“Should I do an accelerator?” – almost every founder ever

Everyone asks me if they should even do an accelerator in the first place. If you’re a first-time founder, I will reply with an enthusiastic yes. As a company we've gone through them all: Techstars, Y-Combinator, Sequoia’s Company Design Program, and On Deck. They are a lot of work and by no means a magic bullet to unicorn-hood, but if you put in the effort, you will reap copious rewards.

“Should I do more than one accelerator?” – you, after reading the above paragraph

The answer is a clear and strong, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. We certainly don't regret it but it depends on your business model and what networks will be integral to your success. At Warmly, we think a lot about helping folks build stronger networks and deeper relationships (we're a free app that connects to your calendar to give you instant insights on people while you're meeting with them over Zoom).

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Y-Combinator vs Techstars

A question I get a lot from other founders is “Which one should I do – which one is better?”. As with every normative question, the answer is it depends. Depends on what you and your company are looking for.
Techstars is better at:

• Cohort camaraderie
• Providing work space
• Growing you as a leader and person
• Help pivoting and finding a real pain point
• Teaching the detailed operations bits on how to run a company
• Providing mentors who are responsive and invested in you
• Being open to new ideas and process improvements
• Access to B2B companies outside of Silicon Valley (Midwest & East Coast that trend more old school)

Y-Combinator is better at:

• Connecting you with a network of lots of unicorn founders
• Having a very active and helpful internal social network
• Fundraising – raising bigger rounds at higher valuations
• Opening doors due to brand recognition
• Pushing your business to hit aggressive revenue goals
• Investing in moonshots (wild and risky ideas that might be huge)
• Giving you tactical and succinct advice about a slew of very relevant topics such as GTM strategy
• Access to the almost any Silicon Valley startup and extension B2C growth advice

Let’s break it down

Cohort camaraderie

‍Winner: Techstars

‍Caveat: We did half of Techstars in person and half remote (COVID). We did all of YC remote.

Techstars Boulder

Techstars is a massive program with cohorts all over the world. We did the Techstars Boulder program, so I can really only speak to the experience there. I don’t know much about the other Techstars programs, although I suspect they are similar-ish.

• The Techstars Boulder program accepts 10 companies. With an average of 3-4 people per company, that’s about 30-40 people you get to know. Our Boulder Slack channel has 63 people in it, including program leadership.
• They hosted weekly bonding events where each week one team is responsible for planning something fun while we announce “wins”, “gratitudes”, “asks for help”, and who is “in the ditch”. Being in the ditch means you did something dumb like getting your GSuite suspended for your entire company for 24 hours so no one could send emails or open up a doc (yeah, I did that).
• 3-day offsite in the mountains packed with bonding and high quality, well run personal growth workshops (Not sure how they do this during COVID)
• Weekly CXO (CXO’s are any founder who’s not a CEO) and CEO forums where people gather and practice conflict resolution and work through emotional pains together. My cohort’s CEO and CXO forum is still going after the program! (Active during COVID)
• Swag on day 1 that everyone wears at the office (hat, hoodie, t-shirt, water bottle, stickers), it makes us all feel like more of a community.

Y-Combinator

• YC accepts ~200 companies. Our YC S20 Slack channel has 583 people in it, including program leadership. The 200 companies are broken up into roughly 5 groups. Our group has 110 people in the Slack channel. The groups then have sections of 5 companies each. Our section Slack has 15 people.
• Weekly dinners with half of the cohort
• During COVID this turned into a zoom call with a YC alum talking about their journey. I personally really enjoyed these speaker sessions and found them to be helpful to building a business. Downside is that there was no hangout time with other founders in the cohort.
• After dinners, founders typically hang around to chat together
• During COVID: Donut chats via Slack, otherwise no planned cohort bonding time. I enjoyed my Donut chats, although the response rate wasn’t great from other cohort members.
• Buy your own swag. Swag isn’t important to me and I think that because of COVID YC actually is sending us a swag pack, although they ran into some shipping issues (much like the rest of the world) and we still haven't gotten it.

Fundraising

Winner: YC

For their investor network, especially in a virtual world, it’s YC. We don’t have enough data on who is better at teaching how to fundraise since we weren’t raising during YC. And that, is a very important skill to learn.

Techstars Boulder

• Techstars has an extensive network of investors and a lot of background in B2B SaaS companies. We intended to pitch in front of 200+ investors in person in Boulder but because of COVID this turned virtual. The Demo Day with Techstars went well – check out our polished 4 min virtual presentation (yikes, so old! several pivots ago) that Techstars helped us prepare for extensively.
• Several of our Techstars mentors angel invested in us, as well as one VC firm Matchstick Ventures, a firm associated with Techstars. All of these were relationships we built in the program.
• Although the money we ended up taking didn’t come from inbound virtual Demo Day Techstars investors (~50 inbound), the video seemed to be quite helpful for the investors we ended up choosing. We have a hunch that we would have had more in-person investors had COVID not occurred.
• The very basis by which we learned how to fundraise, came from Techstars. David Cohen, the founder of Techstars, gives a seminal lecture to founders on essentially “How to convince most investors to ask to invest in you.” It’s legendary.
• Techstars provided the following fundraising help: (1) Multiple pitch-practice sessions in internally (2) 2 pitch-practice sessions externally live with real investors (great to get real investor feedback!), (3) Warm intros to ~10 top requested investors from their internal list
• Techstars’ internal data on investors from their Techstars Connect portal was not very helpful.

Y-Combinator

• YC has an incredibly strong brand name amongst investors in the Valley. With companies like Stripe, Airbnb, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, Ginkgo Bioworks, Gusto, Reddit, and more coming out of YC, that shouldn’t be surprising. Investors want in on YC companies and the average valuation of a YC startup is substantially higher than a Techstars startup. YC is like a feeder high school to the ivy league investors.
• In YC in June we were getting ~2 inbound investors requests per day (this increased to 4 per day after we publicly announced our Seed Round in Forbes).
• YC provides “Fundraising Office Hours” and helps prepping for and demoing on Demo Day. The partners are quite responsive. Caveat: this is hearsay from founder friends since we skipped Demo Day as we didn’t need to fundraise
• YC Demo Day was virtual and participants were allowed a single slide (!) and 1-minute (!) to explain their company to watching investors. We actually really appreciated this simplicity vs the traditional lengthy slide deck.

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Grow as a person and leader

Winner: Techstars

Techstars Boulder

• Techstars invests in your brain and well-being. I already mentioned the emotional support CXO/CEO groups, which are lead by a mental health pro, who is in the office everyday for 1:1 chats at any time. Our pro was Keith Gruen, who just launched his own YouTube channel.
• Additionally, they provide you a free leadership coach that you meet with weekly. My coach was instrumental in helping me work through and gain the skills to manage some the really challenging things I went through during the program. In addition to this, a lot of their curriculum is structured around being a better team leader, in addition to tactical business building advice.

Y-Combinator

• No mental health support or leadership coaching that I’m aware of. Maybe there is one, but it wasn’t made known to me nor did I proactively ask for one. However, you search for “mental health” in Bookface (YC’s internal social network), you find a good number of posts where founders are speaking honestly to each other about this sort of thing.

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Internal social network

Winner: YC

Techstars Boulder

• Techstars has an extensive internal network that thousands of people are on. It’s pretty good and has tons of resources to help founders build a company.
• There’s an ad hoc mailing list that people can reach out to when relevant (it’s call Amplify). The rule of thumb is that for every Amplify request you have, you get 10 people with theirs. They are usually akin to “help like/share/comment on my new launch”.

Y-Combinator

• Because YC is a smaller community, bonds are stronger and the internal network (Bookface) is much more active and reliable than Techstars’ internal network. Almost every post has several replies and people are eager to help with all sorts of professional and personal favors. For example I was looking for roommates for my place in Hawaii and I posted on Bookface instead of Techstars Connect because the smaller community felt more personal and has an established norm of not always being only about business.
• YC has a daily digest emailed to you of the most poppin’ posts of yesterday.

