Here’s the real truth.

Businesses make significant investments in both time and money to acquire new customers. Think about every dollar spent on marketing, advertising and things like sponsorship, branding and signage. Think about everyone in your business who dedicates time, attention and expertise to activities that support acquiring new customers.

Now imagine all this investment pays off and results in your business getting a customer enquiry. 

Let’s say for argument’s sake, this customer enquiry comes via your website.

Harvard Business Review reports that of the companies that do respond within 30 days, the average response time to a new enquiry is 42 hours. All the time, money and investment in marketing and while HBR did not report on how many companies didn’t respond at all, when companies did respond, it took nearly 2 days for someone at the business to respond.

Only 37% of these companies that responded to an enquiry responded within an hour. But these companies, which at least attempted a follow-up within an hour, were seven times more likely to qualify the sales lead.

MIT took this research one step further and found that the odds of qualifying a lead increase by 21 times when contacted within 5 minutes compared to within 30 minutes. 

So yes, following up on a customer enquiry is important, but so is the response time – and the faster the better!

Now, let’s assume that the potential customer has a conversation with one of your team members – maybe it’s in person, or maybe it’s over the phone or online – either way, the lead has been qualified, but the potential customer doesn’t purchase at that point.

EarlyPay reports that 80% of sales are closed after five follow-up calls, yet 44% of sales reps follow up with their clients only once. Furthermore, 42% of consumers report that they are likely to purchase if the team member calls back at an agreed-upon day or time.

So once the lead has been qualified, statistically at least a further five follow-up calls may be required to maximise engagement and sales conversions (preferably at the time and date agreed with the customer).

This is why over the coming weeks, we’re going to cover everything about customer follow-ups. We’re going to share our tips, leadership considerations and stories.

Stay tuned, and in the meantime – check in on your follow-up calls. Are they happening?