Research says that 71% of marketing leads are getting wasted every day. Why?

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2 Introduction What if you proved to your CEO that 71% of the marketing leads generated by your company are going to waste? Who would be fired? A range of industries exists to help web marketers increase lead conversion by fractions of a percent. Entire salesforces are constantly trained to boost closing ratios by 10% or 20%. However, businesses are missing a big black hole that exists somewhere between their marketing leads and the realised sales revenue. The following data are from tests done by InsideSales on over 10,000 companies in fifteen different industries as secret shopper studies over the last 5 years. They entered real phone numbers and addresses in lead forms on websites and tracked how fast they got a response, and how many calls or s they received. Research says that 71% of marketing leads are getting wasted every day. Why? Because companies are too slow to respond, and online sales leads have very short life. On an average, a sales rep takes 46.5 hours to pick up the phone and respond to a lead. And when they do call, they only make 1.3 call attempts before giving up and moving on. Shockingly, only 27% of leads are getting contacted, while upto 64% of leads never got called at all. Are you also wasting leads? Chances are, yes, you are. Why spend thousands of dollars on generating clicks, high conversion websites, and powerful analytics if you are going to let your leads sit for 2 days and only contact roughly half of your potential prospects? Baffled, aren t you? With a combination of awareness, best practices, automation with technologies and solutions like Waybeo s voice platform, companies can contact around 92% of leads. Yes - an increase of 341% in lead conversion just by responding to leads immediately and persistently. Following are the seven best practices to convert marketing leads into maximum sales and revenue. The focus here is on how companies should respond to their leads for best results. Most pointers here are best for first call attempts, indicating how to get the job done right the first time focusing on minimising effort and maximising results.

3 1. Respond immediately (Within 5 minutes) When you respond to a lead within five minutes, the chances of getting an appointment with them increase by upto 21 times. This has plenty of reasons. First of all, your company is still on the client s mind they haven t forgotten you just yet. Secondly, you have their full attention. Your prospect is most likely still at their computer. If they are looking for specific information, you will be able to direct them to your website and help to answer any questions they might have. You also lower the chances of them stumbling upon a competitor s website Finally, you have managed to impress your prospects with your rapid response. Consequently, you are able to build trust with them. They feel that their business is valued and are more likely to become a customer.

4 2. Respond persistently (6 to 9 call attempts) On an average, sales reps take anywhere from 1 to 46 hours to call and respond to a lead. More often than not, they give up after making just 1 or 2 call attempts. The InsideSales research discovered that only 27% of generated leads ever get contacted. What s worse is that, for nearly 60% of the leads, an attempt isn t even made. Make a follow-up schedule and stick to it. Staying in the customer s mind ensures that your product gets top consideration. When ending a call, offer a follow-up time frame. Try to use multiple methods to follow up - combine s, calls and social media.

5 3. Consider your Inbound Call as a Buying Signal An inbound call converts to sales or revenue 10 times better than any other kind of lead. Usually, a customer trying to talk to a sales rep is at his peak of interest in your offering. Therefore, inbound call is definitely a buying signal, and companies should effectively monitor and track the result of an inbound call. 1 out of 3 inbound calls convert to sales faster than all other sources. The more the strategies you place in your channels to drive inbound calls, the better the chance to get more sales ready leads.

6 4. Respond simultaneously through phone and e- mail (Phone is far more powerful) There is no doubt that in the sales process, a phone call is more powerful than an e- mail. It is a fact that s pile up day after day. Our customers get around 140 s on average every day. But when responding to an incoming lead, respond by sending an first, followed by a phone call within minutes. By sending an , you can use the remembrance in the customer s mind and also get a great opening line for communication.

7 5. Call at optimal times and days Bad timings are sales killers Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to contact leads for maximum conversion, Mondays and Tuesdays are the worst. Another way that leads get wasted is bad timing. According to a study conducted using call center data combined with the results of the calls (customer relationship management), the best time to call leads was between 4:00-6:00 PM, while the best time to contact and set up an appointment with a lead was between 8:00-9:00 AM and 4:00-5:00 PM..

8 6. Research direct dial phone numbers (About 2X better than dialling main office lines) Consider your own call answering pattern. You are more likely to answer a call coming from a local or mobile number, than a long distance or toll free number. Blocked numbers have the worst chance to get answered. Studies show that leads are 57.8% more likely to answer a local caller ID than a blocked, toll free, or long distance caller ID. Make sure that you follow up with leads from a local caller ID

9 7. Never miss any Inbound call Information Track and save each data Most successful marketers and sales gurus realise the importance of an inbound call - they are the most sales-ready leads. If the call is coming from a website visitor, there is a 90% chance for it to be a sales enquiry. But 71% of inbound calls are getting wasted, because it is difficult to automatically log inbound call data to CRMs or Lead Management system. With proper tracking, advanced technologies and monitoring, you can scale up your sales conversion by upto 175%.

10 Conclusion Imagine what a CEO or CMO would think if they knew that only a fourth of leads are getting spoken to, when with better techniques and technologies they could be speaking to 92 percent of leads. That is, you achieve a 3.4x improvement in bringing value out of leads just by ensuring that these precious leads get contacted. Try implementing these methodologies in your sales and marketing - you will start seeing results within weeks!