Reaching today’s buyers is feeling more and more like an obstacle course. Revenue leaders everywhere are breaking a sweat as they must clear increasingly challenging hurdles to reach their pipeline targets. For one, tightening privacy regulations have made it tougher to stake a claim in customer inboxes. For another, the power is now in the hands of the buyer, who will no longer give up their personal info to talk to a sales rep—they want content first. Finally, buyers are impatient—they expect speaking with a sales rep to be just as instantaneous as grabbing an Uber. 

Where does that leave us?

Well, the revenue leaders who are winning the obstacle course—without wiping out—are the ones who have risen to the unique challenge of our era. They have embraced our revolutionary new platform: The Pipeline Cloud. The Pipeline Cloud is comprised of four pillars based on your Salesforce-connected website. The pillars include: buying intent signals, ABM ads, hyper-personalized sales outreach with sales engagement platforms, and conversational marketing.

In this article, we’re going to focus on the latter and explore three key ways that live chat and chatbots can give you a leg up on the competition. 

Separate VIP visitors with Qualified Live Streams

Not all website visitors are created equal. That’s why it’s important to understand who’s on your website so your sales team can spend the most time and energy conversing with prospects who are in-market and sales-ready. Sales reps can greet customers who are earlier in their journey, but mostly leave them to peruse independently if they prefer. Qualified Live Streams alert sales reps which website visitors are from target accounts or open opportunities.

Upgrade to a phone call from chat

Today’s prospects are allergic to premature phone calls. Until your sales rep has proven that he or she is a trustworthy resource, buyers won’t give up their precious time. Live chat is an excellent way to engage in a low-stakes conversation to establish that trust. But once you do, it’s best not to break the momentum. Instead, you can capitalize on that precious moment of your buyer’s attention and upgrade to a voice call. Much easier than emails back and forth to schedule a time, these calls allow you to answer nuanced questions that are easier to explain verbally, while also asking crucial discovery questions to ensure they’re the right fit for your product.

Use chatbots to book meetings while sales reps are asleep

While ideally you would want sales reps at the ready on your website 24/7, the reality is many prospects conduct buying research outside of normal working hours. Or if your prospect is on another continent, their working hours may occur while your reps are asleep. That’s why chatbots work beautifully to fill the gap. Equipped to answer basic questions and serve up relevant content, chatbots can also book meetings on your reps’ behalf. It takes an average of 42 hours for sales reps to respond to a “contact us” form on the website. Think about the advantage for your company if your response was instant—any time of the day.