Use Case: Optimize Meeting Conversion Rates with Apollo

Article author
Brandan Blevins
Updated

Overview

Meetings and conversations in Apollo go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Apollo meetings empowers prospects to book time on your calendar and helps you effectively prepare for a meeting. Then, you can use conversations to record your video meetings, access powerful insights from the transcript, and streamline follow-up actions.

When you understand how to set up and use meetings and conversations together, you can focus on creating meaningful conversations with your ideal prospects and ultimately, improving your sales meeting conversion rates.

The following sections walk you through the most critical steps you need to take in Apollo to use meetings and conversations seamlessly. You can also learn how to increase your chances of booking more meetings and closing deals.

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Understand the Scenario

David is the Director of Innovation at the Big Company. You believe his company fits your ideal customer profile (ICP), so you've been trying to gain meetings with him and his team to discuss your product. You connected with David over a cold call, and he showed interest in having a more in-depth discussion. Are you ready to meet with David and his team to close a deal?

This use case is going to walk through the human and tech processes you should follow to increase your chances of turning meetings with the prospects at the Big Company into won business. By following this use case, you will ensure that:

  • David and his team can easily book meetings with you.
  • The video meetings record automatically and those recording are available for further analysis.
  • You understand the critical steps you need to take before, during, and after meetings to increase your chances of turning meetings into closed deals.

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Set Up and Use Meetings

David and his team are ready to meet. You want to empower him to book a meeting time directly on your calendar via a meeting link from Apollo.

Take the following steps to set up and use meetings in Apollo:

Connect Your Calendar to Apollo

Connecting your calendar to Apollo enables prospects to book meetings with you directly.

Launch Apollo and click Meetings > Connect your calendar.

Connect a calendar to Apollo.

To change the connected calendar, go to the Availability & tools tab. Click Disconnect for the connected calendar, then connect another one.

Change connected calendar.

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Provide Meeting Links to Prospects

Now you've connected your calendar, you can provide prospects like David with meeting links that they can use to book meetings with you. When the prospect clicks a meeting link, they can view an updated version of your calendar with available time slots.

For this scenario, you are going to book a 30-minute exploratory meeting with David and his team at the Big Company. To do so, go to the Scheduling pages tab and click Copy link for your 30-minute meeting page.

Copy the scheduling page link.

When you send David the meeting link, he can book times based on your updated availability. To make adjustments, go to the Availability & tools tab and edit the options in the Set your default availability section.

Update calendar availability.

For more details about meeting links and meeting types in Apollo, check out Create and Manage Meetings.

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View Upcoming Meetings

As prospects book meetings with you, your connected calendar automatically updates with the meetings.

To view all upcoming meetings with prospects in a single location, go to the All meetings tab, then change the view to Upcoming. From here, you can view all your upcoming meetings and access links to join the meetings.

View meetings.

 
More Meetings Magic!

This use case shows how to provide basic meeting links via Apollo, but you can do so much more with meetings. For more information about Apollo meetings, like setting up inbound routers to filter prospects and integrating your web forms with meetings, check out Meetings Overview.

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Set Up and Use Conversations

David and his team at the Big Company have booked a 30-minute meeting with you using the link you provided. To stay on your A-game throughout the call, you want to ensure that Apollo automatically records the meeting for you. This means you can reduce manual note taking and dive directly into the conversation to focus on addressing David and his teams' needs.

Take the following steps to set up and use conversations in Apollo:

Enable Conversations Recording

When you first click Conversations, Apollo displays a banner at the top of the page if you are not an admin on your team's Apollo account. Click Turn on the Apollo recorder on that banner to enable conversations.

By default, Apollo enables recording for all 3 video conferencing platforms (Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams) for meetings that you are hosting with external participants. You only need to click Finish to enable conversations recording.

When you do so, Apollo detects upcoming meetings based on the schedules of your connected mailboxes and automatically schedules eligible meetings to be recorded.

Enable recording.

If you are an Apollo admin, check out Set Up and Use Conversations for more info about the complete set-up process for your team.

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Check for the Apollo Recorder

You've joined the video meeting along with David and his teammates at the Big Company. But wait, you might be missing an important attendee: the Apollo recorder!

