Lead Response Management
QUESTION: What do you do with web leads once you generate them?
This question goes unaddressed by almost everybody. It is quite often the cause of ineffective results in what would otherwise be powerful internet marketing campaigns. But the obvious answer is easier said than done:
ANSWER: You respond to them immediately and often to turn them into prospects.
Many organizations invest thousands of dollars monthly with Yahoo, Business.com, MSN and especially Google to drive clicks to their website. These same companies invest tens of thousands in building a website to attract visitors. They even use analytical or testing tools like WebSideStory, WebTrends or Omniture to analyze how to turn these visitors to leads.
The problem comes when they allow those leads to reside in even the best sales managers? inbox for 48 to 72 hours before they get typed into a CRM database like Salesforce.com or RightNow Technologies, and finally get assigned to the right salesperson to call them back.
Our research shows that most salespeople only dials 4 to 5 times to get in touch with them the first week then they move on. That means only one-half of a company?s web leads will actually get contacted.
By the time they get contacted (if they get called back) a competitor has often reached them first and is already close to another customer, your customer.
Why? Because they called them back immediately, and followed up consistently.
Just how quickly do they begin attempting contact? Within minutes and seconds, not days and hours. And they keep trying to contact, often at different times of the day and different days of the week until they can begin the sales process.
Why spend thousands of dollars on generating clicks, high conversion websites, and powerful analytics if you are going to let your leads sit for 48 hours and contact 55% of your potential prospects? The question is almost insulting, yet that is what most organizations do.
There are new technologies being released that take control of lead response almost immediately. They will continue to make 20 or more attempts at predefined times of the day and different days of the week to increase contact rates above 85%. Also, these same solutions can be set up to automatically market to leads and continue to qualify prospects every 3-4 weeks for 2 years or more.
We at InsideSales.com call this ?Lead Response Management?. Wringing every last ounce of value out of your costly leads and tracking a true return on investment from your lead sources.
This forgotten oasis of opportunity may just be the next key to internet marketing. It lies unnoticed somewhere between Lead Generation and the Sales Process or right where the handoff commonly occurs between the Marketing Department and Sales. It?s the frustration that everyone feels but no one is doing anything about, until now.
Ken Krogue is the President and Co-Founder of InsideSales.com, the first internet-based lead response management database solution with built in voice messaging and dialer technologies. Ken has nineteen years experience in building and management of teams and technologies for inside sales capabilities. He built the fastest growing department at Franklin Qwest (Now Franklin Covey) and was a co-founder of UCN, Inc. a leading hosted contact center solutions company. Ken is available at 801-853-4090 and the solutions he discusses can be demonstrated by going to http://www.insidesales.com.
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