Delivered.pdf

DELIVERED✓✓
How small businesses are embracing
Messenger-Based Sales to generate
more leads, nurture more relationships
& keep more customers
Jacqueline Phillips

DELIVERED ✓
How small businesses are embracing
Messenger-Based Sales to generate
more leads, nurture more relationships
& keep more customers
Jacqueline Phillips
Julia Kovaleva
Irene Kvashali
Leo Korneev
Edited by Julia Kovaleva

Copyright © 2019 QSOFT LLC
Cover design © 2019 Thomas Zeiter
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
of used in any manner without the written permission of
the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a
book review.

With special thanks to all those Messenger-Based Sales
believers who have helped along the way:
A.K.
A.N.
C.I.
E.K.
E.Z.
P.C.

Contents
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1 What you thought you knew
about B2B buyers is wrong
The Internet takeover
Unsubscribe, block, ignore, delete
Who’s really holding the cards?
11
CHAPTER 2 Diagnosis: Customers have
wised up…
You have been conditioned
The era of customer empowerment
Hunting for reviews
The promise of inbound
21
CHAPTER 3 Escaping the predator-prey
mentality
The chase continues
Backlash against the old mentality
41

Time for a new perspective
CHAPTER 4 Embracing the new era of
sales
The instant messaging craze
The aftermath
55
CHAPTER 5 Messenger-Based Sales
What is Messenger-Based Sales?
The benefits of MBS
What's next?
64
CHAPTER 6 How to deliver the message
Phase one: MBS pilot program
Phase two: Scaling MBS
Closing thoughts
76
References 92
Index 103

The rise of
Messenger-Based Sales
Ever been to Iceland? During the spring up north, if you
stand in one spot long enough, the scenery around you will
change almost entirely. The ice and the sky melt together,
glaciers move, break and disappear from sight, giving space
for something else.
Similar to the constantly shifting Icelandic landscapes,
sales are about to meet the most considerable change in
recent history. There is a perfect storm coming, and B2B
businesses should prepare. But if you are ready to ride the
wave, you will be rewarded with loyal customers who keep
buying more because they want to. In this book, you will
learn:
❏ How B2B sales got to where it is now, and why a
revolution is brewing
❏ Why the reign of calls, emails and live chat should be
questioned
❏ Why using conventional sales approaches actually
sabotages relationships with leads
❏ What the modern lead really thinks about your sales
playbook
2

❏ Why messengers and chatbots should be added to your
arsenal
Who are we?
amoCRM the world's first messaging-powered CRM. It's
built on the principle that enabling conversations with leads
is the single most effective tactic that sales teams can
introduce.
And now we are on a mission to prepare you, the
entrepreneur or sales manager at an SMB, for the inevitable
changes you are about to start seeing. We always keep an ear
to the ground in anticipation of the coming trends, and this
one is so big that we could not keep silent.
Revolution is heading your way. Do not be fooled by the
calm-before-the-storm tranquility. We are standing at the
precipice of something new, something huge — something
great.
Still living under a rock?
Messaging is a huge part of our daily lives and it has been for
a while. Billions of people use chat apps now. Take a second
to think about how you reach out to the people in your own
circle. How do you get in touch with your friends, family,
colleagues or anyone else you talk to on a regular basis? If
3

you are like most people, you send them a message using a
chat app like Facebook Messenger, Skype, WeChat or
WhatsApp.
The way we communicate with each other has changed
fundamentally — from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, to
handwritten letters, to crafted emails, and now, to
emoji-filled chats. We fight, we share news, we flirt, we brag
and we even break up through our favorite messaging apps.
It is time to adapt to the bright light outside and take a
good look around. Everyone is glued to their smartphones.
Some restaurants have even banned the use of mobile
phones while dining in an attempt to encourage customers
to interact with each other.
In fact, a recent study by the global tech company
Asurion discovered that the average American checks their
phone 90 times a day and every 12 minutes while on
vacation!1
Plus, 62% of the sample surveyed stated that they
would rather go a week without chocolate than lose their
phone for a single day.2
If that is not a strong enough
attachment to your device, then what is?
Whichever way you look at it, we are hooked. Our
phones are not just phones anymore. No one is working
hard to improve the calling app or to improve the quality of
phone calls — it has already been done and it is not what is
hot anymore. What is hot is messenger apps. Why? Because
that is where everybody is.
4

Considering how frequently we are all pulling out our
phones to shoot a quick question to a friend, how likely is it
that people want to communicate with companies in the
same way? Pretty likely! Rapid responses are not just for
friends and family. Businesses can benefit from this kind of
connection with their customers as well.
Facts on messaging
According to market research company Emarketer, 1.4
billion people around the world send more than 50 billion
messages every day. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and
WeChat have around 3 billion active monthly users in total.
Let that sink in — that is double the population of China.
And you can be sure that the numbers will keep on
growing. By the end of 2018, 78% of the world’s
smartphone users were sending at least one message per
month.3
Facebook forecasts a further increase of the global
user base for mobile messaging apps to rise by an additional
23% by 2021.4
That just leaves one question — who won’t
be using messengers?
So the reality is that you have a communication channel
with 3 active billion users that you can connect with for
business purposes, regardless of which industry your
company is in.
According to Facebook, 91% of users are more likely to
shop with brands that remember them and send out
5

relevant offers. Savvy companies have already figured this
out — more than 8 billion messages are exchanged between
businesses and individuals every month.5
And let’s keep in
mind that any B2B buyer is first and foremost, an
individual.
Simply put, the era of convenience is here. Like it or not,
communication is now short and quick, and the tool of
choice is messaging apps.
We put our money where our mouth is
We know the messaging revolution is coming. Our team at
amoCRM believes in it so strongly that we have completely
pivoted our product to focus on messaging-based sales. We
have poured months of hard work into preparing our CRM
for this totally new way of selling.
Messenger-based sales is not a trend. It is the new wave
that is crashing down on the previously established shore of
communication. And it is big. We have shown you the
numbers, but you have most likely also looked around
yourself, and the fact is that everyone is using messengers. It
is merely a matter of time before businesses cannot imagine
not using messengers in their sales strategies.
It was like that with email. Tools for automation allowed
marketing and sales teams to totally redesign their strategies,
sending out “email blasts” to a massive amount of people.
6

And despite the ongoing battle to outsmart email providers
and avoid landing in the spam folder, email remains the
lynchpin in the average sales strategy.
It was like that with calling. From contact list building to
automatic dialing to pre-recorded voicemail messages —
countless tools that enabled cold calling centers to
effectively reach out to a great number of prospects for a
low price were developed. And again, calling is one of the
activities sales teams spend the most time on every day.
It is just not working anymore
Emailing your prospects is waning in efficiency, as open
rates across all industries are in decline and the
click-through-rate averages at 2.4%, according to
MailChimp.6
You are literally spamming 100 people to get 2
clicks. Unless you have an amazing content machine and
droves of excited customers, running an email campaign is
becoming tougher and tougher.
What about calling? As a prospecting tool, it is one of the
least effective ways your sales representatives can spend their
time. On average, only 1% of calls result in a later
appointment or meeting.7
Because of this low conversion rate, many companies
turn to automated robocalling, where bots dial and deliver
pre-recorded messages. And people hate these. The number
7

of complaints to the Federal Trade Commission's
DoNotCall list has more than doubled since 2015. And in
2017, more than half of the complaints were attributed to
robocalls.8
Using this communication strategy simply
reinforces the vicious cycle: if you are surprised by a
spammy robocall or telemarketer enough times, you just
stop answering calls from unknown numbers, decreasing
the conversion rate even further.
And even when they do strike gold and reach that elusive
ready-to-buy decision maker, outbound sales callers are
often unqualified for what comes next. In fact, 70% of
executive level buyers report that salespeople are incapable
of answering their questions during calls.9
When outbound
sales reps spend the majority of their time just trying to get
on the phone with decision makers, that is what they
become good at. It should not come as a surprise that when
they finally hook someone, they might not have the skills to
reel them in.
All of this translates to work hours on your dime, and it
is not very effective.
So it is time to throw the reign of email, phone and live
chat into question. A great new change is on our collective
doorstep. And it is not spammy like automated emailing nor
is it intrusive like cold calling.
Messaging puts communication on the customer’s terms.
8

After all, many chat apps such as Facebook Messenger
protect their users by prohibiting companies from sending
the first message. They also allow the user to delete the chat
or block future messages. That is critical. It means that the
conversation takes place entirely based on how and when
the lead or customer wants.
This, we believe, is the most powerful change to sales in
the coming future. The customer feels in control. The
brand truly serves the customer. Perfect harmony of
effectiveness and convenience — a modern way to
communicate. A total win-win.
Aided with multimedia capabilities of chat apps...the
possibilities are boundless.
Is this book for me?
Changing the status quo is not easy. We get it.
Sometimes the predictability of a 2% conversion rate is
reassuring. It is hard to take a risk to invest in new tools,
rebuild a process or retrain a team that has been educated to
approach sales a certain way.
But if you are fed up with a strategy built on repetitive,
demotivating tasks...
❏ If you are tired of getting feedback like “Stop
spamming me” or “Leave me alone!”...
9

❏ If you are struggling to respond fast enough or hook
the leads that are interested…
❏ If you are unable to scale up because you just cannot
seem to balance lead quantity and quality...
Then it should be pretty clear by now that your current
strategy puts your sales team in an uphill battle. You have to
look for a new, more effective way to engage.
People like talking to people. Wouldn’t you like your
B2B buyers to connect with you just as easily?
Let’s make it happen!
10