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Help pivoting and finding a true pain point

Winner: Techstars

Techstars Boulder

• We got into Techstars with an MVP for a mobile app for professional networking. By the time we started Techstars we learned that this idea wasn’t going to take us anywhere so we pivoted to PushPull. Week 2 of Techstars has a thing called Mentor Madness, where you pitch your idea to 80+ mentors. After the crazy two weeks of Mentor Madness, you choose 4-6 longer term mentors who help you throughout the program and beyond. The Madness weeks are grueling but incredibly enlightening. We pitched our PushPull idea and got expert feedback on the reality of building a business like this. We met with our chosen mentors weekly and got incredible insights that would have taken us a very long time to get ourselves. Because of Mentor Madness we ended up pivoting and finding a pain point that got us real paying customers by the end of the program. We wrote our first line of code in the middle of March and, by the end of April, showed up to Demo Day with 19 customers and raised $2M+. This was only possible because of the insights we got.
• We had also had a Weekly Ops Review with Techstars, and this had a very clear and effective structure to discuss our business goals and how well we did on the goals from last week. Everyone made a slide deck using the template and had 5 minutes to share their updates. At the end there would be a brief Q&A where other founders would comment and typically ask insightful & helpful questions.

Y-Combinator

• By the time we started YC, we knew what we were building, or so we thought. Our idea seemed good enough and we were never really challenged on it. We had traction and a tiny amount of revenue after all. Because of this, we didn’t proactively ask for help on figuring out a pain point. That being said, I spoke to a few founders (via Donut chats) who were in the very early stages (like what we were in at the start of Techstars) and they said they still felt really lost and like they weren’t getting the help or support in finding a pain point.
• With YC you have a weekly check-in meeting. Every week it alternates between a group (5 companies) check-in with your YC Partner and one without the partner. The goal of those meetings is to check in on how you did last week and what you want to do this week. Those meetings didn’t have strong structure and overall didn’t feel very productive or helpful. The ones without the Partner were truly unstructured, albeit, a nice social time.

Investing in moonshots & wild ideas

Winner: YC

Techstars Boulder

• Techstars leans more heavily towards companies with proven business models and it seems to take less risks on wild ideas.

Y-Combinator

• YC seems to have a much higher risk tolerance and so do the founders they accept. YC casts their net wide with a cohort of 500+ people and accepts in competitive companies (there were at least 3 Zoom competitors in our batch) and relatively high-risk (compared to SaaS) biotech or hardware companies. The average YC founder comes from the tech scene already, so they are primed to be extraordinarily scrappy and have bold visions. YC founders are also much younger on average, and don’t have families or mortgages, so they are willing to lose it all.

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Office Space

Winner: Techstars

Techstars Boulder

• Free office space where 10 companies work and laugh together
• Not available during COVID, obviously

Y-Combinator

• No office space, although I think not during COVID the YC HQ has couches and hangout areas for socializing after the weekly dinners.

Help getting media mentions

Winner: YC

Techstars Boulder

• Their press announcement led to a few more article mentions (google "techstars boulder class of 2020 colorado")
• Techstars gave us 120 personal intros to customers in Techstars Network
• They tweeted/facebooked our Forbes seed round announcement

Y-Combinator

• Getting media and PR may seem like a “nice to have”, but trust me, it’s key. Proper marketing, especially in a saturated market like sales enablement tools (our startup) can make or break an aspiring unicorn.
• They have a partner devoted to press and PR (Kat Manalac) and she spent time with us reviewing and offering suggestions for our press release that was very helpful in our pitch to multiple outlets. Though their connections to TechCrunch declined to profile us <sad violin music plays>, Kat's wordsmithing was critical towards getting Forbes excited about us (the Forbes intro came through our investors).
• Our Bookface post (internal YC network) was read by 1000+ and led to multiple customers
• They tweeted/facebooked our Forbes seed round announcement

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En Conclusión

Ultimately the choice is yours. But if you're drowning in decision paralysis then one way to think about it is as a mindset:

• If you are a baby bird that just hatched out of your cushy and stable 9-5 job and know little of the world of entrepreneurship, go for the program that will support you more (Techstars)
• If you are an older bird who knows what they are doing but just needs more access, go for the better brand recognition program (YC)

And while picking an accelerator is important, the reality is if your business sucks then neither accelerator will make you a unicorn.

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May the odds be ever in your favor,

Val

Cofounder @ Warmly
YC S20 & Techstars Boulder '20

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Oh yeah, and who are we?

Warmly is a free app that helps you create deeper relationships with the people who matter most. By simply connecting your calendar, Warmly gives you instant insights & context on everyone you meet, directly in Zoom & Google Hangouts.

As explained in prior articles we are going through a sales and marketing evolution. Buyers are moving faster than ever. Sales teams can use slack to stay ahead of the competition.

One way to achieve this is through effective communication and immediate action on leads. Today, many leading companies, including Hubspot, Drift, Stripe, AllSend, Webflow, and Salesforce-acquired Troops.ai, are leveraging the potential of Slack to enhance their sales communications. They send instantaneous notifications to their sales reps via Slack, keeping their teams alert and responsive. Especially when the average digital attention span is eight seconds, you want to immediately respond to buyer interest.

Essential Role of Slack Notifications in Revenue Operations

For revops teams, creating a system for your salespeople with relevant Slack notifications is no longer optional - it’s essential. If you’re not using this strategy, you’re missing a crucial opportunity. Using tools like Zapier, you can create low-code alerts for just about anything into Slack, a platform where your reps already live and work. The aim is to drive immediate action, keeping your team responsive and agile.

Sample automated email from an inbound request to Warmly. The rest of the Slack message includes meta information like email, how they heard about us, and why did they decide to book with us.

The One-Channel Strategy

Some businesses prefer to channel all their alerts to one communal Slack channel. This strategy generates a sense of urgency and competition, as every member can see and respond to the same alerts. After taking action on an alert - say, someone visited your website or opened a sales collateral - reps mark the notification with a check, indicating it’s been handled. For instance, we use the #f-sales channel to sync on every sales process, including mistakes, customer successes, and lessons that we can learn.

The Individual Channel Strategy

Alternatively, some companies create individual channels for each rep. In this setup, the rep’s manager or supervisor is included in the channel to ensure accountability. As an example team, our growth team has two to three members officially in charge of tasks, but we’re keen on bringing everyone into the loop, so we’ll post weekly and bi-weekly updates, either in the form of long-form digests or links to projects, to share the learnings. Even though the individual channels focus on the messages of two members, the wider community is involved in the reply and comment sections.

Types of Slack Notifications for Sales

From top-of-the-funnel interactions to greenfield accounts, there’s a wide array of potential alerts for your sales team:

1. Top of Funnel Interactions: If someone opens your email, that’s an ideal moment for a cold call, so why not set a Slack alert for this?
2. Meeting Requests: When someone wants to set up a meeting, a timely Slack alert can streamline the scheduling process.
3. Active Deals: Keep your team updated on any significant activity on active deals with real-time Slack alerts.
4. Account Visits: When a potential lead or customer visits your website, an immediate Slack alert allows your team to quickly follow up.
5. Inbound Form Fills: Instant alerts, whenever someone fills a form to request a demo, can help your team respond promptly.
6. Greenfield Accounts: These are companies visiting your website that are not yet in your CRM. If they’re within your ICP, this might be a great opportunity to reach out.

You can also differentiate your Slack notifications by priority level, with distinct alerts for high-priority and less important tasks. This strategy can help your team manage their time and focus more effectively.

Crafting a Sensible Slack Notification System Using Warmly

Creating an effective notification system on Slack requires a thoughtful approach. The goal is to design a set of notifications and channels that make sense for your team’s structure and workflow. At Warmly, we adopt the following channels to streamline our processes:

• #a-inbound-request: Prospect booked a demo
• #a-warmly-for-free: Prospect is trying our free version
• #a-inbound-pounce-response: Prospect responded to an outbound AI chat message on our website
• #a-identified-user: Prospect is identified on our website
• #a-identified-company: Target company is identified and active on our website
• #a-[AE name]-accounts: Target accounts owned by the AE is active on the website

Balancing the Use of Slack Notifications

While Slack notifications can be incredibly useful, it’s also important not to over-rely on them. Too many notifications can create a sense of constant urgency that might result in more noise than signal. Consider using Slack for real-time, actionable items that need to be addressed within the day. Other less time-sensitive information might be better suited to a daily email or dashboard.

Remember that it’s okay to mute a Slack channel unless you’re being directly messaged. This way, you’re only getting notifications for leads that you need to take action on, rather than getting drowned in information about your coworkers’ leads. Be willing to experiment with the number and frequency of notifications, and adjust them to find a balance that keeps your team responsive without overwhelming them.

