Stop Selling, Start Closing: Win More Business with Self-Service Tools [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 74]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy.

Vin Gaeta
0:00:00
Gartner's recent study talks about 75% of people want a seller-free sales experience.

Alex Winter
0:00:06
75%?

Vin Gaeta
0:00:07
75% of people don't want to talk to a sales human in their buyer's journey. That means our websites need to evolve to meet that modern buyer. Welcome back to Endless Customers, the show that teaches you how to earn trust and win

Alex Winter
0:00:28
more business in the age of AI.

Alex Winter
0:00:29
I'm your host, Alex Winter, and today we're joined by Vin Gaietta. He's a head coach and head of web strategy here at Impact. Vin, welcome back to the show. Great to be here, Matt. Great to have you here. We have an awesome topic today.

Alex Winter
0:00:40
We're talking about web. Surprise, it's Vin. Of course, we're talking about web, but more specifically, we're talking about self-selection tools.

Alex Winter
0:00:54
What are they?

Alex Winter
0:00:55
Why are they important? We need the breakdown. You gotta give us the 411. What's the deal?

Vin Gaeta
0:01:01
Big deal, man. So, self-selection tools, it's really taking the human out of our buying experience. So, humans this day and age, we don't wanna interact. We wanna be able to get the information. We don't wanna have to be gate kept with information

Vin Gaeta
0:01:15
that we know you have as a company, right? So self selection lets us really personalize that experience and tailor it to the end consumer and give them a better educational journey. So most importantly, our sales team has an easier time with these conversations. So Gartner did a study and 75% of buyers would prefer to have a touchless sales experience. Wow, 75%. No humans.

Alex Winter
0:01:39
That's three quarters right there. That's pretty much the whole bag.

Vin Gaeta
0:01:41
Yeah, right?

Vin Gaeta
0:01:42
Do we think any of that's gonna change?

Alex Winter
0:01:44
I don't think so. If anything, it's probably gonna be more like 80 to 85% sooner than later.

Vin Gaeta
0:01:49
And so much of that goes into the tools and experience that we can create, right? So 60% of buyers would prefer to have pricing details before that sales conversation. One of the tools that we talk about in self-selection is self-pricing, right?

Vin Gaeta
0:02:03
And that is one of the biggest things that can help qualify or disqualify consumers. And make no mistake, that's part of our job. We need to disqualify people from our website. We don't want sales wasting time in bad fit conversations. So part of self-selection is making sure

Vin Gaeta
0:02:17
we're educating the right fit and educating the bad fit so that they opt out before they get down that funnel.

Alex Winter
0:02:23
Yeah, I like that you said too that it's okay to disqualify non-fit or not good fit clients. I think that's something, we've talked about this before on the show, but that's something where some sales folks are like, no, I can convert them. We can make it happen. We need the money.

Alex Winter
0:02:36
We need the deal, whatever the case is. Usually, that's not how it ends up playing out, is it?

Vin Gaeta
0:02:40
No. Usually a big waste of time. Yes, and it ends up being more time and money than just disqualifying immediately or having great self-selection tools to do it for you so that you can talk to people that you know

Alex Winter
0:02:50
are gonna be open to doing business with you.

Vin Gaeta
0:02:52
Yeah, they're the strongest tools in the digital salesperson's tool belt, right? So we talk about having tools at every stage of the journey and that same Gartner study showed that 69% of buyers want tools at every stage, specifically around pricing and cost.

Alex Winter
0:03:09
Wow, so it's not just like the opening part of the, like their entry into the foray of it, okay. Wow, so every stage.

Vin Gaeta
0:03:16
From I don't know what the problem is, I don't know what I could even do to solve this, all the way through, what's my cost and how do I talk to your team? They want touchless experiences every step of the way. So the more self-service that you can provide,

Vin Gaeta
0:03:29
especially if your competitors are not willing to do this, the better your experience is gonna be, the more trust you're gonna build with this consumer, and the better your results are gonna be.

Alex Winter
0:03:38
That makes total sense. So I think we get the concept. I think we're picking up where you're putting down.

