There is a limited window of opportunity when you receive a new lead. This window typically becomes available as soon as an individual submits information to complete a contact form, selects “call now,” or sends an email requesting your services.
And this window does not remain open for long.
Many small business owners are aware that it is important to respond to their leads in a timely manner. However, “timely” is a very vague term and the difference between what many businesses perceive as being timely and the reality based on actual research data has some significant discrepancies.
The Five-Minute Rule Nobody Talks About Enough
Here’s an interesting number to contemplate: companies responding to a brand new lead in less than five minutes will have at least a 100 times better chance of connecting with that lead compared to the company waiting thirty minutes.
100 times. Not a small margin. Not a little edge.
That’s a huge difference.
And yet the average small business response time is approximately forty-seven hours, or two full days. And by that time, that prospective client has most likely found another provider to hire, has completely forgotten that they had contacted your company in the first place, or maybe even both.
That being said, this isn’t a negative critique of small business owners. As stated above, running a business can be very chaotic. There’s no receptionist. There’s no assigned salesman. There’s a guy working in a work truck trying to respond to calls and manage his own job site. That’s real-life.
However, leads do not care about what happens in real life. All they really care about is who gets there first.
Why Speed Matters More Than Almost Anything Else
What really happens with your customer’s mind as you submit their lead?
The person has reached the point where they are serious about getting something resolved: they have a need, they want that need met, and then at this very instant they are actively seeking assistance.
This “window” of intent can be a hot opportunity for anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. If you do nothing, you lose them. Either they find another provider, get sidetracked, or simply forget all about you.
Harvard Business Review conducted a study several years ago that found that businesses that contacted their leads within an hour had a nearly eightfold higher chance of having a real dialog with the customer than businesses who waited until after one additional hour. That’s not a huge time frame by most standards of the workday, but it is a huge factor in closing.
It’s Not Just About Being First: It’s About Being Fast and Following Up
Although speed-to-lead has garnered all the glory, the follow-up game is equally important. According to studies, it usually takes between 5 and 7 touchpoints for a lead to be converted. The majority of businesses stop trying to reach out after 1 or 2 times. This isn’t a pipeline issue so much as it’s an endurance issue.
The companies that ultimately succeed are not simply faster; they’re also persistent and never obnoxious. They have the ability to send the correct message at the correct time and multiple times at that. They also do so in a manner that appears natural and non-desperate.
This can be very challenging when your business is operating on a model (i.e. a plumbing company) where “marketing” consists of simply answering the telephone when you get a chance.
The Real Cost of a Slow Response
Let’s look at this with a little bit of honest math. Let’s assume one business receives twenty new leads every month. As for their average response time (47 hours), some number of leads will go cold by the time someone can call them back (let’s be conservative here and say 30%).
For our example purposes, we’ll say that there are six possible clients who are now no longer interested in your company. Since each lost lead costs you $500 per job, we’re losing $3000 per month just from people waiting for us to call back. Over a year that would total $36,000.
This isn’t about bad customer service or bad online reviews. It’s about simply taking too long to call them back.
Speed to Lead Is a Revenue Strategy, Not Just a Courtesy
Fast response time is not just a polite thing to do. It’s directly tied to generating more revenue.
In fact, it’s one of the most important changes you can make as a small business and doesn’t require additional personnel or ad spend. It just requires that you have better systems.
Automation Is the Only Scalable Answer
Here’s the hard truth: humans are not built for speed-to-lead.
The expectation that someone will instantly drop all of their work to answer a form submission within five minutes, twenty-four hours per day/365 days per year is unrealistic; it does not provide for personal or professional sustainability; and it is certainly not a method of sustainable business growth.
However, automation is a viable solution. This is precisely where tools such as Townsquare Interactive’s Business Management Platform are truly changing the game.
As soon as a new lead submits a form, the platform automatically sends out a personal response. This occurs long before any of your staff see the notification. The lead feels they have been heard.
What Good Lead Management Actually Looks Like
A good lead management process does not require you to work more. The best way to manage leads as a small business is to build a lead management system that functions in your absence, so whether or not you are actively engaged in running your business, leads will be acknowledged immediately and then followed up regularly through a structured schedule and tracked by your company, at all times.
Even the smallest businesses can achieve the level of responsiveness from which large agencies have historically benefited. This is often referred to as “big agency tactics, small agency feel,” and it represents how an enterprise-level approach to marketing and sales (tools and processes) can be scaled-down to meet the needs of very small businesses (two people).
The Simple Fix With Real Results
The businesses that win the lead game aren’t magic. They’re not luckier. They’re not spending more on ads. They’re just faster and more consistent than the competition, and furthermore, they’ve set up systems that make fast and consistent basically automatic.
If a business is spending money to generate leads and then leaving those leads sitting unanswered for two days, the problem isn’t the marketing. The problem is the follow-through.
Fix the response time, build in the follow-up, and suddenly the same ad budget starts producing dramatically different results.
The five-minute window is real.
The real question is whether the business will be ready for it.