What you thought you
knew about B2B buyers
is wrong
In past decades, salespeople were taught that in order to
make their customers happy, all they had to do was deliver
the perfect pitch. Advertising was responsible for making
sure that buyers were aware of the brand, but ultimately, the
persuasive power of the salesperson was considered the real
reason for the purchase.
Long after online shopping took off, many people still
preferred to trust in brick-and-mortar stores because they
believed that a professional salesperson would know the
product (and their needs) better than they did themselves.1
It does not sound too unreasonable, but visualize this
model from a business perspective: customers (people just
like you) are dropped down to the bottom as just another
conquest to “win.” Customers became nothing more than a
number to add to the monthly quota. In fact, the
fundamental goal of sales was to push as many individuals
through the sales pipeline as possible.
12

In other words, the metric of success was simply to
persuade individuals to consume more, regardless of the
product’s quality or whether or not it matched the
customer’s needs.
But the traditional sales approach has reached its
expiration date. It simply cannot accommodate the needs of
the modern day customer, whether that means buying one
pair of headphones as a birthday gift or 50 pairs of
headphones for a small business.
Over time, as the internet continued to give customers a
louder voice, trust in companies gradually eroded. As a
result, expressions of bitterness over feeling “sold” are no
longer limited to the attentive eyes and ears of friends and
family since it is now possible to share discontent with
anyone who has internet access.
The internet takeover
The real turning point came with widespread internet
access. Now most consumers cannot go a day without it.
Every year, the number of internet users increases by
approximately 0.2 billion, reaching a whopping 4.1 billion
in 2018.2
This has totally changed the way we do business.
13

When it comes to reaching consumers, you can forget
about billboards, in-store displays or glossy magazine ads. In
2017, more than 41% of all ad spending went to digital
advertising. Not only is that already more than any other
type of promotion (including TV), but it is expected to
keep growing!3
Nearly $200 billion is spent on advertising attempts to
target you based on your likes, dislikes, recent life events,
and more. It is impossible to deny how much of an impact
these changes are making, and they are all part of a
momentous trend toward total personalization.
Imagine that you want to sell an HR tool to affluent
30-something year olds who are fresh out of elite MBA
programs and looking to start their first business and hire
their first teams.
Sure, you could buy ad space during the TV shows that
they are likely to watch, but that is child's play compared to
what a digital marketer is capable of. On the internet, you
could target them directly based on the keywords they
search for, their buying preferences or even recent life events
such as graduation from an MBA program. And that is just
the tip of the iceberg.
ProPublica has identified more than 50,000 targeting
categories on Facebook alone. Of course, everyone knows
that marketers can target you by demographics like age and
location. But did you know that you can also target
14

frequent business travellers who use iPhones? French expats
living in New York City? Or single women who are friends
with a newlywed couple?
On top of all that, you can also retarget people who have
taken specific actions such as engaging with your ads,
visiting your website or making a purchase. That is why you
Google a blender once and cannot escape the blender ads for
a month. It might seem annoying, but it is ultra-effective. In
fact, it increases the chance that a viewer will click your ad
by ten times.4
Altogether, this means that before a lead has even
touched your website, you have engaged them numerous
times with targeted, personalized messages, banners and
videos. By doing so, you get closer to your goal and create a
positive association with your brand, increasing your
trustworthiness.
Thanks to the internet, the buyer’s experience is
becoming increasingly personalized once again. And as
much as we complain about targeted ads “tracking” us, no
one really wants to go back to those unsophisticated,
irrelevant ads (“You’re a woman. Here’s an ad for
diamonds”). There is really no turning back.
Start paying attention
Technological advancement has altered the
consumer-company relationship forever. Customers no
15

longer need to enter brick-and-mortar stores to buy items or
meet face-to-face to purchase goods or services. RIP Borders
Bookstore and so many other fallen soldiers like you...
The ability to buy in a single click means that
expectations are only going up. Customers will accept
nothing less than easy and convenient purchase options, and
they want everything delivered asap. If you think your
salespeople have any chance of getting away with replies like
“We will get back to you within 24 hours”, then do not say
we did not warn you when your sales plummet.
Today, brands have no choice but to pay attention to
how customers prefer to do business and to offer them a
sales process that fits their expectations.
The fact is, no matter what a great fit your product might
be, if you don’t respond quickly and offer the perks your
customers have grown to expect, your competitors are only
a click away.
Unsubscribe, block, ignore, delete
The demand for quick response has led to a change in the
way we communicate. Admit it — nowadays, it is totally
normal to ignore emails as well as phone calls. Before,
“checking your email” used to be a common
first-thing-in-the-morning ritual.
16

Today, having to deal with spam emails is not only
time-consuming, but it is also a nuisance. Our inboxes are
overflowing, we procrastinate with our replies, and let’s be
realistic — who has the time to sit down and clean out their
inbox? All of this causes extra stress.
Quick tip: If the amount of messages in your inbox has
hit the triple (or quadruple) digits, type “unsubscribe”
into the search bar and start mass deleting if you are brave
enough.
Hope you are not still trying to prep for millennials
because Generation ‘Z’ (i.e. individuals born in mid 1990s)5
is already entering the workforce. And it is no surprise that
they prefer social media and messengers over traditional
email. According to Pew’s, 95% of teenagers have an active
online presence, 81% visit social media frequently, and only
6% of them use email. Other studies demonstrate that
young adults do not even bother to sign up for email
anymore.6
Please stop calling me
Although your intuition may tell you that hopping on a call
is easier than composing an email, phone calls require more
effort. When we are on the phone, we tend to avoid
awkwardness, uncomfortable pauses and silence in general.
17

Instead, we try to fill it. But this does not happen as much
when we use messengers and text.
Taking your time to reply is normal, although you can
ask any teenager about how much time is allowed to pass
after a message is marked “read” and you will discover that a
whole new etiquette is emerging. In general, we can take as
much time as we need to analyze the message and respond
when we want to. We now have exactly the amount of space
and power that we need to feel that we can make decisions
on our own time.
The dusty, old-fashioned approaches to sales do not
work anymore. People do not want to be harassed with
phone calls. Do you? Doubt it. Cold-calling is dead, and
even back in 2015, Business Harvard Research found that it
does not work 90.9% of the time.7
To respect people means
to respect their time, so it is essential to understand that if a
customer is interested in your product, then they will make
it known.
Who’s really holding the cards?
Today, if you want to watch F.R.I.E.N.D.S. for five hours,
Netflix has got you covered. If you want to listen to Lana
Del Rey’s latest album, there is Spotify, Google Play Music
18

or countless others. Want a new printer delivered to your
office tomorrow? It only takes one click on Amazon.
The power between the customer and company has
shifted, leaving the cards in the hands of the buyer. Rather
than viewing customers simply as “consumers”, savvy
companies view them as informed consultees. Customers
today are not willing to simply be driven by ads. Instead,
they do their own in-depth research, share opinions about
products and services online and even snub companies that
do not meet their expectations. One of the most memorable
examples is the storm of bad publicity that United Airlines
faced after mishandling musician Dave Carroll’s guitar. The
fiasco resulted in the viral song “United Breaks Guitars”,
which is blamed for United’s stock price plummeting 10
percent.
This revolutionary shift in power has not only been
evolving in B2C companies — it is also prevalent in the B2B
sector. The software company Cision provides PR services
to businesses using a cloud-based model to offer social
media monitoring and engagement. In 2015, the company
launched the #pitchPRomise campaign that asked PR
specialists to sign a promise emphasizing the importance of
focusing on building relationships with customers instead
of allowing technology to take over the entire process. The
problem was that Cision itself heavily relies on technology
to provide the services it offers to other PR firms. The
19

backlash occurred when Joel Landren wrote an article
criticizing Cision’s reprehension of its own target
customer.8
This led to Cision’s promise campaign to making
the company look tactless and hypocritical and that is not
the type of reputation damage that a B2B company can
bounce back from easily.
There is simply no use living in denial or trying to avoid
customers voicing their opinions. Instead, this is an
opportunity for companies to boost their customer’s
satisfaction in a way that was not possible before. Be the one
who is there for your customers, be the one who is really
listening, and you will be miles ahead of the competition.
20