Vin Gaeta
0:03:43
What are the types of tools,

Alex Winter
0:03:44
or how does one, after they get this idea, go into like, all right, I wanna implement this, I want a self-selection tool on my website, or other places, what does that next step look like?

Vin Gaeta
0:03:53
Yeah, so there's five types of self-selection tools that we typically talk about. So there's self-assessment, top of the funnel, right? Where do I stand, what do I need to make the improvements or solve the pain that I have, right? So very educational.

Vin Gaeta
0:04:07
You might talk about some of the services, but it's usually resources in a self-assessment or we're scoring them and we're gonna say, hey, based on your score, here's the stuff you gotta do to improve that score higher or lower.

Alex Winter
0:04:18
Got it, yeah, that makes sense.

Vin Gaeta
0:04:20
Okay, next step down that funnel, right? We're talking self-selection. So what are the right resources based on my need? What are the exact services or offerings that I need from you or anyone to help get my problem solved, to make my situation better, to fix the roof leak that I have, whatever that thing might be.

Vin Gaeta
0:04:40
Right? So self-selection is what's the right piece for me? What are the right resources? What is the right solution for my specific situation? Getting a little bit more granular with your specific situation. Bringing them one step further down the funnel.

Vin Gaeta
0:04:52
Got it. They know what the problem is, now they see what they need to do to actually solve said problem.

Alex Winter
0:04:56
Okay.

Vin Gaeta
0:04:57
One step lower, self-configuration. So now this is where they can take your service, your product, your offering, and tailor it based on everything they learned in step one and two to what their needs are. You're getting a little bit closer

Vin Gaeta
0:05:08
into making this thing a real live breathing solution. Think about, cars are a great analogy, we use that all the time, right? I love cars, yeah. As soon as you start customizing your car and you put the alloy rims or the platinum thing on it,

Vin Gaeta
0:05:19
you want it more. You still running platinum rims on your car? I mean, hey, why not, right?

Alex Winter
0:05:24
No, but I get what you're saying, yeah, yeah. So the more you customize, and you see how it affects the price

Vin Gaeta
0:05:28
and how it affects everything. And that might, so the next step deeper is self-pricing. So self-configuration might have pricing in it, it might not, depending on your business and what the model is. But no matter what, we need a self-pricing tool,

Vin Gaeta
0:05:41
which is right there at the bottom of that funnel. If I'm looking for price and I'm gonna customize my thing, I'm pretty close to either qualifying or disqualifying myself for that sales qualified conversation. Totally, and we know that most people are looking for price and wanna know what the price is,

Vin Gaeta
0:05:56
even if it's not the exact with taxes and fees out the door, but like a ballpark. So they know what the stakes are

Alex Winter
0:06:01
and what they're playing with.

Vin Gaeta
0:06:02
And as soon as we say self pricing tools people are Like there is no way that I can give a specific price in this calculation Calm down everyone sure we're not saying that you can give a range in these tools, right? So we just launched a pool remodeling tool. There's no way we're gonna give a specific price because if you want Special things you want fire pits you want pergolas you want new things around your remodeled pool, price is going to go up. If you don't want any of that, your price is going to be down.

Vin Gaeta
0:06:31
So based on what you select in the tool, you're going to get a range, plus or minus 20% from what we believe the price is going to be. This way, no one gets locked in, we're educating the consumer, and sales has some wiggle room in those conversations as well, and there's also disclaimers. So there's safeguards that we can put in place. Of course, yeah, nothing finite there.

Vin Gaeta
0:06:50
So we get to the fourth step, which is the self-pricing. Is there another, the fifth step after that?

Alex Winter
0:06:54
What's the final step?

Vin Gaeta
0:06:55
Fifth step, self-scheduling. So we need the ability to get on someone's calendar. I don't want to be gate-kept to get on your calendar. I know that I have that access, so give it to me. And that is usually where we go after a conversion point. So get their information this way.

Vin Gaeta
0:07:10
If they don't self-schedule right away, we can follow up with them. But we tell them on that conversion point, once you fill out the basic info, we're going to give you the ability to actually book time on our calendars for what works best for you. So we eliminate some of the back and forth and potential delay that can happen waiting

Vin Gaeta
0:07:27
for someone to actually schedule that meeting.

