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

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?

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)

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.

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.

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.