733 - AI-Powered Chat Revolutionizes Sales, with Alan Zhao

Colin and Alan Zhao from Warmly discuss the importance of engaging with website visitors in real-time to maximize conversions. They share success stories of companies increasing their pipeline by three times through proactive engagement strategies. Zhao highlights the role of AI chatbots in identifying high-intent visitors and routing them to the right sales representatives for personalized interactions. They also touch on the significance of having 24-hour coverage for engaging with prospects effectively.

Follow the Host:
Collin Mitchell (Partner, Leadium)

Our Episode Guest:
Alan Zhao (Co-Founder, Warmly)

Sponsored By:
Leadium | The leader in outbound sales appointment setting

*If you'd like to be a guest on the show or have any questions, email us at [e-mail] - Just tell us why you're reaching out and we'll contact you as soon as we can!

Episode Transcript

Announcer (00:00):
Welcome back to sales transformation brought to you by
Leadium. In this episode, wewelcome once again, Alan Jo from
Warmly to discuss the impact of8i chatbots on increasing
website conversions. Colin, thefloor is yours.

Collin Mirchell (00:15):
Alright. Welcome back to another episode
of sales transformation broughtto you by Leadium. I'm your
host, Colin Mitchell. Today,I've got Alan Zhou on. He is the
cofounder over at Warmly.
Alan, welcome to the show.

Alan Zhao (00:27):
It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Collin Mirchell (00:29):
I'm curious because I'm sure you've looked
into this. How many conversionsare missed out from web traffic
where people are hitting thesite and never fill out a form,
never schedule a time? Frankly,folks may not even know that
that person was ever even on thewebsite.

Alan Zhao (00:48):
It yeah. It's it's definitely a lot. It's not just
the conversions that for thepeople who are in market today
that you're missing. And we havesome statistics with with
customers of ours, like, for ourone of our first customers in
the case study. It's like wehave 3 x enterprise cut pipeline
within a month.
So when you're running some ofthese large campaigns that bring
people to your site, then youcan quickly, especially with

(01:10):
these tools that help you engagewith them instantaneously, or at
least know that they're there soyou can reach out to your own
channels, then you can quicklycapture that. Like, for that
day, we're just gonna focus onmanning chat. That day, like,
when we see people comingthrough, we're gonna call them
as soon as they hit our website.We're gonna link to message
them. And so through that actionalone, our 1st customer in 3 x
enterprise pipeline, and it wasdone through it's like campaign

(01:33):
mechanism.
On a daily basis, othercustomers of ours have said that
it's not just the revenue thatyou lose out today for people
who are in buy mode, but it'sthe relationships that you
should be forming today thatyou're not. That's revenue for
tomorrow. And that is, like,inestimable, honestly, because
everyday people come to yoursite.

Collin Mirchell (01:49):
Yeah. And, who who are typically manning these
these chats or running thesemotions? Right? Is it is it SDR?
Is it AE?
Like, I mean, it probablydepends on the size of your
team. But what are you seeingfrom the customers that you guys
have as far as who's responsiblefor running this motion, you
know, manning the chat, and, youknow, making sure that they're

(02:13):
getting as many conversions aspossible through, you know,
having this data?

Alan Zhao (02:17):
Yeah. It it depends on how the company is set up.
Like, if you have full cycle AEsor you have dedicated SDR teams,
typically, we've seen it be atthe SDR teams that man the
chats. And, you could set updifferent Slack channels of our
different accounts, mapping,territory mapping, or just based
off the coverage. So if you'rean AE and all of your named

(02:39):
accounts will be going to acertain channel that you're a
part of, then you would see themcome through.
And it's really important toknow that this deal or this
person or this buyer, thispersona is on the pricing, the
case studies page. Like, they'rethey're thinking about you right
now. You could chat to them liveand say, hey. Let me know if you
there's any updates with yousince our last conversation. Did
you have a chance to talk toyour VP of marketing about this?

(03:00):
I see you're on a case studiespage, which talks about the
marketing ROI. Let me know ifyou have any questions. Like,
it's just it's very hypercurated, so you can create that
experience for the AE. Butgenerally speaking, for a high
velocity, like like I said, ifyou have high website traffic
and I speak comes through allthe time from various different
channels, whether it's paid ads,blog content, podcasts,
whatever, get more referrallinks that also help you, siphon

(03:24):
off traffic to the rightchannels of people that need to
know. Then, that tends to beSDRs that picks up the phone, We
call it warm calling here thatpicks up the the the warmly warm
calling phone.
Then we'll chat to them and say,you're on the pricing page. I
saw you came from, you know,like, you you were searching for
this topic. Let me know if youneed any help.

Collin Mirchell (03:42):
Yeah. And are they are they calling them in
real time, like, while they'reon the site?

