Real-Time Selling™Methodology

The Drift

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A year ago, we made the decision to remove all of the lead capture forms from our website.

We felt that forms were a roadblock, which were preventing leads from getting in touch with us right away.

So we set out to create a “fast lane” that would allow leads to engage with us on their terms.

Instead of relying on lead forms, we now use messaging to talk to leads in real-time.

Instead of relying on lead forms, we now use messaging to talk to leads in real-time.

Pssst. You can visit Drift.com to see how this works for yourself.

Old Way New Way

As a result, we’ve been able to remove complexity from the buying process.

We call our new approach

Real-Time Selling™

And after a year of experimenting with it, we’ve decided to share our methodology with you…

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1. CAPTURE 2. QUALIFY 3. CONNECT

The Drift Real-Time Selling™ Methodology

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1. CAPTURE 2. QUALIFY 3. CONNECT

The Drift Real-Time Selling™ Methodology

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1. CAPTURE 2. QUALIFY 3. CONNECT

The Drift Real-Time Selling™ Methodology

QUALIFYCAPTURE CONNECT

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Visitor Lead Opportunity Customer

The Drift Real-Time Selling™ Methodology

• Live chat replaces forms

• Bots capture leads even when you’re offline

• Chat targeting let’s you filter out the noise

• Conversational AI replaces marketing automation

• Bots ask leads qualifying questions via targeted campaigns

• Sales rep profile pages replace business cards

• Bots replace manual meeting scheduling

• Intelligent routing connects leads to the right reps based on sales territory

Keep reading for a more in-depth look at each phase of our methodology.

How to use live chat and bots to capture leads without forms

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1. CAPTURE

If you’re just getting started with live chat, we recommend putting it on your website’s high-intent pages first. (e.g. your pricing page)

From there, you’ll be able to gauge how much chat volume you’re getting and make adjustments accordingly.

Low chat volume? Make your targeting conditions less restrictive to optimize for more leads.

Quality(fewer leads)

Quantity(more leads)

all leads account-basedtargeted

behaviorally targeted

bot-qualified

firmographictargeted

$

$$

$$$

$$$$

Chat with 100% of leads

Quality(fewer leads)

Quantity(more leads)

all leads account-basedtargeted

behaviorally targeted

bot-qualified

firmographictargeted

$

$$

$$$

$$$$

Chat with 10% of leads

High chat volume? Adjust your targeting so live chat only appears to leads from your named accounts.

With Drift live chat, an email address will get stored automatically as soon as the person you’re chatting with enters it.

But don’t worry, you don’t have to be online 24/7 in order to capture leads with live chat.

You can set up targeted bot campaigns that capture leads for you, just like the one our pals at Perfecto Mobile have on their “contact us” page.

Instead of replacing forms, Perfecto Mobile added live chat to their site as a “second net” for capturing leads.

Within 3 months of using live chat, Perfecto Mobile saw their visitor-to-lead conversion rate grow from 6% to 10%.

After 6 months, it had climbed to 20%.

Chris Willis CMO, Perfecto Mobile

Think in terms of somebody coming to a website, and having a question, and filling in a contact us form. And they’ll hear back in 24 hours, or two days … that problem might not be there anymore. If they’re able to initiate a conversation, so skip the form, and have a conversation in real-time, we’re seeing that move very quickly.

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2. QUALIFY

How to qualify leads in real-time using targeted bot campaigns

Research shows that ideally you should respond to new leads within 5 minutes of them reaching out.

Source: InsideSales.com/Harvard Business Review

Source: HBR / InsideSales.com

10,000

8,000

6,000

4,000

2,000

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5 min 10 min 15 min 20 min 25 min 30 min

Response time

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There’s a 10x decrease in your odds of making contact with a lead after the first 5 minutes.After the first 5 minutes, there’s a 10x decrease in your odds of making contact with a lead.

Source: InsideSales.com/Harvard Business Review

10,000

8,000

6,000

4,000

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5 mins

10 mins

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# of leads qualified

Responding in 10 mins vs. 5 mins = a 400% decrease in your odds of qualifying a lead.

Source: HBR / InsideSales.com

Meanwhile, responding in 10 minutes vs. 5 minutes results in a 400% decrease in your odds of qualifying a lead.

Source: InsideSales.com/Harvard Business Review

When we surveyed 433 B2B sales teams earlier this year, we found that just 7% responded within 5 minutes.

55% took 5+ days to respond or never responded at all.

within 5 mins.

within 1 hour

within 1 day

within 2 days

within 5 days

5+days/never

Response time

7%2%

27%

3%

5%

55%

Source: blog.drift.com/lead-response-survey

By using live chat to engage with leads in real-time, you can always respond within that magic 5-minute window.

And with LeadBot™, you can qualify leads in real-time even when all of your sales reps are asleep.

You just need to take the qualifying questions your sales team are already asking and turn them into a script.

To make sure your LeadBot script has a clear objective, we recommend using this structure:

• Question 1: What? (What brought you here?)

• Question 2: Who? (Who are you? What company do you represent?)

• Question 3: How? (How can I help you use our product?)

• CTA (book a demo, leave an email, start a trial, engage with human)

At Drift, the first LeadBot campaign we ever created is still running on our pricing page.

63% of visitors who click on it end up starting a conversation with one of our sales reps.

3. CONNECT

How to connect the right lead with the right rep at the right time

Once a lead has been qualified, there’s no need to wait: With live chat, sales reps can reach out instantly.

Reps can even set up push notifications so they’re alerted when a qualified lead is live on their website.

With intelligent routing, you can have a bot connect leads to the right reps automatically based on sales territory.

For teams where you have multiple reps operating in a single territory, the bot can assign leads on a rotating basis.

In order to give leads a place where they can message reps directly, all of our reps have created Drift Profiles.

Each Drift Profile has a unique URL (perfect for email signatures) and comes with a built-in scheduling bot.

The bot lets leads pick from available times on a rep’s calendar, and then takes care of sending invites to both sides.

Note: You can also use this scheduling feature as a CTA for a LeadBot campaign, or you can drop it into any Drift conversation by clicking the calendar icon.

After 3o days of using Drift, RewardStream was booking 25% of their demos using our scheduling bot.

After 45 days, they were booking 30% of their demos with it.

Neil Parker VP Marketing, RewardStream

We were bringing a lot of people to our site who were reading our content but not converting, and we felt that we should engage people in the moment … These days, people hate the idea of picking up the phone to take a call with a salesperson. They want to drop into the site, get their questions answered and form their own opinions about the product.

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Drift is reinventing modern marketing and sales using messaging

Visit Drift.com to learn more.

https://www.drift.com/