Article Readers since February 8th, 2017:

Wednesday 5 December 2018

Make three times more sales leads from your website? Read this interview!

Reading time: 5 min


Make 3x more sales leads from your website? Read this interview!



Dear reader,



This a couple of years old but still up-to-date interview contained so many important thoughts about increasing sales lead generation of web sites that I had to acquire permission to republish it for your benefit.



Please enjoy the article!



Christian Dillstrom

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Many of my clients wonder why so few visitors fill in their website contact forms.

This is odd as website visitors have a reason to visit the page. Even email marketing campaigns have an average conversion rate of 1% - double the amount website contact forms are receiving.

I am a bit puzzled about it, but luckily, I know a good growth hacker.

So, let's ask him how to improve this!”


WHAT IS THE FASTEST APPROACH TO COLLECTING MORE SALES LEADS FROM WEBSITES?
The best thing is proactive live chat as it will generate many more sales leads than any passive live chat or a form.

There are many other things you can do to improve the sales conversion of a website, but this is the fastest and easiest way.

I would never create a website without proactive live chat. We make millions with it every year.

Many of our customers confessed later that it was our proactive live chat that made them start talking with us. All other materials made them consider our services, but the polite proactive live chat was the trigger to close the sale.


WHY WOULD PROACTIVE LIVE CHAT COLLECT MORE SALES LEADS THAN A FORM?
People like people, and no one likes forms!

Your customers' website forms are filled in by only 0.5% of the visitors, so it is obvious that they are not as engaging as talking to a real human in a live chat.

Unless you start doing something different, how can you expect your results to improve?


WOULDN'T A PROACTIVE LIVE CHAT ANNOY VISITORS?
If you proactively start a polite chat that will suit the situation about your brand or product, it will not annoy visitors.

Things done to help the reader and in good taste will only ever generate more sales.

Of course, you need to communicate like you would do in the same situation in an offline store. Stay away from any brand statements, slogans, or sales pitches.

Always chat like you would with an acquaintance.”


WHY DON'T YOU LIKE LIVE CHATS WHICH THE VISITOR NEEDS TO OPEN WITH A CLICK?
The reason is quite simple: I like sales.

Proactive live chats, when done correctly, make a lot of money for businesses. There are also other ways to boost sales leads with proactive live chats that simply don’t exist for passive live chats.

By passive live chats I mean chats that the visitor has to click to start chatting.

I guess the purpose of passive live chats is to have poor customer service and to lose sales?”


WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY ”OTHER WAYS TO BOOST SALES LEADS WITH PROACTIVE LIVE CHATS”?

First,
Proactive live chat is already open when a visitor comes to the webpage. So, they can see that these are interesting interaction features for the visitor on this page.

The chat message will get the visitors' attention but will not startle them like launching a new chat window would do.

This feature can be used to generate a lot of sales.”


Second,
You will know about the interests of your visitor and as a bonus you can offer something of value like a video, a PDF, etc. in exchange for the visitor's email address and other contact details.

Again, if done correctly, this works great. We used this method to collect over 4 million email addresses from LinkedIn article readers who liked my articles and who signed on to receive my recommendations for other LinkedIn articles.

Using proactive live chat this way will generate a very big marketing database for future sales.”

Of course, you can only do it with sensitivity and good taste as well as following all local legal requirements.


Third,
You can start video sharing competitions on social media platforms like Facebook by inserting a button in the live chat window.

For example, we have a Facebook button at the bottom of our live chat window, and we ask our visitors to take part in our video sharing competition.

Every visitor who takes part in our competition will generate over one thousand video views on Facebook which are endorsed by our visitor and our visitor's friends within the next 60 minutes.

That is also a good sales booster, and it is easy to make that happen among casual chatting.”


Finally,
You can also try to activate passive visitors who have not responded to your pro-active chatting. If done with sensitivity, it does not annoy anyone. I have found out that it works best to track what the visitor is doing and have chat actions related to that.

The first step is to make the 'right noises' relevant to the visitor’s interest.

The second step is to offer links to material relevant to the visitor’s interest.

The third step is to offer a direct connection with a knowledgeable sales colleague and finally a purchase incentive relevant to the visitor’s interest.

Of course, the best action plan varies from company to company, but the main goal is to see that the sales lead conversion of a web site can be multiplied by 3.


DURING WHICH HOURS SHOULD A PROACTIVE LIVE CHAT BE OPERATIONAL?
That's easy – all the time when people are visiting your website. If you do global business, 24 hours a day.

If your business operates in just a couple of nearby time-zones, usually 15 business hours per day are enough.


HOW ABOUT WEEKENDS AND HOLIDAYS?
Whenever your website has visitors, you need to provide them with service.

In our research we found out that there is a growing number of people who don't like websites without live chats because they want immediate answers to their questions, even on weekends!


CAN'T WE JUST TURN ON ”WE ARE OFFLINE - PLEASE FILL IN THE FORM” -MODE?
You can if you don't respect your potential customers and you really do not like new sales leads.

Your visitors tried to come to your website, and you are not respecting them with the service.

What is even more annoying: When you go to a company webpage, and you see that they have a chat service, but it is not available now! Am I not important enough to get customer service?

I would just take my business somewhere where my efforts to buy are respected.”


WHEN CAN I HAVE ”WE ARE OFFLINE - PLEASE FILL IN THE FORM” -MODE ON?
The only exception to the ”respect your customer”-rule is when most of your customers are expected to be offline or sleeping. That is the time visitors do not expect to get service.


WILL A PROACTIVE LIVE CHAT EAT AWAY A LOT OF EXPENSIVE WORKING HOURS?
Let me give you a perspective on this: I just talked with a CEO whose small business lost €60,000 from a single visitor on their website because they did not have a proactive live chat on.

Can you really afford not to have a proactive live chat on?”


HOW DO YOUR CLIENTS HANDLE THE PROBLEM OF EXPENSIVE WORKING HOURS REQUIRED BY A PROACTIVE LIVE CHAT?
Some clients just understand that proactive live chat really is a part of an effective sales process and also good customer service.

Therefore, they do not see the cost of working hours a proactive live chat requires as a problem.

Some clients outsource the work to companies that handle the chat for them.”

We, for example, handle chats in 130 countries and on millions of web pages. It is not our core business, but we do whatever is needed to boost the sales of our clients, and therefore we do it for €5 per hour including everything.


IS THERE A CHAT SERVICE YOU RECOMMEND?
There are so many different services, and each offers different options, so it really depends on your business and its needs.

My advice is to first think about your business needs and then research which chat service can cater to those.

I would strongly advise clients to stay away from passive live chats. Why lose sales if your business does not have to?


WHAT NEVER TO DO WITH A PROACTIVE LIVE CHAT?
Never lie! This happened to me a couple of times, and I have not gone back to those businesses, and I never will. It is because the human touch makes it personal, so lying becomes personal, too.

We have also verified that in our test; making things personal increases sales leads but being dishonest will anger people and angry people do not buy.

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That concluded my interview this time. I now have something new to tell my clients regarding a triple increase in sales leads from their websites.

It will be interesting to see what kind of live chat solutions they will implement, and it will be even more interesting to see who dares not to have a live chat at all.

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Christian Dillstrom.

Please stay tuned for more interviews.