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 like BookIt for Forms enables an almost instant response. 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.
It’s a great start for buyers. But, it’s not always the best start for your revenue team. There’s 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.
You see, it’s critical to ensure a meeting is booked not just for the sake of booking a meeting. The key parts of your 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, it’s essential she routes to the correct representative. However, if a meeting is not the next best step for your prospect, she should route elsewhere — 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.
Preparing for the Meeting
When the meeting is set, confirmations need to go out to both participants. 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.
Additionally, in the time between when a meeting is scheduled and it actually takes place, prospective customers should route to the appropriate stream, cadence or sequence. This content helps the lead best prepare for the meeting too!
Lastly, a meeting is a significant milestone in the buying journey. 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 look for ways to continually improve the customer experience.
BookIt for Forms Ensures the Right Meeting & Right Rep
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. 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, BookIt for Forms presents the calendar of the representative responsible for that account. For example, if there’s an open opportunity at the account, your lead routing logic might pull up the calendar of the account’s Account Executive (AE).
Qualifying Prospects with BookIt for Forms
If your customer becomes unqualified by your go-to-market (GTM) logic, BookIt for Forms slots the customer into the appropriate Marketing nurture stream.
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. It seamlessly integrates with solutions like Slack and MSFT Teams, empowering your team with instant notifications.
BookIt for Forms Blazes the Trail for Sales Scheduling
Earlier this year, Gartner identified automated scheduling as a key emerging technology to assist sellers in gaining a competitive edge. With appointment scheduling software’s benefits so readily apparent, it’s 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. 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 and delivers a better customer experience.
