Finding Customers by Linking to Your SalespeopleIn the business of finding customers, making it easy to shop, ask questions and follow up will only serve you. Here's how technology can help.

If your path to finding customers walks the line between online marketing and the human touch of one or more salespeople, you can increase the number of those touch points by linking your website and emails to the actions that directly involve your salespeople.

All you have to do is decide which of the following five actions are most likely to help your salespeople identify quality prospects and close the sale. Then, use a comprehensive service such as Agendize.com or one of the individual services listed below to install links that connect your salespeople to your customers through your website and email content.

1. Click to call
   Embedding click-to-call links on your website, in emails or on a social-media page allows a prospective customer to enter his or her phone number into a Web form and click a link to receive an instant call from a salesperson. Click-to-call links can include individual extensions so you can create multiple links for multiple salespeople, and the links can automatically track the number of connected calls for each salesperson and integrate phone call actions into your analytics tools.
   
2. Instant chat
   Providing a chat connection with your salespeople through your site allows consumers to instantly ask a question, request pricing information or make meeting plans. Chat allows your salespeople to multi-task, send links through the chat window and collect information for follow up when chatters aren't quite ready to buy yet. In addition to Agendize, Zopim.com and liveperson.com are two tools for installing live chat.
   
3. Schedule an appointment
   Linking visitors to your salespeople's available appointment times allows them to view and choose from a variety of meeting time options instantly. That way, you can avoid lengthy back-and-forth email conversations and double bookings. Both Agendize and BookFresh.com also allow your customers to prepay for meetings with simple PayPal integration if your salespeople charge for their time.
   
4. Fill out a form
   People who are not ready to buy right away may still be interested enough to submit contact information or requests through an online form. Agendize and Wufoo.com allow you to create custom forms and direct the form information to salespeople for follow up.
   
5. Save and share
   You can make it easier for people who aren't ready to buy right away to connect with a salesperson in the future by providing save and share links. Save and share actions include downloading a page as a PDF document, sending a page to a mobile device or social network, saving a date to a calendar, saving a location to a GPS device, saving contact information to an address book and posting a link to the information on a social media wall.

How do you help your salespeople help customers?Leave a comment and let us know.

-John Arnoldis president of Aveta Marketing, a marketing agency in Boulder, Colo.