Hello? Is anybody out there?
- Stephen Murphy
- 27 May 2009
You have a business, you build a website. You fuss about layout, content and design. But when you get an online enquiry, you can’t be bothered to respond. Sound ridiculous? It turns out around 59% of Australian companies don’t respond to an online lead enquiry within seven days.
We have a saying in our business: the bigger the front, the bigger the back. This is so true of people when it comes to how they manage their online marketing campaigns and responsiveness. Ad-hoc approaches, poorly thought-out landing pages and the complete lack of tracking metrics all lead to some abysmal results.
One large corporate (that shall remain nameless) was rumoured to have spent over $600k on a recent retail banking campaign that resulted in a rumoured total of six new retail customers! (Needless to say, we didn’t manage this one.) This is just one small snippet of a myriad of waste and poorly managed online marketing budgets. Wake up corporate Australia! What is your online sales and marketing department up to?
But the thing that really gets my goat is the complete lack of urgency and response quality with which businesses treat their inbound leads. When I started my career many moons ago in insurance there was no such thing as an inbound lead. We had to get on the blower and work our charm. So have Australian sales teams become bone idle? Or do they not really want the business that they say they can service? If you have sales staff, do you know how long it takes them to respond? Here is the challenge: enquire yourself and find out!
Just before Sydney hit 36 degrees earlier this summer I decided to invest in an air conditioner. I did a search on Google and found three local air conditioning suppliers. I filled in two quote request forms and sent one email to sales. Only one had responded after three business days. I consider this to be a poor effort. I have $3000 to spend and want your business and you can’t be bothered to call me?
In my experience, your hottest lead is an inbound phone call. If you have a call centre or a poor performing sales person, you might as well throw your wallet in the ocean!
The second-hottest lead is someone who fills in your online form or sends an email. Always respond within 24 hours! Most people will get more than one quote, so the quicker you respond and the more effort you put in, the greater chance you have of capturing that sale.
A while back, we ran a campaign for a home loan lender. Unfortunately, the sales team were unable to get back to people fast enough. Either that or they would call people once and give up if they were busy or not home. The client told us the leads were no good. But when we reviewed the statistics, we found 45% had found another supplier! Why? Slow response and poor service.
Don’t think that because you are dealing with emails and electronic forms, you can treat them differently to any other sales lead. Most of them come from real-life human beings and many of them are sales opportunities.
Come on Australia, get with the program! Instigate a sales conversion strategy that deals with tyre kickers, warm prospects and even eager potential clients. Answer your inbound leads!
