Lead Response Management—The Next Key to Search Marketing

QUESTION: What do you do with web leads once you generate them?

This question goes unaddressed by just about every web marketer. It is almost always the cause of ineffective results in what would otherwise be powerful internet marketing campaigns. But the common-sense answer is easier said than done:

ANSWER: You respond to them immediately and consistently to qualify them into prospects.

Many organizations invest thousands of dollars each month with MSN, Yahoo, Business.com and especially Google to lure clicks to their website. These same companies invest significant amounts up front in building websites to attract visitors. They even use analytical or testing tools like WebSideStory, WebTrends, WebSTAT or Omniture to analyze how to convert these visitors to leads.

The issue comes when they let those leads to reside in some sales managers’ inbox for 48 to 72 hours before they get typed into a CRM database like RightNow Technologies or Salesforce.com, and finally get assigned to the correct sales rep to begin the sales process.

Our research shows that the average salesperson only dials 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 started the contact process immediately, and followed up often enough to make contact.

Just how immediately do they follow up? Within seconds and minutes, not days and hours. And they keep making attempts, often at different times of day and different days of the week until they make contact.

Why spend thousands of dollars on generating clicks, high conversion websites, and expsensive analysis systems if you are going to let your leads sit for 2 days and contact roughly half of your potential prospects? The thought is almost insulting, yet that is exactly what happens.

There are new technologies just coming out that take control of lead response within seconds. They will continue to make 20 or more attempts at different times of the day and different days of the week to dramatically raise lead contact rates above 85%. Also, these solutions can be set up to automatically market to leads and continue to qualify prospects every 3-4 weeks for many years or more.

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

This new oasis of opportunity may just be the next key to search marketing. It lies unnoticed 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.

Kenneth D. Krogue is the President of InsideSales.com, the first web-based lead response management database solution with built in voice message broadcasting and dialer 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 is available at 801-853-4090 and the solutions he discusses are available by going to www.insidesales.com.

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