Diagnosis: customers
have wised up…
What is the biggest difference between customers today
and customers 20 or 30 years ago? Is it their ability to reach
into their pockets, pull out their phone and find everything
they need to know about your company, product or service
within minutes? Or perhaps it is their unwavering
confidence in the validity of the reviews left online by
previous customers. Either way, the reality is that consumers
these days are not the same as they were before. So the real
question is, “Why are most businesses still applying old sales
techniques and methods to generations that have outgrown
them?”
You have been conditioned
As the second oldest profession in history, sales is one that
has seen it all and continues to mold to the shape of its
characters. Buying and selling is what makes the world go
round, and as long as humans are buying, sales tactics must
adhere to the vacillation of consumer behavior.
Historically, salespeople progressed from offering a
product that the consumer either desired yet knew nothing
22

about, had a dire need for or simply had no choice but to
purchase something of its kind at that specific moment to
becoming aggressively invested in pushing products onto
customers. Each historical period had its own sales
approach and as people and technology evolved, so did the
sales tactics. So then how come we are still seeing companies
offering their customers what they want but making it
nearly impossible to get in touch to actually make a
purchase? And why are companies still training sales reps to
“sell Raid to a bug” or “water to a well?”
It is clear that there is an imbalance when it comes to
how B2B companies are used to selling and how their
consumers want to be sold to. The solution is quite simple
but it must be done correctly, and most importantly, it
must be done now. If it seems intimidating at first, keep in
mind that all sales strategies were at one point introduced
and completely new. Some were ridiculous, such as Ford
Motor Company’s sales training advice of “Sell the vehicle
according to the shape of the prospect’s head.1
High
foreheads leave room for larger development and indicate
people who are less likely to resist new ideas.” But some
actually changed the world of business entirely.
The past several centuries have seen a steady progression
of sales methods that adapted to the needs of consumers.
The procession from Benjamin Franklin’s insurance
company and subscription tactic, to the less-than-honest
23

methods of the snake oil salesmen, to Dale Carnegie’s
AIDCA approach introducing the concept of
customer-relationship focus, to SPIN selling (which led to
Solution Selling or Consultative Selling) exemplifies just
how much the sales game has changed.
Then, at some point during the last decade, it was
established that businesses and salespeople were spending
too much time searching for new prospects and were not
able to meet their sales targets. When the internet began to
offer both businesses and consumers the opportunity to
connect to each other from any location at any moment, it
became easier than ever for a business to see a consistent
stream of new sales leads, but not all of them were qualified.
In 2011, Aaron Ross pointed out this inefficiency and
insisted that the only way a business could see a significant
growth in sales was if there were constant qualified leads and
the way to achieve that was to delegate a sales rep to focus
on lead generation, another on closing and another on
account management.2
The issue that most sales reps face is the fact that as the
sales methods have changed, so have the consumers. They
have been informed of how salespeople used to treat their
ancestors and they will not allow themselves to be
manipulated.
The key concept for businesses to comprehend is that
just because customers have wised up does not mean that
24

the sales game is over. No, it is really not like that at all!
Customers are now on the same playing field, and if your
business can find the right approach to your specific
purchasing audience, then you can both win.
By now, the flourishing generations have heard the
stories, seen the movies and have read the books and they are
well aware of what happens to folks who get tricked by
salespeople. That is why businesses have no choice but to
adapt their sales tactics to those that will not make the
customer feel like he or she is being chased, cornered and
captured. There is no straighter road to distrust, general
dissatisfaction and ultimately, bad reviews and negative
opinions of your company if you continue to treat your
consumers like something you need to catch for your own
benefit.
Several years ago, we began to see how innovations such
as email, text messaging, telephone marketing, and now,
messengers, have broadened the abilities of companies to
reach their customers, both potential and existing. The
problem is that companies are trying to adapt old sales
techniques to the new mentality of the modern day
consumers. This is what led to managers demanding that
their salespeople make hundreds of cold calls per day or
sending out a vast amount of emails into ultimately,
emptiness because less than 24% of sales emails3
are even
opened and it takes approximately 18 dials to connect with a
25

potential decision with call back rates being less than 1%.4
So
by now, you can probably see for yourself just how much
money a company loses when it has sales reps on the phone
day in and day out trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Ideally, salespeople should be making 60 calls per day if
they want to have conversations meaningful enough to lead
to a successful deal, but that’s provided that prospects can
be reached.5
That is why dialing automation was the
number one buying priority for sales development in 2015.6
Despite how inefficient and time-consuming cold calling
can be for businesses, it is still a critical touch point when it
comes to client outreach.
But as most business owners now already know, people
do not want to be interrupted by a sales call, spammed by
unwanted emails, or worse, constantly chased by a
salesperson who was convinced that all leads must be
captured. Consumers have developed a sort of immunity to
the traditional sales tactics and will no longer be valuable to
a business if the business does not make itself appear
valuable to the public.
The sales resistance situation
Despite the fact that the modern day person entirely
depends on goods that he or she is used to obtaining only
through the process of purchasing, only 18% of buyers trust
salespeople.7
This raises the question of, “Why are we so
26

skeptical when we come across someone who is committed
to providing us with something we want?”
Due to the painful aftermath of traditional sales
methods, the majority of us have now developed
unconscious psychological responses to being sold to, and
this type of sales resistance is expressed by prospects in the
form of either objections or obstacles, or sometimes even
both.
Objections are sincere or insincere reasons a buyer may
express against the salesperson’s attempts to sell a product or
service. For example, a buyer may have a sincere objection
that he or she does not believe in your product and may
need more information and a patient approach from the
salesperson in order to help them make the decision that is
best for them. On the other hand, a buyer may have
insincere objections and may try to discourage the
salesperson as a result of increased sales resistance.
Something that many salespeople have to deal with on a
daily basis is reactance, a strong resistance to the sales
process itself. It is the subconscious refusal of buyers to have
their time wasted and to be manipulated by anyone who is
trying to gain from their loss. Often, buyers will feel
placated when the salesperson addresses their concern
directly and applies reverse psychology. For example, if a
buyer does not have faith in the newest technology for their
office because it is expensive and it will cause him to spend
27

time and money on training his sales reps, a salesperson can
address this concern by saying something like,
“Look, I know you’re probably thinking that this is
going to cost you more than it is worth and that it’ll take
your employees weeks of paid overtime before they’re able
to really use this software, but I can assure you that the
results you’ll see will really surprise you… Our experience
shows that it takes a person 3 full working days to really
grasp how to use this program. There’s no additional
training required as we provide all of the instructional
videos and all of the necessary information. You won’t have
to have spend money setting the equipment up because we
don’t have an installation fee. We also provide a 1 year
guarantee which means you or your employees can call us at
any time and we’ll help you.”
Obstacles are revealed when the prospect expresses either
real or apparent reasons he or she cannot make a purchase.
The role of the salesperson in this case is to really gain some
perspective as to whether or not the obstacle can be
overcome. If the prospect says that he or she is currently on
too tight of a budget, perhaps the salesperson can offer a
payment plan that would fit the prospects financial
opportunity. Obstacles can be different — sometimes it is as
simple as a prospect and a salesperson just not seeing eye to
eye on anything and just getting off on the wrong foot right
from the very start. In this case, it is up to the salesperson
28

