Category: Lead Response
Don’t Give Up Too Soon When Following Up on Leads
Responding to inquiries fast is essential but persistence pays off
When people submit their information in an online form to receive more information, they expect a response and they want it right away. We already know that it’s critical for successful sales and marketing initiatives to be the first to respond and that too many companies don’t respond at all.
While the first company to react often gets the sale and the closing rate on the first call is the highest, what should you do if you contact a lead right away and don’t close the sale?
You keep contacting them. Not one more time, not two more or even five times, but keep reaching out. With each contact, you increase your overall odds of closing the sale. Indeed, after a dozen contacts – assuming you need that many – the chances of closing the deal stands at an astounding 95 percent.
This conclusion comes from Dave Elkington CEO and chairman of InsideSales.com, a lead management and sales automation provider. Elkington’s presentation about lead response efficacy in the business-to-business space includes this and other surprising discoveries.
There’s a 37 percent chance of closing the sale on the first contact when responding to an online lead. Yet salespeople who stop then miss 63 percent of their potential business.
With a second call, a follow up to the first one, the closing rate jumps much higher. Combining the 37 percent success rate of the first call with another 24 percent from the second one, produces a 61 percent compounded closing rate. Each subsequent contact moves the overall closing rate higher. After the sixth contact it moves to 90 percent, reaching an astonishing 95 percent after the twelfth time.
“Clearly persistence pays off,” says Adam Berkson, president of LiveVoice, an answering service call center that provides a lead response service. “Yet few salespeople are that diligent.”
“I can’t stress how important it is for sales staff to keep reaching out to their leads,” adds Patricia Totton, CEO of TeleServices Direct, a worldwide provider of outsource call center services. “Continuing to follow up is the single most significant difference between a good sales rep and a great one.”
Berkson concurs. “The failure with most sales efforts is giving up too soon. The salesperson stops calling even though the prospect is still interested.”
This reality can skew an analysis of a marketing campaign’s effectiveness. A common measure, comparing the cost of the marketing initiative to the number of sales closed, can lead to wrong conclusions. It is unclear if the fault for low results stems from a poorly conceived marketing campaign or the failure of sales reps to respond.
“The goal of marketing is to get a lead, while the goal of sales is to close that lead,” says Berkson. “To close leads, salespeople need to respond fast and follow up with persistence.”
LiveVoice’s goal when responding to online information requests for their clients is to react within one minute,” concludes Berkson. “That sets in motion a journey for success. The next step is to keep following up. It’s that simple.”
Peter DeHaan, PhD, is a freelance writer, call center authority, and publisher of Connections Magazine, which covers the call center industry.
