6 Mind-Blowing Stats about Contacting Leads within 5 minutes

Contacting a new website lead as fast as possible should always be the top priority of a sales and marketing team. But how fast do you need to be contacting them? How much of a difference does it really make if you contact them in 30 minutes instead of 5-10 minutes?

Below are some shocking statistics that show just how important it is to be reaching out to these website leads as fast as possible.

Reaching out in the first 5 minutes is 21X more effective than calling after 30 minutes. - Lead Simple

Imagine your sales team was 21X more effective than they currently are. What would that look like? Probably more demos, more calls with qualified buyers, less wasted time, and of course, a higher win rate. How do you solve all of those problems with the least amount of work? Simple. Contact the lead within 5 minutes.

Being that quick to contact a lead allows for some huge benefits. For one, the sooner you call the more likely the lead is available, which means that you have a better chance of having any conversation at all. Also, being the first vendor to contact a lead allows you to frame the conversation. If you get to teach the lead about what features and benefits to care about, it becomes much harder for a competitor to teach them about their value. 

Overall though, being that quick to respond simply demonstrates professionalism. A long wait is associated with poor customer service and can lead to the prospect associating the bad service with your product.

Only 7% of companies respond to a demo inquiry within 5 minutes, and over 55% never even reach out. - Drift

Talk about being disappointed as a buyer. If you walked into a coffee shop and stood at the counter to order a latte, what would you do if no one even said “hello” in the first 5 minutes? Probably find a new coffee shop. That’s exactly what website leads are thinking when they fill out a form on your website asking for more information. The longer you make them wait, the more likely they are gonna look somewhere else.

Reaching out within 5 minutes is no joke, especially if you have a high volume of inbound leads coming through and only so many Business Development team members to handle them. That is why in a survey that Drift conducted, they found that all of the 10 fastest respondents had a chatbot on their website.

Using chat is an easy way to engage with a lead right when their interest is at their highest. This engagement also allows you to gather valuable qualifying information right when they are most willing to give it to you. But chat has its downfalls, since the interaction between a Chatbot can only give the prospect so much information. The ideal solution would bridge the gap between gathering information and actually providing them with some immediate value.

Lead Conversions are 391% higher if you call within a minute of an online inquiry. - Xoombi

That’s not a typo. This is not the number of leads converted into a qualified buyer, that’s actual sales conversions. So if your Sales Team is worried about getting their Win Rate up, the first thing they should be looking at is their Speed to Contact a lead. 

The survey that was originally completed by Velocify also shows the massive drop in value after each passing minute. By contacting the lead within the 2 minutes instead of 1, the added conversion boost drops to only 120%. Still respectable, but nowhere near the 391% that the first minute brings. 

As a marketing or sales leader, trying to put a 60 second Service Level Agreement (SLA) on all new incoming leads can be nearly impossible. When looking for a way to ensure your precious website leads get immediate attention, you might want to consider automating that process entirely to take full advantage of the 391% conversion rate.

78% of buyers choose the vendor that responds first. - Salesforce

Well, in the words of Ricky Bobby, “if you ain’t first, you’re last.” The first vendor to contact a lead, almost always, is the one the lead will choose. 

The sooner you reach out to a lead, the sooner they can begin the next part of their buying process, Vendor Selection. B2B buyers are more educated than ever now, and a study by CEB shows that when a lead reaches out to a vendor they are already 57% of the way through their buying process. When these buyers get to the point where they submit an online inquiry, they likely are already very familiar with your company, and were impressed enough to want to learn more. Don’t waste that momentum. 

Being the first to contact shows that you respect your lead and will allow you to further influence what they should care about when choosing a vendor. If you are second to the party, you have to catch up to what the first vendor has already established as the buying criteria the lead should consider.

Leads Submitted on the Weekend or “Off-Hours” close 20% better - Lead Simple

Yup. Those leads that you wait until Monday to call are actually the Glengarry leads, and to you they should be gold. But how many companies actually have people able to call those leads within that golden 1-5 minute period after they submit? 

