Why B2B GTM Teams Should Give a Sh*t About SMS

Andrew (00:00)

Hey, welcome back to the 98% Podcast. I'm Andrew from the go-to-market team here at TextUs. Today's episode is going to be a little bit different. No interviews today, guys. What you're about to hear started as a webinar, but honestly, the content is just too good to leave locked behind one of those registration forms. So I'm going to bring it to the podcast feed here.

Here's why I think you need to hear this. I have been engaging with a lot of marketing leaders, SaaS leaders, sales leaders, rev ops folks, and marketing operators, and I keep running into the same misconception or worry they have about SMS. When I bring it up, people immediately go to blast text, cold blasting text, promo code, e-commerce spam, top of funnel cold outreach that you're not really allowed to do. And if that's what SMS was, and if that's what I was talking about, I would definitely tell you to avoid it as well. But that's not what we're talking about at TextUs.

We're talking about performance SMS, which is a completely different motion. It's not about generating new demand. It's about converting the demand you have already generated. It's the connective tissue that plugs that gap at every handoff point in your go-to-market workflow where the momentum of the deal or the momentum of the lead breaks and the deal stalls.

In this episode, I'm going to walk you through exactly where SMS fits — and more importantly, where it doesn't fit. I'll give you the actual templates and triggers you can steal. We'll talk about why the tools you're probably thinking of are built for a totally different use case. And I'll clear up that compliance stuff because I know that's what's holding a lot of you back.

Now, just a quick note for the audio-only listeners. There are some slides and visuals in the original webinar that you're going to miss and I would encourage you to go watch them. But I've made sure to describe everything as I go so you can listen whether you're in your car, on a run, on an airplane — whatever it is — you'll get the full picture. All right, let's get into it.

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Andrew (02:29)

Let's be honest about the problem. 70 to 80% of the leads you generate never convert. Not because they're bad leads, but because they have never meaningfully engaged at that stage of the funnel. 40 to 55% of qualified leads never actually connect with sales. Think about that. You've done all the hard work on demand gen — generating these leads, qualifying someone, getting them to your site — and then they just poof, disappear before the first conversation. 65% of your pipeline ends in no decision, no response. Not lost to a competitor, not based off pricing, just nothing. They just go dark. And then 5 to 10% of your customers end up churning within a year, depending on the size of your organization.

This is staggering. Most SaaS companies are spending millions on demand gen and then watching that demand leak out of every stage of the funnel. This isn't a demand problem. It's a conversion and engagement problem. And that's exactly where performance SMS comes in.

So why does this happen? There are four root causes.

First, demand outpaces engagement. You're generating traffic and leads, but most of them never meaningfully engage. They fill out a form and then nothing happens. You're spending money to generate interest, but that interest evaporates before it can turn into a conversation.

Second, momentum breaks between stages. Slow response times, poor handoffs between marketing and sales, weak qualification — all of this causes buyers to disengage before sales even has a chance to establish value. I can be a testament to this. I get messages all day, right? I get emails, I get ads, all this type of stuff. The people that text me create a personal relationship and I can ask questions, I can be honest — hey, what's this? I need to understand this before I'm willing to give time. The momentum is there with texting for sure.

Third, deals stall more than they lose. A huge portion of your pipeline doesn't go to a competitor. It goes to no decision or no response — a lack of urgency, a lack of follow-up, a lack of sustained engagement.

And fourth, full value isn't fully realized. Onboarding is incomplete, activation is slow on your product, and weak feedback loops limit retention and expansion.

Every one of these problems has the same underlying cause: communication that's too slow, too impersonal, or gets lost in the noise. And that's what SMS is built to solve.

Now, when I say SMS, I know exactly what you're picturing. And I need to be clear about this before we go any further. You're thinking blast text to cold lists, top of funnel spam, those annoying promo code texts that you get from e-commerce brands, mass marketing communications, compliance nightmares, et cetera, et cetera. If that's what SMS meant for B2B, I would tell you to avoid it as well. But that's not what performance SMS is.

