Is your revenue team ready for what's next?
When it comes to lead follow-up, there are two absolute truths: 1) faster is better and 2) it pays to be persistent. Insidesales.com recently published an article in which they share findings from their study of response times and follow-up persistence of almost 200 companies.
Who were the all-stars when it came to reaching out to their leads? James Hardies Industries came in first, with a 3.8-minute response time and a total of 7 follow-up attempts. Dynamic Signal came in second, with an 8.3-minute response time and a whopping 14 follow-up attempts. Conversica came in third, with a 9-minute lead response time and 8 follow-up attempts.
Here’s the top ten list of companies with the best lead response:
The shelf life of a lead is a lot like sushi – you don’t want that salmon roll that keeps passing you by on the conveyor belt. For salespeople, the same truth applies. Leads go stale quickly, and people who were interested just 30 minutes or an hour ago have most likely moved on to other things.
Five minutes. The likelihood of making contact with a lead significantly drops after 5 minutes. In fact, the contact rate decreases by 100x from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. It makes sense when you think about it — the best time to reach out to a lead is when he or she submits their inquiry since that’s when they’re on their phone or computer researching your product. It’s at the top of their mind.
Gabe Larsen of InsideSales states, “The problem with responding to leads right now is people focus on the exceptions, not the rule. The rule is customers want and expect an immediate response in under five minutes. Train your people, optimize your process, and invest in technology to make this happen. Once you’ve reached that goal, then start focusing on the exceptions.”
As Gabe mentioned, one way of ensuring that each lead gets a prompt response is to leverage technology that does the work for you. Conversational AI tools like Conversica reach out to every inbound lead with a response relevant to the inquiry. Valuable information such as the specific product of interest, the prospect’s phone number, and the best time to call can be verified — all before the salesperson picks up the phone.
Want to learn more? Schedule a live demo to see Conversica’s conversational AI in action.
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