This is an excerpt of a masterclass presented by Chase Buckner, Director of Content & Education at HighLevel. Connect with Chase on LinkedIn and Twitter.
You know the drill. It’s the end of the month and you fire out a spreadsheet of leads to your client. But for some reason, instead of thanking you for your work, you get a response like “No one showed up – these leads stink!”
You might think that it is the client’s responsibility to do something with the leads and turn them into sales … and you’d be right! But instead of arguing with your client, it's better to find a solution.
The High Level platform can automate lead nurturing to help you scale your business.
With HighLevel automation, the leads you generate will end up taking one of the following paths:
- Lead books automatically
- Lead asks questions (Hot Lead)
- Lead gets added to long-term nurture (likely to book in the future)
Exploiting the 5-Minute Window
The 5-minute window in sales is crucial. Research shows a huge drop-off in your chances of either contacting or closing your lead once the 5-minute window has closed.
This makes those first 5 minutes absolutely crucial. Expecting clients to act with that kind of speed is just not realistic, so you need to use automation to be sure of hitting that window. HighLevel automations ensure that you maximize the chances of each lead closing by leveraging text messages, emails, voicemail, and even a call step that connects your client with the lead via an automated warm transfer!
SMS/Email
As soon as the lead comes in, they get an automatically-generated SMS. This is all about trying to engage with the customer by starting a conversation. If they ask questions or interact, the AI chatbot can respond with natural-sounding language and even close the deal.
In this example, we can see an sms chatbot for a dental practice. At the end of the process, the customer can book an appointment via a link sent by the bot – all without the intervention of any human resource.
You should ensure you ask the client for opt-in to receiving sms messages in your lead capture form.
By using AI technology and having dedicated platforms by industry, the bots can specialize by leveraging the conversations they have across the whole platform. The more clients they work with, the more sophisticated they become. You can also enter your own customer FAQs into the AI.
Find out more about the HighLevel platform by accessing the full webinar.
The SMS conversation flow is followed up with an email along the same lines; either resending the booking link or perhaps confirming the booking, depending on how far the SMS conversation went.
Call
If the client doesn’t use the link to book their appointment within 2 minutes, HighLevel will automate a call to your client that reads them a fully customizable whisper message notifying them of the new lead, the new lead's name, and prompting the client to press any key to connect with the lead.
As we saw in the graphic above, you have a far higher chance of connecting with the customer if you move quickly.
Voicemail
If the call doesn’t connect, they get a pre-recorded voicemail that either you or your client has uploaded into the system.
This flow is about acting rapidly and efficiently to close the lead before it goes cold.
Nurture Sequences
If you don’t succeed in closing the lead in that window (most won’t), you continue with an intensive short-term nurture sequence for a few days.
After that, you can shift the lead to a long-term nurture sequence, which can be very effective. Case studies and testimonials are excellent resources to use for your long-term nurture sequence.
What you end up with is a small percentage of leads who book right away, a bigger percentage who ask questions via sms and then another small group who book from long-term nurture.
HighLevel enables you to build fully customizable Pipelines in order to visualize the lead flow for your clients. Here's a typical pipeline broken out into stages for: New Leads, Hot Leads, Booking Requested, Booking Confirmed, Services Sold.
You also get a dashboard overview of what you have sitting in the pipeline, the conversion rate, etc.
Now, when you send the leads out to your client, instead of just sending them a spreadsheet full of names, you can break it down for them as follows:
- We generated X leads this month
- X of them booked straight into your calendar
- X had a text or phone convo with your staff
- X that didn’t reply were added to long-term nurture
You can also include suggestions for improvements: For example, your conversion % was XX – let’s take a look at your sales process to see if we can improve that, etc.
You can increase your lead conversion by up to 40-70% using these automation procedures.
If you want to know more about the platform, including how it can benefit location businesses using Google My Business, how it can improve your Facebook Ads data and what other features and functionalities it has, access the full webinar – which includes a Q&A with Chase Buckner, Director of Content & Education at HighLevel – by signing up to our Insiders program.