Performance SMS is triggered, one-to-one conversations based off something that's happening with that lead. It's mid-funnel acceleration, meeting reminders and follow-ups that are personalized, deal progression nudges. So when you get to the deal stage, it's follow-ups, it's conversations, it's jokes sometimes and memes — if you haven't heard from somebody, you can send that, right? And then finally, it's CRM-integrated workflows that fire based off what's actually happening with a specific prospect. It's happening in your CRM. It's happening in HubSpot. It's happening in Salesforce. It's happening directly out of those platforms or your ATS, for example — anything along those lines.

The mental model shift is this: SMS isn't another blast channel. It's connective tissue. It's what prevents momentum from breaking at every handoff point in your go-to-market workflow. Let me show you exactly what I mean.

This is the framework I want you to walk away with. SMS works at every handoff point where momentum breaks. Let me walk you through each one.

Lead capture to qualification. When someone fills out a form, you have about five minutes before your odds of reaching them drop dramatically. An instant text gets you in front of them while they're still in buying mode. The outcome: you disqualify bad-fit leads faster and you increase connect rates with leads that are more important and higher value to you.

Qualification to sales conversations. Once a meeting is booked, the fight is not over. No-show rates in B2B SaaS run 15 to 20% on a good day. I've seen them as high as 50 or 60%. Text confirmations and reminders will cut that in half.

Sales conversations to pipeline. After a demo, your prospect is evaluating multiple vendors. It's naive to assume that they're not. A quick text message keeps you top of mind between the formal emails that go back and forth in inboxes that people really aren't reading — and we'll talk about that in a couple of minutes. This maintains momentum and prevents the deal from going dark.

Pipeline to closed won. A great stage, an important stage. When the deal stalls, email follow-ups get buried. A direct text cuts right through that noise. It creates gentle urgency without being too pushy, and it's very easy to do.

And then finally, post-sale — onboarding and retention. For customer success teams, texts drive activation. They prompt milestone completions and they keep customers engaged during the critical first 90 days of using the product, which can push adoption and retention.

The point is, SMS isn't about generating new demand. It's not going to get you new leads. It's about converting more of the demand and leads you already have into pipeline and into customers, and then retaining those customers until they eventually become evangelists for you.

Now let me hit you with some of the numbers, because this is what makes SMS so different.

Cold email: 1 to 3% response rate, and it's falling fast. We've all felt this — inboxes are saturated. If I screen-shared my inbox right now, half of you would probably be understanding and the other half would probably be appalled.

Cold call connect rates: 2 to 5% on a good day. Most calls go straight to voicemail. They're busy, they go unanswered. BDRs and SDRs just move on to the next contact, never to be touched again.

LinkedIn InMail gets a little bit better — 10 to 25% — and we're seeing really good data around this. LinkedIn is getting really good, but you know what's happening with it? It's becoming oversaturated, very similar to email. Too many connection requests, too many InMail messages happening at any given time are causing degrading performance, and we will likely continue to see that trend over the next coming months and years. How well you target also influences this percentage.

And then B2B SMS: 30 to 45% on the low end. We have customers doing 60, 70, 80% response rates. It's fantastic. This isn't just better for the sake of the numbers — it's a different order of magnitude. We're talking 10x to 15x the response rates of email, which all of you are probably using right now. Imagine getting 3x, 5x, 10x better results. The data's there. It's clear.

And this makes sense when you think about it. The average professional receives 121 emails a day, but text messages get read within three minutes of being received. There's no spam folder for it, no promotions tab. When you send a text, it just lands. They see it. Even if you don't have a read receipt, they see it and they read it.

Now let me show you some specific plays that are going to help you implement SMS into your go-to-market workflow.

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Okay, the first use case is inbound speed to lead, and this is probably the highest-impact play for most teams. I don't have to preach to you guys the importance of speed to lead — it's there. The faster you get to a lead, the higher the probability of having a good conversation, a demo, pipeline, even becoming a customer. Speed to lead is important. But here's the gap: research shows that your odds of qualifying a lead drop 21x after 30 minutes.

21x — and yet most teams respond to inbound demo requests within hours, sometimes days. SLAs aren't even established in some organizations. Every minute you wait, that prospect is cooling off. Their interest drops, their consideration goes somewhere else. We all know that in the B2B SaaS space, people are over-inundated with things they're trying to do on a daily basis. Less people, more expectations. Less resources — they're doing a million things in a day. They're not coming in and writing one thing on a sticky note anymore. They're writing five things they're trying to accomplish today.