Celebrating Success on Slack

Finally, remember that Slack is not just for tasks and alerts; it’s also a fantastic tool for celebrating success. Use it to create a positive work culture by celebrating wins, big or small. This practice not only boosts morale but also encourages further success.

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Slack notifications are powerful tools in the arsenal of any sales team. Used wisely, they can significantly improve the speed and effectiveness of your team’s communication, helping you to stay ahead in the competitive world of sales.

Warmly Secures $11M Series A to scale its AI fueled pipeline acceleration platform for SMBs 

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Delivers ready to convert prospects increasing pipeline by +200% in the first 3 months

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San Francisco, CA - October 19, 2023 - Warmly, the first AI fueled pipeline acceleration platform that harnesses the power of existing sales enablement and intent tools to automatically deliver ready to convert prospects to sales, announced an $11M Series A round led by Felicis, NFX, Zoom, F-Prime Capital, Maven Ventures and others. The Warmly platform orchestrates metadata from Salesforce, Hubspot, Slack, Outreach & Salesloft and combines them with intent data from 6sense, Clearbit and Bombora to identify, track, and connect with website visitors who are in active buy mode. This allows teams to prioritize the deals most likely to close. Warmly is purpose built to meet the growth targets and budgets of small and medium (SMB) sized B2B companies. Early adopters include New Relic, Zoom, Seamless.ai, and Sendoso.

“Organizations spend more than $47 billion each year to drive prospects to their websites, yet 97% of visitors never fill out a form or share their information,” said Warmly cofounder Carina Boo, “The ability to engage with these prospects in real-time, while they are actively researching on your site fast-tracks time to purchase, and that’s what sales reps need,” said Boo.

SMBs are struggling

99% of organizations are SMBs. In this climate of layoffs, global financial pressures and budget cuts, companies of all sizes have fewer in-bound leads while needing more ‘at-bats’ to meet growing quotas. Large organizations can often hire more staff or buy expensive enterprise grade solutions to help. The Warmly Platform was purpose-built to automate and orchestrate the sales tech stack for SMBs, and deliver ready to convert prospects. Warmly clients have seen: 

• ROI - Namecoach got 282% ROI in 6 months while Behavioral Signals doubled their enterprise pipeline in 30 days
• Fast results - Kanji booked two qualified new business meetings with minutes of installation 

“We were running multiple campaigns and weren’t seeing the results we wanted,” said Jay Leano, VP Sales, Behavioral Signals. Within the first month of using Warmly we were able to double our enterprise pipeline with outbound campaigns that converted quickly on our site.”

According to Gartner, most prospects require on average 20 touches to convert to a trial or a meeting. And cold outbound conversion rates have plummeted as buyers are now inundated with sales outreach. Warmly cuts to the chase, enabling sales to start a warmer conversation with prospects directly, at the exact moment they are actively researching.  

“The reason to buy Warmly is to deliver more new business meetings to your reps,” said Jonathan Pogact, VP Marketing, Seamless.ai. “Knowing that someone who has engaged with our content and emails before is back again, and being able to engage with them in real-time, ensures our sales reps have higher rates of conversion. This solution is critical for any business that runs on inbound marketing and SDRs,” said Pogact.

“The average digital attention span is 8 seconds, according to media analysts and data scientists,” says Aydin Senkut, Warmly Series A investor, Founder and Managing Partner at Felicis. “So the opportunity to catch a prospect while they are actively engaged with your content is fleeting. There is no time to chat the visitor, upload a lead into a CRM, enrich the data, and add to a follow up sequence. Warmly provides real-time orchestration of these tasks within that 8-second window.”

How Warmly works: Simple, automated orchestration with easy installation:

• Warmly identifies anonymous traffic and associates the ‘suspects’ to opportunities and target accounts in the CRM
• Accounts are scored based on intent signals from website, CRM, Outreach, SalesLoft, 6sense and Bombora
• High propensity to convert prospects visiting the site are served to sales reps instantly so they can engage and greet ideal prospects via AI chatbot real-time
• If the AI Chabot is not able to secure a meeting, then Warmly automatically finds the decision makers of hot accounts and sends personalized messages on behalf of the sales reps via email and LinkedIn

By automatically aggregating data and integrating insights from various platforms, Warmly identifies which accounts to prioritize, the stage of the buyer journey, and orchestrates the most effective next step to drive trials and meetings.

“Many of the newer sales tools and strategies work in silos to solve one piece of the sales funnel challenge," explained James Currier, General Partner of NFX. "Warmly's AI driven approach and automated orchestration of these tools enables sales teams to convert leads faster.”

“Organizations still struggle with how to increase sales productivity,” explained Max Greenwald, CEO of Warmly. “The promise of AI is not to replace humans, it’s to enable humans to be more effective and deliver more with the same or less. Warmly has the first solution that does this today. With this new capital we will bring the vision of autonomous sales orchestration. By shifting from automation to autonomy, we can empower sales teams to navigate complex processes on autopilot and serve prospects more dynamically.”

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About Warmly

Founded in 2020 by Ex-Google and Forbes 30 under 30 honorees, Warmly is the first AI fueled pipeline acceleration platform that harnesses the power of existing sales enablement and intent tools to automatically identify high propensity website visitors and alert them to sales for real-time engagement. It’s the first such solution purpose built to meet the business and budget needs of SMBs.

Based in San Francisco, Warmly investors include Felicis, NFX, Zoom, F-Prime Capital, Maven Ventures, Soma Capital, YC and others. The company has grown 30% month-over-month during the last year. 

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About Felicis

Founded in 2006, Felicis is a venture capital firm investing in companies reinventing core markets, as well as those creating frontier technologies. Felicis focuses on early-stage investments and currently manages over $3B in capital across 9 funds. The firm is an early backer of more than 47 companies valued at $1B+. More than 100 of its portfolio companies have been acquired or gone public, including Adyen (IPO), Credit Karma (acq by Intuit), Cruise (acquired by General Motors), Fitbit (IPO), Guardant Health (IPO), Meraki (acq by Cisco), Ring (acq by Amazon), and Shopify (IPO). The firm is based in Menlo Park and San Francisco in California. Learn more at www.felicis.com.

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About NFX

NFX is the world’s largest venture firm dedicated exclusively to pre-seed and seed stage companies. The firm is based in San Francisco, CA and Herzlia, Israel, and invests in network-effects driven startups. Founded by entrepreneurs who built 10 companies with more than $10 billion in exits across multiple industries and regions, NFX is transforming how true innovators are funded. Learn more at www.nfx.com.

Let’s be real here:

Drift really isn’t a good fit for small and medium-sized businesses today.

I mean, the tool itself is great (if you’re looking for a purely automated passive lead collector). But with a $30k starting price tag, it's not really within reach of SMBs anymore.

But hey, it’s not 2015 anymore, either. 

There are a number of powerful Drift alternatives & competitors available, many of them with pricing and feature sets designed to serve a non-enterprise audience.

In this guide, we will dive into seven attention-worthy alternatives to Drift. Each provides a slightly different take on conversational marketing and sales, so you’ll no doubt be able to find one that matches what you’re looking for.

Table of Contents

• 7 Drift Competitors & Alternatives Worth Their Weight In Leads
• 1. Qualified - Best For Integrating With Salesforce 
• 2. ServiceBell - Best For Live Video Chat
• 3. Intercom - Best For Customer Support
• 4. ZoomInfo Chat - Best For A Full Stack GTM Solution
• 5. Signals - Best For If/Then Workflow Logic 
• 6. HubSpotChat - Best For Out-Of-The-Box Chat
• 7. Warmly - Best For Account-Based Orchestration
• Why Consider An Alternative To Drift? 

7 Drift Competitors & Alternatives Worth Their Weight In Leads 

1. Qualified - Best For Integrating With Salesforce 

Qualified brands itself as a “pipeline generation machine” and offers a host of features (like chatbots, meeting scheduling, and some really great lead routing) to help sales teams achieve this goal.

(Image Source)

Why Consider Qualified As An Alternative To Drift?

Qualified is at the other end of the automation-human spectrum to Drift.

Here, The focus is on orchestrating human capital to have sales reps respond on the site rather than conversations being entirely automated and passive.

Qualified’s “Signals” feature is slick. It reveals your hottest accounts (using AI-predicted purchase intent) to help reps identify which leads to prioritize.

