How many times should you follow up with a new lead before giving up and moving onto the next one?
We get asked this question all the time. And finally, we have a definitive answer.
We’ve spent the past three months analyzing reams of data from clients & prospects across the country, and across a variety of industries. We’ve looked at number of touches, channels used (email, phone, social), different combinations and sequences, time between contacts and more.
Our measure of success was both conversion to live, qualifying conversations with prospects as well as what percentage of those conversations resulted in qualified short-term sales opportunities.
Once we identified a lead follow-up program that appeared to be optimal, we asked several participating companies to adopt it, so we would have richer data on the new best practice. And we were pleased to find that the same high conversion rates held across every company.
The resulting, optimal lead follow-up process was surprisingly simple, and here it is:
- 16 phone calls over 10 business days
- Two follow-up emails after each phone call (one to business and one to personal email address)
- Three text messages on Sunday
- Two Twitter DM’s per day
- Hand-written letter to their mother
Surprisingly, our research found that the content in these touch points was immaterial. The sheer volume of attempts, in nearly each case, is what drove the prospect response (for purposes of this study, we defined a response as one of the following: a return phone call, live conversation, all-caps unsubscribe request, 45-minute call with their mother complaining about HER inability to get her son or daughter on the phone, or cease-and-desist letter from their general counsel).
For more details of this study, including results from the various follow-up sequences tested, examples of the call scripts and text messages used, as well as copies of the more colorful cease-and-desist letters received, please click here.
