When it comes to B2B selling, forms are the gold standard for finding new leads. Unfortunately, they don’t work as well as we think they do.
81% of tech buyers abandon websites when they encounter gated content. Even when buyers do fill out forms, 58% of companies won’t follow up. And if they do, it’s often too little too late.
Here at Drift, we believe that the most frictionless buying experience comes from a form-free website. But we know that not everyone can get rid of all their forms right away.
That’s why we built Drift Fastlane.
With Fastlane, you can accelerate the buying process while keeping your lead forms intact. That means you’ll instantly be able to follow up on high-value opportunities without completely overhauling your website.
We asked Allison Winkle, Marketing Programs Manager at Jobvite, to share some insights into how her team uses our tool and how you too can make the most of Fastlane.
Let’s go ⚡️
We hosted a workshop to introduce Drift Fastlane and how you can use it to accelerate qualified buyers to sales. You can check out the recording here. Otherwise, read on for all the insights💡
What Does Drift Fastlane Do?
Have you ever been to a theme park where you can buy a pass that allows you to skip all the lines? That’s what Fastlane does for your top-tier buyers.
In the traditional lead generation process, target accounts would fill out forms and be left waiting to hear back from your sales rep — for hours, sometimes even days.
That waiting period has huge consequences for pipeline. Wait just five minutes and you’re 10x less likely to qualify the person interested in your product.
Fastlane makes sure that your sales team is netting all their opportunities by qualifying buyers as soon as the form is complete. Once qualified, you can offer them the chance to talk directly to sales, immediately route in a rep, or drop a calendar so they can book a meeting for a later time.
The tool also sits on top of your forms to ensure a smooth transition from static forms to dynamic conversations.
With Fastlane, lead forms no longer feel like one-way interactions. Instead, sales teams can engage with buyers instantly, exactly when their intent is highest.
Sounds like a good deal? Start setting up Fastlane now with our Drift Insider training course.
What Fastlane Can Do for You (with Jobvite’s Allison Winkle)
If you can’t eliminate lead forms, Fastlane is a must-have tool to generate more leads and increase the number of meetings booked.
Don’t just take our word for it, though.
For the team at Jobvite, lead forms are a must — their crown jewel being the “request a demo” form. Their problem was that they weren’t engaging with many mid-market and enterprise buyers on their website.
Using Fastlane, Jobvite was able to invite companies into a sales conversation as soon as they showed interest in a demo. As Allison explained:
[Buyers] fill out the requested demo form and the bot says, ‘Thanks for requesting a demo. Would you rather just book a meeting or speak to someone right now?’ This is huge for us, because we can catch people right when they’re telling us they want to talk to us. When you’re ready to fill out the form, it means you’re serious. Why not talk to them at that moment instead of waiting for a sales rep to get a notification?
You have to get in touch with buyers at the right time because they are likely looking at several different solutions. They may be filling out five or six different forms a day — so a fast and easy qualification process is sure to grab their attention.
Jobvite has the numbers to back that up: 85% of people who request a demo engage with the Fastlane bot. Allison reported that they get four times more meetings booked with Fastlane compared to other conversational playbooks on their website.
And having such an accelerated qualification process is a huge boon for sales reps. As Allison put it 👇
Our meetings get on the calendar right away. Sales reps can just come in and go straight to the next step.
3 Tips for Getting the Most Out of Fastlane
No two lead forms are the same. Then, it stands to reason that your Fastlane playbook will look different from the one that Jobvite uses.
We designed Fastlane to help you instantly get in touch with your top-tier buyers. Here are some tips on how you can make that happen:
1. Set Targeting Conditions
The first thing you have to ask when setting up Fastlane is: Who should be seeing this?
“We learned this the hard way,” Allison explained. “We started with Fastlane on for everyone but we realized pretty quickly that we had a lot of requests from staffing agencies, college students, and smaller businesses that just didn’t match the services we offer.”
Fastlane is all about giving your best buyers a shortcut to your sales team — that is, companies that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP) or your target accounts.
So, it’s more efficient for your sales team if Fastlane shows up only for those accounts that fit your specific targeting conditions.
That’s precisely what Allison did with Jobvite’s Fastlane bot.
We eliminated companies with less than 30 employees and a few other markers so we’re not getting meeting requests from people who we can’t actually work with. You only want your ICP to see these playbooks.
This way, you can prioritize those accounts that will get the most out of your products and services, as well as those who are ready to buy.
By setting targeting conditions, you can make sure you’re reaching out to the people you actually want to talk to, instead of just gathering dead-end leads.
2. Customize Your Bot Flow
When you have a specific audience in mind, you’ll want to tailor your messaging as much as possible.
The Fastlane bot is completely customizable so that you can design the site experience you want that specific visitor to have.
The Fastlane template starts with a conditional branch at the top: online or offline. From there, you can build out the flow of the playbook based on that condition.
For example, if your sales team is online, you’ll probably want to offer the option to chat with a sales rep. Whereas, if the team is offline, you can simply provide the option to book a meeting.
With these two chat flows, you can ensure that your team doesn’t miss out on any of those high-value conversations.
You can also make more detailed customizations, like changing the questions that the Fastlane bot asks. You can even tweak the bot’s copy so that your messaging is on point and the bot sounds the way you want it to.
3. Don’t Forget to A/B Test
With all the ways you can customize Fastlane, there’s a lot you can do to up your bot’s performance.
It’s always good to engage in A/B testing to see what works best for your goals — regardless of whether you’re testing your bot’s messaging or even just one line of copy.
Allison agreed on the importance of testing for her team:
I’m currently working on another Fastlane flow for product tours where we’ll test giving statistics and data vs. asking them how they’re feeling to see which gets more interaction. I’m excited to see what we find out there.
By implementing A/B tests on Fastlane, you can get better at drawing in buyers so that you’re holding more conversations with new faces. And, this way, you can continually grow your qualified pipeline.
Get Ready for More Booked Meetings with Drift Fastlane
Lead forms have turned most of B2B selling into a waiting game. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
With Drift Fastlane, you can turn those impersonal lead forms into opportunities for engagement and conversation.
We asked Allison for one last piece of advice for anyone getting started with Fastlane:
We hoped for a few extra meetings, but we actually got a lot more leads and so many more meetings booked on the calendar — so be ready for more. It’s going to be a big deal when people start booking meetings directly from a form.
In short: Once you’re living in the fast lane, you won’t want to look back.
Interested in seeing how Fastlane can help you drive more qualified pipeline from your lead forms? Get a demo today.
