6 Stages to a 7 Figure Business, Part 1 – Lead Response Times

Respond faster! A fresh lead has your business top of mind and is already a good way down your sales funnel—take advantage and close the deal. The MIT/Kellog studies show that the contact rate is 100x more from 5 minutes to 30 minutes.

75% of prospects do business with the company that contacts them first. However, the average response time to an online lead is 44 hours, and 50% of online leads never get a response! Why is there such a large disparity?

It may well be that most Real Estate professionals do not have the time to focus on their lead response time. With all the responsibilities to fulfill within the business, the lead response often falls to the bottom of the list when it should be a priority.

Even if you can’t sustain a prompt response of 5 minutes or less, any improvement will improve sales.

Virtual Professionals can cost-effectively manage your ‘800’ number, ‘Chat,’ and online landing pages driving huge improvements to Qualification Rate and Contact Rate. Virtual Professionals also allow you to respond during off-business hours.

It’s important to follow up diligently! If you can’t reach the lead within 5, 10, 30 minutes, etc., make sure you’re calling periodically to ensure contact. Amazingly, 30% of leads are never contacted. Virtual Professional Inside Sales Agents (ISA) can ensure that leads are contacted and followed upper your organization’s standards. By making a few more attempts, you can experience an increase of 70%.

A study by the Harvard Business Review revealed that contact within an hour of inquiry, you have 7x more of a chance to have a productive conversation compared to reaching out after over an hour, and compared to someone who waits 24 hours to contact a lead, you’re 60 times more likely.

According to the National Association of Realtors, in real estate, 64% of buyers and 66% of sellers end up working with the agent they speak with first. Those who are first-to-the-draw have a tremendous advantage.

For example, let us tell you about one of our clients Amy and her ISA Virtual Assistant Rex. Rex is in charge of calling leads as soon as they enter their system. His speed to lead is essential, and this sense of urgency was instilled in him from his first day with Amy. Aside from being tasked to make at least 100 calls a day, he is also given new leads that he must reach out to within 5 minutes of their query. Rex set 199 appointments in his first year alone, and out of those, Amy has closed 142 transactions. This is 7 million in trackable sales volume and over $200,000 in GCI!

Amy, like many business owners we work with, could not take everything on herself. She realized that her team needed someone who could focus on their speed to lead time. So she hired and trained a Virtual Professional who could pick up the slack so she and the rest of her team could focus on what they needed to accomplish.

Let us know if you want to get past this pain point, we can help you out.