how to proceed. If he or she feels that the prospect would
rather speak to someone else about the deal, perhaps there is
an option for another salesperson to handle the sale.
Overcoming these issues brought on by sales resistance is
one of the things that salespeople spend a lot of physical and
mental energy on throughout their days. The underlying
problem is that most buyers are so skeptical about being
tricked that they are ready to come up with obstacles,
objections, and any other reason they can think of not to
give the salesperson what he or she wants, which is to make a
sale. But once again, if it is the buyer who is in need, and the
salesperson who has what the buyer needs, can they not find
a way to work together and both benefit from their
partnership? That is what B2B is, really, when you get down
to the bottom of it — a partnership.
As we move further into the switched — on digital
century, we question how businesses can succeed by
dropping all those classic, wasteful methods that the buyer
hates. Even if some sales tactics worked in the past, today
they have no positive impact on brands. Today’s customers
are busy people and just like you, they’re drowning in work,
are bombarded with emails, receive or make dozens of calls a
week and have hours of unplayed WhatsApp voice messages
they need to catch up on.
The issue of sales resistance and buyers’ existing and
growing distrust in salespeople, when combined with the
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way that the internet provides consumers with all of the
information they need, is the reason that selling can no
longer be anything but customer—centric. Anyone
involved in making a B2B purchase decision is not going to
fall for the same sales tactics that they most likely implement
in their own sales strategies. What they will do, however, is
spend days or even weeks researching your company online
and making sure that your company not only suits their
needs, but is also credible.
The era of customer empowerment
The more salespeople pushed customers to buy, the more
customers pushed back. But refusing to make purchases at
all wasn’t an option in yesterday’s world, and it certainly
isn’t one today. So consumers slowly, but surely, starting
taking their power back. Their demands grew, their
expectations in terms of quality and customer support
increased, they became more knowledgeable and most
importantly, they began to depend on one another for
valuable information instead of turning to salespeople for
help. This left salespeople with no other choice than to meet
the standards that the consumers were setting. And those
standards keep getting higher even today.
The way that customers seek out information has
changed and it is up to the companies and their salespeople
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to adapt. It is not a secret that social media is big these days.
There are 3.48 billion social media users in the world at
this point. And while you may still be sticking to the belief
that social media is for teenagers and sharing cat videos, the
reality is that 95% of online adults age 18—34 are most
likely to follow a brand via social networking. If your target
audience is a bit older, 92% of 35—44 year olds, 85% of
45—54 year olds, 74% of people aged 55—64 and 71% of
people aged 65 and older said that they follow brands on
social media.8
So if you’re not present on social media, then how are
empowered customers supposed to revel in their experience
with your brand? Being present on Facebook, for example,
allows you to not only generate valuable content, but to
include the magical Share and Like buttons under your
posts so that your customers don’t have to keep their great
experience with your company a secret. It is so simple to
make it easier for your customers! Not to mention
incredibly cost-effective! No wonder 81% of all small and
medium-sized businesses are on social media.9
Another way to look at it is that despite customers’
feelings of empowerment due to easy access to vast amounts
of information about products, services, companies and
customer experiences, they are feeling overwhelmed! They
no longer want salespeople to sell to them. They want
salespeople to help them make a choice.
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One of the simplest ways to help your customers is to let
them know you’re there for them and that you can be
reached whenever they want to reach you, however they
want to reach you.
So let’s take a look at what we have got: empowered but
overwhelmed customers with high expectations who are
almost always connected to social media and prefer to
communicate via messaging. Are you starting to see the
solution?
The initial motive for businesses to implement messaging
into their sales strategies would be to simplify the processes
of all of the stages involved in the business deal. This means
just being available at all times and being easy to reach. The
majority of consumers are using social media and 90% of
business leads would rather receive a message than a phone
call and more than 50% of consumers would rather receive
customer support via text than on the phone.10
When it
comes to receiving information about appointments,
deliveries, prices, and possible deals, 75% of all Millennials
would rather communicate via text.11
And who can blame them, right? Most of us are so busy
all the time that picking up the phone to make a phone call
means that you have to find a quiet and isolated place where
you can focus on your voice, your tone, your words, your
thoughts and everything else that could affect your future
relationship or partnership with the person on the other
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line. Who has time for that these days? But writing a quick
message is easy to do anywhere and doesn’t require you to
step away, to allot a certain amount of time (10—30
minutes) or to polish up your fake voice and hope that no
one you know can hear you. And not to mention,
sometimes you don’t want anyone to know what you’re
calling about.
When it comes to customer empowerment, it doesn’t
matter if your firm is B2B or B2C, because the general
approach that you should be taking is B2P — Business to
People. Whether you’re selling to one person or selling to
business, the decision to purchase your product or service is
made by people. And these days, all people are consumers.
B2B companies can no longer use the hard “strict
guidelines” approach to selling because the people buying
aren’t going to be swayed by it.
The empowered customer isn’t something to fear. The
empowered customer is someone to care for. Because as
much knowledge as they now have and as much
information that’s available to them, they still need help
making the right choice for their company. Letting your
B2B buyers know that you’re there to help every step of the
way should they need you is the secret to winning the
empowered customer’s heart.
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Hunting for reviews
The internet is a vast plain that invites each and every
person to spend hours browsing pages of stories of how
customers were tricked by salespeople, how companies lose
millions of dollars due to the ineptitude of their business
partners or suppliers, how customers were lied to, ridiculed,
and cheated by companies and any other
customer—business relationship story you can possibly
imagine.
In short, buyers now have unbounded access to
opinions, ratings and reviews.
Nowhere is this more apparent than software. Let’s say
you’re a marketer looking for a Search Engine Optimization
tool. With so many SEO options to choose from, would
you risk signing up for the first one you come across?
That’s just too big of a gamble. Instead, most people
consult the general consensus first. That’s why ranking
websites like Capterra, TechnologyAdvice and GetApp are
growing explosively.
After all, time is money, so buyers want to alleviate their
doubts before investing. They need plenty of reassurance
that your business has been beneficial to others in the past
before they decide to cooperate with you.
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It is for this reason that online reviews have become one
of the most powerful devices you can use to boost your
brand and attract more customers. Although they are
challenging to drum up, using the right strategies can get
you all the reviews you need to leave a lasting impression.
At the heart of this increasing demand for reviews is the
issue of trust. Before investing in your services, buyers want
to know that you’re somebody that they feel safe doing
business with. After all, B2B buyers know that advertising
copy is written explicitly to motivate them to buy, so
checking out what past customers have to say seems more
trustworthy.
Need proof? Data from 2015 illustrates that in order to
trust your business, 85% of B2B buyers need to read up to
10 reviews about your company.12
And while B2C shoppers also use reviews to make
informed decisions, one bad review of a B2B company
(usually by another B2B firm) is much more damaging than
one negative review of a customer buying from a B2C
company.
The purchasing process in B2B sales, which may take
months or even years, is complex and costly. The B2C
segment, on the other hand, has a short process of buying.
These buyers can get away with purchase decisions sparked
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by emotional wants rather than needs. Instead of months,
the choice to buy is made in days or even on impulse.
However, the decision to buy in a B2B space is generally
fuelled by needs and constrained by budget. B2B buyers put
forth a lot of effort into making rational decisions. Buyer’s
remorse isn’t something that is condoned in the B2B
workspace. The swipe-first-ask-questions-later approach
won’t get you anywhere you’d like to be if you’re working
for a B2B company.
When working with B2B buyers, companies take time to
cultivate close, long—term relationships with customers.
There’s really no room for mistakes when you have
businesses depending on you to be there for them. If
something should happen and a mistake is made, the
relationship must have a foundation that is solid enough to
withstand disturbances without causing significant damage
to the reputation of the company.
So while it might be enough for a B2C business to have
reviews about how their shoes arrive on time, B2B
consumers have higher expectations that involve an entirely
different spectrum of nuances. They are experts who are
aiming at the best investment for their budget, and the
wealth of information available on the internet has changed
their research habits. They search for proof and make up
their minds before they actually engage with a vendor.13
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“The truth is that B2B buyers are just like you and me.
They use Uber, they love their Apple products, they use
Google, they use Netflix, they shop Amazon and then
they go to make a B2B purchase and the sales process is
horrible.” — Blake Morgan, author and futurist
B2B customers also demand that the purchase experience
is intuitive, accessible and easy. In fact, nearly 70% of buyers
claim that convenience is essential. It is obvious: the longer
and more complex the buying process is, the fewer people
will buy.14
The Promise of Inbound
We are beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel.
No more chasing customers nor begging. We are finally
liberated from the tyranny of old-school sales rules and
distracting customer’s lives. Thanks to inbound marketing,
brands have been able to attract customers, earn their
respect, “love and attention.”15
Also, this has been done not
via expensive campaigns nor powerful or creative TV ads,
but by generating exciting online content that engages,
educates and entertains the readers. According to marketing
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literature, online sales approaches don’t work when
companies firstly produce general content and secondly,
when they generate a set of the same texts that originally
would only address specific audience.16
Before anything else, we must keep in mind that our
potential customers are a group of individuals who already
have specific expectations about the brand. Many sales
experts assert that we must appeal to the customers directly
and relevantly. And this is what inbound marketing
dictates. To create and maximize customers’ experiences
with companies, they must be spoken to in such a way that
would connect them with the brand’s vision. If the messages
are communicated successfully, then it may lead to
increased communication and sales. But how exactly has
this been achieved?17
Personalization drives results
With the introduction of inbound sales in our increasingly
connected world, we have realized by now that the
connection between customers and the brand is essential.
We must be focus on our customers and this is something
that should be our priority. To achieve this, companies
started generating highly personalized messages and content.
Interestingly, research explains that once the buying journey
