How Much Could Fast Response Time Increase Your Sales?

Just a few short years ago, the time it took sales teams to respond to emails was longer (think days, not hours). But we’ve become a society of instant gratification, and now customers can’t wait that long to get an answer from a salesperson. If they take too long, that customer will find another company with a faster response time.

Have you ever stopped to consider how your response time correlates to your close rate?

In InsideSales’ Annual 2014 Lead Response Report, we learn that there is an undeniable connection between the two, and it’s one that salespeople need to be aware of.

Some Background

In 2007, Dr. James Oldroyd published the Lead Response Management Study. He found that salespeople had 100 times greater chance of making a successful contact with a lead within five minutes of an inquiry, as opposed to 30 minutes. That same lead was 21 times more likely to enter the sales process if contacted within 5 minutes. This data was used in the current lead response report to gauge whether these assumptions still rang true. Turns out, they do.

This study looks at different industries, frequency of contact, and method of contact as factors that affect sales.

The Industry Dictates the Response Time

Now, we may not be taking days to get back to potential customers anymore, but there’s still some variance in response times among different industries. Healthcare, for example, takes on average 2 hours and 5 minutes to respond to a lead inquiry. At the opposite end, Telecommunications takes 16 minutes to respond.

The Form of Contact Matters

The study discounted the fact that many companies use automated emails to instantly reply to a lead query, and instead focused on that first phone call. Oldroyd’s numbers held up, and those phone calls placed within five minutes proved to be more successful than others. Unfortunately, not that many of those surveyed actually succeeded in responding within that timeframe.

What Does the Data Tell Us?

We can keep digging into the data, but we get the picture: responding faster gets us more sales. So why don’t we make responding quickly to emails sent by potential customers more priority? My guess is something’s broken:

• The marketing automation system isn’t set up to get to a salesperson quickly
• The salesperson isn’t tapped into his email when the lead comes in
• There is no formal lead process for responding promptly

Fortunately, these errors can be corrected. Use a marketing automation and CRM system that will automatically forward a sales query to the appropriate salesperson, rather than waiting for a real live person to review it and then forward it (that shaves valuable seconds or minutes off the process). Enforce the importance of your sales team being tied to their computers or phones and responding quickly.  And set up a process with expected response times where your sales team strives to respond in five minutes or less. You could even set up a healthy competition so you reward the salesperson who has the quickest response each month.

We can no longer afford to respond to lead emails when we get around to it. Our customers are impatient, and if we want that sale, we have to be on top of it.