5 Minutes is too long

The data is clear: the longer you take to contact a lead, the less likely you are to make the sale.

Think about it – when a prospect makes the effort to reach out to you, it’s because they’re interested and excited about what you have to offer. At the very least they’re curious and already thinking about your services. The momentum is there, and you should take advantage of that upswing.

The more time you allow to pass between that first contact and your initial follow-up, the more time your prospect has to lose interest, find a solution elsewhere, or change their mind altogether.

Let’s look at the numbers. Surveys tell us that responding within 24 hours is better than responding within two business days, and following up within one hour is better than 24. So getting back to a query within 5-10 minutes sounds pretty good, right?

Not quite. Vendasta’s lead statistics tell us that the odds of qualifying your lead drop by 80% between the 5 and 10-minute mark. But if they’re contacted within the first minute? That’ll buy you a 391% increase in conversions. That’s an exponential difference.

So it’s obvious – if you’re serious about making more sales, you need to reach out to your prospects immediately. But there’s something else to think about.

With average email open rates sitting at about 20%, even if you manage to get an email out quickly enough, will it go to their primary inbox? How do you know it’ll even be read? You could call – but is waiting around for sales queries and spending the day on the phone an ideal use of your time?

The best course of action is to use multiple marketing channels while taking advantage of the strengths of each. 97% of SMS marketing messages are read within three minutes, and there are no barriers to inbox entry. Compare that to the stats on email: a 20% open rate and a high likelihood of getting filtered to promotions or the spam folder. The champion of immediacy is clear.

SMS marketing is the obvious winner for timely and to-the-point information (like responding instantly to a sales query or confirming an upcoming zoom meeting). Email marketing is better for longer, richer messages (like information about that demo your prospect requested), and is still the primary driver of business communication. You should be using both.

With a tool like CLOSEM, you can automate your entire follow-up process through multiple marketing channels, including SMS marketing messages and postal mail. When a prospect requests a demo or additional information, you can instantly ping them with a personalized text that can direct them to their email if necessary. Persistent, personalized messaging in a variety of marketing channels best suited to each stage of your sales funnel is essential to familiarize your prospects with your brand and position yourself as the correct and obvious service to purchase.

In today’s over-stimulated, distractible society, five minutes is too long. Automating your follow-up process in a way that all but ensures your message will get read is the obvious way to give your prospects the immediate response they want. It’s the key to boosting your engagement, getting more referrals, and ultimately, making more sales.