Once upon a time, online sales chat was the purview of the few, and it took a lot of evangelism to get management’s attention. Today, it’s a different game.

Sales chat is heading toward the tipping point. Next up: real time hand offs to partners.

Sales chat has ceased to be an innovation that delivers a competitive advantage — and is well on its way to a tipping point that requires companies to pay attention.

Case in point; 35% of the companies we track now offer interactive sales chat on their sites. One of them is booking over $100 million in sales using this technique.

Unfortunately, even these companies are missing the obvious. Pop up sales chat offers are usually presented long before the visitor is ready to engage. When the buyer is ready, these features are usually missing in action.  That relegates them to an expensive game of buyer “whack a mole.”

There’s an easy solution to this problem. Put a “chat with us” link in your call to action module.

Few of the sites we evaluate have made this connection. Among those that have, Cisco.com delivers several best practices and moments of brilliance. One is the fact that its eye-catching chat module and pop up offer use the same design. The other is that its SMB zone hands off pre-qualified buyers in real time to a Cisco partner who can continue the dialog in a private collaboration space on the Cisco.com site.

If you don’t have online sales chat on your dance card, it’s time to start planning.  While you are it, be like Cisco. Think out of the box.