Every sales leader has been here before: The quarter-end is approaching, and you’re sitting there looking at your open opportunities in Salesforce scratching your head thinking, “are these really closing this quarter?” Few things create a more uncomfortable feeling than the possibility of missing your number. But being in the dark on buyer behavior when you’re expecting a decision can be similarly distressing. 

In the world of B2B sales, where oftentimes deals are complex and involve buying committees of anywhere between 6-12 people, deal cycles can go long and wide. We’ve all heard the expression “time kills all deals,” and the longer a cycle is, the more opportunity you give the buyer to “go dark.” But what really happens when a buyer goes dark? We like to convince ourselves stakeholders need more time, that they’re working several simultaneous priorities. Or as paranoia sets in, we fear the worst – are they actively talking with our competitors? 

While those all can be true, we’re finding that stakeholders on the buying committee are doing something particularly interesting: crawling our website. They’re checking out our customer testimonials, browsing security docs, revisiting pricing, exploring use cases, understanding our terms, etc. They want reassurance that everything they’ve been working on with our team is validated and solves their pain points. If they can’t find what they want and move onto something else, days or even weeks of darkness can be added onto the sales cycle.   

What we’ve learned is that this buyer activity presents an opportunity to reduce friction in the sales cycle by providing a helpful touchpoint. With conversational sales and marketing, sales teams can now expedite the late stages of a deal to avoid that “closing weeks of the quarter uncertainty feeling” by guiding buying committees forward as they explore your website.

We call this the “Opportunity Fast Lane” strategy, and our customers are masters of engaging stakeholders from buying committees once visitors from an account with an open opportunity arrives on the website. These visitors shouldn’t get a bot, and they shouldn’t be treated like any random tire-kicker browsing your website.

These are decision makers. They should receive a warm, personalized welcome from their dedicated account team. The account team knows the stakeholders involved, understands the nature of the deal, and can offer that personalized assistance to deliver answers or resources the visitor is looking for. This is especially important as a deal evolves -- new stakeholders are introduced (infosec, procurement, etc), new demands must be met, and new questions must be answered.   

These delightful real-time buying experiences have a meaningful impact on win rates and cycle accelleration. It also reduces your buyers incentive to talk with other vendors.

Making a collective purchasing decision is not easy, especially when it involves a committee consensus. In Qualified’s 2021 Buyer Trends, you’ll find that 67% of decision makers want more communication and reassurance when making a decision. With conversational sales and marketing, every time decision makers are on your website is another opportunity to move the deal forward.

Forecast calls can be awkward and uncomfortable if you don’t have answers. With a conversational sales and marketing platform that works seamlessly with Salesforce, your team has much higher likelihood of knowing where deals stand by being present in the moment on the buyers time and terms to march a deal forward. 

Want to see conversational sales and marketing in action? See how Qualified was able to drive 3 million in pipeline. Or check out this demo video that shows how you can use Qualified to connect with your most important buyers and propel deals forward. ⏬

‍