We have all had experiences with bad service. Maybe it was needing help finding something at the store, and you couldn’t find a worker anywhere to ask. Maybe it was waiting for hours on the phone for help with your phone bill. Whatever the situation, not having someone there to help and provide information quickly can be a frustrating experience.

On the other hand, you wouldn’t want an employee at the grocery store following you around waiting for you to ask a question.

Engaging with visitors in real-time means being there and ready to answer questions or add additional information when customers need it, while also being completely invisible and unnoticeable. This can be accomplished through email or straight through chat on the website.

Speed to Lead

You don’t want to be that overwhelming rep. Rather, you want to be aware of who is coming to your site and why they are there. You want to know where they are in the funnel. Are they browsing? Are they getting information? Or are they ready to buy?

According to research done by James Oldroyd and Dave Elkington, if you reach out to your lead within the first 5 minutes of a form field coming in, you will be 10 times more likely to get ahold of them.

In addition, you are also 4 times more likely to close that deal. Not only does your speed to lead increase your contact rate as a sales rep or as an SDR, but as a closing rep, it increases your closing rates as well. It’s definitely worthwhile to reach out at soon as possible.

How to Engage

What happens as a sales rep when you receive a notification that someone’s on your site? The most important thing to remember is when you get the notification you want to reach out to them within minutes. 45-60 seconds is usually what you want to keep it at as a rep.

Next, you reach out to them telling them who you are. Then you have a back-and-forth conversation answering their questions and concerns. You might want to look at the historical data on your site of the person you are talking to. This will give you valuable information, whether or not they are first-timers or not. With that information, you will know better how to engage with them. It’s more of answering any questions that they have than feeding them information. You might even get a meeting set up with them to better dive into their needs and to see if you are a good match for them.

When it comes to chat and website engagement it’s not necessarily about how to replace a human, but rather how to enhance what is already being done. Getting that personalized messaging when it needs to happen and then getting the rep on the line right when that needs to happen as well.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it’s all about your speed to lead and making sure potential clients know that they are important to you. Engaging with visitors in real-time will be a valuable tool to use to help increase the pipeline and drive sales. Signals provide a great platform that accomplishes just that.