Word is that most people who set out to buy a new product or service begin their journeys by perusing the websites of organizations that sell such solutions. So knowing who visits your website, how long they’re there, and what they’re looking at can be extremely useful. It also pays to be able to reach those customers and prospects where they are, so your business can easily offer to help and/or enable visitors to ask a quick question with a minimum of friction.

A desire to allow people on its website to chat with company representatives is what drove The Farm Technical Sales and Marketing to implement Zoho (News - Alert) SalesIQ about a year ago. The Farm, which was incorporated in January 2000 and caters to organizations in Alaska, Northern California, Northern Nevada, Washington, Western Idaho, and Western Montana, sells audio/visual equipment to companies that want help selecting and purchasing such gear. When it made the decision to use SalesIQ, The Farm had assumed that the benefit of using this tool would be to respond to questions from existing customers via chat for those clients who prefer that method of communication to a phone call, says John Hood, the owner of the AV company.

“We routinely get people hitting our chat window that would ask us a simple question that would never call us and wouldn’t even bother to fill out the contact information on our website,” Hood explains.

But since the SalesIQ solution has been in place on The Farm’s website, the company has been able to track the journeys of all its online visitors and enable those individuals to interact with the company in real time using the chat feature. In fact, a national retail chain used the chat tool to ask a question, and SalesIQ provided enough information that The Farm was able to contact the retail chain right away. As a result, The Farm was able to win the business of that national chain – which is now a multi-hundred thousand-dollar client.

SalesIQ provides live visitor information like location, web path, and referrer. It shows where visitors are from, and how they navigate a website, so businesses can engage with them proactively. It converts CRM data into actionable insights. That means businesses that use SalesIQ can leverage their CRM data to prioritize website visitors in real time, receive hot prospect alerts, and drive targeted engagement. SalesIQ users also can increase sales and improve customer service by delivering a personalized experience to website visitors by sending targeted messages to prospects and customers.

Organizations that employ SalesIQ also can define lead scores customized to their business needs. Specifically, they can identify hot, warm, and cold prospects on the website and focus on prospects that most deserve attention. Zoho says that SalesIQ also can “Supercharge your sales conversions by automating website-visitor engagement with intelligent triggers.” By this Zoho means that SalesIQ allows organizations to recognize and engage new prospects with email campaigns.

The Farm uses SalesIQ to record information about who’s been on its website and for how long, and to rank those visitors so it can prioritize who to call on to offer solutions, explains Hood.

“Those conversations are public in the company,” Hood says. “That way, we just don’t miss an opportunity.”