Calling back leads fast is much more important than most business owners realize.
If you wanted to buy a product or service, what is the likelihood that you would wait two days for the seller to respond? You wouldn’t!
As a business owner, I’m sure you’re aware of the importance of getting back to leads quickly. But I’m going to show you exactly HOW important it is by putting some numbers to it.
So let’s get on with it…
Firstly, the odds of contacting a lead decreases by over 10 times within the first hour!
In fact, 64% of customer prospects submitting business inquiries and 54% of those making personal inquiries say their buying decisions are heavily influenced by slow responses.
Here are a few more eye opening stats:
- Only 6% of qualified buyers submit inquiries to a single business for the first contact.
- A significant majority of those making inquiries submit to 3 or more companies.
- Studies strongly suggest that the company who response first has a huge advantage, which 61% of prospects agree with.
- According to one study, 78% of customers are likely to purchase from a company that responds first to their inquiry.
- Most prospects prefer being contacted through a mix of both calls and emails.
Speed to Call is Everything
According to one study, contacting a new prospect by phone within a minute boosts conversion rates by 391%.
If a company takes 24 hours to respond, that is too slow. And 29% of buyers say that no response within one hour would make them question a company’s level of attentiveness.
In another survey by Velocify and PossibleNOW, it was revealed that:
- Among the respondents who had made an online business inquiry, 72% of prospects were convinced that the company that called first had an advantage over the others.
- 62% of business buyers preferred being to be called back as quickly as possible, irrespective of who called back.
- 3 in 4 respondents indicate that they would be happy to be called 2-4 times by a company in a 30-day period before they gave up.
- 1 in 8 said they would be happy with as many calls as it would take to reach them.
And another source indicated that 55% of surveyed companies take 5 or more days to respond to a lead.
Add Email to the Mix
In addition to making a phone call, email outreach increases contact and conversion. Data from Leads360’s “Ultimate Contact Strategy” proves that emails sent in between phone calls have the potential of improving contact by 16%.
In addition to calls, consistent email outreach increases contact with prospects.
The optimal number of email messages needed to increase conversion in the first month is 5 according to data. After 6 or more emails, the conversion rate was 36% lower than for prospects who were reached in 5 or less emails.
- 80% of buyers prefer receiving 1-4 emails within a 30-day period.
- The chance of qualifying a lead in 5 minutes drops by 21 times in 30 minutes.
- The chance of qualifying a lead is reduced by 4 times between 5 mins and 10 mins response time.
So, if the ability to contact a lead reduces significantly after 60 minutes, your ability to qualify leads suffers considerably during that one hour.
The Takeaway
It’s worth repeating, conversions increase by 391% when you contact inbound leads within one minute of contacting you. It’s your chance to provide customer propsects a unique one-on-one experience.
This is a prospect’s real first impression of your business, so train your sales team to follow up with prospects who first contact you immediately.
Make sure to contact leads by phone first, then follow up by email and social media channels like Facebook or LinkedIn if you collect that info.
- Although conversion rates are best during official working hours, they are higher during the pre-work hours than the post-work hours.
- During work hours, the conversion rates are highest at 4 pm (about 21% above-average). Another study also confirms these findings.
- While conversion rates tend to be higher in the afternoon, the opposite is true for qualification rates (highest between 9 am and 11 am.
Bottom line—if your company is not getting in contact with prospects within 5 minutes of their initial quote request, you’re running a huge risk of losing that prospect.
With the escalating costs of paid advertising and the ever-increasing online competition, you can’t afford to lose leads by wasting time.
