How Chatbots Can Change Your Sales Game

Gone are the days of small to medium businesses’ budgets falling short. Chatbots have flung open the opportunity for businesses to automate part of, or even their entire sales cycle, thereby reducing the need (and cost) for large sales teams.

Chatbots can be programmed with the capabilities to assist with:

· Providing content and useful information to prospective leads

· Qualifying leads

· Organising and managing appointments with qualified leads

· Closing sales

That’s the power of automation for you.

Let’s take a look at four common stages of the sales funnel and how chatbots can help usher potential customers through each one of them with ease and efficiency.

Awareness

User: Who is this business? What do they do?

A chatbot may not be the cause for a potential lead initially finding out about a business, but it can play a crucial role in initiating brand-user engagement once the person lands on the business’s website or Facebook page.

While many businesses may not have the resources to engage with every website visitor, chatbots are able to start a conversation with multiple visitors simultaneously, within seconds of a user arriving at the website.

Relationship building is key in both driving new leads and customer retention and the earlier in the sales process this is initiated, the better.

Interest

User: Hmmm…this looks interesting, let me find out more.

We live in a time of fleeting attention spans and a burning desire for on-demand information. Consumers want what they want, when they want it.

This makes lead response time crucial. And in the Interest phase of the sales process, the query response time can be the difference between nurturing a lead’s interest and moving them further down the sales funnel, and losing their interest entirely.

According to a study, by the Harvard Business Review, companies that try to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving queries are nearly 7 times more likely to have meaningful conversations with key decision makers than those who try to contact prospects even an hour later. And yet, only 37% of companies respond to queries within in an hour. And 23% never even responded at all.

While businesses can throw money at lead generation, it means nothing if those leads aren’t nurtured.

Chatbots are ready for action 24/7 and can provide leads with information, content and answers to queries immediately, rather than them needing to speak to a sales agent or search for additional information themselves.

And in cases where a chatbot may not be able to assist with a particular query, it is able to then hand the request over to a human member of the sales team and communicate this to the user.

During engagement, chatbots can ask relevant questions that help weed out unqualified leads and pinpoint those that are more likely to purchase. Human sales team members can then focus their efforts on those quality leads, saving them time and increasing the rate of conversion.

Decision-making

User: To purchase, or not to purchase?

This is the part of the process that should be introduced in a deep, epic movie trailer voice.

“It all comes down to this. The crucial part of the process when the lead decides whether or not they are going to purchase from the business.”

Chatbots can have a big impact on this phase of the process.

In addition to answering any final queries the potential customer may have, chatbots can be proactive and determine what information/content to send to them on their own. This is based on what information people with similar preferences and concerns typically look for at this stage or based on the person’s previous interactions with the business.

That makes for a pretty great user experience.

No business can afford to ignore that customer experience drives sales. In fact, according to groovehq.com, 86% of customers will pay more for a good customer experience. And improved customer experience is at the core of chatbots’ purpose.

And…Action

User: Ok let’s do this

The final, Action phase of the process is where the transaction takes place.

Depending on the type of business, the chatbot will either hand over to a human agent to complete the purchase, or in some cases, the chatbot can even facilitate the purchase itself.

Did we mention the marketing strategy optimising power?

The data gathered by chatbots is invaluable to a business’s marketing efforts. Rather than tedious feedback surveys, chatbots are able to gather high-quality information more naturally, through conversation with users. This gives marketers insights into what their audience wants, their needs and concerns, empowering them to optimise their marketing strategy accordingly.

In summary

A well-programmed chatbot is like a superhuman sales agent equipped with simultaneous engagement capabilities, a built-in winning sales script designed to deliver and powerful information and content to nurture leads and drive them towards conversion. And, the fact that they are highly cost-effective makes them accessible to small and big businesses alike.

Can you afford to miss out?

If you’d like more information on how a customised chatbot can boost your business’s sales process, reach out to us at chat@feersum.io and let’s chat.