Sales Leads Response Time is Everything
Your sales leads conversions are greatly dependent of your response time. That’s it, end of article.
OK I’m kidding that’s not the end of the article, but I wanted to drive our point home. Response time, response time, response time.
When you’re ready to buy an item you’ve been thinking about or hire a service professional for a much-needed repair, home improvement, landscaping job, etc. you’re ready to spend money the moment you make the first contact with the company who offers it.
If they answer your inquiry quickly enough, you’re sold. If they don’t, chances are the second or third company you contact WHO WAS able to answer your inquiry is who will get your dollars. Right?
Well then refer to the first line of this article regarding what sales leads conversions are greatly reliant on.
Here are some facts to back up what I’m saying:
How Sales Leads Response Time Effects Conversion Rate
Sales teams tend to respond slowly to leads and according to a study on the lifeline of sales leads, response time is what greatly effected the lack of conversions.
Now if you’re a service professional or own an online store chances are, you’re busy attending your existing customers when a hot live lead comes in. So it’s not until later on during the day that you’ll have the time to look at your smartphone where your email is set up and that’s when you see the notification.
You may or may not have time in the moment to contact the lead to either answer their question, provide pricing, and if you’re lucky, schedule a consult or estimate appointment. Keeping that in mind, here is what I found most revealing from the lead generation study:
The average first response time of B2B companies to their leads was 42 hours
Only 37% of companies responded to their leads within an hour
16% of companies responded within one to 24 hours
24% of companies took more than 24 hours
23% of the companies never responded at all
Did you guys catch that first stat? 42 hours?! If I’m ready to buy a new car and I have my payment ready and my adrenaline rushing for it…I’m not looking to wait 42 hours to buy it. By then, I’m over it.
Or, if my heater stopped working mid-winter and I need a technician to come look at it…I can’t wait 42 hours to get pricing or an estimate appointment. I’m cold!
So what’s the solution? Well what if you had a virtual staff team that is standing by waiting for your leads to send an email inquiry, call for pricing, send a text message asking about availability? Your sales conversions would double and possibly triple, that’s what would happen.
Now we’re not talking about partnering with a call center that has a staff that barely speaks English, sound robotic, read from a screen, etc. We’re talking about a US based customer service business that is fully trained on the products and services you provide and can speak to your leads as if they work in your local office. They would answer all of your lead’s questions, schedule estimate appointments or consultations, provide pricing, and have friendly conversation to nurture your leads. The best part is, they’re waiting on those leads to come in so they can respond within minutes and not hours. That means in terms of sales leads response time, they’d be the first responders. Now we’re talking!
If you’re looking to increase your sales leads conversion rate and are too busy to handle your leads as they’re coming in, feel free to contact us for a quick conversation on how we can help boost your revenue,