When should a lead get a phone call vs. receive nurture emails of some sort?
Research from Hubspot and other sources shows clearly that certain leads need to be nurtured with automated and periodic email communication. The data shows that only about 5% of your leads are going to be ready to buy immediately. Thus, the other 95% of your leads need to be nurtured slowly and consistently until they are ready to buy.
But, does data from InsideSales and Speak2Leads contradict the Hubspot data? They say that leads are significantly more likely to convert to customers if they’re called within 5 minutes of showing interest.
Do these two data points contradict each other? If so, who’s right?
Do they contradict?
I don’t think so. Inside Sales and other sources would say that the leads need to be sales ready to begin with, or sales shouldn’t be calling them anyway. And, Hubspot would say that the only way to get them sales ready is via lead nurturing email campaigns.
So, there doesn’t appear to be an inherent contradiction.
However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for discussion.
The 1000 Leads Example
Let’s say that a company had 1000 leads they gathered from White Paper downloads, database marketing, webinars, and tradeshows. Let’s say these 1000 leads were split evenly between two groups. And let’s say, for the sake of simplicity, that we call these two groups Group A and Group B.
Group A gets 500 leads. These 500 leads are called by an inside sales team within 5 minutes of showing interest. If the lead couldn’t be reached on the initial phone call, sales tries to call the lead 4 more times before giving up.
Group B gets 500 leads also. All 500 are put into a nurture email campaign that sends them one email a week for 20 weeks. They are considered ‘Sales Ready’ leads until they have opened 5 emails, or something.
Which group of 500 leads would produce more customers after 3 months? 6 months? a year?
My gut tells me that calling all 500 immediately would generate immediate results. I would bet that 5 – 10 customers would immediately come from that group of 500 leads. Probably more than that actually.
I would also guess that the group of 500 leads that were nurtured with weekly or bi-weekly emails would only produce 1 to 2 customers in the same time period.
I think most people would agree with me; having an aggressive sales strategy (calling everyone) would generate more sales.
Instead of waiting ‘until the iron is hot’ to strike, why not make the iron hot yourself?
So why don’t more companies do this?
The answer likely comes down to one factor: sustainability.
Salesmen and women aren’t robots. They can’t make calls all day every day and get rejected 98% of the time. Eventually calls per day drops and effectiveness decreases. That’s why nurturing is critical.
LogMyCalls has a dual sales approach. You will get nurtured and you’ll likely get a phone call.
This means we’ve converted many leads to customers because we called when other companies would have nurtured . But it also means our sales team has probably wasted a lot of time on the phone talking to non-sales ready leads, leads that should have been nurtured longer.
In the end, every company has to decide how agressive they want to be with outbound calls to their leads. This will depend on how busy your sales team is and how much time you want them on the phone.
Or, just say ‘Screw it’ and call everybody.