Alex Winter
0:07:29
Right. It's like automating the process to bring people down the funnel their own way, the way that they want to do it, which is, I feel like that's so they ask you answer. It's very in line with the book and with the methodology. So I'm bought in, the five steps make sense, I wanna pull people down the funnel,

Alex Winter
0:07:44
I wanna help my sales team out. How do I actually implement this? How do I get these tools on my site or how do I develop these things?

Alex Winter
0:07:51
How does that look?

Vin Gaeta
0:07:52
There's a couple routes, right? So there's custom versus out of box. Pros and cons to each, right? So custom, you're gonna be able to customize it. More of your company, it's gonna be more likely to be on brand, you're gonna have specific user experience,

Vin Gaeta
0:08:03
things that you can do. You can usually get more data out of a custom one and get it to be in your CRM in a way that fits your business, right? There's also cons to that piece. It's sometimes a little bit more expensive. You're going to have a little bit more of a timeline to get that thing set up

Vin Gaeta
0:08:21
because you've got to go through strategy, design, custom pieces, right?

Alex Winter
0:08:24
Right, totally.

Vin Gaeta
0:08:25
In an ideal world, you shouldn't need to pay for that long-term over time It's a one-and-done build unless there's maintenance or updates. Okay out of the box, right? There's plenty of options out there and I'll give some for the audience to go explore and start testing out with Pros and cons to this usually cheaper to get start with heck. Yeah, let's prove the point before we invest We make a large investment. Yeah, that makes sense. Mm-hmm there are limitations to the some of the design aesthetics some of the user experience

Vin Gaeta
0:08:51
pieces, the education, and oftentimes outcomes. So you might not be able to tailor the results to the level that you want. You also might not be able to get all the data that you want depending on the level of the out-of-the-box solution you'd go with.

Alex Winter
0:09:04
Okay, so the customization piece of it might be limited depending on your budget.

Vin Gaeta
0:09:08
Yeah, and the out-of-the-boxes are great, again, to prove that this thing could work for us if anyone is skeptical and you're not ready to dive Full bore in and we've had plenty of folks that just say we need the tool We know we're gonna use this we know the sales team is gonna use it Let's build it and get it done, right?

Alex Winter
0:09:23
But I'm sure you have others that aren't fully bought in and maybe want to dip their toe in the proverbial pool I see if the water's warm

Vin Gaeta
0:09:28
Make sure that it's the right fit for them and that the concept is gonna actually pan out on the way that they want to go now one of the cons that we always talk about, and it depends on the company and the tool that we're going after, you may not get the data in the way that you want, or you have to pay more for that out-of-the-box solution to get the integration of the API. So it's something that I always recommend looking at.

Vin Gaeta
0:09:52
How does the out-of-the-box solution integrate with your CRM? Is there additional costs that you're going to need to look at? Or if you're looking at the base plan, does it include the integration or do you need to upgrade to the next level, whatever that might be?

Alex Winter
0:10:04
We just talked about this too. We had Will Smith on the show recently talking about how important it is to have a CRM, why you should have one. How important is this? I'm going off script a little bit here, but how important is this because you just said it to have this self-selection tool plugged into your CRM so you can track this data,

Alex Winter
0:10:18
right?

Vin Gaeta
0:10:19
Is there a way to do that? There is. And if you're not doing it, I frankly wouldn't spend time on self-service because the whole point of this is to gather information on our users, right? Not only to help nurture them and provide them a better experience, but to help our sales team sell better. If we don't have this data in a place where the sales team can access

Vin Gaeta
0:10:36
or that our marketing team can go off of, there's no point in doing it. And at that point, you could do other things with that time and effort. But if you have the CRM and if your team is going to leverage the data, you can make some really cool experiences and have really strong conversations with the data we gather here.

Alex Winter
0:10:55
Yeah, so what are some, I'm thinking about this like the website, right? And I'm not a web guy like you, I know enough to be dangerous. I've done a few of my own WordPress sites in the past and stuff like that,

Alex Winter
0:11:05
but WordPress and other platforms like that have plugins and all different types of things you can use. Is there similar things with self-selection tools for different facets of like, depending on what industry you're in

Alex Winter
0:11:15
or what type of style of quiz you're trying to do or whatever the case may be?

