{"id":18372,"date":"2018-10-30T18:07:55","date_gmt":"2018-10-30T18:07:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/?p=18372"},"modified":"2024-07-25T11:57:01","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T10:57:01","slug":"invisible-sales-pipeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/invisible-sales-pipeline\/","title":{"rendered":"Capture your invisible pipeline of sales leads"},"content":{"rendered":"

The most common way to think about leads is to put them in two buckets: inbound and outbound. The first is owned by marketing and the second by sales. But I’d like to introduce the idea of a third, your invisible leads.<\/p>\n

These are the invisible buyers who visit your website, check out your product and even research your solution on a site like G2Crowd or LinkedIn, but ultimately, never get in touch. And unlike your visible pipeline of inbound and outbound leads, your invisible leads can’t be called or emailed.<\/p>\n

Where does the invisible sales pipeline come from?<\/h2>\n

Your invisible sales pipeline<\/a> are all of those people who visit your website but will never fill out a contact form. For most companies, that’s the vast majority of their website visitors. The median conversion rate<\/a> for landing pages, across all industries, is just 2.35%.<\/p>\n

“Your invisible sales pipeline are all of those people who visit your website but will never fill out a form”<\/p>\n

If you’re in sales like I am, you’ve probably never stopped to think about it. We’re trained to focus on the 2% of leads who do fill out a form and then sell to the even smaller percentage that are passed to us as qualified leads. We’re not thinking, “I could be doing more to engage the other 98% of folks that are also researching my solution.”<\/p>\n

The challenge is until you do, these website visitors will remain part of your invisible, untapped sales pipeline.<\/p>\n

Shining a light on your invisible sales pipeline<\/h2>\n

So how you can get visibility into buyers in your invisible sales pipeline? And then find the ones worth talking to and have a conversation with them?<\/p>\n

1. Find and pick the right sales tool<\/h3>\n

The first step is to find a tool that can shine a light into who your website visitors are, where they’re coming from and the companies they work for. Remember, your traditional CRM and marketing tools only have visibility into your real pipeline, hence the value of products like Intercom<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. Talk to your high value website visitors<\/h3>\n

The second step is taking the data on your invisible sales pipeline and using it to convert website visitors who otherwise wouldn’t fill out a form into legitimate sales opportunities. The easiest way to do this is by initiating conversations while they’re browsing your website. Here are a few tips:<\/p>\n