5 Ways to Grow Revenue Using Chatbots as a Sales Tool
There are evident perks to using chatbots as a sales tool.
Some companies use chatbots to engage with potential customers. Sitting on their website or social media accounts, these chatbots interact all day (and all night), providing relevant information to inquisitive customers.
Some companies use chatbots as internal tool for their sales team. In this instance, they engage with sales staff to provide the latest product information, as well as anything that could help the human close the sale.
Whether it is communicating with potential leads, qualifying leads to smoothen their journey through the sales funnel, or keeping existing customers engaged to motivate continued purchases; chatbots have a revenue-generating role to take within your organisation.
What can a chatbot do for your sales department? In this article, we look at common internal and uncommon external uses of conversational software.
Using a chatbot as an external sales tool
The most common way of using a chatbot as a sales tool is external. In this instance, the chatbot is customer-facing. It engages with members of the public with a simple goal: generate leads (or sales).
Let's look at a couple of common examples.
1. Generating leads
There are only so many leads a sales rep can deal with at a time.
The consistent back and forth between your SDRs and potential leads, cold calling, discovery calls, and more is extremely time consuming. A successful conversion is fantastic, but it takes time to move a lead along the sales funnel. On average, a B2B company takes 102 days to close a sale (source).
Time is precious.
Live chat is a great tool for making the conversation with B2C customers more efficient, much quicker than traditional methods such as phone calls or email.
Implementing a sales chatbot takes that concept to its logical conclusion.
Why commit a sales rep’s time to chasing cold leads or live chat conversations when a chatbot can maintain the conversation by itself? Handing the reins over to a chatbot gives your sales rep more time to focus on hot leads, such as those already qualified by the chatbot. You’ll be making your sales team’s time more efficient and more valuable.
2. Make sales outside of office hours
No sales team can work all day, keep running through the night, and be in any fit state to continue the next day. Even employing two separate teams to work the day and night shifts can be more expensive than it’s worth.
You will always find that some customers come to you at inconvenient times, when your sales team are off work, and no one is there to respond until morning.
There's a better way to make sure your customers are taken care of, whenever they decide to reach out.
Don’t let these opportunities slip by.
Implementing a chatbot eliminates the inconvenience of office hours and guarantees your ability to respond around the clock. Be there for your customers, all your customers, even those who make contact at unusual hours. A chatbot will keep them engaged, perhaps qualifying them for a human salesperson to take over and finalise the sale first thing the next day.
Being available out of hours helped this company generate £3.1million in ten days.
Using a chatbot as an internal sales tool
Internal sales chatbots are less talked about. In this instance, businesses encourage their sales reps to interact with the company's chatbot while on sales calls or visits. Because they are not customer-facing, these chatbots tend to be a bit more 'secret' in the industry.
And here we are, revealing their impact. You are welcome.
Here are a couple of ways chatbots can help your team.
3. Access sales data
Chatbots aren’t just an interactive communications tool for your customers to use. Your sales team can also take advantage of it to help boost their efforts and make their jobs a little bit easier.
Effectively acting as a virtual sales assistant for your entire team, your chatbot can keep your employees updated on key performance stats, remind them to follow up leads, and provide product information.
Make accessing your knowledge base easier; employees may know what information they need but not where they can find it. Instead of spending precious time searching for the exact details, have them ask the chatbot in their own words, receiving that information in seconds instead.
4. Speed up admin processes
Administrative tasks are dull but they are part of the job.
After closing a sales, chances are your reps need to fill out some type of form and submit it back to headquarters. This step is important, as it confirms the sale and kicks off all sorts of follow-up processes (invoicing, team briefing, etc.).
An internal sales chatbot can help speed up the process by gathering information in a conversational format. Instead of having to log into your CRM and fill out clunky forms, your reps can simply open a conversation with the chatbot and exchange the key information through a simple conversation.
Your sales reps save time for more exciting tasks and feel like they’ve had a simple yet helpful chat rather than a longwinded and convoluted task.
5. Product information at their fingertips
Another important environment for sales reps to have access to sales and product information is out in the field.
Field sales reps often do not have access to the same resources afforded to an office-based team. This shouldn’t be the case. Your on-the-road sales team should be able to deliver the same level of services whilst face-to-face with customers that your in-house team can provide every day.
Not even a top-level salesperson can memorise all the details for more than a few key products. With a chatbot, the need to retain this knowledge is no longer an issue. All your salesperson has to do is ask for some information on a specific product and the chatbot will return a selection of the most important features of that product.
A knowledgeable external sales rep can display confidence in their pitch, a valuable persuasive tool which could make all the difference for their numbers. Don’t neglect your external sales team. The travelling nature of their role makes it more stressful, so make sure they’re satisfied by providing them with the best tools available.
Conclusion
A chatbot could make a significant difference for your sales team’s approach to prospecting.
As an internal tool, chatbots can provide vital information to your reps to boost their product knowledge. Externally-focused sales chatbots are capable of bringing pre-qualified leads to the attention of your sales team, optimising their time increasing the chances of a successful sale.
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