Vin Gaeta
0:11:19
Yeah, there's a variety that you can do. Usually it's a third-party software that you're gonna embed into a given page. So if we go, we'll start with custom, right? If we look at custom, it's gonna be built into whatever you're doing.

Vin Gaeta
0:11:31
So we typically build in HubSpot or WordPress and then tie it into the CRM, however that needs to happen. If you're looking at out of the box, there's different tools like outgrow.co. Great for quizzes, calculators, things like that. Again, different levels, different integration pricing there.

Vin Gaeta
0:11:48
There's things like lead quizzes, great for self-assessment, so we can get a quick quiz together and give them recommendations on what we're seeing based on that. Look at Score app for more calculations and formula-based quizzes and things like that as well. Self-service, self-scheduling, excuse me, self-scheduling, Calendly. Everyone knows Calendly for the most part

Vin Gaeta
0:12:08
in this day and age, right? So Calendly's a great example of an out-of-the-box option for scheduling. Now if you're using HubSpot, I would recommend looking at the HubSpot scheduling meeting link piece. This way it's already integrated into the CRM.

Vin Gaeta
0:12:21
Calendly does the same thing. That is usually the easiest low barrier to entry self-service tool to get on your site, self-scheduling, and make sure that it's at the right stage of that journey. That makes sense.

Vin Gaeta
0:12:33
Yeah, so those are some cool tools, and my wheels are spinning because I already want to start experimenting, and I hope our audience is feeling the same way. Once you pick the tools, or you pick these different facets that you're gonna use,

Vin Gaeta
0:12:44
is there a way to promote them, or drive traffic, or what's the best way, once this thing's set up,

Alex Winter
0:12:48
to get people to find it and go there.

Vin Gaeta
0:12:52
It's not something where you create it and they will come. We have to strategically put this in the places that are going to get eyes. It's the motion of looking at the most important touch points on the site. If it is something that's going to help someone immediately assess where they're at or get a little bit further, it should be on our homepage. It should be on our product pages or our service pages, and we talk about primary

Vin Gaeta
0:13:16
and transitional calls to action. So primary being our sales motion, transitional being our educational piece, right? So get a quote, self-assess where you're at, whatever that actual link needs to be. That's what we want, we want that one-two punch.

Vin Gaeta
0:13:30
Either you're gonna talk to sales, or you're gonna use our tool to get further down our educational journey.

Alex Winter
0:13:34
That makes sense.

Vin Gaeta
0:13:35
Making sure that we're linking to it in blogs, and that's one of the often overlooked pieces go back and look at your most traffic blogs once you launch or create the tool put it in those so that it's getting the most visibility and then we're tracking what the output is retracting the leads

Vin Gaeta
0:13:51
and now you can actually start creating a funnel through that tool that should provide a better educational experience more sales qualified leads and everybody's happy

Alex Winter
0:13:59
when is more sales qualified leads everyone's happy that's a fact CEO, the sales team, everybody's pumped. So my next question for you, you help a lot of companies implement these, design these, strategize around these. Do you have some examples you can share?

Alex Winter
0:14:12
I know Marcus Sheridan is like the poster boy for this. He started out with River Pools doing this. It worked extremely well for River Pools and for his company. Do you have any other examples that we could talk about that maybe didn't have a self-selection tool

Alex Winter
0:14:24
and how it's changed the landscape of their business since they implemented.

Vin Gaeta
0:14:26
We have a trucking company. They not only do freight logistics, but they also hire company drivers and actually create careers for these truckers, right? So we created a self-assessment tool where they could actually figure out

Vin Gaeta
0:14:42
what the right career for them was and if it is with this specific client, right? So the ATS team built the tool and it educates you every step of the way and based on what you select in your geo region, it's going to tell you what options you have,

Vin Gaeta
0:14:55
whether it's heavy haul or drive in or,

VIn Gaeta
0:14:57
um,

Vin Gaeta
0:14:58
I'm forgetting the third one in the moment, but whatever the right choices for you, like for me, I only have one option if I wanted to be a trucker in Connecticut, I don't, but that is what I could do.

