After your organization’s inbound marketing has done its job and you have been successful getting a potential customer to engage, now it’s time to execute. Your funnel has worked, you have the customer’s digital profile, it’s time to capitalize on this hard-earned inside information. However, organizations and their salespeople, often fail to build upon the prospect’s need for your solution by dropping the ball.

The initial contact has to be just as simple, effective and straightforward as your solution. When taking all this inbound “inside information’ and then translating that into being helpful, one has to continue that inertia into a zero hassle follow-up conversation. To the point, just presenting a link for the customer to click, in order for THEM to set up the appointment with YOU, is not precisely keeping in that “helpful” tone and tenor. Customers are seeking your solution to the pain they are experiencing. Would it not be better to respond in a way, from the very get-go, that is easy for a conversation to happen – and eliminates all the pain in setting up a meeting?

It’s time to get proactive! Making the initial contact with a passive link may work in some circumstances, BUT there is no comparison for converting an inbound prospect/contact into an appointment by being proactive. Successfully inbound marketing and sales are all about that transition to being proactive and making it as easy as possible for the customer to engage with you and your organization.

Let us compare. On the one hand, you can include a passive link for your prospect to click on, which will then send them into a process funnel for them to arrange a meeting with you. If this is not counter to business etiquette enough, you then require the customer to access a limited calendar with dates and times for them to choose and then in most cases regulate them to a specific method for the meeting. This passive link might be technologically competent, but it’s not exactly the white glove treatment. In reality, is this not comparable to a process we all hate…, “calling a company and then facing an endless automated phone queue, first pressing #2, then maybe #6, then #4 and then waiting for a human being”. We ALL love that don’t we!

Now on the other hand, with Arrangr (full disclosure, a company I co-founded), you can keep all that hard-earned inbound marketing goodwill going with an all-encompassing email that has a full invite included. Everything right there for your client to immediately select their best date, time and method to meet – again, directly within the email. No more passive gauntlet for your potential customers to go through. If a preselected option is not optimal for them, they can proceed with making adjustments. You now made arranging a meeting as simple as possible with a customized meeting solution. Goodwill for you and your company maintained for that all-important first personal interaction.

So when it comes time for you or your company to contact a prospective client, don’t lose all that inbound marketing momentum. Try pivoting to a proactive method when setting up a meeting, call or video chat. You won’t be sorry!