clicks the button was getting in its previous location.

Furthermore, the new placement of the pricing bot led to a 58% increase in meetings booked. Meetings booked continued to rise after adjustments were made to the initial bot message which now explains to customers that “Hey there! Let’s get you set up with a personalized pricing meeting. I just need you to answer 2-3 questions, so I can find you the right sales rep.”

(Did I forget to mention the bot schedules a meeting for the agent and site visitor at a time that’s convenient for them both? No need to reach out to the site visitor, praying you’ll catch them and be able to schedule a meeting.) You’re welcome.

In short, if you side with the 99.99% of companies who want to continually increase sales, follow these simple strategies:

• Get laser focused on data collection and scientific analysis.
• Continually test and optimize your use of copy.
• Simplify site visitor experience and optimize timing of information capture sequences.