Development

Demo B2B chatbot connects micro-moments, converts leads

Two tape reels over molten lava with the gap going in between both – almost breaking. To illustrate "lead decay."

If you are a business to business (B2B) marketer, the chances are you have read Google’s research on micro-moments. You optimized your content for I-want-to-know moments. But are your salespeople arriving quickly enough when prospects want to talk to a human? This article is about closing time gaps between I-want-to-know­ and ­I-wanna-talk-to-a-human moments so you can convert more leads from your website.

Two tape reels over molten lava with the gap going in between both – almost breaking. To illustrate

Imagine 10 prospects are on your website right now. Each is typing her name, email, phone number and clicking ‘Contact me.’

Then what? iPhones will ding! Colleagues will knock on doors. By the end of the first hour, your sales people will people dial­. And 9 out of the 10 prospects will hit ‘reject call’ according to this study from InsideSales.com.

I have a term for this; I call it lead decay.

Lead decay operates in the time gaps between I-want-to-know and I-wanna-talk-to-a-human moments. If you could close these time gaps, you could have a major opportunity to stop lead decay and grow sales. That is what a chatbot can do; this article shows you how.

How a B2B chatbot helps a real human

Step with me into a parallel universe –

You work in marketing for SureCourse Business Solutions, and I am a project manager in the marketing department for a bank in Dallas. Here is how your chatbot helps my bank become a customer:

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What does Business Systemization mean to you?

Diagram showing business process maps to charts, people and documents

Somebody asked me this question yesterday. Here is my answer.

In the fall of 2015, I told the CEO of my company, Eric Januszko, that it was time for me to move from San Diego to Dallas.

“Not so fast,” he said.

I started the business and designed its sales, customer service and operations processes. I couldn’t just walk out the door without leaving behind a manual.

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[Video] How ‘Continue from’ works in IBM Watson Conversation

In this video I demonstrate how the order of dialogue nodes affects the Jump to… or Continue from… feature in IBM Watson Conversation.

Continue conversation button from in IBM Watson Conversation
This button goes by several names including Continue from and Jump to.

Until just now, I was unclear about the Continue from / Jump to feature. I followed the car tutorial provided by IBM and the feature worked. Then I created my own chat bot, and it sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.

Why was Continue from / Jump to not behaving consistently? Because I did not realize how the order of the nodes affects it.

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Habit is tech

Golden hamster running in a wheel, depicting the concept of habit
“Hamster Wheel” by sualk61 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

In 2010, I started a company that forever impacted how I approach product marketing. The company sold data, specifically sales prospecting lists for B2B marketing technology companies. Instead of simply delivering CSV files, our data was packaged in a web app that customers could use to interact with the data. The interface was original. Early feedback from customers indicated they were eager to use it. But, the heat was about to rise.

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Internet Explorer is Missing Color?

FYI – here’s a tip for Internet Explorer users. If you’re seeing the web in Black and White (or Grayscale), it’s probably not a bug. You’re not actually missing color in Internet Explorer. The chances are, it’s a simple Accessibility setting that needs to be unchecked: “Ignore colors specified on webpages.”

You can fix the Internet Explorer Black White Bug by following these steps.

Step 1: Press Alt and then select Tools > Internet Options.

License the Mobile Intelligence Report

I want to find someone who will correct the business mistakes I made on the Mobile Intelligence Report, and turn this into a viable product. It can be a very powerful sales tool for advertising agencies.

Examples of Mobile Intelligence Reports (taken mid 2010)

Business History

I designed this report thinking that agencies would order a lot of them for prospecting. The reports reveal what a website looks like on 3 mobile devices, which is usually quite bad, especially if there’s Flash. While the report did show clients why they should invest in a mobile website, ad agencies did not order them in bulk. The reason is that ad agencies are setup to take on a few clients at a time. They do not “turn and burn” cold calls like software businesses because they’re not setup to handle thousands of clients.

I designed this report both economically and technologically to be generated in bulk and uploaded to a server. The better way to do it would be to create a self-service website, where reports are generated on the fly and customers are billed somewhere between $10-50 per report.

As of now, I am busy building Company Data Trees. I have no time to pursue this business opportunity, yet it pains me to have all this cool IP just sitting there. If you have some time on your hands, and you want to give this a try, please call me (do not email) at +1 (760) 542-8027.

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