becomes personalized, customers — aside from feeling the
connection with messages — feel understood.18
To illustrate
this, let’s think of Amazon’s personalized shopping
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experience. Thanks, again, to the digital age, Amazon
presents customers with products that they would most like
and possibly purchase next based on their shopping history
and page per visits. This is because today’s personalization
technology automatically takes into consideration the
buyer’s ratings, purchases and viewing habits. Even if
customers spend time browsing on Amazon, being
presented with individual recommendations saves their
time. Hence, as customers, we start to feel understood by
the company. This creates a better overall user experience,
and for this reason, personalization has become increasingly
popular.
We have outlined the benefits in the B2C segment, but
you are probably wondering about the B2B world. B2B
customers have also been expecting their buying processes
to be as personalized and seamless as possible. Precisely the
same way that a B2C consumer who enters a retail store
doesn’t want to be treated as just another customer, a B2B
buyer doesn’t want to be dumped with a one-size-fits-all
solution. In fact, Forrester Consulting on behalf of
Accenture Interactive, part of Accenture Digital, and SAP
Hybris conducted a study based on 2,000 B2B sellers and
customers.19
The data revealed that regardless of the
medium or device, customers’ expectations for personalized
content have constantly been evolving.20
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From greeting the customer to providing the best
product advice and offers to creating a strong connection, a
B2B consumer’s buying journey also needs to be customized
at every step. Hence, by using machine learning,
automation, and other technological innovations — such as
chatbots — in the B2B space, inbound has become
particularly effective.
Whether your company is big or small, inbound has
proved that by delivering highly personalized experiences to
today’s customers, brands have the potential to drive
themselves to new heights. Product advice, for instance, aids
Amazon in driving its sales. Infosys research finds that 86%
of customers state that personalization affects their
purchasing decisions.21
And McKinsey discovers that by
meeting individual requirements, a company can bring
about “five to eight times the return on investment on
marketing spend and lift sales 10%.”22
The new approaches
to sales methods seem sound, and it looks like sales problems
of the past are finally being addressed. But not everyone
agrees with this. In fact, it often falls short of many brands’
expectations, and businesses don’t reach the standard that
they hoped for. This is still quite a common occurrence in
the B2B sector seeing as how many companies are finding it
difficult to stick to the old while bringing in the new. There
are reasons behind this struggle and there are also solutions
which we will address in the next chapter.
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Escaping the
predator-prey mentality
As we have already seen, the inbound approach has been
instrumental to the success of many brands. Yet for other
companies, it has failed to increase lead volume or
conversion rates. Inbound enthusiasts are quick to point
out that the method isn’t a silver bullet. It can take several
months before a visible return-on-investment.
But what about when you’ve poured all your efforts into
a content strategy, hired a team of writers, gone through a
website audit and optimized for SEO? What about when
you see some growth, but not enough? Months have gone
by, but you don’t have the traffic you were expecting and
your sales haven’t increased.
It is not just hypothetical. According to Hubspot’s State
of Inbound 2018 report, 61% of inbound marketers say that
generating traffic and leads is their biggest challenge.1
According to the same report, sales people say that getting a
response from prospects and closing deals has gotten even
harder over the past few years.
Does that mean inbound doesn’t work?
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Not at all. Done right, inbound is one of the most
effective approaches to sales and marketing out there.2
However, if you look closer, you’ll see that there are two
widespread problems that tend to sabotage the results.
Chapter 4 will describe the second problem — that you’re
forcing leads to connect with you on the platforms that you
want, which, in turn, adds friction to your interactions.
But before jumping into that, this chapter will uncover
the first and most pressing issue: despite adopting a new
customer-centric approach, you haven’t changed the way
you treat leads. You’re still in the classical sales mindset.
You’re still treating customers like prey.
The Chase Continues
Sure, you’re no longer outright chasing them. Instead,
you’ve become a venus fly trap. Your personalized content is
designed to look like valuable expert knowledge that you’re
sharing for free. It is disguised to look like an independent
opinion from a thought-leader.
You don’t attract. You lure. You’re still catching leads,
but you’re doing it covertly.
In all likelihood, this is done unconsciously. After all,
treating leads like prey is what salespeople have been told to
do again and again, decade after decade.
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Inbound was actually created in direct opposition to
hunting down and capturing leads. It was developed as “a
method of attracting, engaging and delighting people to
grow a business that provides value and builds trust.”3
If you’re using this method in a way that fundamentally
contradicts its core values, you won’t get the results you’re
expecting. It is like trying to fit a square peg into a round
hole.
So, what am I doing wrong? The main reason why this
approach may fail lies in the way the company uses inbound
instruments. Let’s take a look.
Gated content
The lifeblood of any inbound strategy is gated content.
Materials such as webinars, demos, and newsletters are made
“gated” when a lead must fill out a form in order to access
them. In other words, in exchange for assets that belong to
the brand, users are obligated to provide personal or
organizational information such as name, phone number,
email address, job title or company size. The potential
customer gets access to something interesting, and the
company collects their information with the plan to start
nurturing a relationship with them.
It has become a favorite tool among many companies
because it offers an abundance of information that can be
mined in order to personalize the buyer experience and
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increase sales conversions. The idea goes a little something
like:
“Go ahead and read our report for free. If you like us,
you’ll be back because this is only one interaction in a
long-term relationship. From this, we’ll understand what
you like and send you more of that. Eventually, if you like
and trust us enough, you’ll probably share our ideas with
other potential customers, or better yet, buy our product.”
If users believe that your company’s content is valuable,
informative or unique, then they’ll be more willing to
provide their personal information in exchange for it. But
this exchange is only sustainable as long as customers trust
you. People are always wary of falling into yet another sales
trap, and they’ll stop coming around if you abuse their
trust.
Abuse 1. The “I didn’t sign up for this”
How often do you find your inbox cluttered with
newsletters that you have no recollection of signing up for?
Entire start-ups such as Unroll.me and Organizer have
emerged because of the massive demand to unsubscribe to
unwanted newsletters. Email providers have even begun
automatically sorting promotional messages into folders
separate from the main inbox.
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The fact is that when prospective customers sign up for a
piece of gated content, many companies still automatically
tick the newsletter subscription box. Leads would need to
actively unclick this box in order to avoid the weekly emails.
And marketers didn’t design it that way by accident — it is a
well-known conversion booster. In fact, according to
behavioral psychologist Dan Ariely, pre-selected default
choices explain why 99.98% of Austrians consent to organ
donation (the default is opt-in), while only 12% of Germans
do (the default is opt-out).4
Likewise, gated content forms are designed, optimized
and A/B tested to get more email sign ups, whether you
meant to subscribe or not.
Trust broken.
This isn’t using inbound methods correctly. Using tricks
based on the old mentality, you won’t win customers’ trust
nor boost sales, bringing you back to square one.
Abuse 2. The “Stop spamming me”
But what happens when leads actually do subscribe? It is
important to acknowledge that gated content also has issues
when sign-ups were made proactively and by choice. People
still unsubscribe for an infinite amount of reasons.
Prime among those is sending messages too frequently.
Yet so many companies shower their users with emails, and
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they wonder why so many people unsubscribe (and even
block them). It is crucial to understand what users expect
and then adapt to it. Maybe a bi-weekly email is perfect in
your mind, but your readers feel bombarded.
Abuse 3. The “Why the heck are they sending me this?”
As we mentioned in the previous chapter, personalization is
one of the best ways to increase your brand’s appeal. Your
messages should be tailored to the lead’s preferences and
interests. Likewise, personalization extends to cover what
you shouldn’t send. If someone subscribes to notifications
about new web design blog posts, don’t send them your
newsletter about how to manage a team. Signing up for one
thing does not give you free reign to send every piece of
content you produce.
It should be obvious, but sometimes it is hard to force
yourself to organize your email lists… it is easier to just send
it to everyone. Fight this temptation. The more targeted you
get with your content, the more value your messages will
carry. Sending irrelevant emails is just another way you’re
abusing their trust and chipping away at your own
credibility.
Contact info for sale
Another dirty trick that is rarely talked about is when
personal data is bought and sold. As a SaaS company, our
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team inbox is constantly filling up with offers to sell us lists
of our competitors’ users. This is one of the worst practices
you can participate in, so the only thing worth saying here is
don’t do it. Don’t buy it. Don’t sell it. It is as simple as that.
That is personal information, and those people did not sign
up for that.
Annoying pop-ups
Another instrument of inbound is the ever-present pop-up.
Research has shown that they irritate and frustrate,
regardless of size.5
Perhaps one of the main reasons is that
pop-ups (along with other digital marketing tools) have
been abused. They are intrusive, they appear suddenly, they
are usually irrelevant to the content and they’re often hard
to close... Basically, all they do is scare, disrupt and annoy.
Sponsored content & influencers — you’re being
deceived
One of the main ways buyers have empowered themselves is
by skipping the ad copy and the sales pitch, and instead
consulting sources they trust. However, what they may not
know is that many independent publications allow brands
to run articles that look identical to their own stories for
cash — the only difference being the word “Sponsored”
written in fine print.
Native advertising is a form of promotion where ads are
designed to blend in as seamlessly as possible with other
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content. According to the popular marketing blog
Convince & Convert, “It is so closely incorporated into
outside websites that the user can hardly tell they are
looking at a brand message.”6
This includes everything from
those first few Google search results (which are actually ads)
to articles in Forbes to videos from your favorite Youtube
influencers.
Living in the age of information overload and distractors,
it becomes harder and harder to recognize which content is
independent and which is a sneaky promoted post or a paid
ad. In one Boston University study, less than 10% of readers
recognized sponsored news articles as advertising.7
But people do feel that something has changed. They
intuitively sense that they are being deceived for the sake of
gaining more sales. And when a customer catches wind of a
company trying to trick them, they lose all trust in the
company and in the independent research sources they once
relied on.
“Trust in media is at an all-time low…. I’m not suggesting
it is only from native advertising, but I think it is a
contributing factor. A lot of people equate this to fake
news.”8
- Michelle Amazeen, Assistant Professor at Boston
University
49

