How does your lead response time stack up?
April 27, 2010 by Bob HillPosted in: closing, communication, In this week's e-newsletter - Sales & Marketing, Latest News & Views - Sales & Marketing, New Research, online marketing, sales management
A recent study revealed how quickly companies respond to Web-based leads on average — and the news isn’t good.
The study, conducted by InsideSales.com, monitored 472 sales organizations in the New York City area to determine how quickly the average company responds to Web-based leads.
In other words, once a prospect registers on a company’s Web site, or poses a question or concern, how quickly are Sales and Service reps turning over that lead and establishing contact with the prospect?
Answer: The average sales organization takes 49 hours to respond to Web-based leads — 29 hours if the company is responding via e-mail. And nearly 70% of companies didn’t respond at all to inquiries made by “secret shoppers” who were actually affiliated with the study.
Why are these results so disparaging? In a 2009 survey, 55% of buyers claimed they’d never do business with a company again if a question or service issue wasn’t resolved within 24 hours.
Also, recent MIT research found that the odds of making contact with a Web-based lead are 100 times greater if someone follows up within five minutes, as opposed to 30 minutes.
The odds of making contact if the company waits more than two days? Slim to none.
Source: “InsideSales.com Checks Lead Response Time on 472 Salesforce.com Customers in New York City,” Marketwire, 4/8/10.
How quickly does your company follow up with Web-based leads? Let us know in the Comments Box below.
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Tags: e-mail, Insidesales.com, Marketwire, MIT, New York City, research, study, Web-based leads
April 28th, 2010 at 11:45 am
I open my e-mails around 8 am and if somone has approached me within the last 12 hours I try responding within that 1st hour via a phone call follow up. I also address answering any technical requests to help the prospect including referrals if we cannot satisfy the capability request. Some of my requests come from international e-mails over the past few years. People are sometimes suprized at how fast I come back. My web site is well positioned for searching on keywords related to the printed circuit board world of manufacturing and test.
Jay F. Stokes
New Business Development Mgr.
April 28th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Send me those leads!!
We follow up all leads, no matter the source, in 24 hours or less.
Leads are expensive and it’s hard to find people to raise their hand and say they are interested in your product so you’d better treat each one like the potential gold it is.
Send me those leads