Last month I put a little chat bubble on our website. I thought it would give people more ways to communicate with us, and then not one person used it. Then one morning I decided to Google if contact forms are out in 2026 what’s in. Phrased just like that, and it suggested chat boxes. I looked at mine and then I looked at theirs and theirs had some floating text above it. Nothing intrusive, but just a little floating text. So I changed ours and added the floating text.
Last night I had an unforeseen consequence to these actions. I ended up chatting with someone that just wanted to chat. They wanted to tell me all about their cat and how much they needed someone to come look at his tail. I informed them we were a dog walking and pet sitting company and they kept wanting to chat about their cat.
I put the chat bubble there and people decided to use it. Our lead velocity has increased a lot over the last month. It feels good and healthy again like I have finally gotten the business to wear I want it to be. I can’t explain lead velocity in any term other than vibes right now because my tracking has never been great. I am now solving that. Me acting like a grown ass salesperson might be the biggest change we can make to my role in 2026.
Not blog roadmaps, improved SEO, ally marketing, review velocity follow-ups, GBP updates, NextDoor post, improved Facebook copy and image quality, better take homes at events, decision matrix on the website, earlier CTA on services pages, a new pricing page, renamed pricing tiers, target marketing personas, Facebook weekly rhythm templates, local city pages on our website, a new FAQ page, brand alignment in messaging, SOPs, and whatever else I have worked on over the last month and a half.
What might make the biggest difference is my asking what is expected from a chief marketing officer and head of sales and then doing it. If I’m going to create job scorecards and job descriptions for every seat in our org chart I should probably start with myself. That is also a project that can wait until after I have seen if I can automate scheduling.
David Huzzard Writes 