David Cancel discusses how sales and marketing teams need to adapt to the rise of messaging by implementing real-time engagement with website visitors. He argues that the traditional approach of using forms and follow-up emails is no longer effective, as research shows responses within 5 minutes dramatically increase conversion rates. Cancel presents Drift's solution called "Fastlane", which uses chatbots and live messaging to instantly capture, qualify, and connect leads, without forms. For companies not ready to fully adopt this new model, he suggests adding messaging as a secondary channel to complement existing tactics. Real-time engagement through intelligent messaging platforms is presented as the next wave in sales and marketing that companies must ride to succeed.

1. The Next Wave in
Sales & Marketing
David Cancel
Revenue Summit 2017

2. About David Cancel
• 5x Founder / 2x CEO
• CEO/Co-Founder, Drift
• Chief Product Officer, HubSpot
IPO: HUBS
• CEO/Co-Founder, Performable
acquired by HubSpot
• Owner/Founder, Ghostery
acquired by Evidon
• CTO/Co-Founder, Compete
acquired by WPP
• Investor/Advisor/Director to Various
Companies and VC Funds

3. 5-10 years ago, sales & marketing teams
were all focused on the same thing:

4. Attracting website visitors

5. • How do I rank higher in search?
• How frequently should I be posting to
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.?
• How do I target an ad?
Those are the types of questions we were asking back then.

6. Nobody sitting here today asks these
questions anymore.

7. The first wave of sales & marketing has
already roared past us. But it’s left a
lingering question in its wake…

8. What do we do with all those people
we’ve been working so hard to attract
once they land on our website?

9. The best-in-class approach: Marketing
makes visitors fill out a form, then Sales
follows up with them eventually (maybe).
land on website
SUBMIT
fill out form get nurturing email
get 2nd nurturing email
another nurturing email?!
talk to someone
(maybe)
schedule call
are you qualifed?become lead in CRM

10. It’s like you’re spending all this time and
energy getting people into your store—
only to hand them forms to fill out before
you’ll talk to them or sell them anything.

11. It’s a terrible experience for buyers, but
it’s also a terrible experience for sales
and marketing teams (who will inevitably
argue and disagree).

12. Sales: “These leads are
garbage! Get us the
good leads. Get us
those Glengarry leads…”

13. Marketing: “These
leads aren’t garbage,
you’re garbage! You’re
not following up fast
enough…”

14. To deal with this problem, we’ve typically
used the “throw money at it” approach.
$
$
$$
$
$
$
$
$
$$
$
$
$
Top of the funnel:
Pay for more traffic
Bottom of the funnel:
Hire more sales reps

15. Think about this for a minute…

16. We spend a fortune convincing people to
talk to us.

17. But when they actually do want to talk to
us, we think it’s too expensive, or too
inconvenient.

18. As a result, our conversion rates suffer.
Just look at the benchmark data:
Lead to Opportunity:
• 13% avg. conversion rate
• 84 days to convertOpportunity to Deal:
• 6% avg. conversion rate
• 18 days to convert
Source: Salesforce B2B Sales Benchmarks

19. Even if you have a best-in-class funnel,
there’s one thing you aren’t doing:
Responding to leads in real-time.

20. Research shows that a response time of
5 minutes or less is the sweet spot.

21. Source: HBR / InsideSales.com
10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
5 min 10 min 15 min 20 min 25 min 30 min
Response time
contactsmadefromfirstoutreach
There’s a 10x decrease in your
odds of making contact with a
lead after the first 5 minutes.

22. 10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
5 mins
10 mins
Responsetime
# of leads qualified
Responding in 10 mins
vs. 5 mins = a 400%
decrease in your odds
of qualifying a lead.
Source: HBR / InsideSales.com

23. But instead of figuring out how to bring
our response times down, most of us
have been treading water.

24. Instead of evolving, we’ve been doubling
down on the same old tactics.
More forms!
More “nurturing” emails!
More calls!
SUBMITSUBMIT
SUBMIT
fill out form become lead in CRM

25. Insanity: Doing the
same thing over
and over again and
expecting different
results
-attributed to Albert Einstein
“

26. When we built Drift, we got the chance to
start with a blank slate. So we decided to
define a new playbook called Fastlane.
Why did we call it Fastlane?

27. Because with the old approach, all of
your leads had to hurry up and wait.

28. With Fastlane, leads flow right through,
getting the content they need & getting
instantly connected to a rep (if needed).

