When you think of pipeline generation, do you think of live chat and chatbots? These tools are valuable, but the ability to book more sales meetings within the context of a website conversation is a big part of what makes the Pipeline Cloud so powerful.

On average it takes three to four emails between a lead and a rep to actually get a meeting booked, often spread over multiple days, or, this time of year, weeks between holidays. By the time you align your schedules, your buyer might have already lost interest or worse, booked a meeting with a competitor. 

TLDR: The current sales meeting booking process is far from instant or efficient.

Did you know that you can use a meeting scheduling tool within your pipeline generation motion to help serious buyers book meetings with your sales team, right from your website? This feature is sometimes overlooked, but it's incredibly powerful.

The easier it is for your prospective buyers to engage with your brand, the easier it'll be for them to buy. In this post, we'll break down how to fold meeting bookers into your pipeline generation strategy.

Why meeting scheduling tools on your website are key

When someone is interested in your product, you want to talk to them as soon as possible. If your sales reps or qualified visitors aren't available to meet immediately on your site, booking a meeting is the next best thing. Your meeting scheduling tool should help qualify prospects and instantly book a meeting with your team, with as few clicks as possible, creating a frictionless experience. 

Here’s why meeting bookers are so valuable on your website:

• Using a meeting scheduler prevents the back-and-forth that comes with scheduling. Scheduling takes time. The standard way is back-and-forth emails or phone calls, which can take days or weeks. Use a meeting booker to free up your sales team to focus on other tasks.
• Meeting scheduling tools allow prospects to meet on their own time. Your qualified prospects are busy, so you want to respect their time. Meeting bookers allow them to schedule a meeting at a time that’s perfectly convenient for them.
• A meeting scheduler can be used within any pipeline generation motion to capture your most valued prospects. Meeting bookers need not be relegated to a “sign up” or “contact us” page. Rather, they can be used within your pipeline generation strategy, anywhere on your website, capturing qualified prospects wherever they are.

4 ways to use meeting scheduling tools to expand your pipeline generation strategy

1. Use a meeting scheduling tool to qualify leads and schedule meetings around the clock

To schedule conversations, you can build a chatbot that invites qualified website visitors to book a meeting with your sales team. You can also use the Chatbot to ask a few qualification questions. If you know someone is already qualified, invite them to book a meeting right away. Your sales reps will wake up to more meetings on the calendar, helping them hit their numbers.

Case study

Korn Ferry, a $2B global organizational consulting and SaaS-based HR firm, switched from traditional forms to chatbots in order to capture more leads, greet visitors on their site, and help qualify potential buyers in a more conversational and engaging process than forms. Within just a few months, Korn Ferry had received over 1900 high-quality leads using chatbots to help qualify buyers. 

Read more of their story here.

2. Schedule meetings within live chat

When a chat with a buyer is going well, the last thing you want is to transition your buyer into a clunky back-and-forth exchange to schedule the next meeting. Your reps need an easy way to ensure they’re always scheduling the next meeting before the end of the interaction, and your buyers need a quick way to access their rep’s calendar before they lose interest. Removing any friction is key to getting that second or third meeting booked. 

With the right scheduling tool, your rep should be able to seamlessly invite your buyer to schedule the next meeting with as few clicks as possible. 

3. Use a meeting booker when your team is offline

Your team can’t be online 24/7, but your meeting booker can. Instead of losing leads while they do research on your website off-hours, leverage a meeting scheduling tool to empower buyers to schedule with your sales team, anytime, day or night. 

Case study

Sendoso, a leader end-to-end sending platform, needed help engaging their website traffic round the clock. By partnering with Qualified, they were able to create more tailored experiences and book more meetings, no matter when a visitor landed on their site.  

Read more about their story here.

4. Route meetings based on geography, company size, or other attributes

You can set up routing rules to ensure that qualified prospects book meetings with the right sales reps. For example, when your website is connected to your Salesforce instance, you can invite visitors to book meetings with the sales reps that are tied to their specific territory. In addition to routing based on region, you can also book meetings according to company, size, or segment, just to name a few. This geography and company size routing ensures that the buyer has one point of contact from the get-go, and guarantees that sales reps have ownership over opportunities in their designated territory or segment.

Wrap up

If you want to make more sales, then you need to have more sales meetings. A meeting scheduling tool should be an integrated part of your pipeline generation strategy, making connecting with more qualified buyers easier than ever.