Category: Lead Response
Make the Switch Now to Adopt an Online Lead Response Mentality
Ad spending on digital marketing continues to increase and is expected to surpass TV expenditures by 2018.
Businesses prefer online advertising because they can easily measure it and quantify success. In fact many of the more recent marketing graduates believe that if they can’t directly measure an ad campaign’s effectiveness, then it isn’t worth pursuing.
“Therefore we can expect to see more online advertising in the future and correspondingly more online generated leads,” says Adam Berkson, president of LiveVoice, a foremost provider of lead response services, who has mastered the complexities in how to turn a lead into a sale.
“Lead nurturing is critical to realize successful outcomes in sales, yet it is even more critical with leads generated online, as those individuals expect a quicker response, have less patience over delays, and will jump to a competitor over the smallest of slights,” Berkson adds. “Almost two-thirds of all companies (65 percent) confess that they have no formal lead nurturing process.”
The key differentiator between success and failure is follow up. “We can’t expect salespeople to inherently know how and when to follow up on a lead,” says Steve Knight, senior VP of client services at TeleServices Direct, a worldwide provider of outsource call center services. “We must teach them.” If they don’t have a specific follow-up protocol to guide them, they will flounder by doing what they think is best. Or more likely they will gravitate toward inaction. Without proper training, they will never make the five to twelve calls required to close the average sale. Instead they’ll stop after two or three, assuming they even make that first contact.
Berkson cites research that the average response time for an internet lead is forty-four hours. “This is pathetic. If you sit on a lead that long, it’s already cold and there’s little point in bothering. Smart marketers know that the prime window of opportunity is one hour, preferably five minutes.” But Berkson’s company surpasses that lofty goal, setting a new gold standard of a one-minute response rate, that’s a mere sixty seconds to reach out to touch a lead. “We aim to contact them before they have time to even think about an alternative provider.”
Only 25 percent of salespeople bother to make two contact attempts Berkson says. “Now compare that to the stat that 80 percent of leads require five to twelve follow-ups. The disconnect is huge.”
In conclusion, Berkson says to nurture leads by having a documented contact protocol that mandates the first contact within one hour, preferably within one minute, and continues for at least a dozen contacts. “This is what is required for success in a digital marketing world.”
LiveVoice understands how important every call is to your business. Contact them about customizing their flexible, premium phone support service so you can turn opportunity into profit.
Peter DeHaan, PhD, is a freelance writer, call center authority, and publisher of Connections Magazine, which covers the call center industry.
