Pouncing Fundamentals

Pouncing Fundamentals

Beginner

In this guide, learn how to "pounce", or outbound chat on VIP visitors arriving on your website.

As a sales rep, you’re always looking to get ahead and crush your goals. That said, waiting for website visitors to request an inbound chat with you won’t be enough to get you there. Think about the last time you visited a clothing store -- did a salesperson greet you and ask if you needed any help? Imagine if that salesperson saw your company t-shirt and started a conversation with you, using what they knew about your company.

In the same way, sales reps using Qualified can be most impactful when they outbound chat, or what we call “pouncing”. By pouncing on website visitors, you’ll get more leads and more meetings, faster.

How do I pounce?

When you log into Qualified, you’ll see a number of live stream columns, configured by your sales manager or Qualified administrator. These are designed specifically for your business with the newest website visitors at the top of the page and the most VIP visitors on the left.

While you could pounce on any visitor, we highly recommend prioritizing certain visitors over others and being as specific and targeted as possible. This will allow you to have the most meaningful conversations and spend your time with the visitors most likely to convert.

Who should I prioritize?

We recommend targeting five groups of visitors:

Target Accounts (aka ABM accounts)

  • These visitors fit your ideal customer profile and have been identified by your marketing team as great potential customers. Use the information about their account to have a conversation that shows you understand their company and business and why your company would be a great fit. By being very targeted in your messages, you can position yourself as a 1:1 concierge for any questions they may have when they’re on your site.
  • Example: “Welcome Volkswagen team! I’m the dedicated rep for VW. I know you run your sales engine on Salesforce and Marketo. Are you thinking about adding chat to the mix?”
A targeted message to a target account can help build trust.

Open Opportunities

  • These visitors are actively in a buying cycle with someone at your company and they deserve VIP treatment. Website conversations can be a great touchpoint to keep the buying cycle going. Be sure to show that you understand who they are, their business needs and what buying stage they are in. Use Salesforce opportunity data to understand the size and timing of the deal and personalize your greeting.
  • Example: “Welcome Wells Fargo team! I’m Sara on Alex’s team. How was your demo with her this morning? I’m here if you have any questions or need anything.”
Use Salesforce opportunity data to personalize your greeting to a visitor with an open opportunity.

Working Leads

  • Real-time conversations can help flip leads quickly. Be sure to reference their name and content that may be relevant to them. Be sure to share the meeting booker so you can move their website visit to be a conversation.
  • Example: “Hi Chris! Thanks for checking out the content I sent over. Noticed you didn’t select a meeting time from my email, but no problem: feel free to select a time here that works for you!”

Paid Media Campaigns

  • These visitors are a ‘can’t miss’. Marketing spends lots of time and money driving your target audience to the site. Reference the media channel and/or the content that drove them to your site. By using shortcuts, you can engage very quickly.
  • Example: “Hey there! Thanks for checking out our LinkedIn post. Know much about Qualified? Happy to answer any questions you may have.”
Reference where your visitor came from or the content they are engaging with.

Golden Pages

  • We know that online activity indicates intent. Engage visitors that view high-intent or high-priority pages such as pricing or the contact us page. By acknowledging the page the visitor is on, you can ask a question to help move them forward.
  • Example: “Hey there! Qs on pricing? Curious if the Pro Plan is right for you? I’m a real human here and can help answer any questions or help you consider the right plan.”

Additional Signals

Not all visitors are going to fall into these top five buckets of visitors. So how do you effectively pounce on anonymous visitors that you don’t know much about?

Qualified makes it easy by empowering you with additional signals to supercharge engagement with anonymous visitors. By focusing on digital body language, location data, and data gathered from chatbots, you’ll be armed with information that can help fuel engaging, personalized conversations. Use this information wisely to drive productive sales conversations with a visitor that’s seemingly not sales ready. Flipping an anonymous visitor into a stage 1 opportunity in the first visit is one of the most exciting wins!