29. We soon realized that to make Fastlane a
reality, we had to make a major change:
We had to kill all of our lead forms.
#NoMoreForms

30. ORMF S

31. Before you freak out I’m going to tell you
how we did it.

32. Our secret: We use
conversations to
capture leads.

33. Here’s why this worked

34. Think about it: Billions of people around
the world are now using messaging.

35. The Rise of
1:1 Messaging
The 3 Waves of
1:1 Messaging Software
User Growth

36. Share of Usage Time Spent in
Top 5 Email & Messaging Apps
Source: Andrew Wagner. #Converted16 Conference. Figures from 2015 and U.S. only.
Email Messaging
13-24 25-44 45+
8.00%
6.00%
4.00%
2.00%
0.00%
ages

37. So why are so many companies still
selling like messaging doesn’t exist?

38. Today’s buyers are tired of getting
tangled up with phone calls.

39. They’re sick of sorting
through emails.

40. And they’re fed up
with filling out forms.
ORMF S

41. As an entrepreneur who’s been building
software for sales & marketing teams for
20 years, I’m here to warn you:
Something is going to break.

42. At Drift, we recently surveyed
433 B2B SaaS companies to see
how long it took sales teams to
respond to new leads.
For the full results, send me a message at
https://team.drift.com/david

43. 10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
55%
5+ days/never5 days2 days1 day1 hour5 minutes
Response time
%ofcompaniessurveyed
32 companies (7%)
responded within
5 minutes.
240 companies
(55%) took 5+ days
to respond or didn’t
respond at all.

44. 93% of the sales teams we surveyed
failed to respond within 5 minutes

45. Source: HBR / InsideSales.com
10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
5 min 10 min 15 min 20 min 25 min 30 min
Response time
contactsmadefromfirstoutreach
There’s a 10x decrease in your
odds of making contact with a
lead after the first 5 minutes.

46. 10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
5 mins
10 mins
Responsetime
# of leads qualified
Responding in 10 mins
vs. 5 mins = a 400%
decrease in your odds
of qualifying a lead.
Source: HBR / InsideSales.com

47. So as a sales & marketing organization,
what are you supposed to do? How do
you adapt to selling in 2017?

48. Option 1:
A new net to fish with

49. At Drift, we realized that the rise of
messaging gave us an opportunity to
create a new sales funnel.

50. QUALIFYCAPTURE CONNECT
Anonymous Lead Opportunity Customer
• Live chat
• Campaigns
• Driftbot
(intelligent routing
& replies)
• Live View
• Drift Profiles
So we developed a new methodology to
enable real-time selling.

51. Instead of forms
and follow-ups,
we use intelligent
bots to capture
and qualify leads.

52. We also use bots
for booking demos
and meetings.

53. But hey, we get it: You might not be
ready to take the plunge yet. That’s why
there’s a second option…

54. Option 2:
Use the new net
+ the old net

55. This is what some people are doing—
They’re adding messaging as a new net
but keeping the old net (forms) in place.

56. Guillaume Cabane
For example, meet Guillaume — VP of
Growth at Segment. Guillaume recently
added the 2nd net to the Segment site.

57. (targeted
message)

58. Remove the live
chat widget,
and it’s just
your standard
B2B website.

59. But because of that 2nd net—Guillaume’s
team has doubled the number of
qualified leads they generate each
month.

60. That’s led to thousands of dollars in
incremental MRR & pipeline each month.

61. All the sales reps now love Guillaume.

62. Now, I know what you might be thinking:
“This isn’t anything new. It’s just a chat
tool, I’ve seen a million like it before.”

63. Here are 3 things chat doesn’t give you:
1. Capture via a proactive concierge
2. Qualify via fine-tuned knob + bot
3. Connect via intelligent lead routing

64. The future of sales & marketing is being
able to control the flow of leads.
Quality
(fewer leads)
Quantity
(more leads)
all leads
account-based
targeted
behaviorally
targeted
bot-qualified
firmographic
targeted
$
$$
$$$
$$$$

65. Quality
(fewer leads)
Quantity
(more leads)
all leads
account-based
targeted
behaviorally
targeted
bot-qualified
firmographic
targeted
$
$$
$$$
$$$$
Turn the dial one way and you can open
the flood gates (i.e. optimize for volume).
Chat with 100%
of leads

66. Quality
(fewer leads)
Quantity
(more leads)
all leads
account-based
targeted
behaviorally
targeted
bot-qualified
firmographic
targeted
$
$$
$$$
$$$$
Turn the dial the other way and you can
show chat to only your target accounts.
Chat with 10%
of leads

67. This level of control
is possible thanks to
bots—they make sure
the right people get
the right messages at
the right times.

68. And they send alerts
to let reps know when
target leads are live
on the website.

69. With today’s tools your sales team will
never be able to respond to every lead
in less than 5 minutes…

70. …but with an intelligent messaging
platform they can.

71. Capturing, qualifying, & connecting with leads in
real-time is the next wave in sales & marketing.

72. And it starts
by adding a
2nd net to
your website.

73. But don’t just take my word for it

74. 9/10 consumers want to be able to use
messaging to talk to businesses.
(Source: TechCrunch)

75. This is the next wave of sales & marketing.
land on website talk to the right person
KEVIN
Sales
intelligent messaging
platform

76. So now you have a
choice to make:
Are you going to ride
the wave? Or are you
going to let it knock
you over?

77. Drift is how businesses communicate with their customers.