Conversational Marketing: How the World's Fastest Growing Companies Use Chatbots to Generate Leads 24/7/365

by David Cancel, Dave Gerhardt

Real-time conversations turn leads into customers

Conversational Marketing and Sales is the definitive guide to generating better leads and closing more sales. Traditional sales and marketing methods have failed to keep pace with the way modern, internet-savvy consumers purchase goods and services. Modern messaging apps, which allow for real-time conversations and instant feedback, have transformed the way we interact in our personal and professional lives, yet most businesses still rely on 20th century technology to communicate with 21st century customers. Online forms, email inquiries, and follow-up sales calls don't provide the immediacy that modern consumers expect. Conversational marketing and sales are part of a new methodology that's centered around having real-time, one-on-one conversations with customers via chatbots and messaging, enabling powerful lead generation and optimal sales conversion. In this book, conversational marketing pioneer David Cancel shares his knowledge and experience to give marketers and sales professionals the innovative tools and proven techniques they need to carve out success in an increasingly dynamic business environment.

Effective customer communication is crucial to any business, particularly in sales and marketing. By allowing your business to communicate with customers in real time--when it's most convenient for them--conversational marketing improves the customer experience, generates more leads, and helps you convert more leads into customers.


Merge inbound and outbound tactics into a more productive dialog
Integrate conversational marketing techniques into your existing sales and marketing workflow

Generate higher-quality leads and shorten sales cycles
Improve the customer experience with real-time communication
Face-to-face meetings, phone calls, and email exchanges remain important to customer relations, but adding a layer of immediate, individual conversation drives the customer experience--and sales--sky-high. With a multi-layered approach that combines traditional methods and cutting-edge technologies, Conversational Marketing and Sales can help you maximize your business's performance and potential for years to come.

Genres: Business, Nonfiction, Professional Development

288 pages, Hardcover

Published January 30, 2019

About the author

David Cancel is the Chairman and CEO of Drift, the world's leading conversational marketing and sales platform that helps businesses connect now with the customers who are ready to buy now. After just two years, the company has become one of the fastest growing SaaS companies of all-time and was named to the Forbes Cloud 100, LinkedIn Top 50 Startups, Entrepreneur's Top Company Cultures, Boston Business Journal's Best Places to Work, and SaaS Company of the Year by the NEVCA.

David is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Business School, a prolific angel investor and the host of The Seeking Wisdom podcast. He is best known for creating hypergrowth companies, products and product teams at companies such as Drift.com, HubSpot, Performable, Ghostery and Compete.

David has been featured by media outlets such as The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Wired and Fast Company. David has guest lectured on entrepreneurship at Harvard, Harvard Business School, MIT, MIT's Sloan School of Management and other Universities. His popular blog davidcancel.com has been read by 1M+ entrepreneurs, and his Twitter account @dcancel is considered a "Must-Follow" account for entrepreneurs, executives and investors.

Reviews

[Javier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m going to preface this review by stating that I am a Drift customer and have been for a while, and I don’t usually review many items on a online platform.

This book is a great book for anyone who has not or has very little experience with conversational marketing. If you keep an open mind while reading it does not matter if you’re a BDR or a C suite executive, you can find a few hidden jewels in the text.

However, with that said, if you have been a Drift customer, if you have been through their on boarding or read a lot of their content online, a good majority of this will seem repetitive. It may also come across as a bit of a sales pitch, as almost everything mentioned in this book speaks to a feature or capability that Drift has. That is why I rated this as three stars.

[Jake Singer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this as part of interview preparation with the company whose CEO wrote this book. It helped orient me around the company, the products, and how to speak about it, but frankly I didn't learn too much. This is a solid marketing pamphlet turned into a book that I believe will serve Drift well, but I wouldn't necessarily advise picking this book up for anyone interested in a good business book or anything like that.

[Dustin Overbeck · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid three stars. I feel this is the type of book to write of you want to indirectly promote your SaaS to hungry entrepreneurs who are vaguely familiar with what your company does. This will boost your company’s credibility by having a book, not necessary for having a well written book.