Digital Body Language

Although you can’t see your visitor face-to-face, you can see their digital body language. That is, you can see how a visitor is interacting with your site. By looking at Live View, Active Tabs, and Page Type within Qualified, you’ll be able to gain pretty deep insights about your visitor.

Live View - Don’t be quick to write off an anonymous visitor! Qualified Live View helps you understand a visitor’s intent. When it comes to pouncing, it’s powerful to reference what you see them doing: scrolling, hopping pages, watching a video, etc. The longer a visitor spends on your website, the more likely the visitor is worthy of a pounce.

Active Tabs - You have a limited window of time when a buyer is focused and active on your website. Don’t miss it! Leverage a visitor’s open tabs to personalize and time your messaging. Qualified will tell you when a visitor is viewing another tab, which helps you avoid starting a chat when they’re inactive or distracted.

Page Type - A visitor’s activity on a high-converting page is a good indicator of interest and what they care about. Address the visitor’s page and what they’re reading or highlighting to demonstrate a shared co-browsing experience. Visitors are more likely to engage in a conversation when they feel understood.

Use location data to your advantage, but be aware location data isn't always 100% correct.

Location Data

Qualified provides the location for every visitor, known and unknown. Referencing a visitor’s location demonstrates you are not a bot and can be a great ice breaker. Draw a personal connection when possible. If you’ve lived in or visited the city where they reside, mention it!

Chances are you won’t have a sales conversation here, but you’ll leave them remembering the positive VIP treatment from your brand.

Chatbot-gathered Data

When you’re not sure how to proactively engage, lean on information collected by the bot onsite. You can set up your bots to collect information about visitor intent, company size, and any other fields you care about for qualification and routing.

Don’t let a bot be the last “person” a qualified visitor speaks with. Use chatbot data to wow a visitor with the transition from bot to human. Always continue the conversation where the bot left off. Reference previous answers and don’t repeat questions.

Help! I don’t know what to say!

It can be hard finding the right conversation opener for a website visitor. We’ve given some examples for pouncing on some of the top priority website visitors - but what about others?

Here’s a list of some greetings that generate engagement for us here at Qualified:

  • Human here! 👋 Human there?
  • I see you hopping around pages… can I help you find what you’re looking for?
  • Hey there, Happy Friday! We did it 🙌
  • Not ready to chat, that’s ok! If you change your mind, I’ll be down here👇
  • Not looking to chat with a bot? Good thing I’m human! 💁‍♀️
  • Hello Salesforce team! It’s Susan (a real person) here in San Francisco!
  • Maura here from the Qualified team 👋 Looking to learn more about XXX?

Looking for other examples? Chat with our team here and ask them for their favorite pounce opener!

A visitor responded to my pounce...now what?!

In the past, when a visitor filled out a form and left the site -- your job was to pepper them with emails and voicemails to try to get them into a meeting to run your discovery. Now you can do it immediately when you have them in a conversation!

Now since you have them in a conversation via chat or voice, you can run your discovery in the moment, on the same day they arrive to inquire about your solution. When you do your discovery and qualification on the same moment the visitor arrives, your odds of converting that visitor into a Stage 1 Opportunity increase by 6X. Simply put, you have their attention, right now!

Think of this as your first sales meeting! Run a quick discovery via chat. Have a list of your top three qualification questions ready to help understand if the lead is a good business fit. In fact, make these questions shortcuts so you’ll always have them on hand.

Remember, sales conversations are a give and take process. A visitor who is actually interested in purchasing will understand that they need to answer a few questions for you to direct them to the right place. Don’t shy away from the opportunity to gather insights!

Make sure to grab an email address once you’ve qualified the visitor and get on a phone call as soon as possible. Qualified even has built-in telephony capabilities to host your first sales meeting right on the website, if the visitor is ready.

Still Have Questions?

If you have any questions, feel free to chat with us using the Qualified app on this page or reach out to the Qualified technical support team.

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