Respond In Under 1 Minute And Sales Go Up 391% (Speed To Lead System)

What Is Speed To Lead?

Speed to lead is how quickly you contact a lead after they opt in. We open the video with the figure that sales go up 391% when leads are contacted within a minute of opting in.

Under a minute is record-breaking, but cutting your response from an hour or 30 minutes to five minutes would still be a big increase in sales conversion and in the number of leads that end up on your sales team's calendar.

It sounds easy but is hard to do, especially with several reps. This video maps the system out on paper, based on what we've set up for other businesses, so you'd still need to build it around your own CRM.

How Should A One-Person Team Respond To New Leads?

Send every lead into your CRM automatically, then alert whoever handles leads on every channel at once. Their SMS should carry everything from the opt-in form, such as name, email and phone number, so they have it all to hand.

Add an email and a Slack or Teams message, plus any other channel that sends a notification, and the more the better. In an office you could even connect a physical bell on their desk by webhook. It's a few automations you can set up in an afternoon.

Then record how long each response takes. If your VoIP system connects to your CRM, it knows when the lead's number is called, so you can see the time from the lead being created to someone responding.

How Does Round Robin Lead Assignment Work?

It shares leads equally across your reps: lead one goes to rep one, lead two to rep two, and it loops round indefinitely. When you add a rep, they join the loop.

You need a CRM with a round robin function. When a lead comes in, the CRM works out who's next and records them as assigned, so you know who it's heading to. If you assign leads by quality instead, the approach changes a little but the idea holds.

How Should You Notify A Rep About A New Lead?

On every channel at once, but without the lead's details. The message only says a new lead is available, and the rep has to accept it before they find out who it is. Here's how a claim works:

1. Message the next rep in the round robin by SMS, email and Slack or Teams to say a new lead is available.
2. The rep accepts by replying on any of those channels. In our setup any reply counts, even a single letter.
3. Send them the lead's phone number, email, first name and last name straight away. The lead is now their responsibility.

Make accepting as easy as possible. Once a lead is claimed, track how long it takes to go from claimed to contacted through your VoIP, SMS or email system.

What Happens If A Rep Doesn't Claim The Lead?

It counts as a miss and goes to the next rep in the round robin, who gets the same messages and the same chance to claim it. How long each rep gets is up to you, anywhere from one minute to five, and the example uses about two.

If the second rep misses it too, it becomes a free-for-all, because passing it on again would waste another two minutes when you're already four minutes in. Every rep, including the two who missed it, gets the SMS, email and Teams message, and the first to claim it gets it.

This is why the details stay hidden until someone claims the lead. We once had a free-for-all where several reps called the same lead within a minute or two of each other, and it didn't go well.

Should You Track Which Reps Miss Leads?

Yes. Record in your CRM each rep who didn't accept a lead, and whether the rep who ended up with it got it through the free-for-all. You might find one rep is constantly missing leads.

The point of the whole setup is to give reps quick access to every lead without losing time to someone who takes ages to respond. Getting them to pick leads up quickly is a training job, separate from the technical side.

Should Your Best Leads Go To Your Best Reps?

It depends on your numbers. Work out whether you convert more when a lead is reached fastest or when your best rep reaches it, especially if your best rep tends to take longer than five minutes.

If you do, the same process works: the best rep gets first chance, then after about two minutes it moves down a level, and after a couple of levels you might open it to everyone. Ideally your best reps are also your fastest, which is probably part of why they're the best.

Either way, filter leads before they enter the round robin, for example checking they're based in the US or UK and filled in the form with what you need. Thousands of leads a day is a lot harder, and you'll likely have a bigger team.

What Should You Report On For Speed To Lead?

Average time to respond across the business and for each rep, the number of leads allocated to each rep, how many each one missed, and from there, conversion rate by rep. It only works if every step is recorded in your CRM.

Should You Call A Lead Straight Away In A Book-A-Call Funnel?

Not always, which is something we found out fairly recently. If your opt-in goes straight to booking a call, give the lead a few minutes, say five, to book it themselves. Test it first, as you might find more calls get booked when you wait a little.

This only applies to book-a-call funnels. If waiting doesn't help, or your opt-in leads somewhere else, such as a brochure, drop the wait and get on the phone as soon as the lead comes in. Then track the time from claimed to contacted and from contacted to converted.