Web Enquiries – how prompt is your follow-up?
Jackie West
Jackie West writes:
Found this interview relating to web leads from Sales Leads Insights.
It got me thinking of the day (many, many years back), embarking on my very first marcomms management post, arriving in the office and being shown the ’systems’ in place. I smile now when I remember being taken to a filing cabinet drawer, with a beautifully labeled system, “these are all the magazine enquiries, filed under each magazine, and sub-divided into the relevant releases/adverts!”. Brilliant, I thought, a great system, I’ll be able to track back responses to each campaign, build a historical picture, see which magazine works best for each product, etc, etc, and go from there…
I was brought down to earth, when I asked when and how each lead was followed-up, and what sales resulted, only to be told that leads were never followed-up, just filed away. It seemed it was enough to know that they had created ‘awareness’, and a jolly good job they’d done, too…. I wondered if the hungry sales people, with targets to meet, agreed. Needless to say I was soon on the case.
I’m not saying that anyone these days does this (and if they do, there has to be a very, very, good reason behind it). Today, we’re all pretty savvy at what we need to do to keep the wolf from the door, especially in these trying economic times – but DO we let leads “slip through the crack” as outlined in the article?
How long does it take your company to respond to a lead? The article states it’s probably around 31 hours – but recommends it should be minutes, and says “from there, the odds of connecting decrease by TEN times in the first hour.”
If you’d like more there’s a report available for download, but you’ll have to complete an enquiry form (as you might guess).
Oh, I can hear you asking, what happened to all those lovely leads sitting in that drawer – well, it was in the days before email, so we snail-mailed everyone providing them with the relevant product information – and guess what? Just over 50% came back expressing further interest, and we were able to give sales some fresh new leads, resulting in some great sales. Result! (Oh, if only it was that easy today…)
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- Posted on 26 Nov 2009 at 02:45 pm
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