There’s a reason almost every SaaS company asks you to book a call.
A scheduled demo gives sales reps control: a qualified prospect, a set agenda, and enough time to understand the problem and make the case. It’s a format built for conversion. The tradeoff is that it creates a bottleneck. Prospects who aren’t ready for a 30-minute commitment or who just have a quick question hit a wall. They either wait days for the next available slot or quietly move on.
At Quo, formerly OpenPhone, we realized our “Talk to Sales” form, which defaulted to a scheduled video call, was turning potential customers away. Once we changed it to give leads the option to text, we saw a 35% increase in form submissions and 105% growth in the number of leads we actually talked to.
In this article, we’ll share how we approach inbound sales at Quo — and what we’ve learned along the way.
Why texting works for early sales conversations
The instinct to avoid SMS in a sales process is understandable. Text conversations are harder to control, easy to ignore, and don’t lend themselves to a structured pitch. For a complex sale, that’s a real problem.
But a lot of inbound sales activity is exploratory. A solopreneur evaluating phone systems as they travel between job sites isn’t going to block off 30 minutes for a Google Meet. A small team that saw a demo somewhere and just wants to confirm one feature before signing up doesn’t need a rep to walk them through the whole product again.
Texting is an initial touchpoint that lets us answer quick questions within minutes. While competitors might require prospects to book appointments days out, we can talk to them right away. Prospects are also far more likely to respond to a text than an email. When someone’s inbox is flooded, a text from something they opted into cuts through the noise.
It works great for straightforward questions like:
- Can I port my number?
- Can I set up a phone menu?
- Do you guys offer this feature?
How we set it up: Infrastructure first
Adding a text option to a contact form is easy. Making it actually work at volume is a different lift.
When a prospect fills out our sales form, they get an automated text — sent through our Quo API:
“Hey [name], thanks for your interest in Quo! Our team will reach out to you shortly, within one business day at the latest. In preparation, was there anything beyond your submission notes we can help with?”
On the backend, we use our native Salesforce integration to score the lead and round-robin it to a rep. Our API then maps custom Salesforce fields directly onto Quo contact and lead records the moment the form is submitted. Things like submission details, industry, company size, and website are captured, so when a rep opens the conversation, they already have the context they need.
These conversations funnel into our shared web form Sales number on Quo, so anyone on the team can jump in if needed.
If leads don’t respond after the first touch, follow-up texts go out automatically on day three and day seven — triggered through Zapier and our API — so nothing slips through.
How reps work the queue day-to-day
Each rep filters their Quo inbox by owner, so they’re working from a clean list of their assigned leads rather than a cluttered shared inbox. From there, it’s about responding quickly and moving things forward.
To maintain our two-minute median response time, the team replies on Quo’s native texting features. For example, snippets work well for common scenarios like “Hi [name], I see you’re currently evaluating Quo, how can we help today?” or for no-reply follow-ups and next-step prompts. These eliminate the fatigue of manually typing the same responses repeatedly.
Because the sales inbox is a shared number, the whole team can act as one. A colleague can cover a conversation without the prospect ever knowing there was a handoff. Internal threads keep everyone aligned when a rep is tied up, needs to flag a high-interest lead to a manager, or hand off a conversation when someone’s out of office.
And not every text conversation stays a text conversation. Reps use judgment to escalate — a vague prospect or a complex question is often a signal to just call. We use Quo’s native Gong integration to pull key insights from call transcripts — think use-case summaries, product requests, CRM mentions, and growth indicators — that feed directly into reporting and follow-up.
A better path to the demo
The default sales process where everyone books a call exists for good reasons. The catch is that it only works for prospects who are ready for it. For everyone else, it’s a wall. What we’ve built isn’t a replacement for live sales conversations. It’s what gets more of the right people to that conversation in the first place.
Looking ahead, we’ll continue to build on this foundation. Lead scoring data will soon be visible directly in Quo, so reps can prioritize their queue without leaving the app. And as our AI agent Sona’s capabilities expand, we see an opportunity to automate even more of the early qualifying conversation before a rep ever needs to step in.
