Hello, fellow sales reps!

Starting a conversation with a potential prospect can be the hardest part of sales, whether you are a veteran enterprise or a sales startup. First impressions are everything. How do we start a conversation with so many different scenarios?

Remember, all visitors sit on a spectrum from known to unknown visitors. I’m going to walk through the sales conversation starters that work for me based on a visitor's degree of “familiarity”.

Sales Conversation Starters for Known Users

This is the money-maker. Because you know specific information like their name, company, and stage in the buying cycle, you’re able to effectively personalize your sales conversation starters to meet their unique profile:

A. If they're a Lead in Salesforce: Here’s your ideal customer knocking at your front door and it’s your job as an SDR to book a meeting with them. The secret sauce for this sales conversation starter is hyper-personalization. You know their name, so reference it. You know their browsing behavior, so surface it. You know they're back onsite for more information, so talk about it. Typically leads welcome a meeting booker as a frictionless & approachable method to learning more, so try to serve it to them when it feels right.

B. If they're an open opportunity in Salesforce: It’s crucial to recognize and prioritize this visitor as they’re actively in the buying process. My strategy for this sales conversation starter is to tell them you know they're in a sales cycle, because you do. Referencing their respective AE and buying stage is effective.

C. If they're part of an outbound email sequence: We’ve shied away from including links to website content in our outbounds for fear of deviating recipients from the primary goal: reply to book a meeting. Qualified gives those 'dead' clicks a new life. By passing through click data, Qualified alerts you that someone from your outbound sequence has landed onsite. And you’re there waiting with the perfect sales conversation starter.

Sales Conversation Starters for Semi-known users

In this scenario, we have a partial picture of our website visitor. Your marketing team spends time and money targeting the right people, but only 1-2% of this traffic converts to a lead because their onsite experience is not tailored to their behavior signals. With Qualified, it is. Qualified tells you which channel the visitor entered through, so you can prepare a quick, proactive & relevant greeting. Because this is not a super 'sticky' visitor, I recommend setting up shortcuts for speedy responses:

A. If the visitor enters via Search campaigns: I know this is a high-intent user, actively searching for our solution. Qualified tells you exactly which Google Adwords campaign they've clicked, like our Live Chat for Salesforce campaign, for you to reference.

B. If the visitor enters via a social media campaigns: This user may be more top of the funnel, interested in content consumption versus purchasing, so engage in a conversation rather than immediately pushing the product. Qualified tells you exactly which post on which social channel a visitor clicked.

C. If the visitor enters via tagged referral source: Qualified's referral thumbnail gives visibility into a user’s organic journey to site. This provides information about our visitors even if it's not through our targeted media. If they’re coming from a review site like G2 Crowd, I'd use a sales conversation starter like this.

Sales Conversation Starters for Unknown users

‍To caveat, thanks to Qualified’s Clearbit and 6sense integrations, no user is really ever fully unknown. But in this instance, you know very little about your visitor. They're not in your CRM, they haven’t clicked your media, they’re not a return visitor. So Qualified fills in firmographic data that can shape conversations - like company name, location, and employee count. Here, I typically take a laissez-faire approach to my sales conversation starter, not immediately pouncing. Even if this visitor doesn't meet the qualification parameters set by your company, don’t write them off! Some of the most exciting wins come from converting a completely unknown user into a new lead, just by a having a conversation on the site. 

A. If you have the visitor’s location data: When a visitor from my hometown of Philadelphia, PA lands on our site, I love making the personal connection.

B. If you have a visitor’s firmographic data: When a known company lands on our site that fits my ideal customer profile, I’m sure to callout their company name.

C. If a user is on a high-converting “golden page”: I might not engage if they’re browsing a blog post, but once they land on a high-intent page like our pricing page, I prioritize this visitor.

D. If you’re monitoring a visitors’ live view: With Qualified’s technology, you can visually monitor a user’s engagement, watching how they browse and what they click. You're able to step into your visitors shoes and share their onsite experience. We call this ‘digital body language’ and referencing it as you chat is really powerful. Here are my two favorite sales conversation starters:

When a user hovers over a bot, but doesn’t engage.

When a user scrolls down the page, I love referencing the text they’re currently reading.

So there you have it! My guide to engaging visitors with Qualified. Some small takeaways for you:

• Use Qualified’s data integration tools to chat smarter! Qualified unlocks the faceless, nameless users on your site and gives them a profile.
• Don’t be afraid of striking out. Not everyone will bite, don’t get discouraged. Keep testing approaches and lean on Qualified analytics to help inform successful tactics.
• What makes Qualified different and effective is it’s human-centric approach. Let your human shine and find your personal brand!

Happy chatting!