About Social Media Today
The single biggest impact you can have on your return on marketing, and even return on sales, is the time it takes for companies to follow up on a new lead. But yet so many companies are poor at following up on leads in a timely manner. Why? Is it that they don’t want to make money? Or maybe they don’t want the recognition of exceeding quota and big paychecks? No matter what the reason, many companies /salespeople are dropping the ball when it comes to lead follow-up.
In 2007, insidesales.com released a groundbreaking report that showed some startling statistics about just how quickly companies should follow up on Web leads, and the repercussions of not doing so. In it they found:
- The chances of reaching a new sales lead drop over 10-fold if you wait longer than the first hour of shown interest, and the odds of qualifying that lead decrease 6-fold after the first 60 minutes
- The odds of contacting a lead if called within five minutes versus even 30 minutes are 100-fold greater. The odds of entering (that) lead into your sales cycle increase 21-fold if called within five minutes compared to 30 minutes.
And in their recent update, they have found that there’s been precious little improvement in lead response management practices.
For many companies, as long as the lead is called at “some point”, this seems to be good enough. But in reality, it is not enough. Over 75% of the time, the sale goes to the company that follows up first. Bottom line: if you’re inside sales team isn’t consistently reaching every new lead within five minutes of that person’s expressed interest, you’re losing sales.
What's the solution?
While some might recommend just hiring more sales staff, that will not always solve the problem and is probably the most costly solution. What you really need to do is look at your lead process and remove any bottlenecks. Usually this means looking at how marketing hands the leads off to sales, and what the expectations are on the sales team when it comes to lead follow-up.
The follow four questions are key to keep in mind when analyzing your lead flow process:
- How quickly do your sales representatives follow up?
The key is to reach the prospect as soon as possible; ideally within 1 hour, and in a perfect world, within 5 minutes. After that, the returns begin to diminish very quickly. You will see significant diminishing return on every call made outside of 48 hours, and after 7 days you will see a 60-70% drop in leads generated. The sooner you call, you will also diminish the chances that a competitor has called the prospect and is “first at the table” for purchasing discussions. - Does your sales representative have the background story?
Each person who searches the web has a specific purpose. Each lead has been triggered for a reason (if not, you need to go and look at your lead qualification requirements). It’s important to understand the human element: these are real people with real challenges and pain points. The search terms they used or the content they looked at can be great indicators to what their problem is and how you can help them. It is essential that the follow-up call not only reference the specific piece of content that they viewed but immediately direct the discussion to the reason for this search, and the broader needs and pains of their company. This can only be achieved if the lead that is passed to the sales people has more than just a name and number. That is why it’s important to include the full history of communications between your company and the lead when passing it to your sales people. Integrating your marketing automation solution with your CRM can help achieve this. - Are your sales representatives prepared for the follow up call?
Training your sales representatives how to follow up on each type of lead or campaign is essential. You cannot assume that the prospect only wants to discuss the one piece of content they viewed, or that is their only need and pain. The follow-up discussion should be focused on the company as a whole and not simply the one responder. More often than not, the person you are connecting with first may just be the one tasked with researching solutions and may not be the final decision maker. Your sales representative must be attuned to this and have many assets at the ready so they can audible and continue the conversation with that prospect and their company. Train your representatives to understand the different problems that your prospects have and how to map your solutions to them - and in return you will see a quick increase in the success of your lead follow up programs. - Do you have a nurture program for those leads that are not sales ready?
We should never assume that all responders are looking to buy something from you today. In today’s digital age it’s often important to begin discussions with a prospect before they have actually realized all of their pains and needs, and the implication it has on the company as a whole. That means you need to have a strategy developed for how you will work with that prospect and help them advance along their buying journey. You must create a specific and robust nurture program to ensure that all responders who are not immediate leads are not discarded. If our representative makes a valuable call, then they gain several pieces of business intelligence about the company and the contact. This information should be utilized for further nurture and discussion with the prospect so when they are ready to begin a sales cycle you are the first company they engage with.
The average overall response time to new leads is 42 hours. That’s almost 2 days. Combine with it the fact that over 75% of the time the deal goes to those who follow up first, even in B2B complex sales. By simply improving your response times and having an efficient process, you can win more business and stop dropping the ball on lead follow up.
