You know how streams join together and turn into rivers, right?

Slowly the water heads downstream until it meets up with another and another and they all come into one and turn into a mighty flow of water that will (at some point) feed into the ocean.

Smart business services will have multiple channels for bringing in leads.

These streams come together and can really drive the flow of clients into your operation. Eventually those streams and rivers will dump into the ocean of your revenue.

Here are just a couple of broad examples of streams and rivers.

• River: Existing Customers
  • Stream: Upsell/Cross-sell/Recurring payments/Net promoters
  • Stream: Referrals from current clients

• River: Marketing and Sales
  • Stream: Outbound sales (via cold email, calls, direct mail, etc.)
  • Stream: Inbound marketing/sales (via email, live chat, product/service education)
  

It’s an illustration, not science. But you get the idea. Optimize your current streams, add new ones and soon enough you’ll have that river.

Here’s Where Gist Comes Into Play

Gist is an all-in-one tool which helps agencies better optimize and harness all of these streams by:

• Automating follow ups with current customers
• Booking and scheduling meetings using live chat, bots and our meeting scheduler tool
• Capturing contact data and nurture leads via email marketing

Note: The unique thing about Gist + Your Agency is that we can do all of these things for you and your clients!

In this article, I’ll cover an in-depth game plan to start using Gist to get the river flowing.

The Gist

• One: Get Live Chat setup and looking good. Create a chat prompt to start the conversation with site visitors.
• Two: Link your Google Calendar and set up Gist’s Meeting tool to start booking sales calls via email and chat.
• Three: Create a meeting scheduling bot to book calls and qualify leads when you and your team aren’t in the office.
• Four: Begin collecting email addresses and automating your referral outreach.

Bonus: Once you’ve got Gist setup for you, it’s time to start rolling it out to your list! In the last section, we’ve put together several “getting started” articles for several other types of verticals (e.g. the businesses of your clients).

1 First Things First, Set Up Live Chat

Having live chat on your site is an inbound and outbound tool.

If people search for your services and find you, having live chat there is a fantastic way to start the conversation. And if you sent out a cold email, many times a prospect may check out all of the links in your email signature before they make an effort to reply.

And last time I checked, having conversations with potential customers is a priority for agencies like yours.

Live Chat set up is a breeze, especially if you’re using WordPress.

Just login to your WP Dashboard, install the Gist plugin, go to “Settings” > “Gist” and put in your workspace ID from the Gist dashboard.

The Live Chat will now be on your site.

You can go into the Messenger settings and change the appearance to match your brand. If site visitors start a conversation with you, it will show up in the “Conversations” tab of your Gist dashboard.

Note: You may notice that live chat is not on our blog content. We do this on purpose and you can also set the display conditions for your live chat.

Live Chat

You probably use either referrals, cold email or paid ads to get potential leads to your site. Our live chat can have you ready to start a conversation within 2 minutes of installing Gist. You can even set up a chat prompt to continue the conversation easily.

Now, It’s Time to Start the Conversation (with Chat Prompts)

Sure, those who are really interested may click on the chat icon. But most people will not start the conversation.

To get those visitors talking, you’ll need a chat prompt.

I recently wrote a deep look into creating a prompt. Essentially, it’s like a store owner greeting someone who walks into their shop.

2 Next, Start Booking Meetings

Decision makers are busy people.

Even if you can get them to agree to chat, it’s hard to nail down a solid time. It’s for these reasons, meeting schedulers were invented. And it’s been a wonderful tool.

They’re so wonderful, that Gist comes with our very own Meeting Scheduler tool on all of our plans.

All you have to do is connect your Google Calendar and set up your meeting preferences (which you can access in “Profiles and Preferences” in the upper right of your Gist dashboard).

It’s once you have the meeting link the magic happens.

Here’s why.

A meeting link is one tool that can be used in multiple situations.

• Email Outreach: Put a meeting link in the P.S. to capture prospects who are ready to talk.
• Live Chat: Book meetings and turn chats into full-blown demos/sales calls.
• Bots: Gist offers a few types of bots, including a meeting scheduler to book calls when you’re not available via live chat.

Meetings

Getting decision makers on the phone can be tricky. We have a meeting tool built into our platform. Use the meeting link to book a time best for your lead right from a live chat conversation.

3 Then, Create a Chat Bot

What happens when you’re not there?

Site visitors (aka potential customers) will move on and keep searching.

If you and your team are in the office, you can make yourself available via live chat or having your number right there for a quick call.

But during the off-hours, people can still come to your site. Could be a decision maker from a different country, or just someone who’s working late.

Here’s the thing, you can have a virtual rep that is available to talk 24/7. In other words, a Chat Bot.

No, you don’t have to know how to code. Gist has a couple different bots for our Support and All-in-One plans.

Starting with the Support plan ($9/mo per user), you can get a qualification bot which asks certain questions to your prospects to help you separate prospects (those genuinely interested) and suspects (leads who won’t likely buy).

Questions like:

• How many employees at a company?
• Current solution for target industry?
• Looking for a new solution?

These are likely questions your reps will work into a conversation on the phone or over live chat. The bot can get to the point and ask these questions to new site visitors who initiate the conversation.

For Gist’s Support plan users, your bots can actually book calls for you and your team!

In addition to the automated booking bot, you can create custom bots to do things, like answer frequently asked questions.

Chat Bots

You and your reps can’t be online all the time to explain all of your services to potential leads. That’s why we have chat bots. In about 15 minutes create a custom bot to explain your key services or book appointments.

4 Finally, Start Using Email

Gist has Live Chat, Meetings and Chat Bots. And we’re also a full-fledged Email Marketing tool (not to mention several other tools)!

As an agency, you have to understand the power of content and inbound marketing.

Working hard to provide resources (like this one, to be honest) isn’t going to do you any good if the right people don’t get to it.

If you’re reading this very article, it’s likely because you’ve signed up for a free plan/trial for Gist and are in the onboarding sequence. (Notice, how we’ve segmented it for different verticals like B2Bs, SaaS and more.)

All of the aforementioned nurturing is via our drip campaign feature in the email marketing tool.

Note: Stick around to the end, because I’ve included links to all of the other getting started pages. This could help you use Gist specifically for your clients to get them results.

But what if you’re just doing outbound.

Either way, an email marketing tool is vital for your success.

No, I’m not going to try to sell you on inbound. If you’re having success with outbound sales already and don’t want to add inbound, that’s totally up to you.

But what about referrals?

Using behavioral emails (another Gist email feature), you can set an email to automatically send to every new client after a few weeks. The email asks them to set you up with any colleagues that could use your services.

Doing this automates your referral system, making it a stable stream of lead generation.

Email Marketing

Nurturing your leads well can significantly reduce the buying cycle. Our email marketing platform allows you to send personalized drip campaigns and even cue up emails based on lead behavior.

Using Gist for Your Clients

Gist makes sense for a lot of businesses and organizations. As an agency, you work with businesses and organizations of all types.

Specifically, we’ve determined 7 different verticals (agencies included). And I’ve written a specific plan for using Gist for each and every one!

Here are the links:

• Software-as-a-Service
• Publishers (like bloggers, authors, etc.)
• E-Commerce
• Home Services (Roofers, Electricians, etc.)
• Consumer Services (Gyms, Salons, etc.)
• Business Services (B2Bs)

You’re welcome to go through all of them and see how Gist can benefit you and your clients.

Happy Hunting.