Why is it important to attend to your leads quickly? How to do it? 

Why is it important to attend to your leads quickly? How to do it? 

Written by Sophie Robertson, In Marketing, Updated On
April 28th, 2023
, 255 Views

Time plays a crucial role whenever a new lead comes into the system. The faster you reach out to the lead after they’ve shown interest in your product or service, the more chances you have to convert that lead into a paying customer.

A study shows that 88% of people, while contacting a company, expect a response within 60 minutes, and 30% want to get their query answered within 15 minutes.

This stat is sufficient to tell the importance of lead response time.Let’s explore in detail – Why it is crucial for every business and what are some ways to improve it.

Why is it crucial to attend to your leads quickly?

Event organizers will agree that organizing a memorable experience is no easy task. It necessitates significant planning, which may be exhausting because a systematic approach requires effort. Event ticketing software, however, nearly renders the entire planning phase seamless and tolerable. The integration of administration and ticketing technology by event producers and venues has resulted in major, quantifiable advantages that create a level playing field for all parties. How? Look more closely at the following benefits. Enables you to maximize event outreach The possibility of reaching a large audience is among the main benefits of an event ticketing platform like Eventtia. By attracting more customers, employing an event ticketing platform will boost your direct bookings. Social media is an effective method for advertising. Your clients can upload their bought tickets on their profiles by connecting them to your booking system, which will help promote the occasion without any work. Allows paperless online payments and registrations Each promoter understands the importance of being able to forgo printing out passes for your visitors; while it might look great, the cost can quickly pile up. However, it's acceptable if many guests continue to ask for printed tickets. Typically, more than 50% percent of individuals would like to skip standing in line at the entrance or for their tickets to arrive via mail. Rather, allowing your guests to download their tickets to events at home guarantees that your sales department has one less task to handle. Measures attendance rates Every event planner should use the simplest method feasible to verify participants. To check out your attendance, you can use a QR code approach online. To see who is available and still scheduled, link your ticket system to your enrollment summary. The day before the event, send out more information by using the participant roster. Boosts ticket sales We’re all aware that attendance at a conference is a key indicator of its performance. Developing a clear strategy on how to reach in front of your intended audience is crucial, especially for activities that are available publicly. A significant role in user registrations is played by ticket revenue. Obviously, knowing the number of tickets sold is important. However, it’s also essential to understand who purchased these seats. What demographic is the specific event's core demographic? Develop a strong ticketing strategy with data-supported responses inquiries If your platform is fully integrated, you may follow this up by monitoring ticket sales targeted at particular demographics. Additionally, everything now exists online as a result of the ongoing advancement of technology. Even though your invite list is short, only raising money at the occasion entrance can cause a delay in the admittance process. Because of COVID-19, guests are also searching for contactless tickets and other measures to reduce their exchanges to the greatest extent feasible. Visitors don’t wish to arrive early at an event only to get their seats. You can offer tickets or other goods in advance online with the right software, which will be advantageous for both you and your customers. Customers who purchase tickets online may have them in hand when they arrive for entry, reducing wait times and facilitating a more seamless entry process. Saves time and costs The ‘generational system proliferation’ phenomenon affects almost every firm. In reality, close to 64% of businesses claim to possess more apps than they can possibly use. They start off with more than one software and gradually add additional components to the blend as time goes on. Managerial accounting, calendars, schedules, and excel sheets – since one platform is independent of the others, the operator must move between them and frequently sign into and out of every app as they utilize it. The majority of these technologies are out-of-date and risk data entanglement and network complexity. This may ring a bell, right? This back-and-forth causes ineffective operational efficiency – leading to increased timelines and costs. If you've got to this stage, you need to consider ticketing software, particularly for organizing events. When you switch to a complete ticketing solution and integrate it with your platform, you won't need to go through the booking process to retrieve data or rely on a ticketing firm to provide results – because you'll be able to observe each ticket purchase as it occurs right away. Assists with data analytics When organizations combine their event planning and ticketing systems, they are no longer dependent on the booking business for sales figures, which are frequently provided after the program has ended. The capacity to access this real-time information is a game-changer since each sale is crucial. Professional event ticketing software will typically give you access to an analytics tool that can aid in the expansion of the organizers' company. It gives you access to the information that you gather. You may easily identify your most successful vendors, the busiest times for inquiries, the busiest routes for ticket sales, etc. when you have a reporting and analytics process in place. Profit from understanding what your customer wants most and spend less time and cash on products that won't advance your company. Your potential business choices and the quality of your products will be determined by how well your framework presents the facts. You can evaluate your data and extract vital insights from it, and seek a booking software provider that gives you such a tool. Keep a record of all the activities you host and figure out how to improve them. Select accordingly. Enables service to the customers Customer service is crucial in every scenario whether you are interacting with a visitor, a client, or the broader population. Customer service is a feature of the majority of scheduling software. You can utilize this application as an event planner to help and guide your attendees when they purchase and register for tickets. Additionally, you can also utilize the customer care function at the time of the event itself since certain attendees could require assistance with different problems. Wrapping it up Knowing the benefits and applications of event ticketing software, you can rapidly decide if or not your event planning company is a good fit for this platform.

