How you manage leads makes the difference between a wasted investment and a solid return on investment
Once your company spends money to find a prospect, the clock starts ticking. Each inquiry has a life span. Some of the leads may take a year to buy something, some may take six months and some will only take a few months or a few days.
We know that nearly half of any group of leads will buy. However, the perishable asset issue arises when leads are not followed up promptly or at all. The facts (research) show that just because some sales leads are six months to a year old, half of any given group of leads with the same age is still in the market to buy.
As the great hockey player Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Companies are not immune from the same issue – no (or slow) follow-up, no sale.
Far too many companies experience sales lead asset losses because their sales and marketing people do not follow up and contact prospects. Sometimes it occurs because follow-up is slower than with their competitors or follow-up fails and the prospect doesn’t hear from the company at all.
Michael Falkson, CEO of Sales Support, said, “ETI’s experience shows that 80% of inquiries that will convert into market-qualified leads will do so within 18 business hours. Thereafter, your chances of success will fall off dramatically.”
It makes sense to understand that buyers have a timeframe to buy. Eventually, they:
- Buy a product from you
- Buy from your competitor
- Decline to buy the product category (a different product entirely)
- Lose funding and don’t buy anything
- Never had an intention to buy in the first place (students, prisoners, competitors, etc.)
Regardless of the reason, the reality is that any group of leads from a given month has a life span. Each month a few make a decision and disappear; they are dead to you.
However, how these inquiries are handled, contacted, qualified, and entered into the pipeline is vitally important. B2C marketers and salespeople know response to consumer inquiries is a race – response times from inquiry to that first call from the lead holder can be down to less than a minute.
In B2B, response times are more often within hours or “same day” for best-of-breed sales departments with inside salespeople. Those who are asleep respond in days or weeks, and then wonder why the marketing isn’t working for them. The company’s investment in marketing is lost, and the potential asset has failed to buy.
Why It Matters
First, fast responders sell more than those who are slow, sluggish, unhurried, leisurely and dawdling in pursuit of a prospect.
In B2C and B2B, the best salespeople understand that faster is better and slower is also-ran. The first person to speak to the inquirer creates an expectation level for others to follow. The sales rep who is first to answer questions directs the conversation; he or she often becomes a trusted advisor and steers the inquirer to the features and benefits unique to their product and not so unique to competitive products. The subsequent delivery of pricing (a proposal?), literature, white papers, articles, case studies and other educational materials further cements the first responder in the leadership position. Great first responders deliver pricing and answer questions the same day, before competitors make the first call.
Delayed response means a higher rejection rate. Prospects often ignore delayed responders as they no longer need information. Plus, they see the delay as the first indication of the value of the business relationship: slow to respond, slow to deliver, slow to service.
Some leads may never mature for these follow-up slow-pokes because budgets can be canceled, the inquirer changes jobs, the committee never meets, and what appeared so promising dies in a whimper.
Will You Be a First Responder or a Dawdling Responder?
The decision to be first is within your hands. You can put the tools and the people in place to accomplish this within a few days; it’s a series of simple steps.
- Outline the sales stages required to make a sale. Get agreement from salespeople.
- Outline the buying stages of the prospect. Talk to customers.
- Meld items one and two as much as possible so that sales is aware of and delivers information the prospect needs. You now have the sales stages for the CRM system. If the prospects expect pricing in the first call or proposals immediately, give it to them. “Read Zero-Time Selling” by Andy Paul.
- Drive inquiries into a CRM and marketing automation system within a minute of the prospect submitting their form. The CRM tool has to deliver the lead to Sales within your agreed-upon parameters.
- The marketing automation system swings into action and delivers information and content based on the buyer’s needs (form) or actions while on the site. Many systems grade the inquiry by website actions, forms submitted, where they have been on a site and for how long. Some new systems use machine or artificial intelligence to understand the buyer’s profile, accuracy of the address, email and phone numbers, previous buying history, etc.
- The inside sales department must jump into action as soon as the lead hits the CRM system and they are notified. This often means in less than a minute.
- If you do not have an inside sales or qualification department and the volume of leads is substantial, go to a qualified outside service. First responder service, qualification and nurturing are what they do. They make the call, pursue the prospect, and develop a lead into a qualified status or an immediate need. They also nurture unqualified leads until they are sales ready, which frees up your salespeople’s time.
- Send the sales-ready leads to the salespeople.
- Eventually, close out those names in the database that are not buying.
For B2B, certainly there is a fast, first responder requirement even if the inquirer takes weeks or months to make a decision.
Why It’s Important
Leads that are followed up fast will buy at a higher rate. He who is a first responder sells more than he who is not.
The issue is that leads that are followed up fast will buy at a higher rate than those that are contacted within days or weeks, or sometimes even months after the initial contact. He who is a first responder sells more than he who is not.
David Hoang works as a copywriter for WriteAnyPapers. He used to be a web developer, but he decided to change his career. In this case, David has an opportunity to tell others how to apply different solutions.
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