I know I wrote a post on this topic a few months back, but it is so important to your success that I can argue writing a post every month on this topic and it would still be worthwhile. I am also bringing up the topic again, because our friends at LeadQual released a report on the topic. The report confirms again how important it is to call your leads within 5 minutes of receiving it. Before I continue on I want to make a point that regardless of where your leads are coming from, whether it be Online or Offline, the speed it takes for you to contact that prospect is the most important factor to your companies success. It makes no difference if you buy Internet leads or if you are marketing online or not. If someone calls your brick and mortar location and leaves a voice mail, you need to call them back asap.

Okay, so we are clear that it’s important to call prospects back regardless of how the prospect was generated, not lets get to the proof. This small study specifically looked at the for-profit education space, but you can check out a few of their other studies here.

Lets get right down to the numbers. For this study LeadQual submitted 423 leads to 92 different schools. The results of the study are staggering. And let me tell you skeptics now that these results are completely in line with other studies. According to their results 63% of the lead inquiries on average ever receive a phone call. Yep, this means that 37% of lead leads were NEVER called. This should be shocking to you and you should absolutely assume that there are leads, leads that you are paying top dollar for, that are not being called at all. But here is the problem: Fixing this issue and insuring that all leads are being called will only move the needle slightly. Here is why I say that – The biggest reason why you are going to succeed at implementing a performance marketing strategy is because you are going to call back that consumer before they – A. Goes to your competitors website to fill out a form. B. Your competition on that specific lead calls the consumer first. People are online because they are shopping and they will continue to shop until they receive a response. On average a consumer will fill out 3 different forms before they are satisfied. Your goal is to contact them before they get to the second form.

The study claims that for the leads that did receive a response the average response time was 7 hours after the lead was submitted. Your goal as a lead buyer should be to call ALL your leads within 5 minutes of receiving it. In the case of these leads simply calling them within an hour would have increased your chance of closing the sale. According to additional studies leads that are contacted first convert at a 238% higher rate.

So if you are a Marketing Manger, Media Buyer or Lead Buyer your success will be determined by the process that your company employs. My friends at Leads360, a industry leading Lead Management Software company, based on their research claimed that success in lead buying resulted from two very important factors – Lead Quality and Lead Management Process. These two factors were weighted accordingly: 49% of a lead buyers success can be attributed to the process they employed. 51% can be attributed to Lead Quality. This means that regardless of the quality of leads you can still fail miserably if you do not have sufficient lead management process.

My suggestion to you is to send this post to your CEO or management team and tell them to stop ignoring the facts and to realign their priorities for the better of the company. If you are a company that buys Internet leads this MUST be your #1 priority and it should be ingrained in your corporate culture. I am passionate about this topic because I have seen too many companies fail because they simply thought they could buy leads and be successful. What is sad and unfortunate, especially in the for-profit EDU space, is that their are companies that currently are profitable even with their inefficient processes. These companies will continue to throw away hundreds of thousands of dollars a month year and are more susceptible to failure when times get tough.

Building your company or lead management process around this one objective will change your company forever.

Here is the report from LeadQual

I have had discussions with industry professionals that claim the speed to contact depends on the industry and/or product that is being sold, and in many respects that can be true. If a lead is generated for a product or service that is solely dominated by one company, the time to contact required will may be slower. If  leads are generated for companies in more competitive industry like the financial or online education industries, follow ups need to happen much quicker. However, in my opinion, and regardless of the level of competition, companies should start a precedent of calling prospects within minutes of the consumer filling out a form. In the case of a company with very low competition it will demonstrate that you respect the consumers time and the business they will soon give to you.

There are many people in the lead generation industry that are familiar with the MIT study that was conducted a year or so ago, and I think it is important to bring it up again in this post. Additionally, I think it enforces the common thought that companies need to call their leads as soon as possible.

Amongst all the data they present, this to me is the most important. This first graph shows the rate in which leads were contacted. A “Contact” would equal someone picking up the phone.

You can see the huge drop in numbers from not calling a lead within 5 minutes and waiting 10 minutes. The bottom line is that we compete for the attention of the consumer and each minute that you do not contact them you are opening up the door for your competitors.  When people request information they want it right then, while they are in the mood, not in 15 minutes and definitely not the next day.

The next graph takes it one step further and looks out how speed to contact affects the qualification of a lead.

Again, you can see the how important it is to call the lead within 5 minutes.

My suggestion to every out-bound sales division manager is to make this your number one objective. Every sales associate should have these graphs posted in their cubical. There should be no question when asked what their main objective is they answer “to call a lead within 5 minutes of receiving it or faster”.

Speed to contact will be essential for your companies success and will give you a solid foundatation to build the rest of your lead management process. The next post will will include addional stratagies that will help you manage leads better and maxamize your ROI.