In our experience, those prospects that are hot-to-trot prefer to pick up the phone and the lukewarm ones, those who are comparison shopping, will fill out forms (they have time). As a result, asking lukewarm prospects the “qualification” questions in a web form is useless; it will turn them off (especially if you make those fields mandatory!) but the hot prospects will gladly share that info over the phone.

The learning for us at WiderFunnel Marketing is that in many industries, offering both web forms and a phone number is mandatory. We then run conversion optimization experiments that provide a cross-channel view.

Raquel Hirsch
http://Www.widerfunnel.com