If you want to know how to sell on WeChat instead of using email and phone calls, you’re in the right place. In this article, learn all about selling on WeChat and using respond.io to shorten your WeChat sales cycle!

WeChat for Sales vs Traditional Methods

For years, phone calls and emails have been the main methods for carrying out sales, but in recent times businesses have been adopting instant messaging as well. These are some of the limitations of phone and email sales:

For a phone call to take place, both parties need to be available at the same time and in a conducive environment to participate in a conversation.

Since voice calls aren’t normally recorded, details can be forgotten or misinterpreted.
Phone calls can be costly, especially if they are international. In addition, people prefer texting these days instead of making calls.

Emails tend to be missed because spam filters often send sales-related emails to the junk folder. People open their email far less frequently than messaging apps to check for new messages.

Threads become dispersed when users don’t reply to everyone in the conversation or the latest emails, leading to confusion and missed messages. People might also send emails from different addresses, leading to problems with contact identification.

As you can see, phone calls and emails have many limitations. Fortunately, there’s a better option to conduct remote sales: instant messaging.

Why Use Instant Messaging for Sales

Instant messaging improves conversational sales by combining the most useful aspects of email and phone calls. Instant messenger conversations can happen in real-time or asynchronously and people can respond to messages anywhere and at any time.

When it’s inconvenient to type urgent messages, users can send voice recordings to recipients instead. The ability to share files and documents makes instant messaging the most versatile communication channel out there.

Instant messaging conversations also tend to be more casual, making it easier to build relationships quickly, especially since contacts will be more responsive to your messages.

Messages are easily traceable, as they are stored in chronological order and involve no messy threads. Each interaction you have with a contact will be contained within its chat window on the channel, making it easy to search or go through for relevant info.

Next, let’s go over why you should use WeChat Official Accounts for sales.

How to Sell on WeChat: Benefits of Selling on WeChat

There are many instant messengers available out there; what makes WeChat stand out from the rest? Firstly, WeChat has 1.2 billion monthly active users, making it one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, especially in China.

If WeChat is the dominant messaging app in the regions that your clients are in, there’s a high chance that a significant number of potential customers will be on the channel. Since they already spend a lot of time using WeChat, it’ll be easy for them to reach you.

WeChat also has Official Accounts that millions of businesses use to communicate with and sell to their customers. These accounts provide access to special tools like newsletters, analytics, polls and more to get the job done.

Any WeChat user who follows your Official Account can send you a message, opening the doors for a potential sale. The conversational nature of instant messaging is great for building partner-like relationships and making your customers feel special.

WeChat also supports third-party inbox services like respond.io, unlocking even more benefits for businesses with large teams of salespeople. However, before you start selling on WeChat, you should be aware of its limitations.

How to Sell on WeChat: What You Should Know About Selling on WeChat

Although anyone can create a WeChat Official Account for business, accounts need to be verified by WeChat in order to access the tools mentioned above. This is a process that cannot be avoided, as unverified WeChat Official Accounts will be canceled after 30 days.

To verify a WeChat Official Account, you must submit your business registration information, an official application letter and a mobile phone statement. There is also an annual verification fee of USD99 or RMB300, depending on your business location.

WeChat is also particular about when Official Accounts can contact WeChat users. Official Accounts can’t send WeChat users the first message, which means conversations need to be initiated by customers.

Official Accounts must abide by the 48-hour messaging window. You can’t send direct messages to personal WeChat accounts after the window has closed. However, if WeChat users don’t resume a conversation, you can reach out to them via other channels.

Lastly, WeChat Official Accounts can’t be added to groups. This means you won’t be able to message multiple customers in a single chat. Now that the restrictions are clear, let’s see what we can gain by connecting WeChat to an omnichannel inbox.

How to Sell on WeChat Using respond.io: Quick Wins

While the operation of WeChat Official Accounts can be handled through the Official Accounts Platform, it is only suitable for smaller businesses. For larger businesses with teams of sales agents, a third-party inbox like respond.io is more suitable.

Here are some of the things you can do when you connect your WeChat Official Account to respond.io:

Shorten Your Sales Cycle with Automation

Respond.io has a number of powerful tools to speed up the sales process. By automating repetitive tasks, you can allocate the workforce and time elsewhere.

Customers communicating with businesses on messaging apps like WeChat expect to receive fast replies. If customers don’t hear back from you quickly, they move on.

With respond.io, manage customers’ expectations by setting up auto-replies to let customers know when you’re away or to welcome them.

Automated Workflows determine the sales funnel or route a contact falls into by automating lead qualification, routing to the right team and assigning customers to appropriate salespeople.

Integrate WeChat Official Account with Your Sales CRM

Workflows allow you to integrate respond.io with your existing sales CRM to allow for info exchange between them.

• Qualify Contacts with data enrichment tools such as Clearbit
• Calculate price quotations for a custom plan during client consultations
• Launch the necessary Workflow from the Messages Module so you don’t have to switch between platforms to execute tasks while chatting with a Contact
• Generate sales deals in a CRM such as Hubspot or Salesforce

With integrations, you eliminate any potential errors that may arise when reentering data in another app or platform. Use them to improve the efficiency of your salespeople and save their time!

Get an Overview of Customers’ Chat History with Contact Merge and Tagging

Most messaging app users have more than one messaging app on their phones. They may have used other messaging channels to reach you previously, which leads to siloed conversations. Fortunately, respond.io’s Contact Merge feature solves this issue.

With Contact Merge, you can combine the Contacts who have reached out to you in the past regardless of which channel they used. The Channels, Messages, Events and Comments associated with the Contact will be merged into a single profile.

Conversations with the merged Contacts across Channels are also displayed in chronological order on a seamless, scrollable interface in the messaging console, so you’ll never miss a message from them, no matter which channel they reach out on.

If a messaging window with a Contact has closed on WeChat, resume the conversation on another connected Channel without a messaging window, like SMS or email. You’ll be able to pick up the conversation where you left off, without having to switch platforms.

Tags let you build complete profiles of your customers to understand them better. For example, use Tags to segment customers by interest, subscription tiers or language among others, so you know which sales teams should be handling their conversations.

Mobile App for Agents on the Go

Respond.io has a mobile app that allows agents to answer customer inquiries and follow up on leads from WeChat on their mobile phones.

The app has all the features available on the desktop such as Dashboard, Contacts and Messaging to give agents an effortless messaging experience and the convenience of answering messages on the go, wherever they are.

Agents will receive a push notification every time they receive a new message or when they are assigned new Contacts, allowing them to stay updated and avoid missing messages.

To get the respond.io app, download it from Google Play Store for Android and Apple App Store for iOS.

Now you know how to use WeChat to better your sales operations, it’s time to put this knowledge to good use. Connect your WeChat Official Account to respond.io and reach new customers!

Further Reading

Found this guide helpful? Here are some other articles that will help you sell more effectively on WeChat:

• Ultimate Guide to WeChat Business
• WeChat CRM: Integrating WeChat with a CRM on respond.io
• 6 Ways Companies Use WeChat for Business