How Vendavo cut lead response time by 90% using AI and automation

Steve Hastert, Director of Revenue Marketing and Operations at Vendavo, remembers the moment it clicked: there was another promising lead sitting idle in his inbox, waiting to be manually entered into a system. "It could take hours before anyone followed up," said Steve. 

Vendavo works with major manufacturers and distributors, helping them set smarter prices based on ever-shifting factors such as customer type, contract terms, tariffs, and market trends. "Think of us like the airline industry but for manufacturing," Steve explained. "Pricing constantly shifts depending on the context."

But while Vendavo’s software thrives on speed and precision, its internal marketing workflows weren't reflecting that. Slow, manual lead handoffs were common and costly.

That’s when Steve turned to Zapier. By automating repetitive lead-handling tasks, Vendavo’s lean team could respond to prospects in minutes instead of hours and maintain momentum.

"Before we automated it, a lead could sit in someone’s inbox for hours. By then, it was basically dead," Steve said. "Now we respond within minutes."

Vendavo’s results, by the numbers:

• 90% faster lead response: Down from hours to just minutes with automated follow-ups.

• 120+ chatbot conversations per month: AI agents now handle repetitive queries and surface leads.

• No new headcount: A single marketer scaled lead routing and chatbot capabilities, while keeping a lean team.

How Vendavo speeds up lead response from hours to minutes

When someone fills out a "contact us" form through a Google Ad, the last thing you want is for it to disappear into an inbox. That’s what was happening at Vendavo.

"I used to get an email, download the spreadsheet, then manually copy the lead into a form on our site. It could take hours before anyone followed up," said Steve.

To streamline the process, Steve built a Zap that triggers whenever someone fills out the embedded "contact us" form on Google Ads, allowing the sales team to follow up within an hour. 

Here's how the Zap works:

• Trigger: A new lead submission from Google Ads.

• Action: The lead data is automatically sent to the CRM.

• Follow-up: Sales reps are alerted in real time, allowing them to reach out while interest is high.

How Vendavo’s chatbot went from clunky to conversational

Like many marketing teams, Vendavo once relied on a basic decision-tree chatbot to handle website questions. But the experience was rigid, impersonal, and often unhelpful.

"It was just if-then logic. People got stuck. It couldn’t answer anything beyond the most basic flows," Steve said.

That changed when Steve switched to a Zapier-powered AI Chatbot trained on Vendavo’s product pages and data sheets. Within two hours, the new chatbot was live, offering more complete answers and helping capture leads directly.

Here’s how it works:

• Training: The chatbot pulls from product pages and PDFs to understand Vendavo’s offerings.

• Trigger flow: When a visitor expresses interest (e.g., types “contact” or “pricing”), the bot kicks off a Zap to capture their info and send it to the sales team.

• Automation: The Zap routes the lead to the same CRM pipeline used for AdWords submissions.

"It answers way more questions, and more completely, than I could ever program in manually. That was a big leap forward for us," said Steve. 

Building smarter journeys with automation and AI

For Steve, automation isn’t just a way to save time, it’s a foundation for smarter, more scalable marketing.

Steve has built workflows for everything from outbound prospecting to event invites, automating personalized sequences and tracking engagement with AI. The flexibility of Zapier has even made him rethink his existing tools: "Sometimes I look at what I’ve built and think I could just recreate the parts of Marketo I actually need," he said.

And Steve’s not stopping with what’s working today. He’s already thinking about how AI can take on even more, like testing subject lines, refining outreach timing, and optimizing campaigns on the fly.

"Imagine an LLM that comes back and says, 'We tested 352,000 versions of your subject line and this is the one,'" he said. "And instead of five-day cadences, it tells you to reach out every 3.27 days because that’s what performs best."

With Zapier as his toolkit, he’s already moving toward that vision.