So after they request a demo from you, they're moving on to the next thing. You want to keep their interest. Every minute you wait, that prospect is cooling off, moving on with their day, forgetting why they filled out the form in the first place. That's probably why some of you are getting MQLs in the door who say, "I never downloaded that piece of content. I never requested a demo. I don't know what you're talking about."

The SMS play is simple. When somebody submits a demo request or a content download — anything along those lines — trigger an instant, personalized text from the assigned rep. Not an auto-response. A real message that feels like it came from a person. We have templates in the TextUs platform that do exactly that. There are little tokenizations — first name, last name, anything that's really on the form — you can pull in for that. And it doesn't have to feel automated just because it is automated. You can automate it and still make it personalized.

Here's a template that works: "Hey Sarah, saw you just requested a demo. I'm free in the next 30 minutes if you want to hop on a quick call. Otherwise, happy to find a time that works better for you. What works best for you?"

This does two things. First, it compresses your speed to lead from hours to seconds. Second, it creates an immediate two-way conversation instead of waiting for them to check their email. The result: 40 to 60% same-day meeting booking rates versus 5 to 10% with email only. That's the power of speed plus the right channel. And I have to keep going back to this — they're already there. We're not asking you to spend more money on media, advertising, or content. You're already generating the leads. You just have to get in front of them at the right time in the right channel.

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All right, let's go to another use case: meeting confirmation and no-show recovery. The typical no-show rate in B2B SaaS is 15 to 20% in a good scenario. A lot of other high-ticket companies and specific sectors of SaaS can see upwards of 50 to 60% no-show rates. If you're in that range, do I have good news for you. And if you're in the 15 to 20% range, good for you — but I bet you're being asked to grow. I bet things are expected to get a little bit harder, or you're expecting a little bit more growth. Well, this is where you're going to find it.

Think about what this means for you. If you have 100 meetings scheduled per month and you're losing 20 — or 50 or 60 — of those to no-shows, getting that down to 8, or 25, or 30 is so much more valuable without adding any additional lead gen spend.

The plays here are straightforward. Immediately after a meeting is booked, send a confirmation text. Not an email — or in addition to the email, but make sure that text goes out. "Hi Mike, confirming our meeting on Tuesday at 2 p.m. Looking forward to it. Text me here if you have any questions or anything changes." That creates a one-to-one conversation that's super easy, super personalized, and you start to create that bond.

Remember, people like buying from people they trust. Texting creates a factor of trust — hey, you've got my number, I've got yours, you can ask any questions. I'm not going to overly pitch you. And as a TextUs user in the sales department who just sent that text, I'm going to get notified in my Chrome extension, I'm going to get notified on my mobile device. I'm going to know real quick.

Two hours before the meeting, send another reminder: "Quick reminder about our call at 2 p.m. today. Really looking forward to connecting."

And then here's the critical one. If someone doesn't show, send a recovery text within five minutes: "Hey Sarah, looks like we missed each other. No worries at all. Want to reschedule for later this week?" You can even add on: "I've got 2 p.m. tomorrow available. I've got 4 p.m. this afternoon. What works best for you?" You can even send a scheduling link — TextUs allows you to send a link so they can reschedule their time right away.

That no-show recovery text alone often gets 60 to 70% response rates. These are warm prospects who just got busy. A quick text brings them right back in. Just keep in mind the behavior of your prospect — there are tons of things going on in their brain. You want to keep that urgency alive and create that channel of communication more than anything else.

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All right, let's go to use case three: re-engaging stalled deals. And this one is huge. I know you all have stalled deals. I know they're there. I've been at nine SaaS companies in my career — they all have stalled deals. It happens in every pipeline. 65% of B2B pipeline ends in no decision, which, from somebody in my seat, is infuriating. I'd rather you call me and say your product sucks, you price too high, or you're missing this feature. I'd rather hear that than not hear from you at all. But we all know it happens.

Lost to a competitor, just goes dark, whatever it is — we know there are reasons behind the no-responses and no-decisions. Do you know the number one reason that deals go into no response or no decision? They make no decision at all, truly. They just go flat. They make no decision to improve whatever your platform or software helps improve. They just stay status quo. And that's really where you should be honing in — because you can only blame the economy for so long. The prospects stop responding.