Alex Winter
0:15:06
Yeah,

Alex Winter
0:15:07
I know,

Alex Winter
0:15:07
but this is fascinating only because I was thinking about it from a sales standpoint, but they're also using it for recruiting and finding people to help staff and drive the trucks and

Vin Gaeta
0:15:15
their freight and logistics company. And they have a whole business model around hiring these truck drivers. So for them, if they can actually get someone through this process, and I think within three weeks of launching the CareerMatch tool, they got two folks to go through, qualify themselves, and fill out the full application and became company drivers for them. And nobody, touchless, like nobody had to do it.

Vin Gaeta
0:15:37
No one had to do anything aside for make sure the application was good and have the initial conversations. Wow. Right? So immediately had a throughput that showed this works, now we can lean into this a bit more and ultimately created that touchless experience for them.

Alex Winter
0:15:53
That is a game changer.

Alex Winter
0:15:54
Wow.

Vin Gaeta
0:15:55
Very cool. Flip side, everyone loves a good pool calculator. So Shasta Pools is one of the newer ones that we have now launched, right? And depending on your traffic flow and the visibility of your website, you might see an influx of leads, whether they're sales qualified or not. And everyone wants to kick a price higher.

Vin Gaeta
0:16:12
So you do see with pricing tools, sometimes you just have tire kickers, which again, disqualifying folks that might waste sales time if we didn't have that pricing on the site already.

Alex Winter
0:16:21
Or they might, it might not fit their budget, but at least they found out and you didn't spend 20 minutes talking to them

Vin Gaeta
0:16:25
to find out the same exact thing. And you'll see folks fill those tools out two, three, four times because they're gonna get a different result. They're gonna add the pergola, they're gonna change the pool shape,

Vin Gaeta
0:16:34
whatever that might be.

Alex Winter
0:16:36
They're experimenting.

Vin Gaeta
0:16:37
And now that's all options that the salesperson could then look at in that first conversation if they are a good fit. And we always recommend asking, what's the timeline that you have for your project? Is it, I'm just browsing, is it three weeks,

Vin Gaeta
0:16:49
is it three months, is it three years? This way we got a gauge, right? And you can now prioritize your sales team around if they're saying immediate or three months, let's talk to those folks first. Yeah, it goes back to what you said at the beginning where information and data is king. And the more that you know, the more of an informed decision you can make, the better you can help your potential customers. That's huge. Wow.

Vin Gaeta
0:17:08
All right, we got to the point of the show. I feel really good about self-selection tools. I hope everyone listening is feeling as good as I am. What's the one thing that we should take away from this conversation that's most important when it comes to self-selection tools? If you're a business owner, if you're a marketing director,

Vin Gaeta
0:17:23
you're trying to implement these things in your own company, what's that one thing that they should take away? Look at your user journey. And we talked about you can have these and should have these at every stage of the journey. Where can we make the biggest impact?

Vin Gaeta
0:17:37
Where can we help our consumer get a better experience immediately? So oftentimes it is a pricing calculator because that is usually the thing that is mystified the most for many companies. But it doesn't stop there.

Vin Gaeta
0:17:50
We need to make sure that we're mapping out those touch points. So if we're gonna get the most out of that investment, you have to look at your website and make sure you know where these things are gonna go and then track those results.

Vin Gaeta
0:18:00
So identify the most important area in our journey to create the tool and then make sure we know what success for that tool looks like so we can track the ROI on the investment.

Alex Winter
0:18:12
Well said. I couldn't have said it better myself. Vin, it was great having you on the show. Thanks for sharing your knowledge

Vin Gaeta
0:18:16
about self-selection tools. Yeah, love. Hey, we gotta make this a less sales-intensive experience in terms of having to get in touch with a human and self-selection will make it so that they don't need the seller in there.

Vin Gaeta
0:18:28
They control that journey and we're gonna build more trust through that.

Alex Winter
0:18:31
I love it, Vin. Thanks again for being on the show. It's great to see you. Absolutely. All right, and for everybody out there watching and listening, this is Endless Customers.

Alex Winter
0:18:37
I'm your host, Alex Winter. I'm your host, Alex Winter. See you on the next one.