They've got a bunch of great lead-based features (chat, video, forms) that do a fantastic job of routing leads to the right rep and mapping them over to the correct account.

Also, their reporting suite is great, with important insights into chat analytics, marketing attribution, and some brilliant leadership dashboards.

Then, there’s Qualified’s integration with Salesforce, which is best-in-class, making Qualified a good option for teams deeply embedded in the Salesforce architecture. 

Similarly, they've got great integrations with Marketo and Outreach. If you're using this tech stack (Salesforce, Marketo, and Outreach), you probably have the scale and complexity to justify using Qualified.

Where Qualified Falls Short

If you’re using any CRM other than Salesforce, then Qualified probably isn’t for you.

While its Salesforce integration is strong (Qualified leadership are all former Salesforce people and have very strong partnerships with the brand), integrations with other CRM platforms are a non-starter.

Like Salesforce, Qualified takes a long time to set up and maintain, making it more of an enterprise tool.

Then there’s the cost involved…

Qualified Pricing

Qualified is even more expensive than Drift, with its cheapest plan costing in the range of $42k a year for “the basics.”

For more customization and strong Salesforce connectivity, you’re looking at $72k or more annually. 

With all of this considered, Qualified is a solid platform if you've got the scale and budget for it, and to run a human-led playbook.

If not (like most companies that fall under the SMB banner), its probably not for you.

2. ServiceBell - Best For Live Video Chat 

ServiceBell is one of few video-focused alternatives to Drift, designed specifically for brands that run on Hubspot.

(Image Source)

Why Consider ServiceBell As An Alternative To Drift?

ServiceBell describes itself as “built for HubSpot” and even uses a similar color scheme to align itself with that brand. But it goes beyond that, offering deep integrations with HubSpot suites of tools (CRM, CMS, marketing hub, etc.)

Its main selling point is that it's one of the only tools on the market that focuses on live video chat that sits directly on your website.

So, it's obviously much more on the “human” side of the spectrum than is Drift.

Where ServiceBell Falls Short

There is, of course, an obvious drawback with the whole live video thing: someone has to be around to be on the other end of the call.

That means reps need to be available instantly, which is a huge problem if your company is small and only has a couple of reps. 

You don’t want them sitting around all day waiting for an opportunity to jump on a video call. Your timing needs to be perfect in order to capture the intent.

As I’m writing this, there are no reps available at ServiceBell, so their chat reverts to this:

ServiceBell Pricing

ServiceBell is reasonably priced, with a free plan and paid options starting at $9k a year.

This puts them in the range of SMBs, which is kind of strange since those companies often have the budget for enough AEs to run a play like this.

3. Intercom - Best For Customer Support 

Intercom has been the name in customer chat for a while now. 

With generative artificial intelligence (like ChatGPT) blowing up the SaaS game, they’ve shifted gears a little to an AI-based chat solution.

(Image Source) 

Why Consider Intercom As An Alternative To Drift?

For support-focused teams, few tools are as well equipped as Intercom.

Built primarily around their people-driven chat tool, the AI component sits at the front end of the conversation and helps answer customer queries until human intervention is required.

Intercom's AI chat tool might be a cost-effective solution for small companies with limited budget for support but who want to improve their service level.

Where Intercom Falls Short

Of course, the flip side of the focus on customer support is that Intercom doesn’t offer a lot to serve the sales use case. 

Chat is passive and reactive, not proactive (like Qualified, Warmly, and ServiceBell), meaning capturing buying intent at the right moment isn’t Intercom's strong suit.

Plus, they don't offer much in the way of reporting and analytics that matter to sales teams.

Intercom Pricing

Intercom’s Starter plan comes in at just $888 a year. However, this only includes their standard AI for customer service chatbot, and you can’t add any custom responses until you upgrade to the Pro or Premium plans (pricing obscured).

4. ZoomInfo Chat - Best For A Full Stack GTM Solution 

ZoomInfo Chat is an interesting one.

Unlike other Drift alternatives, it's not designed as a standalone conversational marketing tool (though it can be used as one).

Instead, ZoomInfo Chat is part of the wider ZoomInfo architecture, which is comprised of their sales, marketing, operations, and talent (HR) suites.

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Why Consider ZoomInfo Chat As An Alternative To Drift?

ZoomInfo Chat is an obvious solution if you’re already using the company’s MarketingOS or SalesOS suites. 

Or, of course, if you’re looking for a chatbot tool as part of a wider go-to-market strategy and you like the idea of managing everything in a single platform.

For instance, their SalesOS suite includes a conversation intelligence feature (think Gong), which can be used to fuel the human element of chat-based conversations.

Where ZoomInfo Chat Falls Short

While ZoomInfo Chat does allow for some decent “if/then” workflows to guide buyers through a journey, these workflows aren’t quite as strong as Signals or Qualified.

Also, Chat isn’t ZoomInfo’s primary tool (or even in their set of four primary “operating systems”). They acquired a company called Insent back in 2021 as an extension of their core business.

That's because they've saturated their core competency (B2B data) and have had to look for other ways to keep growing NRR.

So, while they fact that Chat isn't their primary tool isn't problematic in and of itself, it does imply that feature growth for this tool might be limited, and you will be subject to a whole lot of upsell/cross-sell conversations.

ZoomInfo Chat Pricing

Unfortunately, ZoomInfo is one of those “you’ll have to talk to us first” companies, so we don’t have any pricing details available for them.

5. Signals - Best For If/Then Workflow Logic 

Signals is another AI-based lead capture platform.

Attributes, behaviors, and intent signals are used to qualify visitors, and rule-based chatbot workflows drive conversations before funneling leads to a sales rep.

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Why Consider Signals As An Alternative To Drift?

Signals best feature its workflows, which allows you to architect a bunch of powerful if/then logic.

Sure, this takes a bit of setting up, but once you’ve got the conditional logic locked in, you’ll have a great contextual conversation marketing tool.

Signals also has the ability to reveal the company of the person on your site, find the right decision-makers (based on your ICP), and add them to a pre-programmed email sequence.

Aside from that, the team at Signals is super friendly, and they've come a long way as a completely bootstrapped company.

Where Signals Falls Short

Signals’ company data (for revealing who is on your site and for enriching that with firmographics) is all done in-house.

Other alternatives (e.g., Warmly, Qualified, and ServiceBell) partner with third-party data suppliers, such as 6sense and Clearbit, to reveal anonymous visitors and then enrich that with best-in-class data.

Signals Pricing

Signals is one of the few alternatives to Drift that allows you to pay monthly.

Plans start at $599 a month or $5988 a year (they provide a discount for annual subscriptions).

6. HubSpotChat - Best For Out-Of-The-Box Chat 

HubSpotChat is a basic chatbot tool from HubSpot.

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Why Consider HubSpotChat As An Alternative To Drift?

HubSpotChat is a good option for a simple, basic, out-of-the-box chat tool.

It doesn’t offer the deepest functionality, but it is available for free, which is why we’ve included it in our list of Drift alternatives.

Where HubSpotChat Falls Short

To be quite honest, the list of cons is a lot longer than the list of pros for this one.

HubSpotChat lacks a lot of functionality that platforms like Warmly and Qualified can support, like:

• Intent identification
• Company reveal
• Full-cycle orchestration
• Reporting and analytics 

HubSpotChat Pricing

HubSpotChat is one of many free tools from HubSpot. For deeper functionality, however, you’ll need to subscribe to one of their paid plans (like their MarketingHub suite).

7. Warmly - Best For Account-Based Orchestration 

Warmly (yours truly) combines the best of AI-powered automation and real-life human involvement.

We call this account-based orchestration—a more scalable, efficient, and cost-effective alternative to account-based marketing.

Further learning: The Rise of Account-Based Orchestration in the Age of AI and Automation.

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Here's the problem:

There are so many awesome tools out there that help with intent data and buyer signals, but all of these siloed solutions still have to be orchestrated.

Usually, this orchestration is a human job, which is super costly in both time and money, and that's before considering what's involved in maintaining that complex tech stack.

This puts effective sales orchestration largely out of reach for SMBs (so, like, 99% of organizations).

Warmly has the first sales orchestration solution that automates this process quickly and seamlessly and delivers truly ready-to-buy/try prospects to sales.

Why Consider Warmly As An Alternative To Drift?

When 35-50% of sales go to the company that responds first, speed is everything. But only 7% of companies respond within five minutes of a prospect’s form submission, and half don't even respond until five business days later.

