When you think of Conversational Marketing, 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 Conversational Marketing so powerful.

The standard way of scheduling sales meetings is via email or phone call. A lead fills out a website form, your sales reps send countless emails and leave several voicemails, and by the time it’s all over, you may have been ghosted by that qualified lead and never get a meeting on the books. There are some powerful stats that demonstrate the cracks in the current B2B sales meeting booking process:

• It takes B2B companies an average of 42 hours to respond to a lead after they’ve filled out a form.
• It can take 60-90 dials to get an appointment booked with a prospect.‍
• It takes 4.3 days of back and forth emails to get a sales meeting scheduled.

On top of that, 78% of customers buy from the company that responds to their inquiry first. TLDR: The current sales meeting booking process is far from instant or efficient.

Did you know that you can use a Meeting Booker within your Conversational Marketing experiences to help serious buyers book meetings with your sales team, right from your website? This feature is sometimes overlooked, but it's incredible 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 Conversational Marketing Strategy.

Why meeting bookers 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 right now on your site, booking a meeting is the next best thing. By serving up Meeting Bookers on your site, qualified prospects can instantly book a meeting with your team, reducing friction in the buying process.

Here’s why Meeting Bookers are so valuable on your website:

• Meeting Bookers prevent 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. Use a Meeting Booker to free up your sales team to focus on other tasks.
• Meeting Bookers allow prospects to meet on their own time. Your qualified prospects are busy, so you want to respect their time. Meeting Bookers allows them to schedule a meeting at a time that’s perfectly convenient for them.
• Meeting Bookers can be used within any Conversational Marketing experience 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 any Conversational Marketing experience, anywhere on your website, capturing qualified prospects wherever they are.

4 ways to use a meeting booker

1. Use a chatbot to qualify leads and schedule meetings

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. This strategy is helpful if you are taking a bots-only Conversational Marketing approach. Your sales reps will wake up to more meetings on the calendar, helping them hit their numbers.

Zero Motorcycles, the “Tesla of Motorcycles,”  used this chatbot driven strategy in an effort to book more test drives, their equivalent of a sales meeting. Within the first 60 days of using Qualified as their Conversational Marketing Solution, Zero Motorcycles captured 30% leads and got more test drives on the books.

2. Use a meeting booker when your team is offline

If someone is qualified and would normally be routed to a live sales conversation, but your sales reps are offline (nighttime or weekends), surface up the Meeting Booker. This ensures proper coverage to make sure you never miss the chance to connect with a qualified buyer. It works! Modern ticketing platform askSpoke employs this strategy and is booking 3X more sales demos.

3. Schedule meetings within a live chat conversation

If a live sales conversation is going well via Conversational Marketing, always lock in the next step! Schedule your next meeting within the context of the conversation. This could be a meeting with your Account Executive, a product demonstration, or a pricing discussion. By booking a meeting during your conversation you’ll make sure this deal progresses.

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

You can setup routing rules to ensure that qualified prospects book meetings with the right sales reps. For example, because you know where website visitors are located, Brandfolder invites visitors to book meetings with the sales reps that are tied to their specific territory. In addition to routing based on region, they also book meetings according to company size segment. 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.

Meeting Booker FAQs

• Can my sales reps sync their calendars with Qualified? Absolutely. Your sales reps can hook up their business calendars so that leads can only book meetings when reps are available. Reps can set blocks of time when leads are allowed to book meetings, as well as a minimum buffer period in between booked meetings. This gives your reps control over when meetings are booked as well as some breathing time for them to prep for their next sales call.
• Will meeting invitations show up in the visitors' time zone? You bet. Qualified picks up where website visitors are located, and serves them meeting slots within their own time zone. Once a meeting is booked, invitations are then sent out to the sales rep and prospect.

Wrap up

If you want to make more sales, then you need to have more sales meetings. A Meeting Booker, one that’s part of your Conversational Marketing solution, is your ticket to connecting with more qualified prospects.