The Harvard Business Review did a study about lead response that opened our eyes to the importance of speed when it comes to contacting prospects. According to the results of the study, businesses have a Golden Hour in which leads are most likely to qualify: companies that contacted potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times more likely to qualify the lead as those that contacted the customer an hour later—and more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer.
The Faster You Connect, The Faster You Close
It seems obvious, but when 24 percent of businesses wait more than a day to respond to web inquiries, and 23 don’t respond to those inquiries at all…perhaps the obvious needs to be stated: the faster you contact your leads, the faster you will turn them into accounts.
Don’t believe it? How about this statistic: a sale is 22 percent more likely to happen when you make contact within five minutes. The prospect just entered their contact info: they’re ready for information about your product; they’re sitting still and are researching right at that moment. You should be talking to them while they’re still in the buying frame of mind! Besides, what if they’re filling out forms with multiple vendors? The first one to call is most likely to get the deal, so calling within five minutes of the customer clicking “enter” on your form is in your best interest. Five minute lead response? For some it seems daunting, but it shouldn’t be.
Five-Minute Lead Response
The trick is automatically triggered phone calls. An online lead is on your website and fills out your form. Instead of that lead being entered into your CRM and then left to freeze over into oblivion, it should be directed to a ready agent straightaway. The best tools do this by instantly triggering a phone call to an agent (accompanied by a screenpop in the agent panel) that notifies the agent of the incoming lead and then gives them the option to trigger an immediate call to the lead. That’s all. Five-minute lead response is that simple: a completed form, a triggered phone call, and an agent clicking “connect.”
The Details Matter
Connecting with the customer within five minutes is a good start. In fact, it’s a great start—you’re taking advantage of that Golden Hour in a big way. But you can do more. Above, we mention that the web form triggers a phone call to a waiting agent. That shouldn’t be the only communication the agent gets before being connected to the lead. Instead, you can choose tools that enable you to use “whisper” phone messages that whisper in the agents ear details that will help them turn the call into an account: what product the lead was looking at when they called, which marketing campaign prompted led them to your site, etc. The agent is connecting with the lead in under five minutes, and they don’t have to waste time asking the customer what they’re looking for? They don’t call it the Golden Hour for nothing.
Five-minute lead response is a lofty goal—but it can be done, and very easily. Need some more pointers to get inside the Golden Hour? Watch this webinar, Qualifying Inbound Leads Before They Turn Cold.