In the 12th century, Sultan Nur-ed-din constructed the first pigeon lofts in Egypt. Pigeons were used to carry messages to cities far and wide. There was a race going on, so it was vitally important that crucial information arrived at its destination before something bad happened, and heck, let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to have a bird do your work for you.
Today, messages still fly through the air and across the world but in ways that no one from that era may have imagined. Much has changed in communications. Companies are leveraging everything possible to gain an advantage on their competition, and thus a new race has begun. If you buy internet leads from online lead providers (or even if you don’t), chances are that this race will directly affect the revenue your company makes this year and for years to come.
So what is this race? What can you do to win, and what exactly are the rules?
It used to be that companies would print out their internet leads and hand them to a telemarketer who (hopefully) called that day, the next day, or sometime in the near future. Now, with a majority of companies buying internet leads from online lead generators as a primary source of sales revenue, things have changed…a lot!
Many companies in the mortgage, education and insurance industries, as well as the top lead generation verticals, are buying shared internet leads. That means they are competing to convince the consumer to do business with them over their competitors. Statistically, you are almost twice as likely to convert a lead if you’re the first one to call and contact it. Thankfully, much like carrier pigeon messaging, the process for calling and contacting internet leads has evolved significantly.
Businesses used to hope to call leads within an hour, then it was 5 minutes, then under 60 seconds. The trends show contacting internet leads boils down to a game of milliseconds. In fact, pretty soon TIME won’t be as important as latency, location, or hardware speed. Just like Wall Street’s high frequency traders that have dominated the stock market, you’ll need to be fast if you want to be the one connecting with the consumer on the phone.
“If you look at the trends, in very short order contacting internet leads is going to come down to a game of milliseconds.”
So what can you do to call leads faster? What should you look for and what should you avoid?
Technology does not play favorites, and there are tools available for companies of all sizes. Whether you’re an SMB or large enterprise, find a solution to automate a phone call in real-time on new internet leads. Look for a Software as a Service (SaaS) vendor that provides call center software with sales automation to help you call your internet leads quickly. They should be able to help you create an automated process for when to call your leads and at what call frequency. Thus you can optimize the entire sales process (and your sales team will not even have to think about it).
Your goal is to find the fastest solution. Otherwise you may save time but still come in second place. Search for a system that calls internet leads with zero delay, so the only way your competition could possibly beat you is by reduced latency, or by being higher on the database list at the lead provider.
At Ricochet360, we do all of these things, so we hope you will try out our demo. We truly believe speed is the most critical factor for converting leads, and we strongly suggest that if you do not call leads fast, you’re probably leaving money on the table.
“The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.” Rupert Murdoch
The Golden Minute
A growing number of companies are recognizing the extreme importance of being the first one to make the phone call. Now is the time to invest in this strategic advantage. However, based on a study found on the Harvard Business review website there is still a lot of work to be done in this area.
“Out of 2,241 U.S. companies audited for the study, 37% responded to leads within an hour, 16% within 24 hours, 24% took longer than 24 hours, and 23% of companies never responded at all. For the companies that responded within 30 days, the average response time was 42 hours.”
Harvard Business Review- Lead Response Study
So win the race in the golden minute when a lead is generated… Or at least be sure to give your company the best tools available to call leads so you don’t end up with the slowest pigeon in the loft.