Warmly provides the best (in our opinion) middle ground between human touch and AI automation, helping you respond to buyer intent lightning-fast and drastically improving your speed-to-lead.

Our agile platform combines best-in-class intent data from 6sense, Clearbit, Bombora, and People Data Labs to help you capture every piece of intent and understand exactly when an actual human should engage.

Here’s the big difference:

We use generative AI to automate and personalize outreach on your rep's behalf. 

This is triggered by intent signals from the tools you already have in your tech stack (Apollo.io, HubSpot, Salesforce, Slack, Pipedrive, Outreach, SalesLoft, etc.).

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The entire workflow—from intent being triggered to outreach being fired—is automated. This delivers more consistent coverage and messaging, plus much faster and more proactive communication with high-intent prospects.

All of these touchpoints look like they come from an AE (personalized emails, LinkedIn requests, messages, etc.) but are, in fact, automated and sent by Warmly’s orchestration system.

Take Warmly's AI chat.

You can set up AI-generated messages triggered based on known prospect data:

The chatbot will also communicate with the relevant sales rep (via Slack integration), so they can jump in and reply in real-time when appropriate.

This transition takes place seamlessly, as if they were speaking with you all along!

Warmly helps growing SMBs scale up an AI SDR army to catch interest at optimal points, only looping in sellers when an account is actually ready for a human conversation.

Learn more about Warmly: The Account-Based Orchestration Platform.

Why Warmly Might Not Be A Good Fit For You

A bit of transparency here:

Warmly is designed for the SMB and lower middle market. Easy to start. Easy to use. Easy to see ROI.

That means we’re a great alternative for smaller and mid-sized organizations who see Drift’s enterprise feature set (and subsequent cost) as overkill, but it does mean that our integrations right now don’t fully support the upper middle market or enterprise organizations.

Warmly Pricing

Warmly offers 3 different plans:

At $850 a month, our most basic paid plan comes in at 30% of the price of Drift’s cheapest tier and less than 25% of the price of Qualified, a popular Drift alternative.

Plus, unlike some of the other Drift alternatives discussed here, you can get started for free on our platform without needing to chat with a salesperson.

Why Consider An Alternative To Drift? 

Drift has been the defacto brand for sales-focused chatbots for a few years now. They’re regularly praised for coining the term “conversational marketing” and for even creating the category itself.

So, why might you consider a Drift alternative in the first place?

Prohibitive Pricing

Let’s be honest: 

Drift is not cheap.

They've shifted their focus to enterprise, and it's reflected in their pricing.

Their cheapest plan, which is billed as being for “small businesses,” comes in at $30k a year. They also have a $90k and a custom enterprise option, which is what they’re really gunning for.

To be sure, this is the standard path for software companies. 

Drift, like many others, started off servicing SMBs. Then, they gradually moved upmarket as the brand gained traction, and their size allowed them to pursue deals with a greater CAC but a much higher deal size.

That’s great news for them, but it does leave Drift as an immediate non-option for smaller organizations with leaner budgets.

No Human Involvement 

Drift’s focus has always been on using automated conversation workflows to drive the passive collections of leads from your website over to sales.

This works well with high-volume traffic, as it becomes a numbers game. With 200,000 monthly visitors to your site, even a 1% conversion rate drives 200 new leads a month.

Clearly, this is less effective for smaller companies with a lot less traffic coming through each month. But, more importantly, a fully passive and automated approach leaves a lot of quality intent on the table by not getting a human involved.

Some alternatives to Drift (such as Warmly, Qualified, and ServiceBell) improve on the Drift model by putting a greater focus on human involvement. 

Lack Of Proactive, Real-Time Engagement 

Drift doesn’t really have a feature to show what people are doing on your site in real-time.

This means that you can’t interact with them proactively. Drift is designed to be reactive, kicking off when a visitor engages with the chatbot and then routing that customer to sales.

An SDR Army at Fraction of The Price of Drift 

Drift is, without a doubt, the industry standard for on-site conversational marketing.

But with industry-standard tools come industry-standard price tags, not to mention some pretty heavy startup costs, once you consider the weeks (or months!) involved in integration and onboarding sessions. 

With Warmly, you can begin receiving hard ROI in 20 minutes with just two steps :

1. Add a code snippet to the site
2. One-click authenticate your existing systems (Hubspot, Outreach, Apollo, Slack, LinkedIn, etc.)

You’ll immediately start improving conversion rates by revealing who is on your site, enriching that with best-in-class data, syncing that data back to your CRM, and routing hot accounts to the right rep.

Plus, with plans starting from just $850 a month (billed annually), you’ll reduce your Drift bill by at ~70%.

Discover how Kandji booked 2 qualified meetings just 8 minutes after going live with Warmly.

An investment banker, a lawyer, and a consultant walk into a bar.

What do they all have in common?

They’re all client-facing positions that depend on building long-term relationships with customers. And for the past few years, they’ve all been working over Zoom.

While no physical travel means that client-facing professionals can squeeze more meetings into their day, it’s also led to a massive drop-off in client connections. We all know the ROI on client relationships is huge. Better relationships lead to increased customer satisfaction scores, which means more loyal clients who continue to buy your company’s services.

The biggest issue facing client-facing team executives is enforcing standardization. How can you coach professionals under you in the company’s way of doing business, while maintaining the individuality that helps the agent bond with clients?

Digital transformation poses a challenge, but also an opportunity. Warmly is working on tools that help executives managing investment bankers, consultants, and lawyers leverage brand logos and taglines, while also allowing creativity and nuance in forming connections.

Building Trust With Prospects Over Zoom

Creating trust is something our company has painstakingly dissected over several years of engaging and talking to thousands of business professionals. We’ve found that a sense of trust is broken down into three main factors.

1. Finding Commonality

People are naturally predisposed to run away. That’s because until very recently in our evolution, human beings were often prey. Our natural sense of distrust is what kept us alive. Research also shows that why we do trust hinges on another evolutionary trait: we are much more likely to trust people who are similar to us in some way.

While coaching enterprise clients on how to use our software with clients, we stress that users should display their city, the local weather, and idiosyncratic things about themselves in their Zoom name tag. That increases the chance that they will immediately find something in common on which to build that initial bond.

Maybe the consultant is Zooming in from Colorado, and the client just got back from Vail. The rapport generated by this insight tells the client: Hey, we’ve had shared experiences. I’m not going to hurt you, and helps the client let their guard down.

2. Establishing Credibility

Buyers want to know the seller knows what they’re doing. A professional who logs onto a meeting with the prospect’s logo incorporated into their Zoom background is demonstrating that they came to the meeting prepared. Having the meeting agenda hanging over their shoulder is another way to look professional.

The impression can fail, however, if the usage varies wildly across the company. Warmly’s enterprise license includes brand standardization tools so clients always feel like they’re getting the same caliber of professionalism, even if they’re dealing with someone new.

A local credit union that Warmly helped set up had never done virtual meetings with customers prior to the pandemic, and didn’t realize how they were coming across. Their customer satisfaction scores dropped dramatically—not because they suddenly weren’t good at what to do. It’s scary to put your life savings into an institution, and the representatives were used to building these connections in person. By implementing Warmly’s Zoom add-on, every banker showed up to client meetings with a fun and unique business card that matched their coworkers, along with a personal bio that resonates with the local customer. The standardization also creates continuity, even if a client is dealing with a different banker on any given day.

New clients also want to feel assured that the professional has a track record of success in their field. Social proof is a powerful driver of emotion, and there are multiple options in the Warmly add-on for Zoom to engender that trust.

Consulting clients have found success adding a QR code over their shoulder linking to prior case studies. You can also have the codes link to corporate social handles that showcase prior or current companies you have worked with. Why not run a ticker tape with the logos of your biggest clients or all the five-star reviews your company has had across the bottom?

Dissemination of these assets should also be easy and error-proof to avoid unnecessary slip-ups. We’ve coached an insurance company executive at a company where business was booming. They had recently hired hundreds of representatives, but many were not aware of all the valuable collateral they were able to offer clients. During a demonstration, Warmly helped them upload and instantly distribute customer presentation material that their salesmen can simply hover over their shoulders during Zoom calls whenever a customer asks for it. ‍

3. Forge Authenticity

A common mistake service professionals make is that they immediately try to sell a service. Services are not sold, they’re bought. When you want to buy something, it’s because you have a sense of trust, you think they’re professional, that they have done this for other people. More importantly, it’s because they get you. People want to feel like others truly understands them and their problems.

