As part of my prep for Inbound 2012 I seem to be having even more conversations with experts in the lead generation space and most of my recent articles have had to do with inbound leads and lead conversion. Of course my focus is always on the sales side of that equation.
Last week I was speaking with an inbound expert and he asked me a question;
"Frank, how quickly should sales people follow up on a lead?" in other words call a person that has completed a CTA (call to action)
That sounds like the perfect question to ask a sales development expert - but in reality as I thought about the question I was not sure of my answer. I know what I used to say "right away, get them while they are thinking of you, they may even still be at their desk and so on" but I don't think the philosophy behind that answer is as water tight as it used to be. So I hesitated and realized that the answer was not black and white.
When I get "leads" I end up reaching out to them at a variety of times and in a number of ways. I have had people respond really well to the right away approach, but at the same time I have had some that responded well even though weeks had passed. There just seems to be no consistent hard and fast rule - people would like one but that doesn't mean there is one. Think about the information people complete on a form, we would like to say that because prospect A completed more information that he is more qualified and a better lead than prospect B but that is not true. Maybe A is just better at filling out forms.
Part of the challenge is inherent in the Inbound Marketing philosophy. People are finding you and they are doing so on their schedule and they are expressing interest in what they have determined they need as compared to times past when a sales person might have determined the when and the what. Often a dislike of sales people or a desire to avoid sales people is why they are here to begin with so perhaps the last thing they want is to be "followed up with" at all - forget about the when!
Maybe before we "follow up" with a lead we think about the expectations on the other end.
1) Did we tell them there would be a follow up?
2) Did we say how long that usually takes?
3) Did we qualify what they were looking at?
4) Do we know how they found us?
5) Are they in our sweet spot?
6) What value will the follow up provide (that they didn't already get from the site}?
7) What else do I know or can I find out about them before the follow up?
So rather than worry about the when or the how long maybe a better question is the how and why? There are a lot of people trying to proclaim sales dead as a result of inbound marketing but when you think about the challenges associated with following up on a lead that was generated in today's environment sales people need to be better than ever. They need to have new skills when it comes to relationship building and creative thinking that were not as important in years past as they are now.
So to answer the initial question - I don't have a rule about the length of time between a raising of the hand and a call, but I do think there are some strict rules when it comes to the quality of that follow up.