Optimizing your lead response time
In order to optimize your lead response time, you first must determine your current lead response time. Start with a reliable measurement process.
Survey your team’s actual results, by both lead type and by channel. Don’t fool yourself with averages, either. While mean lead response time is important, so is the median, the high, the low and the variance.
After you’ve assessed your current speed to lead, it’s time to get to problem-solving and continuous improvement:
Determine root causes of poor response time by lead source, channel and outlier highs
Establish realistic goals
Develop your corrective action plan
Execute, measure and analyze
Repeat!
Remember, your lead response time consists of two components – processing time and rep response time. To optimize total speed to lead, you need to optimize both sides of the equation.
Solving for lead process time
Lead processing time must be both fast and accurate. For most every organization with any meaningful volume of leads, automation is the most efficient and cost-effective method to process leads.
Automated lead-to-account matching solutions match Inbound leads to any existing account in your Salesforce CRM. Additionally, contextual account data can be further added with enrichment solutions like ZoomInfo, also easily integrated into your tech stack.
Holistic view of leads and accounts eliminate any need to fill in data gaps, empowering sales reps to engage immediately with a new prospect. Instead of researching and data entry, your sales professionals promptly get to selling-related activities.
Next, automated lead routing solutions ensure the right leads get to the right representatives at the right time, every time. Automating any manual lead routing processes eliminates operational bottlenecks and human errors, and it ensures no leads get left behind, either lost or completely forgotten. Build your routing flows to prioritize the routing of time-sensitive leads first – for example, demo requests need immediate routing, while less urgent trade show booth visitors can be slotted in behind.