It is a tough pill to swallow, but the truth is that many
customers still see marketers and salespeople for what they
are — people whose income relies on making that sale. And
that’s acceptable.
Trust is crucial, and it is difficult to build. Skeptical B2B
buyers are out shopping for brands that not only meet their
needs, but also operate with honesty. Would you want to
work with a company that you didn’t trust to:
❏ Describe their products/services accurately?
❏ Tell you honestly when something is wrong?
❏ Protect your data?
In B2B especially, establishing a trustworthy relationship
with customers is essential because relationships between
customers and companies tend to be long-term. So when we
collectively lose customer trust, aren’t we back in the same
situation we were in before?
Backlash against the old mentality
As marketers and salespeople continue to capture and
deceive their prey under the guise of inbound, more people
have taken a stance against sales tactics that use their data
against them.
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The issue has raised so much concern that the European
Union has introduced a set of laws have that sent
shockwaves of panic across marketing and sales teams
worldwide. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
and the ePrivacy Directive give consumers more control and
clarity about how their data is being collected and used.9
Essentially, they detail what companies can and can’t do
with the personal information of EU citizens, fining deviant
companies up to $22 million or 4% of their annual turnover,
whichever is greater.10
These laws cover a lot of bases, but there are a couple of
rules worth looking at closer. Under GDPR, silence or a
pre-ticked box no longer signals consent — a person must
actively opt-in to email newsletters. Similarly, the ePrivacy
Directive can’t install and track cookies in a website visitor’s
device unless they first obtain informed consent.11
On the first day of GDPR being in effect, Google and
Facebook were sued for a collective $8.8 billion. Examples
like this made marketers and sales teams everywhere were
shake in their boots.12
It totally disrupted the philosophy for
inbound that they had come to rely on: grab all the data you
want, sign everyone up — if they’re not interested, they’ll
unsubscribe.
Good thing you’re not in Europe, huh?
Actually, more than 100 countries have passed legislation
to protect consumer privacy and data.13
In fact, California
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recently launched its own law like GDPR called the
California Consumer Privacy Act that will go into effect in
2020.14
There’s obviously a reason that consumers have
demanded a law to protect them from the big bad
businesses that are buying and selling their personal data,
hunting them down, trapping them, or attempting to
manipulate them to part with their hard-earned dollars.
These days, damaging your potential and existing
customers’ trust is a risk that no business can afford to take.
The only way to create a process where trust can thrive is to
change your mindset. If you want to continue seeing your
customers as prey, then don’t bother with inbound
marketing because it’ll only push them away. If you want to
adjust to the desires and expectations of the modern
consumer (B2B consumers especially), then get ready to
make some changes to your sales approach.
Time for a new perspective
It is ironic that we’re still on the same old page, looking at
the same old problem: locked in a battle of Spy vs Spy. 15
Does this mean that the relationship between the
customer and the company hasn’t changed at all? Or that
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the power shift toward buyer empowerment was nothing
more than an illusion?
It doesn’t have to be. We can transform our relationships
with customers from an obstacle into a competitive
advantage. But in order to make this change, we need to let
go of our fears.
When you put the power into the hands of leads and
customers, how do you make sure they come back? How do
you plan and forecast when what’s on the horizon is in the
hands of someone else? We’re desperate not to lose control,
and this fear is what keeps taking over our decision-making
process.
The solution to such a complicated problem is actually
not difficult at all.
Give your customers the freedom and the flexibility to
choose what they want, when they want it — and make sure
you’re there to listen and engage. By giving your customers
this power, you’ll both win.
“Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough
anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have
to create raving fans.”16
- Ken Blanchard
Letting leads take control of how and when you
communicate will actually make your communication more
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worthwhile, bringing you more sales in turn! You both have
the same endgame, after all. You want to provide something
valuable that keeps them coming back, and they want to
stop searching, stop looking over their shoulders and start
feeling confident that they chose the best option when they
picked you.
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Embracing the new era of
sales
With the empowered customer gaining more and more
control over the purchasing process, inbound sales seems to
be the only viable strategy. While it is good, inbound is
often a one-way street. Social media, website content and
email subscriptions can only deliver something, but these
methods do not offer customers a way to respond.
Especially in a way that is convenient for them.
Even if your customer subscribes to your newsletter,
emails can be classified as spam and be filtered out — and
this is quite a common occurrence. Also, if a customer is
intrigued by your newsletter content, then how is he or she
supposed to get in contact with you? Via email? Sure, that is
an option, but considering that the average response time is
over 12 hours, emails are not satisfying most consumers’
need for the here-and-now reply.1
And to be quite frank,
most consumers are not all that surprised when they do not
receive an email response at all, seeing as how 62% of
companies do not respond to emails at all.2
All in all, there
are plenty of gaps along the way for your message to fall
through and remain undelivered.
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So what can you do about it?
The customers are coming to you, and they will only play
the game on their own terms. This means that you need to
have a sales channel that supports the relationship between a
customer and a business according to the new rules where
responses have to be immediate, at any time of the day or
night on any day of the week and last but not least, using the
communication channel that is most convenient for the
customers.
It is time to get the most out of inbound marketing if you
want to truly connect with your consumers and build
business relationships that will last. Your customers are no
longer just consumers — they are advocates for your brand.
If you treat them right, they will spread the word and your
reputation as a business will prosper. Give to get, right?
The Instant Messaging craze
Think back to the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, when
everyone was chatting with each other using instant
messengers. ICQ, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN
Messenger (later renamed Windows Live Messenger and
finally, Skype) — these programs were such a huge part of
our daily lives. We revelled in the fact that we could sit
down at our computers, wait to connect to the internet,
open up the program, see if someone was online, write a
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message, and wait for them to respond. We were ecstatic
from the feeling of freedom that instant messaging gave us.
These companies quickly saw the end of their reign,
however, when the same concept was applied in a way that
accommodated the desires and lived up to the standards of
the consumer world. The 2010 and 2011 saw some of the
greatest changes (which are still affecting our lives today)
when Whatsapp was launched, Apple introduced iMessage
and Snapchat pioneered the disappearing message.3
Most consumers and businesses are familiar with
Facebook Messenger. It has been around for over a decade
and it has 1.3 billion active users. This number will only
continue to increase as businesses around the world are now
including Messenger in their sales strategies.4
Companies
like Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, Icelandair, Coca-Cola and
others are embracing this communication trend between
consumers and businesses, both B2C and B2B.5
The reason? Well, people like to use Messenger because it
coincides with their expectations. As forward-thinking
businesses have been making an effort to accommodate the
needs of their consumers, people fairly recently began to
prefer using messengers above all else when it comes to
making purchases, business deals or appointments.
It is the simple and natural process of communication
evolution — people became hooked on chatting when it
was introduced and the popularity of instant messaging did
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not wane over the years. It actually became more
widespread!
Instant messaging went from computer-based to
handheld once messengers became available on mobile
phones. Do we still send regular text messages? Sure! But
how much information can a text message provide a
customer about a business or the other way around? Not so
much…
The Aftermath
The IM boom gradually conditioned people to accept
nothing less than instant responses whenever they had a
question, and businesses had to keep up! Getting a lead
from the awareness stage to becoming a loyal customer
became more and more difficult as people were expecting
“answers now!”, but most businesses were only capable of
providing “answers later!”
Enter in Live Chat, a website plugin (a pop-up) that
allows customers to chat with a member of the support
team while both are online at the same time.
Now, anyone who has ever worked on the other end of
live chat knows exactly what it is like — it is usually a
complete and total mess. The original idea behind it was to
provide customers with instant support and assist them
with their purchases throughout the entire time they are on
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the website. It was a great theoretical application of
providing consumers with instant gratification, but there
were many important details that were overlooked.
However, at some point, it was as if everyone
simultaneously agreed that live chat was the end-all-be-all
customer communication tool.
When live chat was introduced, businesses jumped on it!
It seemed like the perfect solution — any customer
browsing the company’s website was able to connect with a
manager at any moment if he or she needed assistance. Well,
provided that the customer had a question during the
manager’s work hours. If there was no representative on the
other end of the chat, there was no point to having live chat
installed. The customer would just feel abandoned and
annoyed. And 24% of consumers say that what frustrates
them the most is long wait times and 1 out of 5 customers is
willing to stop using a product or a service due to slow
response times on live chat.6
This led to businesses pressuring their representatives to
answering any customer within the first 30 seconds and any
follow up response could not exceed several minutes. That’s
easy if there’s only one customer, but what if there are 5? Or
10? Or 15? Unfortunately, struggling to deal with such an
onslaught is reality. It happens every day and it leaves the
customers extremely dissatisfied and the representatives and
the managers at a loss when they do not meet their KPIs due
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to missed chats. Now when it comes to B2B buyers, most
likely you will not be seeing 15 at a time, but who knows?
Industries are different and buyers are different as well. One
thing is for sure — no B2B buyer is going to take your
company seriously if you are offering live chat without a
representative to actually chat in live time.
Businesses who could afford it were able to hire support
managers to work different shifts day and night, weekdays
and weekends, so that customers could always talk to a real
person online. This was great for those firms that were
interested in selling their product or service to countries in
other time zones. This was not great, however, for the firms
that could not afford to hire an around-the-clock team of
managers.
Another issue that was overlooked was the fact that
customers are often referred to email or calling. There are
many reasons this could happen and that’s why it is so
common. “Please send us an email with this information.”
or “Please let us know when a sales representative can call
you.” or the worst one imaginable, “There is no
representative available at the moment. Please send us an
email, call us at ###-#### or please come back during office
hours.”
First of all, the customer contacted your company via live
chat because he or she did not want or was unable to call
you or send an email. By referring customers to these
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methods of communication, you are disrespecting their
choice and that’s not what the empowered customers of
today will accept.
Secondly, you are literally losing the customer! There is
really no way to reach out to the sender of a “missed chat”
because you do not have any of his or her contact
information. And just imagine, this could have been your
next loyal customer! Small business owners cannot afford to
take such risks when it comes to filtering out potential
quality leads simply because they missed them knocking or
sent them away.
There are actually numerous other ways you could lose
your leads, and they are beyond your control. The potential
customer may accidentally close the tab with your website
and have to open it up again and start the chat from the
beginning. If the customer does this right away, you may
still have the chat open and will not ask him or her to
explain the problem or ask the question again. But if they
