Why Speed Matters
And Why Businesses That Really ‘Get’ This Will Dominate Their Competition
By Andrew Gibb (Published: February 25)
As a business owner, it’s VITAL that you grasp the importance of speed when it comes to responding to inbound leads.
According to a 2018 HubSpot survey, 82% of prospects expect an instant response from businesses… and it’s probably even higher today.
Frankly, if you’re not equipped to respond immediately, then you’re likely to be haemorrhaging future clients.
Real World Insight
This phenomenon hit home for me when I worked in the marketing team of a top 50 UK accountancy practice.
We prided ourselves on responding quickly to inbound enquiries.
Now looking back, the ‘system’ we had in place was pretty crude compared to what we do with CONVERSIONIZE. But, interestingly, prospective clients would tell me, time and time again, we were the first (and indeed the only firm) to get back to them and this set us on the path to win them over as a new client.
It put down an important marker about what working with us would be like.
What fascinated me was with all the effort and budget going into our marketing activities, it largely boiled down to how quickly we could
jump on a call to discuss their needs.
Obviously, it wasn’t the only reason, but it was definitely a big factor.
Our competitors were doing great marketing too… but we were outgunning them, and it often came down to how quickly we responded.
So, the lesson is that speed really matters because the reality is that, if you don’t respond quickly, someone else will.
Tackling the ‘Complacency Factor’
At the risk of being controversial, another thing I encounter with some business owners is a lack of urgency (or maybe it’s complacency) when it comes to responding quickly to inbound enquiries.
Again, (if this is you) it’s really important to acknowledge this and put in place systems and/or automation to ensure that your business is handling leads in a timely manner.
So, how quick do you need to be?
Well, you'll be shocked to learn that it’s 21x more likely that you will get a positive outcome from someone speaking to you if you can get back to them within the first 5 minutes versus the first 30 minutes!
Let me repeat that… 21x more likely.
That’s game changing.
This is what’s referred to as the “Golden Window” and it’s where you should be aiming when it comes to your own response times.
And some other jaw-dropping statistics to maybe ponder on:
Responding within the first minute increases lead conversions by 391%.
After five minutes, the odds of qualifying a lead drops by 80%.
Shockingly, the average B2B business's speed to lead is 42 hours.
This is all in line with what we've discovered working with many different clients in dozens of different industries.
There’s a tonne of research available on what’s known as ‘Speed to Lead’ and even the venerable Harvard Business Review have weighed in on this topic stating that “calling a new lead is the single largest driver of lead conversion within the first two minutes after a lead is generated.”
In conclusion, I appreciate that getting your ducks in a row on this stuff isn’t easy… after all, you’re busy running your business.
But if you’re investing in lead generation activities (which isn’t cheap in both time and money) then I would argue that you owe it to yourself to explore how you can reduce the time it takes to respond to your incoming leads.
The faster a business responds, the more likely it is to convert that lead into a sale.
Ignore this at your peril.
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