Most of us are familiar with how simple it is to schedule a reservation for our favorite restaurant on OpenTable, or to order and schedule a delivery from that same restaurant using a service like DoorDash or GrubHub.
In the B2B world, prospects and customers interested in learning more about a company’s solution or service tend to have a very different experience when they go online and request to be contacted by a sales representative.
Here’s how it typically goes: After filling out an online form, the prospect has to wait for a sales representative to follow-up with them (which could take a day or more). Then, they might play phone or email tag until they can figure out a day and time that works for them both — that is, if that once-interested prospect is even still interested. After all, only about 40 percent of inbound leads ever result in an actual sales meeting.
A Harvard Business Review study found that companies that follow up with online leads within an hour are seven times more likely to qualify that lead than if they reach out two hours later (and 60 times more likely than if they reach out the next day). Research has also found that 78 percent of buyers will move forward with the vendor that reaches out first, making it critical for businesses to increase speed to lead. Time is of the essence, so what’s a B2B marketer to do?
It’s time for B2B companies to take a page out of the B2C playbook and make it easy for interested prospects to schedule a call with the appropriate sales rep at the same time they indicate they’re interested in the first place.
Automated scheduling for inbound leads
RingLead (now ZoomInfo) offers automated scheduling that makes this a reality. RingLead Instant Book empowers your prospects to schedule a day and time to speak with the right sales rep through intelligent lead routing and synching with each sales rep’s calendar for real-time availability — regardless of which country or time zone they’re located in.
And just like when a restaurant gets a reservation through OpenTable or a food order through DoorDash, your systems (in this case, Salesforce and your marketing automation platform) are automatically updated behind the scenes — in real time — with no manual intervention required.
Instant Book is part of RingLead’s intelligent lead routing capabilities, which enable operations professionals to customize and configure visual, rule-based routing workflows for any channel to qualify and distribute leads to the right sales rep (or create a round-robin assignment workflow).
By adding on Instant Book, prospects can immediately schedule a meeting on the correct sales rep’s calendar immediately after filling out a demo request form:
You’ll just need to create a web form in Salesforce, Marketo, Pardot, or Eloqua to capture these requests, and host it on a landing page that accepts custom JavaScript.
And, RingLead is not limited to just booking situations. The same or additional routing rules can be applied to new Salesforce, Marketo, or Eloqua records in real time, without the need for separate routing rules between platforms or source creation exclusions.
In addition to automated scheduling, Instant Book offers:
- Automated email reminders: Automatic email reminders help minimize no-shows and increase inbound lead-to-meeting conversions.
- Easy rescheduling capability: Prospects can easily reschedule if something else comes up — instead of just canceling the meeting altogether because it’s too much hassle. If your prospect needs to reschedule a call, it’s as easy as updating a dinner reservation.
- Behind-the-scenes data enrichment and deduplication: When prospects fill out your request form and schedule a meeting, RingLead provides data enrichment and deduplication capabilities so you don’t have to worry about dirty or impartial data entering your CRM.
Remove the friction from your lead scheduling process
Over the past year and a half, the amount of time that elapses between the initial online inquiry from a prospect and sales follow-up has become even more important. The moment you have a lead who is willing to commit to a time to meet, the better the chance you have of establishing a business relationship and closing a deal.
RingLead Instant Book puts your prospects in the driver’s seat so they can schedule a time to talk with the appropriate sales rep that works for both of them. The result is higher speed-to-lead and inbound conversion rates for your business.
Whether you’re looking to implement the RingLead solution and integrate it with Salesforce and your marketing automation platform, or you’re simply looking to add on their automated scheduling feature, our Data Services team will work closely with you to provide strategic guidance and hands-on technical expertise based on your organization’s unique requirements and business objectives.
Devon Guerrero is a Solutions Architect for BDO Digital’s Demand Generation Group and a certified Eloqua Implementation Specialist. In addition to putting together creative solutions for his clients, he has a long-term goal he practices and preaches: to unite the two distant worlds of marketing and engineering by creating the “marketing engineer.”
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