Speed to Lead: Why It Is Important and How to Improve It

In a marketplace that grows more competitive by the day, customer expectations are higher than ever. Modern consumers expect organizations to get back to their email inquiries in a day or less. And most consumers expect you to get back to them within an hour, no matter the communication channel.

Sound overwhelming? Don’t worry–we’ve got you covered. Read on to learn what speed to lead is, why it’s important, and how you can improve it with tools like Podium’s new LeadDrive platform.

What Is Speed to Lead?

So, what is speed to lead? Essentially, it’s the average time it takes your business to respond to an inbound lead. The metrics by which a qualified prospect becomes a lead differ from business to business. However, generally, this is determined when the prospect fills out contact info on a live chat form or submits a demo request.

Over 40% of local businesses feel that following up with leads quickly is a challenge for their organization. When demand is high and your team is small, meeting consumer response time expectations can feel overwhelming, maybe even impossible. But there are tools every business can use and steps every business can take to become a lead responding machine.

Speed to lead is critical in today’s fast-paced market, and Podium offers an unparalleled advantage by ensuring businesses engage with leads within a couple of minutes—guaranteed. Podium’s conversational AI is outcome-driven – it doesn’t just respond to inbound leads it guides conversations toward a specific goal, such as a sale or booking. Unlike other AI systems that focus on providing correct responses, Podium aims to drive specific customer actions to grow your business. Podium’s AI Employee guarantees your business engages with leads within a couple of minutes; during peak hours, off hours, and every hour in between.

Beat your competition faster than ever with Podium’s AI Employee. Watch a demo today.

Why Is Speed to Lead Important?

What is the importance of speed to lead? It helps move your lead along the sales funnel, strengthens your lead conversion rate, and raises your ROI. More importantly, it’s make-or-break when it comes to meeting the modern consumer’s expectations. To illustrate, here are some of our favorite speed to lead statistics:

78% of leads go with the business that answers first.

That’s right–speed matters, especially when it comes to decision-making. In our competitive marketplace, customers are looking to see who stands out from the pack; namely, which local business is going to offer them the fastest, most convenient, most high-quality, personalized service that takes the lowest amount of time to receive. The business that responds first has the advantage of addressing the customer’s needs before anyone else.

Less than 38% of companies contact their leads within an hour.

With how important speed to contact is, it’s pretty surprising that most local businesses drop the ball. The fact is that most local organizations leave their potential customers for the taking, making it simple for you to get ahead of the competition. If you want an easy win, this is it: Get back to your leads in less than an hour, and you’ll be beating out 62% of companies by a wide margin. Don’t let a slow response be the reason you miss out.

In the first five minutes, conversion rates are 8x higher.

Want to increase your conversion rates? Increase your speed to lead. You want to strike when the iron is hot–and the iron is hottest in the first five minutes. If you respond within this time frame, you have a much greater chance of increasing your conversion rate and winning someone’s business not just once, but multiple times. When it comes to speed to lead, time is money. According to a recent report, responding to leads after half an hour has passed is 21x less effective.

Don’t let your competition beat you to new leads. Try Podium’s AI Employee today.

How to Improve Your Speed to Lead? 9 Tips

Now that we’ve covered the basics, how do you improve your speed to lead? What are the metrics, tools, and processes you need to be aware of to assess your workflows? We’re glad you asked. Here are nine tips to help you improve your speed to lead, no matter where you’re starting from.

1. Implement automated lead routing and distribution.

Using automated lead routing and distribution tools ensures there is minimal delay between the time a lead expresses interest and the time it takes for you to connect them with someone who can help. This not only makes your customer happy (and improves lead qualification) but also your marketing teams as it lightens their loads significantly. With Podium’s routing system, every inquiry (no matter the channel it comes through) is automatically routed to the person who can best help, saving you time and hassle.

Speed to lead wins; Podium’s AI Employee boosts lead conversion by 45%.

2. Enable real-time lead notifications.

As we said, time is of the essence in your customer journey. That means that every time you generate a new lead, you should know about it. Podium’s Inbox gives real-time notifications, regardless of the channel the lead is using to communicate with you. Best of all, it brings everything into one dashboard so every member on your team can easily see exactly where each lead is in your sales funnel. With the mobile app, you can enable notifications that allow you to connect with qualified leads quickly from wherever you’re working.

Podium’s AI Employee guarantees your business engages with leads within a couple of minutes; during peak hours, off hours, and every hour in between.