come back a bit later and reach a different manager or sales
rep, they are going to have to start at the very beginning.
Over half of consumers state that they hate repeating
themselves, whether to a salesperson or to a customer
support manager.7
And who can blame them?
Live chat had a lot to offer in theory, but when it came to
its application, it failed to provide customers with instant
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replies 24/7 and the opportunity to return at any moment
and not have to repeat themselves.
The era we’re welcoming to sales is one where
communicating with businesses is instant, seamless and on
the customer’s terms. Messengers are the very best way of
accomplishing this. That’s why including these humble
apps into your strategy is one of the easiest and most
effective ways of working with empowered buyers.
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Messenger-Based Sales
As the B2B buyer demanded more of a B2P sales approach,
customers became extremely expectant of service that fits
their needs, their schedules, their demands and their
standards and delivers promising results and meaningful
experiences.
The methods of doing so are vast and that list can go on
forever, but what is at the forefront of it all is
communication. Any content that your business is creating
and publishing, any sales and marketing tactics that your
firm is employing — it is all meaningless if there is no way
for your customers to be able to reach out to you quickly
and easily.
What is Messenger-Based Sales?
This is what makes Messenger-Based Sales come in. MBS
means recognizing the trend of messengers as the next major
sales channel and taking steps to incorporate them into
communications with leads and customers as the main way
of communication. The world is ready — people are using it
in their personal lives, marketing and support are using it.
Now is the time for sales.
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Messenger-Based Sales (MBS) is the concept of
prioritizing messengers as the main communication
channel between a buyer and a company throughout the
sales process.
Adding messengers to your sales strategy does not mean
you need to suddenly dive head first into chatbots and AI.
In fact, the next chapter illustrates how you can get started
with an Messenger-Based Sales strategy in only a few
minutes.
The philosophy of MBS is shaped around three main
principles:
❏ Establishing presence on the platforms that your leads
and customers prefer
❏ Giving a real-time, personalized experience (the best of
email and phone in one scalable platform)
❏ Automation only as you need
MBS is an evolved way of communicating that
recognizes the autonomy and empowerment of customers,
as well as the need to close the communication gap across
departments.
You probably already have email and calling as the main
touchpoints for communication throughout the whole sales
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process. New lead in the pipeline? Send an email. Time to
get in touch? Give them a call. We are all used to it, and it is
hard to picture it any other way.
It really is hard to imagine that whenever we think about
adding messaging to the process, we construct it as a
marketing method or support method that has impeded on
the sales process. When you read about messaging or
chatbots in sales, they are used almost exclusively in the
discovery process: it is used to qualify and schedule
appointments. Then the lead is routed to the right person,
the data is pushed to the CRM and that is it — now it is
your turn, sales. Time to call or email the prospect. Forget
answering back via messenger since that is a marketing tool.
After all, messenger channels are often accessed via your
company’s page on a social network like Facebook, and
usually these are handled by a social media manager (SMM)
or a support representative. The sales team does not even get
access. Why is that?
People do ask sales related questions to your companies
via messengers, but sales is usually the last to know about it.
Maybe the SMM spews out a template message with the
sales email or phone number. Maybe the query is forwarded
to the sales team or the manager is savvy and goes ahead and
schedules an appointment. If it had been an incoming
phone call or email it would have been easy: just transfer it
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or forward it. With messengers, the chain of
communication gets broken because sales is not included.
So a warm, engaged lead is left waiting or given the
burden to connect with sales on another platform.
From the customer’s perspective, it is a quick and easy
way to get in touch with your business, as easy as it is to
write to a friend. The obvious expectation is that the
business should be able to reach back just as easily, yet it is
not the case because of this entanglement between
departments and communication channels.
The line between different departments should be
blurred. Transferring a lead from one department to
another should be a seamless experience both for you and
your customer.
The benefits of MBS
A huge benefit of using messengers to connect with your
clients is the offer of asynchronous communication. Calling
and live chat are great “instant” communication tools, but
only if both parties are on the phone or online at the same
time. As soon as one of them leaves, the connection is lost.
Emailing allows for asynchronous conversation, but as we
mentioned before, the waiting period can be extended up to
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days or even weeks, and nobody wants to sit and wait
around for a reply.
There is also the matter of feeling pressured to answer
within a certain time frame and in a certain manner. This is
something that neither a customer nor sales rep wants to
experience, especially when the task at hand is to build
meaningful and strong customer-business relationships.
This is the fundamental difference between messaging
and other sales communication channels. Messengers
address all of these issues and offer a solution. They allow
consumers to be where they want to be, when they want to
be there and to do everything on their terms. The chat
history is always available to all parties involved, and most
importantly, no one is losing anything and everyone is (and
feels like) they are winning.
Since messengers are standalone apps, they are designed
for ongoing conversations, unlike live chat which is a
program integrated into your website. This means that the
history of the conversation can be saved and accessed from
any device. 42% of researchers use a mobile device during
the B2B purchasing process, and realistically, it is easier for
buyers to open up an app that is already installed on their
phone if they want to send you a message.1
They can do this
at any moment of the day or night and it does not mean that
they have to entirely drop what they are doing. They can do
this while they wait in line, while they are drinking a cup of
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coffee or while they are on their way to a meeting. And if we
have learned anything, it is that buyers these days are busy
people who value convenience and speed in everything that
they do.
Another advantage to messengers is that they offer
salespeople the opportunity to assist more than one
customer at a time. A sales phone call requires a salesperson
to focus on only one customer for a certain amount of time,
meaning that not only is time lost, but customers may be
left on hold or may be unable to reach the salesperson at all!
The asynchronous nature of chatting via messengers allows
sales representatives the chance to assist a countless amount
of customers simultaneously as they type out a quick
message, provide a detailed answer, outline the specifics of a
certain product or proposal or send the customer any
requested information quickly and easily.
Messenger platforms, among numerous other benefits,
have one unique trait in common: the ability to be a
medium for marketing, sales and customer support all at the
same time. No other sales channel comes close in terms of
flexibility.
As a marketing automation platform, messengers have
been used for a while now. Sending out promotions,
discounts and other marketing news has been a big part of
the big brands in ecommerce and fashion for the past few
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years. And it is easy to see why! Messengers now gather a
huge amount of users and followers.
How companies are using messengers to thrive
Are messengers as popular as people claim them to be? Yes,
they are. They are booming with popularity and their
growth is only expected to continue increasing from the 2.5
billion people chatting every day, as reported by
messengerpeople.2
Digital Strategy consulting also agrees
and states that by 2021, 32% of the global population will be
using messengers to chat.3
Facebook Messenger is the top mobile app by number of
downloads with 8 billion messages exchanged every day4
and
it is actually used more by B2B professionals than any other
channel according to a study from ComScore.5
On top of
that, 150 million people talk to businesses each month
through Instagram Direct, as Instagram (one of Facebook’s
apps) adds yet another new dimension to shopping.6
In B2B, there are many decision makers involved in the
process. Apart from the individuals comprising the business
decision-making unit, there may also be a procurement
process in larger B2B organizations. The complexity of the
sales process requires quick access to information about the
product.
One company that is really taking the messenger trend to
the next level is WeChat, the most popular messenger app in
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China. It has over 900 million users and it dominates almost
all of human communication as it is used at home, at work,
for shopping and for business. It has replaced email and
calling since it is now easier to find everyone you need all in
one place, either in a private chat conversation or all
together in a group chat. The additional multimedia
exchange features such as sharing songs, videos, large files
and video calling make WeChat superior to any other means
of communication, eclipsing any rival that tries to compete.
WeChat is great for business as well. Instead of asking for
a business card, you can simply scan someone’s QR code to
automatically add their personal information to your
contact list.
Many bloggers and businesses in China are now using
WeChat as their main channel of content distribution,
taking advantage of instant delivery straight to the
customer’s smartphone. This means that customers do not
have to wait for an announcement to receive news of any
other engaging content and can see updates on their phones
immediately.
Yet another bright addition to WeChat’s arsenal is its
brilliant payment system which began to replace the use of
cash and credit cards altogether. WeChat Pay helps you
make a purchase in any physical or online store. Vending
machine snacks, cinema tickets, food delivery, taxis, clothes
— you name it. WeChat produced a User Report in 2017
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which indicates that approximately 90% of the app’s users in
China pay for offline purchases using WeChat Pay.
Even high-end purchases can be made through WeChat.
The most expensive being cars. Some of the purchases made
go up to $80,000.7
And thus, almost the entirety of a
person’s daily online routine can fit into his or her pocket,
even when it comes to buying a car. If that is not
convenient, then what is?
Messengers are beginning to look more and more like
simplified browsers that are specifically designed to fit the
shopper’s needs. For instance, within a messenger’s
interface, a shopping carousel can help choose different
items without having to launch your browser. Additionally,
a payment interface means there is no need to leave the
messenger’s interface to make a purchase.
1-800-FLOWERS.COM is a popular flower delivery
service in the US that offers customers the opportunity to
place orders and make purchases using Facebook
Messenger.8
By doing so, the company gives customers full
control of the purchasing process straight from the interface
of their smartphone, from beginning to end.
All in all, one thing is perfectly clear: if your audience
uses messengers, you want to use messengers too.
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What’s next?
A lot of B2B content is often focused on the customer, and
there’s not much out there about the actual B2B business
owner — the one who has just taken the plunge into the
deep end with the sharks, the one who barely has time to
worry about the product and the service, let alone customer
satisfaction.
If we take a look at the evolution of communication
platforms that have been offered to customers throughout
the recent decades, it is clear to see how everything is being
done with the customer in mind. In our previous chapters,
we have elaborated on what caused consumers to be driven
to where they are now — empowered, in control and last
but not least, demanding nothing less than instant
gratification of their high standards.
That is quite a lot to live up to if you are a small B2B
owner who is just now getting in the game. Or even if you
have been on the market for decades yourself, chances are
that you are still thinking, “So how am I supposed to
incorporate all of this into my current sales strategy?”
The good news is that you have a lot of options, and
getting started is not going to be difficult. Thanks to all of
the gradual changes that have been happening in consumer
behavior, it is fairly simple to predict what customers want
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to see from you, the B2B owner, in the nearest future and
most importantly, how to act on it.
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How to Deliver the
Message
Sales has always been conservative. There are a lot of great
ideas floating around, but when it comes to actually
executing them, it is something that is usually added to the
“I’ll get around to it eventually” list. We are caught in this
vicious cycle of knowing that something needs to change,
