Comments on: React Faster to Your Leads to Increase Your ROI

By: B2B Web Strategy Blog - eMagine » Is your slow response alienating leads you spent good money to get?

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 14:08:05 +0000

[...] on his Sales Lead Insights blog, Mac McIntosh reviews some research [...]

By: Mac McIntosh

Mac McIntosh — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:18:30 +0000

Dear Reality Check,

What I would say to them, if I were you, depends on whether you want to keep your job or not. (Just kidding).

In reality (no pun intended) if I were you I would consider sending them a gently worded email suggesting that slow response may be negatively impacting our student registrations. I would include a reference to the research mentioned above and maybe (if you are willing to have them see your comments about it) a link to this blog post.

Unfortunately, others don’t always share your passion for getting the best results, especially if it changes the status quo or means more work for them. And sometimes, if your frustration level rises too high because of that, it means it is time to move one. (I know, easier said than done in this economy!)

Let me know how it all works out.

Sincerely,
Mac

By: Deborah

Deborah — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 03:46:46 +0000

Reality Check
I work in Marketing for a small school in N.Cal. We get between 600 and 900 requests per month for our catalog. We are currently in our open enrollment period with classes beginning in March. Today, I discovered that our sales person had not followed up at all on over 300 some leads that have been sitting our her desk for the past two weeks as she was too busy on other things. When I brought up the fact to management that these leads have been sitting for two weeks and we all need to help if necessary, no one seemed slightly concerned. I was more shocked at their low sense of urgency from them than I was from finding out about the “dying” leads just sitting on the side of the desk. I need to educate them on what these two week response times are doing to their ROI so they truly understand the impact and they won’t be so complacent next time. What would you say to them.

By: Mac McIntosh

Mac McIntosh — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 06:14:09 +0000

Jake,

You are on the right track. I’d consider using an autoresponder and/or outsourcing.

Regards,
Mac

By: Parker Trewin

Parker Trewin — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 00:15:01 +0000

Mac, great post. I took a look at the same study and I would underscore what you wrote by adding the odds of contacting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 100 times. Forget calling the next day! The time to connect with a prospect is when they are actively buying -which is pretty much NOW! The MIT study says that one way to know this is when the prospect fills out a web-to-lead form but there are also solutions that give you instant insight into a prospect’s web “presence” so you can connect with your prospects before they “move on to something else.” Sales and Marketing ought to be investigating these tools if they want to make their numbers. And who doesn’t in today’s economy?

By: Leigh Anne Wallace

Leigh Anne Wallace — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:46:34 +0000

My company, ReachForce, was actually one of those included in the survey. We came in second with our response time, woo hoo! The thing that I couldn’t believe is that over 37% of companies never responded at all. I would hate to be a marketer for one of those companies. Someone filling out a contact form is like a lead being delivered on a silver platter. Why wouldn’t you follow-up?

By: Jake Atwood

Jake Atwood — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:10:56 +0000

What do you recommend for smaller companies who may not be able to follow up within 5 minutes all the time? We have explored using email autoresponders to reply on our behalf. We also looked into outsourcing the initial follow-up call to a call center. Any thoughts?