As a client-facing professional, you are trying to identify their problems and whether you can help, not trying to force a solution down their throat that doesn’t fit. That means asking doing our pre-meeting prep on both the company and the individual you’re meeting. It also means asking questions with the intent of figuring out what problems the client has, and whether you can help—not forcing a solution down their throats if it doesn’t fit.

Spend time understanding the person you’re talking to, what they are working toward, and their goals for their business. Then see where you fit into helping them achieve those goals. Warmly also lets you take notes within Zoom, so you can stay focused on their needs.

Conclusion

We believe that a corporation should create a sense of uniformity, brand standardization, and professionalism across all their client-facing teams. Instantly matching backgrounds, coordinating release of company announcements at the same time, sharing tidbits and news about the company, creating a professional introductory experience shows the client that your company is a serious company worth working with.

We recently advised a law firm in Australia that had been struggling to create an air of professionalism in their meetings. They didn’t know who was calling in from where. They didn’t know what the right background or logo to use across the company. Everybody would use different things in all the wrong places. Warmly allowed them to instantly distribute the right business-branded collateral to ensure a consistent client-facing experience that led to increased customer satisfaction scores for all their legal teams and even the securing of new business because their clients enjoyed working with them virtually more so than competition.

Warmly is now working on a unique, branded in-meeting client experience to help companies recreate the professionalism of a physical board room during virtual meetings.

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Have you ever met someone entirely new over Zoom for the very first time? Of course you have. Now, have you ever had butterflies wondering what you’re going to say to break the ice with that new contact? Yup. It happens to the best of us.

Icebreakers aren’t just cheesy or silly, but rather, they can help you build interesting context around the person you’re meeting. For instance, if you ask them what they wish they’d studied in college, and they say psychology, you can follow up with that interesting new study you saw in Scientific American. If someone admits to being a night owl and not an early bird, you can schedule a late-night follow-up email as a reference to their preference.

Context leads to rapport, and rapport leads to stronger connections -- in both business, and life. So, please ask some (gently) probing questions, and use these 50 icebreakers in your next call. (And whatever they answer, don’t forget to jot a note down in Warmly, so you remember their secret skill!)

1. What’s your favorite dish that reminds you of childhood?
2. What’s your comfort food?
3. Are you a beach or a mountain person and why?
4. What is a hobby you've always wanted to pick up?
5. What was your first concert you went to?
6. Who’s a famous person you’ve met?
7. If you could write a book, what genre would you write it in? (ie mystery, thriller, romance, historical fiction, fantasy, non-fiction, etc?)
8. What’s a secret skill you have?
9. What’s the first thing you bought with your own money?
10. What’s your favorite place to go when you want to be alone?
11. What was your first job?
12. If you could spend an extra $100 on yourself each week, what would you do?
13. If you could get another degree in something now, what would you study?
14. What show or movie have you really enjoyed recently?
15. How do you like to relax?
16. Which actor would you want to play you in a movie?
17. What’s your beverage of choice?
18. What TV show or movie do you want to watch next?
19. What was the last place you traveled to?
20. Are you an early bird or a night owl?
21. What’s your best tip to not go crazy indoors?
22. What’s a funny corona meme or video you've seen?
23. What’s the first thing you’re gonna do when the quarantine is over?
24. What is something you got into trouble for in high school?
25. What’s the worst job you ever had?
26. What’s something you tried, but will never try again?
27. What’s one thing that’s happened to you that has made you a stronger person?
28. What’s one thing that’s happened to you in your life that made you feel weak?
29. Where is one place you feel most like yourself?
30. Where is your favorite place to escape to?
31. Who do you think has had the largest influence on the person you are today?
32. If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
33. If you had one day left to live, what would you do first?
34. What decade do you feel you most belong in?
35. Who are you closest to in your family? Why?
36. Who is the one person in this world that knows you best?
37. What is your favorite quality about your best friend?
38. When you were younger what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?
39. If you could identify with one fictional character (from a book, show, or movie) who would it be?
40. Do you easily accept compliments? Or do you hate compliments?
41. Is your favorite attribute about yourself physical or non-physical?
42. What is your favorite physical attribute about yourself?
43. What is your favorite non-physical attribute about yourself?
44. Do you believe in love at first sight?
45. Do you believe in soul mates?
46. How seriously do you take horoscopes?
47. Have you ever been in love? How many times?
48. What makes you fall in love with someone?
49. What does vulnerability mean to you? What has the ability to make you vulnerable?

What’s one thing you’re scared to ask a woman/man, but really want to?

Can we all agree that Zoom is awkward and time-consuming? “You’re on mute” was one of the most used phrases in corporate America during the pandemic, right behind “new normal” and “unprecedented times.”

Now that Zoom is the de-facto virtual workplace for most people, so much time is wasted on inefficiencies like mute/unmute, coordinating with your virtual sales team, and scrambling to find the link to your next meeting.

If you’re consistently running five minutes behind, try these 10 Zoom hacks for making your virtual meetings more productive.

Problem #1: It only gets good at the end.

Salespeople know to always schedule the next meeting before you get off the phone with the prospect, but you don’t get to that until the end of the first one. How many times have you found yourself running late to your next demo call? You know how rude it is to the second person, but don’t want to mess things up with this one either. What do you do?

If you have Warmly, use the Running Late feature to customize a template for what to say when this situation comes up. With one click, you can let your next meeting know you’re running a few minutes behind, while still focusing on next steps for your first meeting.

Whether you’re meeting a prospect, coworker, or a friend, you want people to feel like you respect their time, so be professional and always apologize when things come up.

Problem #2: You’re always late to your next meeting.

If you find yourself chronically late, the best thing to do is schedule a few minutes between virtual meetings. If that’s not possible, try using the Warmly Zoom App’s in-meeting countdown timer. It will pop up a huge warning when there’s a few minutes left in your meeting, so you know to wrap it up. The best part? It also shows a “Join Meeting” button, so you can hop onto your next meeting straight from the previous one without having to fumble for a link. 

Problem #3: Your conversation partner is missing.

Your teammate or a prospect is running behind. You don’t know if they’re even there. You could try pulling up their email, phone number, or Slack, but all those require multiple steps and the clock is ticking. How can you ping them quickly? With one click in the Warmly Zoom App, you can send them a Where r u? message that will notify the that the meeting is happening and even send them a Zoom link so they can get to the meeting really easily.

Problem #4: You forgot to take notes.

How often have you gotten off a string of calls and realized that you forgot to take notes for half of them? If you’re one of those people who always forgets to jot things down after a meeting, try using an app like Warmly that pops up a message after every meeting and prompts you to add a quick follow-up, action item, or reminder before moving on.

Problem #5: You always forget to unmute.

How often do you start talking, figure out you’re on mute, quickly jam the unmute button, but then have to wait for a 3-second lag until you can speak again? You can leave your audio on, but then you risk passing sirens, roommates, kids or pets disrupting the meeting. Try using Zoom’s built-in push-to-talk feature. You can keep yourself muted, and just hold down the spacebar to unmute whenever you want to speak. Just let go when you’re done and your audio will automatically turn off again. No more racing around your trackpad to hit the Mute/Unmute button.

Problem #6: It’s too hard to coordinate your virtual sales team.

When you’re selling as a squad, looking unified can make a great impression. Your sales team can wear matching t-shirts, or better yet, match your backgrounds. Try emailing a picture to everyone on the team and have them upload it themselves. If you don’t want to risk a coworker messing up or forgetting, Warmly also has a Matching Background feature where one person can upload a background and it will automatically populate for everyone else on the team.

Problem #7: Do we have a mutual connection?

In a survey we did of 1,000 business professionals, 74% have found themselves researching a person while speaking to them. If you’re looking someone up during a virtual meeting, you aren’t focused on building a relationship with them. Instead of pulling up a browser, use a tool like Warmly that automatically pulls up context on the person you’re speaking to, and even their LinkedIn page, all without leaving Zoom.

Problem #8: I can’t remember how I met this person.

Getting an introduction or having a professional “meet cute” is a great way to start off on a warm foot. Yet what if you can’t remember the mutual contact that brought you together, or what you talked about by email six months ago?

The Warmly Zoom App doubles as a personal CRM—or a superhero assistant—by automatically pulling up past email exchanges. It also makes people feel important when you remember little details about them.

