How to Shorten the B2C Sales Cycle Without Investing in New Resources
3 mins read
January 15, 2020
Generic
The rules of pre-sales engagement have changed. Buyers have more knowledge of products than ever before. And yet, they will not make a purchase unless they’re sure about what’s in it for them: a great car at a good price, a competitive mobile data plan with a long-term validity, a vacation rental villa that costs less than what they might find on an online accommodation-sharing website. Modern consumers are well-informed and demanding, and expect brands to engage them on a personal level.
Enterprises are increasingly looking beyond traditional lead capture and nurturing solutions to embrace conversational sales platforms that make optimal use of call center and sales resources, and convert quickly. A conversational sales platform market powerfully by facilitating one-to-one or one-to-many interactions, all via the brand website on desktop or mobile.
Here is a look at how conversational sales solve problems contributing to lengthier sales cycles.
Quite possibly, you’re facing these challenges in shortening your sales cycle
Your website is among your most important sales channels. It may be receiving traffic from organic search, paid ads and social media handles. The impact on your sales cycle and the possibility of a sale is decided the moment a potential buyer arrives on your site.
At this point, enterprises face the hurdle of not being able to qualify leads successfully. Why so? A key reason is just how static and outdated forms have become. Lead capture forms suffer from poor UX, even worse on mobile devices. Their conversion rates are also low, and they are just not engaging, and actually perceived as being annoying.
Say the visitor fills the form, and lead nurturing begins. You send out emails and try to explain why they need to consider your product or brand, through educational content. If open-rates are consistent, you throw in a promotional offer to motivate purchase.
This lead nurturing approach may deliver results but it also drags out the sales cycle. In an age of ‘here and now’, you’re missing out on the opportunity to create wow moments, supercharge intention, or even convert a visitor who may be ‘just browsing’.
A third challenge is not knowing which tactics are driving revenue. What are leads most interested in knowing about your product? What are the one or two value propositions or promises that they must read or see to make a decision? Without one-on-one conversations and a way to track how effectively conversations are happening, you may not be able make sales-boosting improvements.
A fourth challenge for enterprises seeking to shorten the sales cycle is a disconnect between online sales and offline call center teams. In an ideal situation, visitors to your website should have the opportunity to continue their sales journey on the same channel. Multi-device shoppers are more likely to start and end their ecommerce journeys on the same channel, most frequently, smartphones.
Is there a solution that addresses these challenges to shorten the B2C sales cycle without requiring you to add new resources? Is it easy to implement and does it start results quickly?
Conversational Sales is the answer. It’s a new marketing technology concept that combines the best of digital efficiency and human engagement to convince, convert and keep customers coming back.
Conversations sell
Conversational Sales is a mix of assisted and unassisted sales. Say you’re a carmaker trying to encourage test drive bookings from your website. What if you could create an online showroom experience for visitors? They can opt to join a live video session at your dealership and ask the representative explaining the car’s specifications questions in real-time.
A visitor who wants to learn about a new mobile broadband plan doesn’t have to waste time going through your website. An AI assistant can greet the visitor and ask him if he would like to speak to a call center agent. The agent can connect to the visitor via video or audio on desktop or mobile. If there’s a particular brochure that can help the visitor, the agent can instantly share the file. Your sales/call center agents have a means to provide in-depth information about your product or service at the point of decision. If you choose Whisbi, for instance, your conversational agents can make the most of real-time video, file transfer, web sharing, live messaging and bookmarks to pick up where they left off.
The level of service, support and engagement online is pretty unprecedented – it’s the best thing to having a sales guy sitting next to you and explaining features and helping you with paperwork!
The other component, unassisted sales, fulfils the important job of qualifying leads based on intent. Powered by automation, lead qualification happens seamlessly and intelligently from visit to sale.
And if you were wondering about any integration hassles – as is a legitimate concern with platform adoption – there actually isn’t any. Not only is adding a Conversational Platform to your existing resources uncomplicated, the user experience is intuitive for agents and customers. Check out this quick video on Conversational Sales.
You can also easily test messages and make changes to the customer journey in real time to optimize your conversion rate based on the learnings. The flexibility to create messaging that resonates is helpful in establishing a quick rapport with customers. This is particularly important in industries that are being disrupted rapidly: as a car company, your marketing needs to go the extra mile to convince consumers who today have more mobility and connectivity choices than ever before.
The bottom line:
Conversational Sales is the future. Enterprises adopting Conversational Sales platforms are better positioned than peers to:
– Serve customers impeccably at every stage of the buying journey
– Automate lead qualification to lower cost per lead and customer acquisition cost
– Shorten the sales cycle and increase value from existing call center/sales resources
– Gain valuable insights and perspectives from consumers during the course of interactions
The break even for Conversational Sales is remarkably fast. If optimizing sales cycle length is a key objective of your online and contact center’s digital transformation, a Conversational Sales platform can make it happen.
