Hello and welcome to another edition of Founder to Founder 👋

Today I want to share with you how we’ve reimagined the “Talk to Sales” experience at OpenPhone, which has resulted in 105% growth in visitor to first sales touchpoint (aka talking to more leads) and an overall explosive quarter for our sales team with 2x closed won opportunities.

Every company has a “Contact us” or a “Talk to Sales” form. Most of them look & function the same.

You’ve probably filled out many of these forms and can relate.

It goes something like this:

You enter your first & last name, email, phone number, give some indication of company scale (eg number of employees), and may or may not leave comments in the plain text field at the end.

You sometimes get qualified by an SDR who calls you before scheduling a 30-min video call with a sales rep.

For the longest time, we did something similar at OpenPhone. But it always felt a bit off to me.

While company size is one indicator to use, it doesn’t make sense to offer the same experience to a person with a quick product question as someone doing a formal evaluation.

So we decided to do something different with our “Talk to Sales” form while leaning heavily on our own product. And the results have been incredible.

Let me take you behind the scenes of what we built and why.

📒 DEEP DIVE

How we use SMS in our sales process

A deep dive into the simple shift that doubled our closed-won opportunities at OpenPhone

The problem with a "one-size-fits-all" approach

Even though OpenPhone is a PLG business, a good number of folks go through our sales process daily, and our webform or “Talk to Sales” form is their main entry point.

But as they enter this proverbial “entry door” it becomes clear their needs vary:

• Some have simple product questions and need answers right now

• Others want to do a deep evaluation and need to loop in colleagues

• Some are ready to buy and need a quick confirmation on something

Aside from using “Company size” as the indicator of the needs they might have, we were offering everyone the same thing: a 30-minute video call that they had to book in advance.

But as our sales team got busier, this approach started breaking down.

Some prospects needed more than 30 minutes, while others just needed a 5-minute conversation to get unblocked.

Defaulting to a 30-min video call just didn’t seem like the right path forward.

The light bulb moment

Our sales reps were already using OpenPhone organically to text prospects after initial contact, and they noticed something interesting: deals where texting was involved closed much faster.

Getting on a texting basis with prospects built a relationship that email or scheduled calls couldn't match.

Using texting in the sales process is not a new concept by any stretch but it’s still amazing how few companies (and founders) do it.

I don’t remember exactly how the idea of incorporating SMS into our process came up but I remember bringing this up to one of our reps to who said that she was already texting her clients.

Sounded like a no-brainer. So we got to work…

Rethinking our “Talk to Sales” form

Instead of our standard "fill out form → schedule call" flow, we wanted to create something much more flexible.

But first, we did an audit of the page and asked ourselves about the purpose of each element and questions we were asking our potential customers to answer.

Here’s the before:

Here’s the after:

We’ve changed a handful of form fields:

• “What service are you using today?” Removed as it didn’t make a difference in how we run the process

• “How did you hear about us?” Removed as we’ve got some of this covered through attribution, and can also implement it in the signup flow for more insights instead

• Added the “What would you like to discuss?” question for better routing

Some other changes:

• Removed any optional links and team photos on the left. While those added a human touch, the tests we ran saw no impact on conversion from that section

• Added three checkboxes ✅ to set better expectations for when folks should talk to Sales vs Support. This is so key for any PLG company

• Added a social proof section lower on the page to reinforce the decision to talk to us

Incorporating texting

Up until this point we made changes on the page to simplify it.

Now here’s where the real fun began.

We worked closely with the team at Default to create the ideal inbound experience for us.

Based on information provided by the lead on the form, we route them through a decision tree in Default and present them with 3 different options:

• Text me (start an SMS conversation immediately)

• Call me (get a call from the next available rep)

• Schedule a demo (the traditional calendar booking)

~28% of people choose the texting option, which is higher than I anticipated, but also shows that calls (50%) aren’t going away anytime soon. The key learning for me personally is the power of choice.

Once the prospect got to the confirmation screen, they received an automated text message (sent through OpenPhone API, of course) to the number they shared with us in the form.

The answers go into our shared Webform Sales number on OpenPhone so anyone on the team can jump in if needed.

From here on, it’s a text message conversation with the prospect.

Based on the situation, it can go to a voice call (using OpenPhone) or if there’s a need for a deeper demo, to a video call with screenshare.

While this setup might look simple on the surface, there's a lot of complexity behind it:

• Routing logic by Default to make sure the right person gets assigned to the lead

• OpenPhone API for:

  • Creating a contact with all custom fields (from the form fill) inside OpenPhone

  • Sending that first automated text

• Shared number visibility in OpenPhone so if one rep is on PTO, someone else can jump in seamlessly

One of the things we’re improving is creating automated follow-up via text if we don’t hear back after a certain period of time. We’ll be using the OpenPhone API here to send a second text message in the thread.

Alternatives

You might be wondering why we opted for this approach vs any other options. After all, this isn’t a common SaaS buying experience.

We’ve considered 2 alternatives:

1) Live chat

Live chat only works when the buyer is actively on the site. But with texting, the conversation continues on their phone, which means they're able to stay connected with us even when they're not at their computer with a million tabs open.

Plus, once we have their phone number, we've established a direct line of communication. If they want to hop on a call, we already have their number so there’s no extra friction.

2) Expose a phone number for folks to text

We wanted to capture lead information upfront and ensure leads are routed to the right folks on the team. Without some sort of a form being the entry point we wouldn’t have the ability to capture this key information.

The results

Because we asked folks how they wanted to be spoken with, we were able to speak to more of them and much faster. Folks who opted for SMS saved a lot of time and freed that up to those who needed a more comprehensive call or demo.

Since this update, our visitor to sales touchpoint grew 105% QoQ and we had an overall explosive quarter with 2x closed won opportunities.

As Mak put it eloquently, “When you get back to leads faster, you create more opportunities”. And that’s very much the case here.

But outside of the metrics, we've gotten feedback that buyers actually prefer this approach.

It’s extremely disappointing to submit a “Contact us” or a “Talk to Sales” form and not hear back for hours (or even days), which happens in most cases. Texting helped unlock speed to lead (with a median response time of 2 minutes) and ensure no buyer is waiting around.

It feels more personal, more flexible, and more in line with how people want to communicate today.

The wrap-up

I think the biggest lesson here for fellow founders is that sometimes the "gold standard" approach isn't right for your specific business.

Every contact sales form on the web looks the same because everyone assumes that's how it should be done.

But your business might need something different. I know ours did!

For us, as a high-velocity sales team with a unique product, the standard approach was suboptimal. By rethinking it and incorporating our own product more deeply into the process, we created something that worked much better for both our team and our customers.

It was scary to deviate from the norm, but the results speak for themselves.

I'd be curious to hear if any you’re using SMS anywhere in your sales process or if you’re thinking about it. Let me know, I’m all ears!

And if you're interested in seeing how this works in practice, you can check out our contact sales form yourself at openphone.com/sales 🙂

See you next time!

Daryna

ps - Kudos to Connor McDunn for his beautiful design work and Derek Leung for bringing this experience to our website. And of course, to Makalie Reed and Melissa Bates for leading and championing this effort