The deals sit in your pipeline for months and eventually you mark it closed-lost because you never really know what happened. Email fails here because it gets buried. It feels like another sales sequence. I get the same email from the same seven people every single week, basically — it's easy to ignore. There's no urgency to respond. Like I said, the average person gets 121 emails a day. Do the math on that. They're getting more than one email every 10 minutes.

SMS breaks through that because it's a pattern interrupt. It feels personal, not automated. It's easy for the prospect to reply with a quick yes or no, a thumbs up emoji, and it creates gentle urgency without being pushy — which I think is really important. It's about building that trust like we've talked about.

Here are the two templates we see work best.

The soft check-in: "Hey Sarah, just checking in. Is improving lead response time still a priority, or should we revisit later?" I get this one a lot from agencies and other SaaS solutions — is X problem still a priority for you to fix? Remind them of that pain in text.

And then there's the timing reset: "Hey Mike, it seems like timing may have shifted. Do you want to pause for now or should we pick it back up?" I'm giving you an easy way to answer me, right? Is this still a priority, or should I just mark this as closed-lost? It's like we're right here talking — just tell me what you want me to do.

Email has this formality associated with it, like whatever you send is going to be written in stone and then I'm going to come back with objections. But via text it's just: hey Mike, is this still a priority? Do you want to pause? Come back to it in Q2? It's like texting your friends.

Both of these templates give the prospect an easy out while also opening the door for re-engagement. You'd be surprised how many deals you can restart with a simple text like this. It seems so simple, but it's there.

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All right, last thing we'll talk about when it comes to performance SMS is how it compares to what we would describe as e-commerce SMS. There are a lot of providers out there that offer basic packages but are missing the performance SMS features. So when you're selecting a tool, it's really important — because this is where a lot of teams go wrong more than anything else.

When most people think of SMS platforms, they think of tools for e-commerce — Klaviyo, Postscript, Attentive. These are great tools for their use case. But they're built for a completely different motion. They're built for product-led growth, specifically in the e-commerce space, where there's not a high-touch sales process at all. There's almost virtually no sales process other than: I want product, I buy product, I click. Or, I'm going to run a Black Friday sale for these sweatshirts. Sure, blast them out. Use those products — they're great, they get high reviews. I don't have anything bad to say about them in that use case. But that is not the use case that you guys are walking through on a regular basis. That is not the go-to-market motion for most B2B SaaS organizations that are sales-led.

As a reminder, e-commerce SMS is about promotional blasts triggered by a campaign calendar — the Black Friday sale, Valentine's Day sales, whatever it is. It's all based off a campaign calendar. Personalization is very basic, like name merge fields. Response handling is optional, meaning if you get that text message and you respond, do you know the likelihood that somebody actually received that back in an inbox? Or do you think those messages are sent out by numbers that aren't really monitored?

I can tell you that on TextUs, any number that goes out has an inbox that's shared amongst the organization — where a message will come in and the person that owns that account will know instantly. Even if you don't use it in that way, you will still receive the text message.

Attribution on e-commerce platforms is at the campaign level at most — it's never discussed at the conversational level. So if your marketing team sends a message and then your sales team takes a response and moves it into a one-to-one conversation that gets tracked into your CRM, that isn't happening on e-commerce platforms. They only integrate with certain marketing platforms, and a lot of them are trying to be a marketing platform on their own.

Performance SMS is fundamentally different. We designed it completely differently. It's about those one-to-one conversations triggered by CRM events — so-and-so came back to the website, they downloaded a piece of content, they requested a demo (which is the biggest use case we all talk about in B2B SaaS), lifecycle stage changes, anything along those lines. Personalization pulls full context from your CRM. Responses are two-way and rep-owned. Attribution connects to contacts and opportunities, and it integrates natively within your CRM.

TextUs specifically — and I don't want to make this a pitch, I'm just trying to educate you — if you're a Salesforce or HubSpot user, it embeds right in your CRM. You open up a lead or contact record and it's right there in the corner. You're sending right out of your CRM. You're not opening another application. There are Chrome extensions, there's a mobile app if that's how you want to do it. But as someone who watches salespeople operate on a regular basis — you open the record and you want to be able to send an email, send a text, make a call, all from that page. And you can do that with TextUs.

