In the ever-growing wellness industry, the key to maximizing sales lies in the adoption of innovative technologies. AI sales chatbots are revolutionizing how wellness programs are marketed and sold by offering personalized and efficient customer interactions. By integrating AI chatbots, wellness providers can engage potential customers through consultative selling, addressing their unique needs and preferences. This not only enhances the customer experience but also significantly boosts conversion rates, making AI an invaluable tool for wellness program providers.
The wellness industry: a multi-trillion dollar market fueled by active pursuit
Wellness programs are a multi-trillion-dollar market. According to the Global Wellness Institute (GWI), the global wellness economy was valued at $5.6 trillion in 2022. This is a 14% increase from 2019, when the industry was worth $4.9 trillion. The GWI projects that the wellness economy will grow at an average annual rate of 8.6% over the next five years, reaching $8.5 trillion by 2027. This growth rate is significantly higher than the projected global GDP growth of 5.1%.
The Global Wellness Institute defines wellness as the active pursuit of activities, choices, and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health. From this definition, we can see that wellness is not a passive or static state but rather an "active pursuit" associated with intentions, choices, and actions that help us progress toward an optimal state of health and well-being.
Most people enroll in wellness programs to fulfill this active pursuit. A wellness program is a health initiative that aims to improve and maintain health and fitness. Examples of wellness programs include weight loss, fitness, smoking cessation, stress management, yoga, meditation, and hundreds of others.
Wellness programs can last from a few months to a few years without a specific end date. They are in active pursuit of a better state of well-being. As such, they are sold on a subscription basis, where the subscriber typically pays a monthly subscription fee.
Providers of wellness programs know that getting people to sign up for the program is not enough. They also need to ensure participants realize the benefits they hoped to receive and continue paying the subscription fees.
The need for a consultative sales approach
Wellness programs are not cookie-cutter products. While they are built around a framework or methodology, they are consumed by the participant in an individualized form, adjusted to their needs and preferences. For this reason, the most effective way to sell wellness programs is using a consultative sales approach.
Wellness programs thrive on a consultative sales approach, ensuring personalized solutions for every participant. Engaging warm leads effectively is key to turning interest into commitment.
Consultative selling for wellness programs is a sales approach that focuses on understanding potential customers' specific needs, goals, and concerns and providing tailored solutions that address those needs. Instead of using high-pressure tactics to make a quick sale, consultative selling aims to build a relationship of trust and support with the customer, positioning the wellness program as a valuable and personalized solution to their health and fitness challenges.
Providers of wellness programs engage in various marketing initiatives to drive potential customers to their websites. The website must provide helpful information about the program with clear evidence of its benefits. In addition, the website may sell the program online and give calls to action that will encourage the website visitor to initiate engagement in the form of live chat, a scheduled call, or an instant call. The engagement with a sales professional is where consultative selling typically comes into play.
However, despite the benefits of having a consultative sales engagement, website visitors who visit the wellness provider's website for the first time are typically not ready to engage with a human. They are still researching and comparing the program to other alternatives. They like to do this research at their own time and their own pace, without the influence of a salesperson. These website visitors are what we call warm leads. Warm leads are not looking to engage with a human. They need to become hot before they will be willing to engage.
So, the critical question is, how can providers of wellness programs engage their warm leads with a consultative sales approach when they are not ready to meet with a human or when the program's sales are entirely online? The AI sales chatbot is the answer!
Consultative selling of wellness programs with an AI chatbot
The information available on a wellness program provider's website is essential information. It serves as the initial hook to capture the website visitor's attention. The problem with this information is that it is typically static and generic. It is very hard to relate this information to the specific needs of an individual customer. A second problem is that there is generally more information than the website visitor can or is willing to consume. A third problem is that some information may be hard to find. So, while this information provides a general overview of the program, it is not explicitly related to the individual customer's pain points and does not constitute a consultative sale.
This is where the AI sales chatbot comes into play. It can follow any consultative sales methodology you define and use any content you specify. The AI sales chatbot can then conduct a deep conversation with the website visitor, discovering their pain points and objectives and specifying how the wellness program can help them achieve their goals. This allows consultative selling to start much earlier in the customer acquisition process, increasing the chances that warm leads will convert into hot leads and then look to engage with an actual human or be ready to purchase the program online. Furthermore, once a conversation with a human takes place, all data collected through the conversation with the AI chatbot is visible to the salesperson. This enables better preparation for the call, better personalization, and a higher chance of converting the prospect.
Another significant benefit of the AI sales chatbot is its 7x24 availability. Many people looking to enroll in a wellness program do their research during off-hours, such as nights or weekends. At these times, most wellness program providers would find it very challenging to staff with real salespeople. In this case, the AI sales chatbot is acting as the first-tier response team, and if an actual human is needed, the chatbot can offer a scheduled meeting when the human is available.
The return on investment from adding an AI sales chatbot to the wellness program provider's website can be huge. A maximum of 15% of website visitors for a typical wellness program website are hot leads. Most website visitors are warm leads (about 70%), and the remaining 15% are cold leads. If an AI sales chatbot can warm up just 10% of your warm leads and turn them into hot leads, that would increase the percentage of hot leads from 15% to 22%. This has a huge impact!
Let's dive deeper into the two key sales models using an AI sales chatbot. When deals are closed online and when deals are closed via an engagement with a salesperson.
