Top of the Post 📥 

Hello, entrepreneurs! Lots to unpack this week

• Podcast: The Top 1% is Playing With You, Here is How I Broke Free - Michael DeVine

• Biz Hack: Supercharges Your Sales With These Live Chat Best Practices

• Biz Essentials: How To Manage People Who Are Smarter Than You (Or They Think They Are)

• Save the Date: Networking Events Worth the Hype

But first, a tour of the headlines…

Weekly Catchups

News | Industry Insights | Trends

•  🤝 Best in Business

  CNBC’s 2024 rankings of Best States for Business puts Virginia at the top of the list for the third time in five years, and a record sixth time since CNBC began its rankings in 2007.

• 🕰️ Moving on

  Microsoft said late Tuesday that it is giving up an observer seat on OpenAI's board, noting that it has seen "significant progress" over the last eight months, is confident in the company's direction and no longer sees the seat as necessary.

• 📊 35%

  The share of U.S. adults planning to job-hunt in the second half of the year is down from 49% a year ago. Workplace consulting and recruiting firm Robert Half’s April poll also found that 77% were happy with their jobs.

Biz Hacks

Strategies | Tools | Marketing Tips

Live Chat: A Customer Conversion Powerhouse

More than 50% of customers like to make recurring purchases with a company offering live chat support. But only a little more than 60% of businesses offer it—a huge opportunity missed. 

Live chat is crucial to speed up your sales cycle. Let’s get you up to speed with the kinds of chats, where to implement them, and some best practices in 2024.

#1 Proactive Vs. Reactive Live Chatting

There are two types of chats appearing on websites: 

↪️ Proactive Live Chat: Conversation starts immediately when visitors explore your website to avail of products/ services. 

↪️ Reactive Live Chat: When customers click on the chat box to ask questions. 

So, which one must you choose? Three simple considerations.

• If you want to increase conversation on the website, pick the proactive live chat. 

• Reactive live chat, on the other hand, shortens the sales cycle through leads. 

• For interaction, proactive chatting outshines reactive chatting. 

#2 When Should I Use Proactive Live Chatting for Conversions?

Proactive live chatting is best suited for places where visitors enquire about products/services. Like:

• ✔️ Homepage

• ✔️ Pricing page

• ✔️ Product pages promoting a new feature

• ✔️ Pages with higher-than-average bounce rate

  Proactive live chats must not distract visitors from other high-converting CTAs. These include:

• ❌ Landing pages (where the main CTA is related to checking out)

• ❌ Pages where live chat placement is going to be obtrusive for the visitor (usually the bottom right corner)

• ❌ High-converting pages

• ❌ Pages with clear, single-purpose actions 

#3 Live Chatting Best Practices

The rule of SMS marketing—right message, right place, right time— applies to live chatting too. 

• If you have a homepage with a lengthy GIF, you might want to wait up to 10-20 seconds before showing the chat, to have it appear when the user shows exit intent signals.

• For a pricing page, 5 seconds on a page is plenty.

• Whatever your brand’s tone, formal or informal, live chat is the place to showcase it. 

• Set clear expectations by showing when your team is available for responses. Let visitors know what they can expect responses (eg: within 24 hours) 

• Set up reports to track the most commonly asked questions. 

Biz Essentials

Stay Ahead of the Curve

• One thing to see 👀 Cialdini's 6 principles of persuasion

• What we’re reading 📚 How to manage people who are smarter than you (or they think they are) 

• Trends 🗣️ Spotify will start letting listeners leave comments on podcasts. Creators can approve the comments they want to appear and limit comments to specific episodes.

• Productivity ✏️ Read this Google Doc master guide to speed up your workflow with 25 hotkey commands, advanced features, and tons of little timesaving shortcuts.

• Personal Brand: 3 Hooks That’ll Help You Get 100s of Thousands of Impressions Per Month on LinkedIn (without wasting hours on engagement)

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