When inbound leads come in through your digital properties, it’s important to act quickly. Your lead response time — your speed to lead — is often the differentiating factor in winning or losing a deal.
If you don’t respond to your prospective customers in a timely manner, they quickly move on to your competitors.
Automated appointment scheduling software enables an almost instant response, and it allows prospective and existing customers to better control their own buying journeys. Empowered customers select meeting dates and times that best fit their needs, accelerating their buying journeys at their own desired pace.
It’s a great start for your prospective customers. But, it’s not always the best start for your revenue team because there is a simple truth in the appointment scheduling software category: Not all solutions are equal.
A Meeting Should Never Just be a Meeting
Appointment scheduling software eliminates the tiresome back-and-forth of emails, phone calls and voicemails in trying to book a meeting. That’s great news for your customers as well as your revenue team, at least initially.
You see, it’s critical to ensure a meeting is booked not just for the sake of booking a meeting. The key considerations in effectively facilitating the customer’s buying journey take place before, during and after meeting scheduling occurs.
First off, appointment scheduling software should determine if a meeting is the next best step for a prospective customer. If a prospect qualifies for a meeting, then it’s essential she is routed to the correct representative. However, if a meeting is not the next best step for your prospect, she should be routed to that best next step — for instance, a marketing nurture stream.
Once a prospect is qualified for a meeting and the calendar of the correct representative is presented, an appointment scheduling solution still has work to do.
When the meeting is set, confirmations need to go out to both participants of course. But, don’t stop there! Integrations with Slack and Microsoft Teams should be triggered to notify representatives so that they can prepare for their meeting accordingly.
Additionally, in the time between when a meeting is scheduled and when it actually takes place, prospective customers should be routed to the appropriate stream, cadence or sequence to deliver content that helps the lead best prepare for the meeting too!
Lastly, a meeting is a significant milestone in the buying journey, and appointment scheduling would be remiss if it didn’t create an event in your organization’s Salesforce instance. With an event established, your RevOps team can then track, measure and, in aggregate, look for ways to continually improve your delivered customer experience.
Ensuring the Right Meeting With the Right Rep at the Right Time
BookIt for Forms by LeanData does more than simply allow a site visitor to book a meeting. Rather, BookIt guides your customer to the path that makes the most sense for both the customer and your organization. As such, BookIt for Forms is so much more than simple appointment scheduling software automation.
When inbound website visitors complete a web form, BookIt for Forms instantly runs that data through LeanData’s lead-to-account matching algorithm and your Salesforce data. The outcome determines the visitor’s next step in their journey.
If a customer matches with an account in your SFDC database, BookIt for Forms presents the calendar of the representative responsible for that account. If, for example, there’s an open opportunity at the account, your lead routing logic might pull up the calendar of the account’s Account Executive (AE).
Of course, matching is crucial when leads are with accounts who are existing customers. In those cases, BookIt for Forms aligns directly with the correct Customer Success Manager (CSM).
If your customer is deemed unqualified by your go-to-market (GTM) logic, BookIt for Forms slots the customer into the appropriate Marketing nurture stream or Sales cadence or sequence.
For qualified prospective customers who don’t match with accounts, BookIt for Forms pulls up the calendar for the Sales Development Representative (SDR) who handles the identified territory.
In any of the aforementioned cases, the customer continues on her buying journey without any unnecessary starts and stops. As the saying goes, you only get a single opportunity to deliver a positive first impression. BookIt for Forms ensures the buying journey starts off on the right foot.
And, of course, BookIt for Forms is part of the LeanData revenue orchestration platform and, as such, is seamlessly integrated with solutions like Slack and MSFT Teams, empowering your team with instant notifications.
Blaze the Trail for Your Customers’ Digital Buying Journeys
Earlier this year, Gartner identified automated scheduling as a key emerging technology to assist sellers in gaining a competitive edge and improving selling results. With appointment scheduling software’s benefits so readily apparent to both the organization and its customers, it’s become a must-have tool in the modern revenue tech stack.
As you source solutions for your stack, don’t stop and settle for just any scheduling tool, for simply scheduling a meeting can produce a meaningless waste of time for all involved. Rather, ensure your automated appointment scheduling software integrates seamlessly with your entire tech stack, greasing the skids along your GTM motions and delivering a better customer experience.