and never having the time or energy to make it happen. We
are always behind on our quotas, behind on our analyses,
and when we finally do get on a roll, the last thing you want
to do is overhaul a process that is working — even if that
process is less than ideal. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.
The great thing about Messenger-Based Sales is that
adding it to your strategy does not have to be complicated.
You can get started in a few minutes and scale it up
gradually to fit your needs.
Phase one — pilot program
Don’t worry about growth just yet. Instead, focus on
offering a better experience to the leads and customers you
already have. Your pilot program will give them the
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opportunity to engage you on a whole new communication
channel and reveal whether messaging fits their needs.
You do not even have to involve the whole sales team. It
is possible for a single sales rep to “alpha test” adding a
messenger to their current sales channels. The key here is to
just to take the first step, no matter how small.
Scenario 1. Your company already uses
messengers
Do other teams at your company already have a presence on
messengers? Let them in on your plan and work out a
system for notifying you when sales should jump into
conversations. It could be something as simple as sending
you a message like “Hey, I have a lead on WhatsApp named
Sophie Nielsen, and she could use some help from sales.
Want to take over?”
Alternatively, if you have an existing brand account (e.g.,
SEO Emporium) and the team responsible does not want to
share access, you can create a new account just for your
team (e.g., SEO Emporium Sales). Then whenever a
conversation is relevant for sales, the lead can be given the
link for messaging the sales team. Most marketing and
support teams already use a similar logic in their chat
conversations:
Sure, our sales team would be happy to give you a demo.
Just write to sales@seoemporium.com.
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However, if they can include a link to messenger instead
of email, it eliminates platform switching. The only
downside of having a separate account for the sales team is
that it is not seamless. The onus is on the lead to click and
start up a conversation with the sales team. Ideally, sales
could just take over the conversation. The good thing?
When you are ready to scale up, there are tools for that.
The main challenge at this point is figuring out how to
work with other teams. We suggest sitting down and
brainstorming a list of topics that indicate when the
conversation should be passed over to sales. Think about
the moments that indicate opportunities or signal sales
readiness. Every business is different — you may be ready
to pass it to a sales rep at the first mention of pricing, or
you may require criteria like Budget, Need, Authority &
Time (BANT). Do what feels right for you, and do not
be afraid to experiment!
Scenario 2. Your company does not yet use
messengers
If messaging apps are totally new territory for your business,
fear not! Sometimes it is even better to start with a blank
canvas. First, you need to determine which messenger app
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to start with. We recommend using the most valuable focus
group you can imagine: your current customers.
Set aside a couple of days to gather feedback. The aim is
to just get a feeling about the general consensus, we are not
looking for statistically significant results. You can add a
question to your usual call script or email template. If you
are into social media, you could create a poll. Something
like:
Our company wants to make it easier for you to get in
touch with us, so we are launching a pilot program to
test out messaging apps. Vote on the app that you
would most like us to adopt!
Once you have the results, get started! For Facebook
Messenger, it is as simple as heading over to your Facebook
page’s settings, clicking “Add a button to your page” and
selecting Messenger. Whatsapp, Telegram, Viber and
WeChat each have their own unique procedures, but
overall, getting set up is really fast, and there are countless
resources to help you if you hit a snag.
If you are feeling the pressure because you cannot
monitor the chat 24/7 — there is no need to. Many
messaging apps are come equipped with the feature that lets
you set up business hours and an away message.
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Hooray, you are online! Now what?
The next step is the most crucial: let the your customers
know. Mention it every chance you get and make sure
everyone else does too.
❏ Add it to your next newsletter: Big news, we are now
available on WhatsApp!
❏ Put a link in your email signature: Prefer to chat? Send
us a message on Telegram!
❏ Offer it during your next call: “So, is the phone the best
method for staying in touch? We can also chat via
Telegram if that works better for you.”
In addition to announcing your presence on your new
communication channel, you should start using it too.
Basic use cases that you can easily start on day one
include sending a personalized follow-up message,
scheduling a meeting, collecting feedback or creating a
group chat between the people you would normally CC in
email.
Evaluating phase one
After a month, you should evaluate the performance of
your Messenger-Based Sales pilot program. At this point,
the key indicators to pay attention to are customer
satisfaction and engagement. The precision of your
evaluation is up to you — it can be as simple as asking the
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team for their impressions or if you are into analytics, you
can measure the growth with more accuracy.
At amoCRM, our own team makes a weekly report to
track all our sources of leads, and our favorite
performance indicators to monitor for messaging apps
are:
❏ Total conversations with existing customers
❏ Total conversations with new leads
❏ Messenger app conversion rate (total purchases via
messenger apps/total conversations with new leads)
❏ Average response speed
You want to look for improvement over time and
compare messengers against your other channels.
Our recommendation is to roughly gauge the volume of
conversations and either keep the current pace or scale up.
If you have only gotten light engagement
, no problem.
We suggest extending your pilot program for one more
month, and at the end, deciding whether it is worth it to
keep that communication channel open. As long as the app
is set up to notify you of new conversations, it is easy to
keep it up and running indefinitely. On the other hand, if
you decide that the particular messenger is not for you and
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your customers, no harm done. The main point is that now
you know. Ready to try another messenger?
If customers are engaging you, congrats! The messaging
trend is growing, and you will continue get more
engagement over time, particularly the more you can refine
it. Wanna go ahead and get your hands dirty? You might
consider more advanced use cases for messaging apps.
Creating a broadcast
This feature goes by many names — it is called a Broadcast
on Whatsapp, a Channel on Telegram, Subscription
Messaging on Messenger. It is a chat where you can push
out news, announcements and offers to anyone who is
subscribed. Essentially, it is a replacement for your email
newsletter minus the html hassle and plus the emojis and
gifs.
Sending and processing invoices
Built-in payment processing is coming soon to messengers.
It is already being beta tested around the world. In the
meantime, there are a number of third-party tools that
already allow you to collect payments, making messengers a
platform capable of completing a full sales process.
Attracting leads with Messenger ads
If your marketing team is running ads on Facebook (or
planning to), there is a new type of ad you might consider.
Instead of sending leads to a landing page, the “Messages”
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objective sends anyone who clicks right into a chat on
Messenger. It is perfect for those hot, ready-to-talk leads.
Adding Messenger to your Website
Facebook recently rolled out a feature called the “Customer
Chat Plugin” that allows you to add Messenger to your
webpage like a live chat. What is even more awesome is that
it is a great experience for the customer: they can start the
conversation on your website and continue it the Messenger
app or in Facebook.
Phase two — Scaling MBS
As you start to see growth, you may want to think about
expanding to multiple messengers, automating with
chatbots or using other tools. When you decide it is time to
scale, your focus should be twofold. First, multiple
communication channels means app-switching, which is a
major drain on your productivity. That means you need to
find a way to centralize your communication into a single
location.
Second, messaging apps are not really designed to
accommodate teams. They are limited when it comes to
assigning a responsible user to the conversation and saving
information about the lead or customer. Their interfaces
were created for light collaboration. When your inbox is full
and multiple people are working there, it is easy to lose track
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of who is working with whom. Translation: a workflow that
does not actually flow.
A modern inbox
Your instinct is probably telling you: time to brace for the
CRM pitch. Well, the fact is, you do not need a Customer
Relationship Management solution to take advantage of
Messenger-Based Sales. If you already have one, that is fine
as long as you are happy with it. But if after reading this
book, you are not convinced that it is flexible enough to
accomodate the MBS strategy you want to put in place,
then maybe it is time to head back to the drawing board.
CRMs are complicated. They require you to identify and
commit to a clear sales process and corresponding
workflow. You need to implement it and get the whole team
onboard. It takes money, resources and effort. To build this
type of a workflow is incredibly difficult — that is why sales
process consulting and CRM implementation is a
multi-million dollar industry.
The myth is that CRMs are supposed to solve your sales
problems, and when they do not, it is incredibly
disappointing because of sunk costs. And in the end, 99% of
the CRMs out there are not equipped for MBS.
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Instead, we propose a new approach.
Focus on opening up the communication channels that are
clearly trending and invest in the tools that help you to do
so. Later, you can establish the processes. The main features
you need are:
❏ A modern inbox to centralize conversations from all
your channels (messengers, phone & email)
❏ Profiles where you can see all your conversations and
the lead’s details
❏ The ability to assign responsibility to different users
We had this in mind at amoCRM when we pivoted our
product to focus on Messaging-Based Sales. There just were
not many good options for salespeople to add messaging to
their communication touchpoints.
And it’s no wonder.
When we set out to do this, we realized some
fundamental design obstacles that we had never even
noticed before. Case-in-point: the lead’s interaction feed.
In pretty much every CRM, each lead has a profile that
contains a history of all your interactions. It looks like the
newsfeed on Facebook or Twitter. Whenever you get a new
phone call, get a new email or write a new note, it lands at
the top.
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Have you noticed the problem yet?
In chat apps, the newest message is at the bottom of the
screen. It is intuitive. It follows the way most cultures read
text: from top to bottom. Should you miss a couple of
messages, you simply scroll up and read them in the usual
order, from top to bottom, and that makes sense. It follows
the orientation of other content you can find on the web:
articles, lists, spreadsheets — all go from top to bottom.
CRMs, on the other hand, were designed like email, putting
the most recent events at the top. Everyone builds their
CRM like this. We did too. How could we possibly
integrate messengers into that? Our users would be sending
and receiving messages within a feed that feels upside down.
This was a painful realization because we knew it would
take us months to reverse the feeds in our lead profiles to
accommodate messengers. However, it was a necessary first
step to putting the ability to message into the hands of sales
teams.
Once you start thinking about messaging, you start
seeing the signs everywhere. This trend is coming. We are
prepping for it and building amoCRM around it because
we think it is inevitable. On your side, you do not have to
make a big splash. It is still early. Just take the first few steps
and you will already be head and shoulders beyond most of
your competitors.
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There is (not) one channel to rule them all
Throughout this book, we have made it clear that other
communication channels are losing their effectiveness for
sales. However, they are not going away any time soon.
Everything has its purpose.
When email came along, we did not stop calling. In a
pinch, a call is faster and more convenient than anything
else imaginable.
Emails also have their place. They are still a fantastic way
to distribute well-prepared content, and they are also the
best way to establish formal communication. For regular
communication, it is just a much slower type of tempo.
And that of live chat? Well... live chats are now
attempting to integrate messenger platforms and perform
the very same thing messengers do. They are definitely
moving in the right direction.
Every channel has its advantages and disadvantages, with
some more appropriate to certain situations than others.
Our point here is that messaging overcomes a lot of the
limitations that afflict other communication channels and
provides a basis for automation that they simply cannot.
Who knows what the next big platform will be in 10 years,
but for now, it is safe to say that messengers are the channel
that best put communication on the customer’s terms.
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