The Apollo recorder needs to join a meeting in order for Apollo to record it. When you want to record a meeting, check the guest list for the Apollo recorder. You might need to manually allow it to join the meeting from a waiting room.

Look for the Apollo recorder.

If the recorder isn't in the waiting room, you can still manually add it to ensure Apollo can record the meeting. To do so, launch Apollo and click Conversations > Record now and provide the meeting URL.

Add the Apollo recorder to the meeting.

 
The Art of Conversation... Recordings

You're recording conversations automatically and using Apollo's AI to analyze the recordings and send follow-up emails. If you're going to improve how you handle meetings, the human touch is still needed. Refer to Coach Teams with Conversations to learn how you can request feedback on your calls from your manager and teammates, and provide feedback, in turn.

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Prepare for Meetings

You've set up meetings and conversations successfully. This means prospects like David can book meetings with you directly and Apollo automatically records those meetings for you. Now you're ready to prepare for those prospect meetings.

If you've never met a prospect, take the time to research their potential needs and wants. For example, you've identified that David is the Director of Innovation at the Big Company. You should further research the Big Company to determine the industries it operates in, its employee headcount, the latest company-specific and industry news, and other factors relevant to your sales pitch. Then, compare those demographics to your products to determine which pain points you are likely trying to solve and tailor your talk track around these key points in preparation for the conversation.

To review this basic information, go to an account page in Apollo and review the Insights section.

Review company insights.

For more in-depth meeting preparation, Apollo's AI enables you to quickly research a variety of pre-meeting insights, from summarizing company priorities to identifying key stakeholders in the meeting. The AI generates these insights by analyzing Apollo's data and researching across the web.

Research upcoming meetings.

With this much insight prior to the meeting, you can more easily set meeting objectives with David and his team. Include an agenda with an outline of the topics along with any pre-read materials so that they know what to expect from the call.

 
Best to Practice

For more tips on how to thoroughly prepare for meetings, check out Meetings Best Practices.

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Follow Up On Meetings Using Conversation Recordings

You prepared thoroughly for the meeting with David and his team at the Big Company, and you engaged thoughtfully with the prospects to uncover and address their specific pain points. You still aren't at the finish line. To actually close the deal, you need to follow several post-meeting processes to ensure that more meetings are booked (if needed) and that the Big Company is comfortable purchasing your product.

Access Conversation Recordings and Insights

Prior to the meeting with David, you enabled Apollo to automatically record the meeting and ensured that the Apollo recorder joined the meeting. Now, you can use that conversation recording to analyze and query the meeting transcript to uncover specific insights. In turn, this analysis can be used to send follow-up communications to David.

To access the recording, launch Apollo and click Conversations. Then, click the meeting title.

Add the Apollo recorder to the meeting.

Apollo automatically provides a brief summary of the meeting that you can review, including an outcome, pricing discussion, next steps to take, and objections from the prospect. To uncover more specific conversation insights using Apollo's AI, click Ask anything about this meeting and ask the AI to research specific questions based on the recording. For example, you can perform sentiment analysis by asking Based on David's tone, was he happy with the answers I provided on pricing?.

Add the Apollo recorder to the meeting.

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Schedule Next Meeting

Though the initial meeting with David went well, he mentioned some potential objections at the end of the call. Specifically, he wants to research whether your product can really handle the data analysis that his team performs on a daily basis. Don't let David's objections linger! You should send a follow-up message within 48 business hours briefly recapping the meeting, including any action items, and providing more information that specifically address his objection.

If David expressed that you should speak again, preemptively include a calendar invite to a follow-up meeting and encourage his team to accept. If he didn't mention a follow-up meeting, you should include another meeting link and emphasize that he can book any of the time slots available to him.

You should always follow up promptly with a prospect and never let any of their objections linger. Prospects will not reply to every meeting request or follow-up message, but you need to remain persistent to close deals.

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Now It's Your Turn

To learn how to do more with meetings and conversations in Apollo, check out the free Apollo Academy courses How to Schedule & Manage Meetings With Apollo and How to Use AI-Powered Call Recording to Close More Deals

When you're ready, hop into Apollo and get started with Meetings and Conversations!

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