There are plenty of factors that contribute to the length of the sales cycle including product complexity, number of team members on the buying team, and price. But it’s fair to say that for most purchases, the primary buyer researches a solution to a problem they have, your brand makes the shortlist, and the learning process begins. Since most brands strive to accelerate a sale, here’s where you have some control.
Make it easy to discover the value you can provide
Visitors to your website are looking for something – help them find it. Make it clear immediately what space your business is in and what your solutions address. Make it easy for them to go deeper as their questions get answered and new concerns surface.
As research continues, eventually searchers come to a point where they need to talk to someone for the next set of answers.
Streamline the learning process
So now a prospect has an idea of what you do and they decide to reach out to your business. How do they connect with you? All channels are not created equal. Let’s evaluate:
Webform
These are great for data capture, but they have a big shortcoming: Response time. Your potential customer is looking for answers now. By the time you respond, they may have moved on. Email is just as difficult and you also run the risk of ending up in the spam folder.
Phone call
When prospects decide to call, they want their questions answered then and there. They don’t want to navigate a complicated phone menu or wait on hold. Calls offer a better response time, but data capture isn’t guaranteed. If you insist on gathering all the caller’s details upfront, you run the risk of annoying them. And, your representatives can only handle one call at a time.
Text message
The business world is quickly adapting to incorporate text as a channel since nearly everyone uses it and many people prefer it. Installing a text bot on your website can be an easy way to facilitate conversations. Unlike a chatbot, text bots capture the caller’s mobile number, which is often the best way to reach someone. In addition, intelligent automation responds to the caller immediately and the conversation begins.
But there’s more. In addition to the immediate reply, automated responses can help facilitate the prospect to the right place, capturing the data provided in real time as the conversation with the bot unfolds. And all this happens automatically. The conversation is handed off to a rep who has access to all the context of the lead-up conversation.
And the final benefit is that reps can typically handle more than one conversation and even as many as five, simultaneously.
That’s how to accelerate a sale.
If you are interested in learning how to accelerate sales in your organization, you can learn more about our intelligent SMS solution, Marchex Sonar, by scheduling a demo.