Alan Zhao (03:46):
Yes. Real time. Real time, we we have we have this
playbook, basically. And and thefunny thing is what we realized
is warm calling as we call it,which is when you call somebody
on the website or you chat tothem first because calling is
kind of strange. That's thatpeople aren't used to that
behavior yet.
But really, it's just you'rethere. I'm free, you're free.
I'm a real person. You don'tneed to wait 2 weeks after you

(04:08):
schedule the demo for us to havethis conversation like you did
right now. We're gonna chat.
It's making you morepersonalized after a couple
exchanges. If you wanna have avideo call, I can turn on my
video and show you that I'mreal. And that way, we're having
a call. So that's what I'mcalling.

Collin Mirchell (04:21):
Yeah. And so in some cases, this could be, the
SDR that send them maybe theemail in the first place if
it's, you know, cold email, orit could be, you know, whoever
ran a discovery call, maybethey've already done a demo and
now they're checking pricing andcase studies and all those sort
of things. So it's it's theactual person that they've
already been engaged with or arefamiliar with depending on, you

(04:43):
know, how engaged they've beenwith that particular person.

Alan Zhao (04:47):
That's exactly right. Like, it we we hook into the
CRM, and so we know who's theowner of whichever accounts. And
so so the right person can getpinged when their accounts or
the person is on the page.

Collin Mirchell (04:59):
Yeah. And so in a lot of cases, you know,
obviously not everybody's justgonna be sitting there, you
know, waiting for those Slackpings all day. Right? They have
meetings or, you know, callblocks, whatever it is that they
have going on. But they can getthat Slack notification.
They can send them a message andsay, hey. I see maybe you have
some questions about pricing.You're checking out some case
studies. You know, are you freein the next 5 minutes if I were
to give you a call? And is that,you know, typical what people

(05:21):
are doing?

Alan Zhao (05:22):
Yep. That and you brought up a really good point,
which is typically reps are verybusy. I mean, in sales, it's all
timing. Right? So you need toknow how to prioritize your
time.
One of the issues that we raninto is that just because
someone's looking at your siteor case, it doesn't mean they
wanna have a conversation rightnow. And it may not be worth
diverting a rep's attention awayfrom the exact thing that
they're doing right now becausethey'll get pinged all day for

(05:42):
this. Yeah. So we solve thatproblem by creating an AI
chatbot, and it basically islike a rep assistant. So it'll
outreach on the rep's behalfwhen key people on-site and can
set a parameters on what needsto happen to show high intent.
Like, they are on the book ademo page or they're on the
pricing page. This is their 5thvisit back or an ICP account,

(06:04):
and they've already had, like, abooked meeting, like, something.
You can get really granular withthis. When these things are met,
the AI will reach out on therest's behalf in your voice and
then basically say exactly whatyou're going to say. It's
nothing complicated, especiallyin chat.
You treat it like text message.Just like, hey, what's up? Not
paragraphs of things to to

Collin Mirchell (06:21):
Right.

Alan Zhao (06:22):
Reach a person. And that's been really effective
because once the people come tothe site, maybe out of a 100
people, only 5 really want tohave a conversation right now.
That AI is going to find out the5 and then wrap to the rep. At
that point, the rep knows thisperson not only is on my site,
but responded to, in theory, thetheoretical me that reached out
to them. That means I need torespond back because they're

(06:44):
also one of my target counts.

Collin Mirchell (06:46):
Yeah. And is is the prospect aware that it's AI,
or does it think that it's therep?

Alan Zhao (06:56):
Based off the responses, it thinks that it's
the rep. It doesn't know thatit's Yeah. Because everything on
the UI looks to be as the sameas a person.

Collin Mirchell (07:05):
Right. Okay. That's what I figured. Now and
then what about if the, AI isengaging with the prospect?
Seems like they wanna have aconversation, but the rep's not
available to jump in.

Alan Zhao (07:17):
Yeah. So this is really important. This is where
good coverage needs to come in.And then then we work with the
team to make sure we structurethat. You do have coverage
throughout the 9 to 5.
And if you so choose to havecoverage, like, past that as
well in the evenings because alot of people are not really
browsing tools during the day.They'll do it in the evenings.
And so that we would recommend,and we have people we work with
who are, you know, offshore.They can provide coverage.

(07:39):
They're fantastic SDRs.
Very sharp, very fast andfriendly and also cost effective
too. So that's a strategy there.Make sure you have 24 hour
coverage, but the AI is reallysoftening off the most important
traffic to them.

Collin Mirchell (07:51):
Got it. Interesting. Well, this is, this
is a big problem that you guysare are looking to solve, and
sounds like you're putting adent into it. Really appreciate
you coming on the show, Alan.Any final thoughts, and then
where's the best place forpeople to connect with you and
learn more?

Alan Zhao (08:07):
Awesome. Pleasure to be on. You can find me on
LinkedIn. You can learn moreabout Warmly. We have a batch of
folks who are pushing out a lotof content.
So we have Max Greenwald, KeeganOtter, and many others. But,
yeah, LinkedIn is the bestplace.

Collin Mirchell (08:21):
Awesome. Appreciate it. We'll drop the
links there in the show notes tomake it easy. If you enjoyed
today's episode, please write usa review, share the show with
your friends so we can help moresellers and sales leaders
transform the way that theysell.