When running a business it is imperative to consistently make new sales while retaining current customers. This will ensure the growth of your business and prevent you from going under when harsh times (such as the COVID pandemic) strike.
In this article, we will discuss how to increase lead response time and why this is such an important element in making a successful sale.
Why Lead Response Time is Important
Lead response time can make or break a sale. When a company takes hours to respond to a lead, that lead instantly feels undervalued. Why would you give your hard-earned money to a company that you feel doesn’t value you?
If a company’s lead response time is slow and another company responds to the same lead in a timely manner, the sale could possibly happen before your company is even in the running to secure the sale.
A good example to demonstrate this would be if you were shopping for a new phone contract. You browse a few different providers, requesting a call back from each provider. The first provider to contact you will have a much higher chance of making the sale, as they have a head start on showing off the deals they have running at that point in time.
What Should Your Lead Response Time Be?
Statistics have shown that a lead response time as fast as 1 minute, has the potential to increase a company’s conversion rate by 391%. That is an incredible jump and could be the key to growing your small business into an empire. If a 1-minute response time seems impossible, a 5 minute response time will do; however, it has been shown that the chance of sale could drop by as much as 10%.
Methods for Improving Your Lead Response Time
It is clear that a fast response time is what you need to skyrocket your sales, but how do you achieve this? There are a few methods one can use to ensure your response as quickly as possible and secure your ideal client.
- Set Goals: If your response time is currently 30 minutes or more, it is going to be unrealistic to expect it to jump to 1 minute overnight. Thus, it is advisable to set small time improvement and slowly but surely work your way up to 1 minute.
- Lead Scoring: this is a strategy that allows you to score the likelihood of a lead making a purchase. Thus, this will allow you to push those more likely to buy your product or service to the top of the lead response list.
- Lead Routing: if your business has multiple departments, it is important to have a system in place that can easily and quickly direct a lead to the person or specialist that can help that specific lead. This will prevent the lead from losing interest.
Tools That Can Assist You in Your Lead Response Time
One of the best tools to make use of when trying to increase your lead response time is a CRM or otherwise known as a Client Relationship Manager. The right CRM will have a lead manager built into it that will allow you to optimise your response time.
Leadtrekker is such a CRM and has a few ways in which it helps increase lead response time.
- Capture Leads: It creates lead capturing landing pages, making it easy to receive valuable leads.
- Assign Automation: It automatically assigns leads to the correct salesperson.
- Escalated Leads: It monitors your lead response time and escalates a lead when the response time is poor.
- Stay Notified: It can send an instant email and SMS notification, ensuring you never are unaware of a lead.
- Analyse Performance: Accurate reports are compiled to ensure you can track your progress while in the process of improving your lead response time.
To find out more about how Leadtrekker can improve your lead response time, book a demo or contact our team.
