Speed. I am speed. -Lightning McQueen 2006

Scott Mark and Billy Bateman tell us that the fastest way to lose leads could be to lose your speed. The rhyming is cringey but there’s real data behind it! You could be dropping countless sales purely because of your response time. Why?

Speed to Lead (Generation)

According to SuperOffice, 41% of buyers expect live chat on your site. On a mobile phone, it rises to about 50%. That’s almost HALF of your buyers that expect to be able to communicate with you immediately whenever they want. This digital transformation means that chatbots and live chat are no longer optional, but imperative.

A goldfish has an attention span of 9 seconds. In 2000 when technological advancements started taking over, people were at a low 12 seconds. In 2015- it was 8.25. With exponentially dropping attention span times, one of the most important things you can be doing (once you have chatbots or live chat) is to actually use them. Not responding within the first minute is all it takes for someone to leave and find your product elsewhere, maybe even with your competitor. We bet they have chat.

Live Chat vs Chatbot: For Quick Lead Generation

So say we’ve sold you on paying instant attention to the needs of your customers. Well, do you choose chatbot or live chat?  Usually, we recommend chatbots because a robot is much more reliable than busy sales reps. Live chat is great, but only if your people are phenomenal about answering their chats. However, we admit that live chat can be helpful in professions where each question is unique and complex. Regardless of the platform you’re using, the principal is the same. You need chat. And you need to respond. Fast.

Here’s a shameless plug if you’re confused about how to use keywords to help automate your chat- check out our last article or our podcast with Scott Mark!

ChatFunnels

We have seen that adding chatbots to your website greatly improves the customer experience by not only increasing customer satisfaction, but by making it easy for them to enter your funnel.

Chatbots can automate pretty much everything!

They can qualify leads, schedule appointments, score leads, book demos, and much more.

To see what chatbots can do for your website, book a demo with us today or get started on a free trial.

Communication is KEY

You know that thing people always say about marriage? Something about how if you don’t communicate, you’ll fail? Well, we like to view our teams as a marriage. Mm, maybe with less love and a little more transactional behavior. But ALL the communication.

For us, this means bridging the gap between sales and marketing. You may have heard of this, usually with the distasteful label of “Smarketing“. Bringing together both these teams in a way that allows BOTH teams to increase success is a power move for any business. In a study done in 2010 by Aberdeen, they proved that even back then, that there was a 20% annual revenue growth by aligning your Marketing and Sales teams. How is this open communication achieved? Here are 3 ideas that may just be what you need to hear!

1. Frequent meetings between the Sales and Marketing teams. Or integrate completely- some businesses even move desks together to remove segregation completely so that it’s very easy to keep an open dialogue. Let each other know what may be working and what may not be!
2. Create many relationships across different levels between teams- not just the VPs! Beyond frequent meetings that create a business relationship, foster friendships between both teams. They’ll work better together and even create a better work environment.
3. Use data to communicate and create common definitions of real leads. Then SHARE the data. It’s very likely that marketing finds impressive data that could easily be used in sales. And vice versa!

When we really look at this list, the main idea is to talk and to build relationships. Essentially, just work TOGETHER. By creating this open environment in a business, you can integrate sales and marketing. Pair this with quick response times and you’re on an uphill climb for lead generation!