3. Use a live chat tool.

Live chat can help you provide faster and more convenient service for your customers. By integrating live chat instead of a chatbot on your landing page, you can respond to inquiries from leads in real-time. Podium’s Webchat tool allows you to text your leads via sms instead of just messaging them online. This promotes convenient and continued engagement even after the lead has left your website.

4. Integrate CRM and communication tools.

You don’t want to just contact your leads quickly; quality matters too. You want to make sure you’re contacting leads in the way they want you to and meeting their needs. You want to read their minds. That’s why effective speed to lead is all about knowledge–how well do you know your leads, and are you able to use that data to quickly seal the deal in a way other businesses can’t?

A powerful CRM can help you manage your leads and interactions more efficiently. With a CRM like Podium’s, you can give every conversation a winning personal touch because you’re able to access all lead information from one place. You’re able to see every interaction the lead has had with you and everything that led them to you–their whole history from conversations to touchpoints. This allows you to deliver a tailored experience, on top of speed, that hits home.

5. Provide comprehensive training and guidelines.

To achieve success, everyone on your team should be on the same page. Take the time to examine your speed to lead and communication processes in depth. Create a plan, including which tools and platforms you’re going to implement to help you respond to leads faster.

Then, discuss with your team at length, providing comprehensive training and guidelines so that they know exactly what to do in every situation and how to get the most out of each tool you’re bringing on board.

Do practice rounds and test runs to ensure high performance and periodically bring your sales reps together to discuss success stories and weak points to improve. Every salesperson should be up-to-date on your latest tools and changes.

6. Optimize lead capture forms.

Our final tip is to optimize your lead capture forms. Your form should collect the contact information most vital to helping you meet the needs of a customer quickly–namely their name, contact, and pain point. With Webchat’s form, leads are required to submit their name, mobile number, and a message. Having a mobile number is important as it allows you to use text as a central communication channel.

7. Set response time goals.

This is also a great thing to do with your team. To improve your current response times, assess where you’re doing well and where you want to improve. Be realistic while challenging yourself. After you reach a certain response time, find another benchmark and see if you can streamline to beat it. By regularly meeting with your team to assess response times, identify and remove bottlenecks and obstacles, and learn how to incorporate tools more effectively, you can set yourself up for sustainable and continuous improvement. You can empower each sales representative to go above and beyond.

8. Track your speed to lead over time.

Goals are only effective when you track your results and aim to improve them. Using tools such as Podium’s tracking features, you can easily measure the time it takes for your team to contact each lead after initial inquiry. This allows you to draw a bigger picture of your speed to lead processes and identify areas for optimization.

9. Set up an after-hours response.

Did you know that nearly 45% of leads are generated outside of business hours? This means that almost half are trying to connect when most employees are not even in office. This presents a huge opportunity for you. The right automation tools and templates can help you respond to leads quickly, even when you’re not open.

A Lead Generation Software to Improve Speed to Lead

Having the right tools at your disposal is a major part of generating leads, empowering every prospective customer, and achieving success–no matter your company size. And we’ve engineered one specifically for improving speed to lead that will help you drive your response times down significantly.

Podium is the best lead management software to improve speed to lead and close more deals. Our new LeadDrive tool allows you to manage every single lead, no matter the source, from one place, ensuring no opportunity slips through the crack. Every single inquiry, from CarGurus, Angie’s, LinkedIn, the phone, and Thumbtack funnel into the one inbox.

This empowers you to quickly and automatically engage–responding to every inquiry, beating the competition, and converting more prospects into customers who come back for more. Want evidence of what a faster lead response can do? The numbers speak for themselves.

With Podium, the sales team at Lux Bond & Green Jewelry is now able to respond to customers in under 10 minutes, significantly improving their close rates.

“It’s been very helpful in completing that white-glove branding experience throughout all of our platforms. We respond to all text messages, all social media, all emails from customers within 10 minutes.” Andrea Mascaro, Manager at Lux Bond & Green

The team at Ultra Modern Pool & Patio has seen a 128% increase in revenue due to increased speed of response and faster follow-up.

“We sold a hot tub within four text messages with a really quick text exchange, which was awesome.” Kara Weed, Ultra Modern Pool & Patio

Every lead matters. And the way you set up your outreach is critical to your success. So,our question for you is: Are you ready to drive down your lead response time and improve your customer experience? Ready to uplevel your sales process and deliver the fastest service in your business’s history? Try LeadDrive today.

Also, transform your business with Podium’s AI Employee. Get a Demo Today.