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The words that sales representatives have come to hate the most are “Well it sounds interesting but it just not the right time for us right now.” Every day thousands of sales reps make a call hoping they don’t have to deal with that frustrating dilemma. The problem is that the potential buyer doesn’t know, so the sales rep has even a smaller chance of knowing when or even if they will hear from the potential buyer ever again. It seems that if a product was worthwhile that a business would leap at the chance to improve their company. However, in order to beat this often challenging issue, technology has created a solution to overcome this most baffling of situations in the sales world. When someone isn’t qualified the first time around, instead of marking those leads as dead, this response system reaches out a second time. This system is called the Electronic Labor Force.

How It Works

This system which is also referred to as a response loop will automatically schedule a time to talk with your unqualified lead in the future. Therefore it is important for sales reps to advise leads that they would like to continue calling them in the future. This scheduled date can range from five years out as the company expands to the right size or it could be six months just waiting out a contract. This information is gathered by the sales rep and then they decide when would be the best time to start initiating calls once again.
When the day finally arrives for contact to be made once again, it is important that the proper channel is used. A quality response loop can incorporate a past lead into any of the new marketing campaigns that are currently being used. That way the message stays fresh to potential buyer. This might be a thorough email campaign, phone calls, or even dusting off the old fax machine. The response loop will also track to see if the potential buyer is actually looking at the emails that they are receiving. All this depends on the method that the sales representative would assume would work the best for that specific buyer.

How it will help

Timing is often the biggest issue that sales reps will face, but if you are able to close more of those tough cases, your bottom line will see an increase. By being a bit more proactive than the competition, you will have more opportunities to qualify those potential buyers. This process shows that your company is both professional and when you are able to recall to the potential buyer the obstacle that was keeping them from getting your product, they will be impressed. Overcome the timing problem by implementing a quality response loop by using a hosted CRM that includes one.

This year InsideSales.com performed what they call a “Response Audit” on each of the companies who attended Dreamforce. The convention was a success, with businesses learning about how to improve their sales process. The Response Audit checked to see how well each of those companies attending Dreamforce did on contacting their web leads. They tested to see how quickly the company was able to respond to a web lead, and how many times they attempted to call or email. Both of these attributes are critical in driving higher contact and qualification rates. The results showed that these companies were in the right place, because the vast majority of them really needed to improve how they did sales.

One third of the companies audited didn’t even have a web form to fill out, ending the Response Audit there. No web form, no way of capturing online leads. Of the businesses that did have a web form, 51% didn’t make any contact attempts to the lead. These two practices are sure to bring your sales down.

Only approximately 1,000 of the 3,000 companies who went to Dreamforce made at least an attempt to contact the lead coming from a web form. Before we applaud these companies however, let’s examine the results. The average time it took these businesses to respond to these valuable leads was 42 hours! Can you imagine if that’s how long it took for your inquiry to be noticed in an actual store? You would surely leave that dismal display of customer service, and find someone who will give your timely service. At least these companies did contact web leads, but there is definitely room for improvement. The research actually shows that decreasing your response time to five minutes will raise your contact rates by 100 times and qualification rates by 21 times!

Out of all those who were audited, less than two percent were at the optimized level of contacting web leads within the five minute mark. You may be asking yourself at this point, how well is my sales team doing? If they aren’t contacting within five minutes, what can I do to make sure they do? We have the answer to both of these questions. First, take a completely free Response Audit by InsideSales.com and see exactly how your sales team performs. If you aren’t satisfied with your results, InsideSales.com has the solution for you. They have developed a high tech hosted CRM joined with a dialer that will get you right at the optimized level for you. Whenever a web lead is processed, it will immediately be prioritized and routed to your sales team. Your qualification rates will skyrocket, and sales will be better than ever before. Start with a Response Audit to see how your business can improve.

This morning I watched a webinar from Brynne Tillman on how to use LinkedIn to better market individual’s business goals and endeavors. The most interesting discussion concerned making your LinkedIn profile SEO ready so that people who have the same business interests and aims can better connect with you. The effective use of keywords within your LinkedIn profile will bring those searching the internet for those keywords closer to making contact with you. The combination of Twitter and LinkedIn while utilizing these keywords was Brynne’s key takeaway for creating a very powerful tool to connect to potential business partners and clients

The other webinar I watched this morning was by David Elkington at insidesales.com. His presentation was very informative on how to most effectively contact leads in a B2B environment. David has teamed with Harvard and MIT alumni and done extrensive research to discover and refine new ways of finding business leads in the B2B environment. The two most interesting principles was the importance of contacting online leads by phone within five minutes, otherwise, the projected success rates in gaining clients and closing deals from these leads falls sharply. Secondly, he talked about the importance of purchasing local phone numbers, as a local phone number on the caller id is much more likely to be answered and positively received. It was a very interesting and neat little trick that Dave offered to better enhance success rates with contacting potential clients. Both of these solutions can lead to better contact rates, and will be vital to be implemented into the tools used by companies that are looking to improve their hosted CRM

You’ve seen the research by now–the faster you respond to leads, the better chance you have of closing and contacting.

But if you’re not doing effective lead management, you’re not helping your cause.

Get the tools you need to do a good job.

• CRM
• Marketing Automation
• Dialer Systems
• Lead Nurturing
• Analytics

If you’re not doing this, you’re not going to succeed in the Sales 2.0 World.