If you run B2B sales plays with an e-commerce SMS tool, you're going to struggle. Your workflow process is going to struggle. Your integrations are going to struggle. And you're going to find out that it's very limited — it doesn't have the sales process or the marketing process in mind. The workflows don't fit. The attribution won't work. And your reps won't adopt it because it doesn't live where they work. Eventually, adoption will die and it will be a wasted effort. This is why CRM integrations matter so much.

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Let me be really, really direct with you. If your SMS tool doesn't live in your CRM, you're creating more problems than you're solving. We all know we have to make it easy for sales to operate and move through the process because they're moving through hundreds — if not thousands — of contacts a day.

If you don't make it easy for your reps to text in the systems they're already operating in, you're creating more problems for yourself than you realize.

First, you need a single source of truth. Every text conversation should automatically log to the contact record or lead record — as an activity, just like demos, like emails sent, like email opens. Text messages sent, text messages back, conversations should all be logged there. If reps are texting from their personal phones or a separate app, that communication is invisible to the rest of the organization — invisible to rev ops, to leadership, to marketing. And if that rep leaves, all that information goes with them.

It's not logged. It can't be picked back up with the same number. So if you have a rep that leaves and another rep takes over that account, the new rep can continue that conversation on the same text chain and reference everything that's already happened.

Second, you need attribution that works. You need to connect SMS touchpoints to meetings booked, pipeline created, and revenue closed. Without a CRM integration, that attribution is almost impossible. You want to know: of the pipeline I'm creating, how many were touched by text messages? Why am I booking more meetings? Because text messages are being sent at the MQL stage or the SAL stage — and it's tracked and reportable as activities.

Third, you need workflow triggers. The magic of performance SMS is that it fires based on what's happening with a specific prospect. Lead status changes, meeting events, deal stage updates — that requires CRM integration. That requires a HubSpot integration. That requires a Salesforce integration. If you're not on Salesforce or HubSpot, we are on Zapier too, so you can plug in. PipeDrive users, that works too.

And fourth, you need compliance built in. Centralized opt-out management, audit trails, message policies — all of these things need to live in one place.

If your text message provider is not giving you message quality indicators, you have a problem. Especially if you have a bigger sales or marketing team. A message quality indicator will tell your reps as they're typing a message, "Hey, this is a little spammy — try changing this," and give recommendations based off that. You can also tailor it to your organization. For example, if your company is ABC Software and a rep is texting somebody saying they're from XYZ Software, that's going to get flagged. You've got to have brand compliance. And with message quality indicators, your brand team can make sure you're representing your brand properly and the carriers aren't going to flag it.

You can also go in and add your own rules — hey, I don't want my reps talking about X or saying Y — flag that and let them know. And then you start getting consistency across your sales team. You've got to have those things built in. You've got to have a team that understands compliance, that can help you with it, that has analytics that allow you to track opt-outs and resources you can rely on to follow best practices.

Because it's not the same as email. I can tell you it's nearly as easy as email and you're going to get way higher performance, but it takes a little bit to set up and there's just a little bit more compliance around it. We're here and happy to help with that.

The bottom line: when you're evaluating an SMS tool, CRM integration should be one of your first filters. Not an afterthought. Not something brought up on the third call. If the SMS provider isn't bringing it up on their end, that's a red flag.

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Speaking of compliance — it's a lot simpler than you think. I know compliance is what holds a lot of teams back from texting, so let's clear a little bit of this up right now.

Yes, there are regulations with SMS. The main ones in the US are 10 DLC and TCPA — but for B2B texting, the requirements are actually pretty straightforward. Let's walk through the three pillars.

Consent: you need permission before texting someone. In B2B, this often comes from form submissions where the prospect opts in to texting, from an existing business relationship, or from explicit opt-ins during conversations. Document when and how your consent was obtained. It's very similar to what you already do with email — there's just some language changes you have to make to be compliant with 10 DLC requirements. You've got to collect opt-ins. And with more and more of your target audience in the B2B SaaS space working in remote environments, they're going to be on their mobile phones a lot more — whether they're at home, driving, in field service management, or in healthcare. Doctors are rarely at their desk. Administrators are rarely at their desk. They're constantly on the move. You've got to move to mobile. That does come with consent.

