4 best practices for lead response management

We’ve talked about how valuable a resource InsideSales.com is for salespeople before on commonsku, and since our sights are set on hitting new sales targets, we thought we’d share some interesting research they’ve compiled on lead response management.

The purpose of their study was to focus on how companies should respond to their web-generated leads to obtain the best results and minimize effort.

The results: 4 best practices  

Best days to make contact
The best days to qualify new leads are Wednesdays and Thursdays, which, when you think about it makes sense: Mondays are for reviewing your results from the previous week and setting new goals, Tuesdays are for putting those actions in motion, so you don’t want to catch someone while they’re attention is focused elsewhere.

Best times to make contact
The best time to qualify a new lead is between 4:00 pm and 5:00 pm when they are wrapping up their day or heading home from the office. The next best time being between 8:00 am and 9:00 am, either on their commute to the office or while they are settling in.

Response time
The best time to respond to a lead from the moment they complete a web form is within 5 minutes. It may seem like you’re a bit trigger-happy but the study found that contact and qualification rates drop dramatically in just a few minutes and continue to decrease over the next few hours.

Persistence
Most sales people give up on leads too soon and over 30% are never contacted at all. Always make at least 6 attempts before moving on – by making a few more call attempts, sales reps can experience up to a 70% increase in contact rates.

If you’re finding your dialing efforts aren’t quite yielding the desired results, it may be worth experimenting with some of these best practices.

Click on the infographic to see all the results from the InsideSales.com study and consider your own sales activities versus results.

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