This book was “good” just not very great. There was too much name dropping of “Drift”, which is the company whose product is mentioned all throughout. That made me knock off a star.

Had the author been more credible by writing about their competitor’s products and how Drift was different, it would be more credible.

I take off another star because the book could have been boiled down into a 2000 word Medium article or blog post with a checklist. I actually think that is how this book was born. They took a bunch of disconnected blog posts, joined them together and paid a ghost writer to fill it with more words to make it worthy of being a book.

I listened to this as an audio book and the voice was dry. B o r i n g. Seriously, the whole book could be condensed into a 45 minute podcast episode.

The information is good, but it certainly didn’t need to drawn out into a book.

[Daniel Sepúlveda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Puntaje: 2 Estrellas.

Continuando mi misión de disminuir mi TBR físico de libros de no ficción, en Noviembre le tocó el turno a “Conversational Marketing” por David Cancel y Dave Gerhardt. Este es un libro que tengo en mi librero desde Boston y lo tenía pendiente por un buen par de años.

Entre al libro con muchas expectativas, quería saber qué tenían por decir los autores sobre el marketing conversacional, pero me encontré con un libro cuyo objetivo era vender el software que ellos producen: Drift.

El inicio estuvo interesante, pero a partir de la página 50, todo se volvió aburrido, repetitivo y sin valor alguno. Eso sí, me llamaron la atención algunas funciones de Drift que no conocía, como la de poder escribirle a los leads que se encuentran activos en el sitio, pero pues yo estaba buscando aprender con el libro, no recibir un discurso de ventas.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

First half is why you should buy Drift, the second is how to use Drift. (My company has Drift, it made sense to read the second half.)

[Eric D · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many books like this one veer into the extreme (removing all lead forms) in the hopes that you as a professional, move just a little bit into a different way of thinking. I came away from the book with several new tactics for increasing the number of conversations on a chatbot that I currently manage.

I found the book to be a bit repetitive on some aspects of conversations and think that I could have gotten the same amount of information in about 50 less pages.

All in all, I’m not ready to completely change my ways, but I can check this resource off the list of things to try out.

[John Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part of the future that is here now. David makes a lot of sensible points about the evolution of sales and marketing. This is a good blueprint for changing your operational model for client interactions. Think it could have been shortened by about 40 pages as some of it is repetitive but worth the read if you want to increase sales.

[Aaron Slack · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Chatbot Manifesto

A must read if you use chatbots in marketing or customer care, or are considering using them at some point in the future.

[Michael Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite this dude trying to sell his product at every turn it had good points and practical insight.

[Jason Boehle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid book on all things chatbots. I really enjoyed the first half which discussed data driven statistics of the industry.

[Elena Austras · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written as a marketing book - starting off with theoretical concepts and then a transition to an implementation plan.

[Audree Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book! If you are looking to change up how you marketing, this is the book.

[Jonathan Crary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got a lot of really good ideas and confirmation on some I have had experience with. I think it’s a good book for my marketing library.

[Raymond Xu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ahead of its time

[Matias Koskinen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book looks into how the shift from supply to demand has changed buying behaviour. Customer’s don’t care about what product they use and from who they buy. They care about service—about how they buy. The authors provide their perspective on using conversational marketing tools. Tools, that help to provide service throughout the customer journey. The book is almost bible-like material. It is not because the message comes through as an instruction manual for their product—a product that I use and love. Only time will tell how often I’ll return back to this book after I have set up our growth stack.

[Kirsten · Rating 3 out of 5]

This gets 3/5 not because I enjoyed reading it but because it was somewhat valuable. It gives good context around how to effectively approach and implement conversational marketing, and is organized into logical sections.

That being said, do I think I learned anything beyond what I already learned on their blog or through their other web content? No, I don't, and I'm glad I wasn't the one to shell out $35 for it.

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eh this book was ok, it was not what i was expecting though. it's more of an upsell for the company's product than what I was expecting. :(

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick read on the concept of conversational marketing and the importance for businesses to connect with their customers on their customers schedule. This book details how the use of chat bots can increase sales and customer satisfaction for businesses no matter what the industry or vertical.