Regarding business, there is no doubt your product or services, customer support, and user experience should be top-notch. But having a quick response time to your leads gives you a big edge over your competitors.

Suppose a company provides extremely high-quality products, but replying to its inbound leads takes a week. In that case, it leaves a lot of money on the table for the companies providing average-quality products but responding to the leads in less than five minutes.Below are a few statistics that will show you the importance of improving your lead response time:

Companies that make initial contact with leads quickly close 35% to 50% of the sales. (Source: Zendesk)

A company responding to inbound leads in less than five minutes increases its conversion rates by 21 times more than responding after one hour. (Source: Qualified)

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Making initial contact with the lead within 5 hours is 40% more effective than calling after 24 hours. (Source: Leadsimple)

Due to slow response time, only 27% of leads get contacted. (Source: Revenuehero)

What are some ways to improve the lead response time?

Track your speed to lead time.

To attend to your leads quickly, you should first know where you stand. Meaning regular tracking of the speed to lead can help you determine your average lead response time.

Maintain a record of this progress and try to analyze how attending leads quickly impact sales. Also, keep an eye on individual sales reps’ performance and average response time. Doing this will help you identify employees who need training or support to improve.

Get automation tools

Today’s business environment is competitive and fast-paced. And for this environment, automation is a must. Though you can’t close a deal automatically, you still need to meet the customer on the phone or face to face. But other things can be automated, such as emails and text messages for follow-up and lead nurturing.

As you receive a lead, use automated emails, sms, or WhatsApp text to confirm that you have received their query. Once you have the lead’s contact information, call or message them immediately and make them aware of what is next they can expect from you.

Leverage lead distribution software.

Investing in good lead distribution software can be very helpful to your business. It will automate lead distribution and make the process efficient.However, you must define the right criteria before assigning the leads to the sales reps. Inefficiencies in the system or the criteria may drastically impair the average lead response time.

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Whether you set the lead distribution criteria based on the sales rep’s skills, expertise, customer’s location, or some other factor, ensure that the leads are assigned equally to avoid burdening any sales rep.

Set benchmarks

Set a benchmark in your company for responding to the leads coming into the system. For example, people sending emails to the company usually expect a reply within 6 hours. However, you can strive to respond within 30 minutes or so.Although you must try to achieve the fastest response time, your goals must also be realistic and achievable for your team. So start small and keep progressing. For instance, if your team replies within 2 hours, you should focus on coming down to one hour first rather than five minutes.

Offer live chat support.

If you don’t offer live chat support, users will need to send emails even for the smallest of their queries. This takes time and leads to frustration. You can solve this problem by implementing live chat support on your website. You can even use Ai chatbots to answer frequently asked questions within seconds or to schedule a meeting.

And if you want to go a step further, implement a live video chat feature on the website. Users who are in real need of immediate help find this option very helpful and appreciate it. This also gives you a competitive edge in the market, as few companies are doing it yet.

Use multiple communication channels.

No doubt, emails are the most effective way to communicate with the lead in a professional way but to attend to the leads quicker, you should use multiple communication channels such as WhatsApp, SMS, phone calls, etc. Also, find out their preferred mode of communication.

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Make it easier for website users to start communicating with you. Just one mode of communication may not be convenient for all users. Give them an option that is easier for them to use.

Encourage and empower your sales rep.

Your sales team’s performance significantly impacts your company’s bottom line. They are the ones who can really put effort into improving the company’s response time. Therefore, you should encourage and empower them to make their performance better. This includes training and development, tools, and resources that help them respond to the lead faster.

Moreover, you can remove some unnecessary tasks from their schedule to reduce their burden. Additionally, you can tell the sales rep to prioritize a new sales call over an administrative meeting.

Summary

You must attend to the leads quickly to get better conversion rates and boost sales. It may seem a bit challenging initially and require some effort. But training your employees to respond faster will be worth it in the long term.

With the tips given here, you can learn and implement some or all of the ways to improve your organization’s average lead response time.

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