Identification: make it clear who's sending the message. Include your company name or ensure the recipient knows who you are based on the context of the message. Don't send anonymous or misleading messages — it's going to get flagged by the carriers. Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T — they'll flag it. And if it happens frequently, you'll get shut down. Make it clear who's sending the message and from where. "Hey, this is Andrew from TextUs."

Opt-out honor: stop requests immediately. Any reputable SMS platform handles this automatically for you as part of opt-out management. You can also track it in an analytics platform — when is it happening? Is it happening in conversational messages or campaign messages? What's my threshold? What's good versus bad? If your SMS provider can't tell you that, you have the wrong SMS provider.

The other thing you need to know about is 10 DLC registration. This is a carrier requirement — 10 DLC stands for 10-digit long code. It's a requirement for business texting. It takes two to four weeks conservatively — though it can take a few days or up to 14 days depending on how quickly you respond during the process. Any good SMS provider is going to help you through it.

Here's the reality: compliance exists to prevent spam. No one likes spam. If you're using SMS thoughtfully for one-to-one business conversations and campaigns to opted-in contacts, you're not going to run into problems. You're following the rules.

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Okay, let's wrap this up and give you a practical path forward. I'm not going to try to boil the ocean. Here's how to get started in 30 days.

Week one: pick your use case. For most teams, I'd recommend either inbound speed to lead or meeting reminders. These have the clearest ROI, the biggest impact on conversion, and the fastest time to value.

Week two: pilot with three to five reps. Get buy-in, refine some templates, gather feedback from your team. Don't roll this out to the whole organization until you've worked out the kinks with a smaller group — a tiger team of sorts.

Week three: start measuring against your baseline. Before you started, what was your meeting booking rate? What was your no-show rate? What's your average response time? What's your average connect rate? Compare your SMS-enabled cohort against these baselines.

Week four: expand based on data. Once you've proven value in your initial use case, add the next one. Each expansion builds on the process and learnings from the previous one. Iterate, make changes, look at the dashboards, look at the data. I'm talking to you, rev ops. I'm talking to you, marketing operations. Make sure you make adjustments based on what you're seeing.

The key is to start small, prove your value, and scale systematically. It's going to work. It's like any other marketing effort — start with a segment, test your messaging, test your approach, then scale from there.

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Key takeaways:

One, SMS is connective tissue, not another blast channel. If you're looking to generate leads with SMS, you're in the wrong place. It plugs the gaps where momentum breaks.

Two, it works at every handoff point in the go-to-market workflow — lead capture to SDR, SDR to discovery, discovery to demo, demo to pipeline, pipeline to close, close to retention. There's a use case at every stage. It helps create better relationships and keeps momentum moving forward.

Three, response rates are 5 to 10x higher than email. If you're using email and not text, that's a missed opportunity. If you do both, that's best. This isn't marginal improvement — it's a different order of magnitude.

Four, CRM integration is non-negotiable for B2B. If you're on Salesforce or HubSpot and you're not integrating SMS, you are missing the point completely. Your reps won't use it, your attribution won't work, and adoption will fail.

Five, compliance is a lot simpler than you think. Don't let fear hold you back. We have resources and experts here at TextUs. If there's an SMS provider that's not helping you with compliance, that's a red flag.

And six, start with one use case. Prove your value, then expand from there. Don't try to do everything at once. Get really good at one thing. You can take it a week at a time. Most text messages get read within 90 seconds. Open rates are 98%. You're going to learn fast — it won't take months to start seeing results in data.

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If you're ready to plug the gaps in your go-to-market workflows, TextUs integrates directly into Salesforce and HubSpot — two-way texting, workflow automation, attribution within your CRM, messaging right out of the tools your team already uses. Head to textus.com/demo to see it in action. Demos are about 30 minutes, and the number one feedback we get from customers is, "I can't believe how easy this is to use."

Also, if you want to see automation in action, text the word DEMO to 720-815-4767 and see what happens. Schedule your demo that way if you really want to see the power of texting.

I'm Andrew from the marketing team here at TextUs. Thanks for spending this time with me today. Now go give a sh*t about SMS and start converting more of your leads into pipeline.

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