Using an AI sales chatbot when closing deals online
Wellness programs such as fitness, weight loss, mental wellness, and nutritional programs are highly dependent on the program provider's website for sales of their wellness programs.
The website is critical in showcasing offerings, facilitating transactions, managing customer relationships, and providing ongoing support in these sectors. A well-designed, user-friendly, and informative website is essential for attracting and retaining customers and ensuring a seamless and satisfying customer experience.
An AI sales chatbot can significantly enhance the online sales process for these wellness programs by providing personalized, efficient, and engaging support throughout the customer journey.
Here are several ways an AI sales chatbot can facilitate sales in these sectors:
- Immediate assistance: AI sales chatbots always respond instantly to customer inquiries, eliminating wait times and ensuring potential customers promptly receive the information they need.
- Around-the-clock support: Being available 24/7 ensures that customers from different time zones or those with busy schedules can always get assistance whenever needed.
- Tailored recommendations: The AI sales chatbot can analyze user inputs, such as fitness goals, preferences, and health history, to recommend the most suitable programs. For example, it can suggest specific weight loss plans, fitness routines, or dietary supplements that align with the user's objectives.
- Addressing concerns: AI sales chatbots can be programmed to handle common objections and concerns, such as cost, time commitment, or program efficacy, providing tailored responses that alleviate customer doubts.
- Offering alternatives: If a customer expresses concern about a specific aspect of a program, the AI can suggest alternative options that might better suit their needs.
- Answering FAQs: An AI sales chatbot can answer frequently asked questions about the programs, pricing, duration, and benefits, which helps reduce any uncertainties or barriers to purchase.
- Content delivery: An AI sales chatbot can share success stories, testimonials, educational content, and motivational materials that resonate with potential customers and build trust.
- Promotions and discounts: An AI sales chatbot can inform customers about current promotions, discounts, and special offers, creating a sense of urgency and highlighting limited-time offers or exclusive deals available to users who sign up within a specific timeframe.
By leveraging these capabilities, AI sales chatbots can provide a highly personalized, efficient, and engaging sales experience for potential customers of wellness programs. This not only facilitates higher conversion rates but also enhances customer satisfaction and retention, ultimately contributing to the growth and success of the business.
Using an AI sales chatbot when closing deals with a human salesperson
In the previous section, we looked at wellness programs such as fitness, weight loss, mental wellness, and nutritional programs that are highly dependent on the program provider's website for sales of their wellness programs. We showed how an AI sales chatbot can help bring business to the program provider when the sale is done online. In this section, we will look at the same set of wellness program providers and address the case where some or all programs require a conversation with a salesperson to sell the program.
There can be various reasons for the wellness program provider to sell its programs via a human salesperson. These can include the complexity of the program, the need to provide motivation and emotional uplifting via a trusted human, and sometimes even personal attention from a respectable figure in the industry. All these can help close the sale and improve conversion rates.
The virtual meetings are typically done via web conferencing with video, enhancing the personal connection and comfort level of the prospect. Some wellness program providers may use an online sales approach for the lower-level offerings and a human salesperson for the high-level offerings. Because human salespeople's capacity is limited, prospect qualification becomes critical so they do not waste their time on unproductive calls that don't result in business. The AI sales chatbot can engage with potential customers to ask preliminary questions and qualify them based on their readiness to purchase, wellness goals, and preferences.
Once the AI sales chatbot has qualified the prospect to be worthy of a conversation with a human, the AI sales chatbot needs to hand them off to the salesperson optimally, so there is no drop off from the AI conversation to the human conversation. To optimize this handoff, it is essential that the AI sales chatbot can support the full spectrum of engagement options:
- Human live chat: This essentially continues the AI conversation, but with the human salesperson added to the call, the AI takes a back seat. This is the most seamless transition from AI to a human conversation in the same chat module the customer already uses. Its advantages are the speed of transition and continuity of the conversation. Its disadvantage is the lack of video, which makes it harder to build rapport and trust.
- Scheduled meeting: In this case, the AI sales chatbot offers a meeting with the human salesperson. The prospect can easily choose their date and time of choice and schedule the meeting at a time at their convenience. The advantage of this approach is that both the prospect and the salesperson can prepare for the meeting, maximizing its effectiveness. In addition, the video connection typically used in these meetings enhances rapport and trust and makes it easier for the salesperson to read the prospect's reactions. The disadvantage of the scheduled meeting approach is that there is a waiting time in which the prospect might change their mind and become a no-show. In addition, these meetings are typically 15-30 minutes, so they are expensive to conduct from the provider's perspective. Hence, these meetings must be only offered to qualified prospects.
- Instant video meeting: This is the best of both worlds, meeting with the prospect via video without any wait time. The only downside of this approach is that salespeople must be available online, ready to be pulled into a meeting in seconds. Sophisticated AI sales chatbots such as ours use conditional availability and will only offer an instant meeting with a salesperson if available. Otherwise, the chatbot will fall back to providing a scheduled meeting instead.
Conclusion: embracing AI for enhanced wellness sales
Wellness programs are complex offerings that must be tailored to the specific needs of the prospective customer. Selling them requires a consultative sales approach that cannot be achieved with a website alone and necessitates additional tools and strategies.
Recent advancements in AI technology have made AI sales chatbots a reality. AI Sales chatbots like OnceHub’s are designed explicitly for consultative B2C sales of wellness programs. These AI sales chatbots can augment a wellness provider's website and significantly help the online sales process when done entirely online or with a handoff to a human salesperson.
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