Problem #9: You need a waiting room.

Too many meetings back-to-back? If you send everyone a different Zoom link, you’ll go crazy trying to track down the right meeting code for all of them. Try using the same link for all your virtual meetings with Zoom’s Waiting Room feature. You’ll stay in the same call, and everyone who meets with you can join at their scheduled time. If someone shows up early—or you’re running late—the next person will be put in a virtual waiting room until you let them in.

Problem #10: Who am I talking to again?

‍Do you ever wish you had an org chart in front of you when you’re talking to someone? Maybe you want to know who their boss is, so that you can ask for an introduction. Organizational charts are crucial for high-level sales.

You can look up someone’s LinkedIn page, but knowing their title won’t always tell you who they answer to. Try a resource like The Org to see where they stand in their organization. Warmly People Insights will also provide this information right in the Zoom App so you don’t have to pull up a browser on the sly.

How often does a prospect mispronounce your name and you bite your tongue? Maybe you’re on the other side, wondering how to address a customer without offending them. With virtual calls making the world smaller, it’s more important than ever than to be inclusive. That means saying people’s names, and hearing our own, with the right pronunciation.

You might think name pronunciation is a small thing. After all, nobody is hurt when Joey from Friends says “moo” instead of “moot.” Except our brains literally light up in MRIs when we hear our own name.

“When my wife and I chose names for our children, we intentionally thought about how it would be pronounced in the Western world,” says DeathtoFluff founder Belal Batrawy (that’s pronounced “bee-lal”). “We wanted to spare our children the same experience my wife and I had growing up. We picked names that would be easy for English speakers, carry importance in our religion and culture, and also can teach someone who’s never met a Muslim something about us just by hearing the name.”

"We wanted to spare our children the same experience my wife and I had growing up."

In a survey of 1,060 people by name pronunciation start-up NameCoach, 10% said they’ve messed up a sale because they mispronounced a customer’s name. The study also found that emotions from hearing your name mispronounced ranged from alienated, self-conscious, to discriminated against. Names are central to our identities just as much as pronouns. It isn’t just awkward when you get someone’s name wrong, it can be downright hurtful.

That’s why we added a feature to the Warmly Zoom App for people to enter how they want their name pronounced. It also pulls in a suggested pronunciation recording from NameCoach. Yet the best way to find out how a person wants their name said is still just to ask, “Hey, is your name pronounced X?” Warmly could have already told you what ‘X’ is, but asking anyway shows the prospect that you really care about getting it right.

Instead of brushing past their name, or saying it fast and hoping they don’t notice, make it a starting point of the conversation. If you have an unusual name, this might even make it less awkward for the customer to ask you how you say yours.

People with rare names are usually aware of it. They might have had it mispronounced by teachers, colleagues, and friends their entire lives. They’ve stopped looking in the “personalized” gift section. They’re probably used to having their names butchered, and maybe told themselves it doesn’t matter. But everyone, whether customers or salespeople, want to feel seen and heard.

Name pronunciation is a powerful sales tool when you get it right. Not only does it show respect, actually using names, and hearing them aloud, helps you form a deeper connection.

Being able to hear, “Thanks for the demo, Max” and saying, “Thank you, Jonahs” is an easy way to reinforce your connection at the end of the call. Having Warmly helps too, by making sure both your names, along with the pronunciations, are on-screen during virtual calls.

There’s no question that the pandemic has changed how companies sell. Presentations in boardrooms are now meetings in Zoom Rooms. Conferences are now Zoom Webinars. Schmoozing over dinner is now… well, another Zoom call, even as the world is opening back up.

One thing hasn’t changed. Even with so much communication moved virtually, building relationships is still foundational to landing new deals.

A GLG survey in 2020 found that while 44% thought the “lack of face time with clients” was negative, most were neutral or even positive about it. That’s because sales folks are finding ways to connect differently, from using breakout rooms to showing vulnerability by sharing more of their home life.

Here are 4 ways that Zoom can make you virtually sell better.

1. Find your client’s pain points.

Sales teams used to be able to fly in-person to conferences and to meet with business leaders in order to figure out what pain points they have. Now these conversations have to happen over a video connection with (literally!) a limited window into the client’s life. How can you make the most of networking over Zoom?

The best way has always been through conversation. Ask smart questions that either demonstrate your expertise or explore the client’s day-to-day. Our Warmly add-on for Zoom can also help you represent your company (and generate valuable brand impressions!) whether you’re in a conference with one person or hundreds. You can share not only your company’s logo, but your title, credentials, certifications, or even fun facts about yourself.

2. Keep the relationship going.

After you receive a potential customer’s information at a networking event, how do you maintain the relationship? You’ve already made a great impression and secured the first call, but there will be another call after this one. That means the stakes are high to look professional and build relationships.

The key is building genuine connections over things that you and the client genuinely care about. Our Warmly add-on lets you add personal touches to your Zoom window, such as personal photos, ice breakers, or even company news that you can use as a jumping off point for conversation.

3. Team up fast.

If you work in a growing sales department, new teams are spun up all the time, which means you are always getting to know new teammates. On large sales pitches, the stakes are even higher. Connecting well with your teammates as you’re forming a new pitch is vital.

Maximize the time you spend in virtual meetings getting to know each other by using icebreakers. Having a tool like Warmly’s Zoom app lets you add background information about yourself to increase the chances of hitting it off. In an internal meeting, you can add hobbies, your recent projects, or even something weird about yourself that you’d like to share with your coworkers.

Make sure to have your own name pronunciation and pronouns on-screen to make it easy to reach out. You never know who might be nervous to speak up because they’re nervous about mispronouncing or misgendering someone.

4. Be on even when your video is off.

Sometimes the customer will meet you on Zoom but keep their cameras off. This is especially common in older, sleepier industries. You want to conform to the client’s level of comfort, but what’s the point of one person on video reading off slides when everyone else is a black box? You might as well be on a conference call. Try using Warmly’s add-on for Zoom to put up a Video-Off Nametag. Your clients will be able to see pictures and information about everyone on the call, and your whole team looks more professional in the process.

What’s the most embarrassing moment you’ve ever had as a virtual sales team? If it hasn’t happened yet, it will soon. Research by McKinsey recently found that 71% of revenue at the average B2B company is now driven by virtual activities, and it’s not going away. Buyers are increasingly choosing digital or remote purchasing options.

Here are five common #virtualsalesteamproblems—and how to prevent them:

1. Name (Mis)Pronunciation

Have you ever pulled in your VP of sales to help close the deal, but they made it worse by completely butchering the prospect’s name? Mispronouncing someone’s moniker can be as offensive as using the wrong pronoun. Virtual calls have opened up the sales pipeline globally in both directions. Your coworkers, prospects, and even other sellers may be coming from anywhere in the world. Nothing can turn a prospect from hot to cold faster than feeling disrespected. That’s why we added autogenerated name pronunciations from Namecoach to the Warmly Zoom App, so you can instantly learn how to say it right—before or during your meeting.

2. A Forever Silent Prospect

Your sales team logs into a meeting. You have 30 minutes to impress the buyer, but first you have to go through a round of introductions. Everyone says their name, title, how long they’ve worked at the company, and basically gives a one-minute diatribe to prove that they’re a professional. At this point, you’re six minutes into a 30-minute meeting, and the prospect hasn’t even said a word.

You’ve just wasted a third of the customer’s time on something that isn’t meaningful! With Warmly, you can start the meeting with a suggested icebreaker to help you immediately connect on a warm note. You can also just say “Hey, my name is so-and-so, and you can learn more about my teammates in their Zoom backgrounds.” Goal: save time and get down to business.

3. Sorry, Wrong Zoom Chat

Have you ever tried to send an in-meeting Zoom Chat to your coworker, then realize three seconds later that the message was sent to everyone? Maybe it was a funny joke, or even something you thought your coworker should know about the customer to help seal the deal. Don’t risk it - stick to text or Slack for internal communication to coworkers.

4. “Where r u?”

Picture this: Your teammate is running late to the virtual meeting. You need to ping them, but also want the prospect to think they have your undivided attention. Most of the time when you head to Slack to say “WTF,” you just end up seeming distracted. Not a great look for a sales call. Thankfully, Warmly has a fix for this, too. With one click in the Zoom app, you can send a “Where are you?” message to your teammate, freeing you to focus on the customer while your teammate gets it together.

