Lead Response Management—The Untapped Key to Online Marketing

QUESTION: What do you do with web leads once you have generated them?

This problem is forgotten by almost everybody. It is often the cause of failure in what would otherwise be powerful internet marketing campaigns. But the obvious answer is easier said than done:

ANSWER: You respond to them quickly and often to qualify them into prospects.

Many companies spend thousands of dollars monthly with MSN, Yahoo and especially Google to drive clicks to their website. These same companies invest significant amounts up front in building beautiful web sites to attract clicks. They even use analytical or testing tools like WebTrends, WebSTAT, WebSideStory or Omniture to analyze how to convert these clicks to leads.

The frustration comes when they let those leads to sit in the sales managers’ inbox for 48 to 72 hours before they get imported into a customer database like RightNow Technologies or Salesforce.com, and finally get assigned to the correct salesperson to begin the sales process.

Our research shows that most salespeople only tries 4 to 5 times to get in touch with them within the first week then they move on. That means barely half of a company’s web leads will actually get contacted.

By the time they get called back (if they get called back) a competitor has often reached them first and is well on their way to another customer, your customer.

Why? Because they called them back immediately, and followed up consistently.

Just how quickly do they follow up? Within minutes and seconds, not days and hours. And they keep trying to contact, often at different times of day and different days of the week until they get in touch.

Why spend thousands of dollars on driving traffic, well designed websites, and powerful analytics if you are going to let your leads sit for nearly 3 days and contact 55% of your potential prospects? The thought is almost insulting, yet that is what most organizations do.

There are solutions just coming out that trigger callback attempts almost immediately. They will continue to make 20 or more attempts at predefined times of the day and different days of the week to increase lead contact rates above eighty-five percent. Also, these solutions can automatically market to leads and continue to convert prospects every 3-4 weeks for many years or more.

We at InsideSales.com call this ‘Lead Response Management’. Wringing every last pound of value out of your expensive leads and tracking a true return from your lead sources.

This new oasis of opportunity may just be the next key to web marketing. It lies hidden somewhere between Lead Generation and the Sales Process or right where the handoff commonly occurs between the marketing and sales. It’s the pain that everyone feels but no one is doing anything about, until now.

Article Source: http://publisherscloninghouse.com

Kenneth D. Krogue is the Co-Founder of InsideSales.com, the first internet-based lead response management database software solution with built in dialer and voice messaging technologies. Kenneth has nearly 20 years experience in building and management of teams and technologies for inside sales capabilities. He built the original inside sales department at Franklin Qwest (Now Franklin Covey) and was a co-founder of UCN, Inc. a leading on-demand contact center solutions provider. Kenneth can be reached at 801-853-4090 and the solutions he discusses can be demonstrated by going to www.insidesales.com.

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