How to Use Calendly to Allow Qualified Demo Requests to Book a Meeting With You
There is no better lead than an inbound sales request. The intent is high & clear: they want to evaluate you as a vendor. Studies show the last thing a prospect does before buying is talk to sales. The only real question SaaS companies ask themselves is “do we want them as a customer?” Perhaps this is why most demo request forms act as intentional hurdles. They require qualified traffic to prove themselves worthy to speak to sales, because reps don't want to waste time on low-quality leads. This creates unnecessary friction in the buyer journey. Once leads fill in nine fields (on average), they wait 5-7 days before speaking with a rep. 50% of buyers say they choose the first vendor they talk to. Is that friction really something an organization can afford?Imagine if we were to re-design the buyer journey to provide the best experience for high-quality leads. Undoubtedly we would ask for as little information as possible. It should be as easy as possible for leads to book a meeting with sales. We can’t block low-quality leads from coming to our website, but MadKudu & Calendly make for a pretty powerful combo for this quintessential pipeline growth play: The Original Fastlane.
Removing friction & adding pipeline
The goal of this play is to give qualified leads access to a sales rep’s calendar so they can book time immediately. We want them to skip the form-filling and email back-and-forth. In order to execute this play, we’ll need to add MadKudu Fastlane to our demo request form, and we’ll need to leverage a scheduling tool like Calendly.
MadKudu needs an email address to score a lead, so we’ll want to make our email input one of the first fields in our demo request form. FastLane bundles two important steps together:
- It sends the email to MadKudu to score & qualify as the prospect fills in the form.
- If qualified, MadKudu FastLane triggers a message that let’s the buyer book a meeting with a sales rep directly.
Designing the buyer journey for your best leads
One of the more creative implementations for this comes from Outreach, who hides all unnecessary fields on their forms.
Outreach has hidden all fields that are non-essential to follow-up, leaving only email & phone number. If MadKudu qualifies the lead as a good fit, Outreach let’s the lead submit their slimmed down form. What a great buyer experience.
When MadKudu identifies an unqualified lead, MadKudu dynamically adds new fields to Outreach’s lead capture form. Unqualified traffic is often the result of a personal email address, so extra information may provide pertinent context.
The Impact: +60% Pipeline
Re-imagining lead forms is a quick win that can have a big impact. We underestimate the impact of operational friction between us & qualified leads. Reducing form fields and eliminating email tag means that you’re talking to more qualified leads faster. Segment increased their pipeline by 60%, and uDemy closed an enterprise client in 24 hours within weeks of deploying this play.If you’re looking to hit your pipeline goals this quarter, start by looking at your existing forms: are your best leads getting the best experience?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETNYahcDKPE&t=50s