How To Increase Lead Generation By 700%

Joe Hall — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 02:34:34 +0000

The other day, Jeremy Victor, wrote about an article first published in the Harvard Business Review. Jeremy does a great job pointing out all the interesting data, and giving helpful tips.

But two points stuck out to me. First it is very surprising that there is a huge gap between those that respond to in coming sales leads with in the first few minutes and those that respond after 24 hours. For some odd reason most have a tendency for the extremes. Which tells me that most don’t have a clear strategy for handling leads.

The second point that really floored me was the dramatic increase in lead retention by responding with in an hour.

Firms that tried to contact potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead (which we defined as having a meaningful conversation with a key decision maker) as those that tried to contact the customer even an hour later—and more than 60 times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer.

That’s a 700% increase in retention. While that might sound incredible to most, it makes perfect sense. With social media and instant search providing almost instant answers to all of our needs online, companies are having to learn new ways to respond to customer needs faster.

This “fast response strategy” is at the heart of my Contact Plugin. With it, you can be sure to respond to inquiries as soon as they come in, anywhere that your mobile service supports.