5. Cat Behind Ya

Have you ever showed up to a call and realized your background is still the meme you put on to make your friends laugh? Maybe you’re trying to talk to a prospect, but your coworker’s cat is running around behind them. The last thing you want is what’s happening in the back to distract from what—or who—is in front of you. This problem is easily solved by Warmly’s matching background feature. One person can upload an image, and it will automatically populate the backgrounds of everyone on your team. Bonus: your crew instantly looks unified and more professional.

Sales managers know that the best way to get a prospect to a ‘Yes’ is by building trust. Studies show that trustworthiness is essential to building strong relationships. There are three main ways that salespeople can build trust with prospects over Zoom:

1. Establish Credibility – That means not only the credibility of your company or your product, but also the credibility of the salesperson.
2. Forge Authenticity – Deeply understanding a person’s problems and reflecting it back to them is a powerful driver of an authentic connection. It also comes from a salesperson that is open, honest, and connects on a human-level with the prospect.
3. Finding Commonality – Your company may have worked with their competitors, and therefore understand their problems possibly better than they do. This principle is also about the people in the rooms finding commonalities around hobbies, location, weather, kids, and things of that nature.

In 2022, the sales email sequence is still the most effective way to generate leads and lay the foundation of trust for your brand. How effective is it? Even in 2019, before every corporate employee in the world was plugged in 24/7, the ROI on email marketing was 4,200%.

Your sales development representatives have worked hard to send the email sequences. Those email sequences work, whether it’s the fifth attempt or the 10th. At some point, one of your value propositions resonates with the prospect and brings them to the table.

Once the prospect is logged in, however, most sales team stop the slow drip of showing them all the different things your company can do. Instead, many sales teams word vomit everything the product can do in a hard-hitting sales pitch—to the point that it drives them away. Or they hyperfocus on the one thing the prospect responded to in the marketing process, ignoring all the other aspects that would actually help make the sale.

What if there was a way to keep up the automated email sequences—without the automated email sequences?

Top sellers today continue building trust beyond the email sequence and into the first meeting with a new concept we call “Automated Ambient Messaging.”

Automated Ambient Messaging

Say the company just completed its Series C. This is a huge vote of confidence from investors, and would tell prospective clients that your business has a track record of success. You could randomly throw it out during a sales meeting. Or you can have creative assets advertising this news automatically pop up in ordinary communication your sales team is already having with prospects in the buying cycle.

Warmly is a customer experience platform that helps VPs of Sales continue ambient messaging through previous touch points with prospects and clients: their email signatures, calendar invites, and Zoom backgrounds.

These messages will also appear alongside the individual touches of the salesperson like hobbies, location, and fun facts. All of a sudden, it’s not an ad, but a bonus of the relationship they’re building with the salesperson.

The outcome is that your sales team is building trust with prospects faster and more organically. That means shorter buying cycles, and increased sales because you are effectively conveying to prospects all the value that you can bring, one bite-sized chunk at a time.

Excited to see how? Here are just a few ideas to get you started.

1. Case Study – Do you know from experience that certain verticals respond strongly to case studies? An easy way to establish credibility with prospects is ending that follow-up email prospect with a QR code to the case study. Check out this QR code of a Case Study Gainsight did with Warmly!

2. Credentials – A great way to establish credibility is by sharing credentials on your Zoom background. Maybe your company has been rated great place to work, or your flagship software is rated highly on G2 Crowd. You can also use employee’s credentials, such as their school, degrees, years of experience in industry, or related certifications.

3. List Actual Benefits – For every industry you’re targeting, identify how you are solving problems for companies in those arenas. You can even have this information.

4. Title-based Value Props – Think about what value proposition would most resonate with the person you’re targeting. A Chief Data Officer would have different business priorities and pain points than, say, a Head of Digital.

5. Corporate Social Responsibility – If you’re meeting with a prospect or company known for being charitable, you can ambiently highlight things your own firm is doing. Maybe have the bio line in your Zoom background include that “We’re raising $8 million for Feeding America this year.”

6. Location – Having employees put their current location and local weather is an easy, no-effort way to both find commonality and forge authenticity. If you want to go even more granular, have employees list the places they have been and auto-match those with where the prospects are located. Now your entire sales team will have an immediate warm starting point for conversation.

7. Company Commonality – Imagine sticking an overlap of your company’s logo with the prospect company’s logo in every email, Calendar link, and Zoom meeting. Warmly is working on a ‘History of Partnership’ page that catalogues all the times your mutual companies have interacted including a log of meetings, and other shared similarities.

Over the last 20 years, software-as-a-service has all but eliminated companies buying software outright. No more slimy salesperson duping businesses into an expensive (and sticky!) installation, only to disappear when the check clears. These days, products have to complete a repeat sale cycle every time the customer is sent a bill for their subscription.

For a customer success manager at a SAAS company, relationships are currency. If a client is unhappy with the product, you want them to come to you early so you can fix it. The last thing you want is to hop on a regular business review with your boss and hear that the client is calling it quits. The more you get to know the stakeholders, and the deeper your relationship with them, the more likely they are to come to you with grievances in advance.

Before the pandemic, a customer success manager could ‘wine and dine’ clients to help build that bond. Now you have to build that relationship screen-to-screen instead of face-to-face. “Connecting to a Zoom call has never been easier, but connecting to a person has never been harder,” says Chief Customer Officer for AppsFlyer, Ziv Peled.

Some of the world’s best customer success managers have told us they’ve been using our Warmly Zoom app to turbocharge their meetings.

“Warmly is a superpower for CSMs on Zoom because it allows them to build deeper relationships,” says Gainsight CEO Nick Mehta. “Every customer success manager here uses it because we know it works.” Gainsight has currently partnered with Warmly to give all their subscribers free access to our enterprise software.

Here are a few ways top CSMs have told us how they use Warmly to build better relationships over Zoom.

Look omniscient.

Say you’re in a Quarterly Business Review on Zoom and the director ropes in a VP that you’ve never met before. All of a sudden, you’re dealing with a different stakeholder who may not share the same values, objectives, or even veto power as the person you originally planned to meet. Warmly can make a Customer Success Manager seem all-knowing by pulling up information on everybody in the meeting without even leaving Zoom. You’ll never scramble to secretly Google someone while talking to them—and risk looking distracted or disengaged.

Take note.

When you’re in back-to-back meetings handling dozens of clients, it can be hard to keep track of what you know about every single person. Customer success managers love that Warmly lets you take notes on your contacts and pops that information back up every time you meet with that person. You can use it for account-based notes, like feature requests, or to help you remember details specific to the stakeholder—think beloved pets or a touchpoint you share.

Show you’re on their team.

In a survey of 1,000 business professionals in April 2021, 73% said they are more likely to skip a second meeting with someone who wasn’t prepared for the first one. Among C-suite executives, it was 90%. You want to make sure clients know you’ve done your homework. As a CSM, you can look extra professional by having the customer’s logo over your shoulder in every meeting. For extra credit, use their company’s headquarters as your virtual background. Your job as a Customer Success Manager is aligning the client’s outcomes with your company’s. What better way to show them that their success is your success than by visually repping their team?

Save time on introductions.

The customer has an issue, and you smartly rope in the Solutions Engineer to solve it for them. Next thing you know, there’s five people on the sales side, and another five on the customer side. Introducing ten people in a meeting easily eats up time you could instead spend fixing the customer’s problem. Our CSM users have told us that using a Warmly Nametag helped them eliminate formal introductions because everyone’s names, roles, experience, and even pronouns are right there in the Zoom window as they’re talking.

Write a biography.

CSMs that use Warmly to share personal information often tell us that it makes conversations go more fluidly.

“It ends the awkward beginning of every call,” one customer success manager told us. Warmly’s “Bio” section lets you add a few lines under your name.

You could list your hobbies (“Amateur surfer” or “Chipotle enthusiast”), professional credentials (“CCSM-certified”), or by sharing a fun fact about yourself.

Keep Things Fresh

Meetings can get stale when you’re seeing the same people, in the same office, on the same screen over and over. Many customer success managers have told us they use Warmly’s “Conversation Starters” to help keep things fresh. It’s extra important when it’s been a long day and they don’t have the energy to come up with that conversation spark themselves. A pre-written question to break the ice helps everyone get to know each other better, so you can focus on building a durable and more successful relationship.

Read our case study with Gainsights here.