Think about a lead that submits over the weekend. What other commitments do they have? Why are they on your website on a weekend, let alone submitting a demo request? It’s probably because they have genuine interest in your product and likely have lots of free time right now to learn about your product. So you could wait till Monday… or you could treat that lead like the gold it is and give them a demo. 

Even worse, roughly 28% of your leads come in over the weekend. So about 1 in every 4 leads  has a better chance of closing, and no one is talking to them when they are at their most interested.

After 5 Minutes, Your Odds of Qualifying a Lead Decrease by 400% - New Breed Marketing

A buyer’s attention span is short, and it’s only getting shorter. If you wait too long, they will be on to the next “coffee shop” and your odds of getting them to consider your product will be slim.

We’ve already talked about how much value you get from contacting a lead within 5 minutes, but how much of a drop off is it after 5 minutes? Well, a lot. Unsurprisingly, it only gets worse the longer you wait.

By contacting them at the 10 minute mark as opposed to the 5 minute mark you will see your odds of qualifying a lead drop by 400%. If your Time to Contact a lead is already greater than 10 minutes, think about the impact it would have on your revenue if your team was 400% more successful in qualifying leads.

Solution?

To recap, the challenges that a business faces are…

• Contacting a lead within 5 minutes is hard. 
• Providing value to a lead within 5 minutes is even harder. 
• Having someone in the office to call Weekend/Off-Hours leads isn’t always possible
• Not being the first vendor to respond dramatically lowers your win rates

So how can a business contact their leads quickly, demonstrate value, and ensure no off-hour leads slip through the cracks? Below are a few options.

#1 - Chat Bot

Including a chatbot on your website gives prospects a way to immediately interact with your company. It allows you to collect valuable information from the prospect as they look around your website, and even potentially create leads out of people who were otherwise just browsing. That means you can become the “first vendor” potentially even before they reach their Vendor Selection phase. 

Chatbots are also great for answering questions about your product. Searching through Feature pages can be a hassle, and giving website leads a quick way to get information further solidifies your company as a trustworthy source. 

However, chatbots do have their set-backs. Although it allows you to interact with customers immediately, they still funnel you to a Form Submission most of the time and don’t have any post-form interaction beyond answering basic Help Desk questions. They also don’t provide any value immediately, so a customer looking to get a demo on a Saturday still will have to wait till Monday.

#2 - Scheduling Software

Although this doesn’t solve the problem of “contacting within 1 minute” it does put the ball in your court. By using a service like Calendly, you can integrate your Lead Submission form with a calendar for your website lead to pick a time to have a meeting. This removes the most annoying part of the lead follow-up process, scheduling a meeting.

This is great because you no longer have to engage in the back and forth of trying to schedule a time to meet. Plus, meetings scheduled directly on your website rarely end with a no-show because the lead set the time and date.

The downside to this though again lies in providing value immediately. The prospect will still have to wait to be contacted to see any part of the product that they just requested a tour of. In the time between now and then, they may feel compelled to explore competitors and those competitors may contact that lead before you, thus causing you to lose your advantage.

#3 - Instant Demo

Give your lead a demo of your product, right when they ask for it, on your website. This removes any time between submission to value demonstration by immediately giving the prospect a tour of your capabilities.

By providing an instant demo of your product, you become the first vendor to showcase your unique differentiators, and get the chance to set the stage for what the prospect should consider when looking at similar services. It also allows you to be the first vendor to contact a lead, guaranteed, by actually giving them a tailored product demo within seconds of submitting a demo request. You also ensure that your lead isn’t left hanging, and is provided relevant information right when they want it most.

Finally, you no longer need to worry about Weekend or Off Hours leads slipping through the cracks, because the demo is completely automated and can run 24/7.

Conclusion

While chatbots and scheduling softwares are great solutions to a few of the problems that contacting a lead ASAP presents, neither solve them all. Instant Demo allows you to solve each of those problems and start your relationship with your prospect off with a “wow” factor moment of seeing a tailored product demo just for them.

When considering a solution to decrease your Speed to Contact a lead, consider using an Instant Demo to provide immediate value, and contact your leads instantly.