Inbound & Digital Marketing Blog

Lead transition from marketing to sales often poses many questions.

How long until these leads are warm enough? What should happen before they’re introduced to sales? When is the right time for sales to engage with leads to maximize customer acquisition?

These are big questions that affect your bottom line.

Today, I’ve put together two distinct processes to help you determine the right time for your specific sales team to engage with leads. Here they are:

1. A lead response management study (to break down exact numbers)

2. The inbound marketing methodology

Let’s get started.

Lead Response Study -- The Exact Days/Times to Engage Leads

LeadResponseManagement.org published a study to determine the best day, time of day, and response time to contact leads to get the highest qualification ratios.

Their mission was to “fill the knowledge gap that exists between marketing and sales, where companies are using intuition and experience to manage lead response timing rather than science.”

They used data from InsideSales.com, which generates and stores call data linked directly with lead process and flow information. They examined three years of data from six companies (that generate and respond to web leads). The study included over 15,000 leads and 100,000 call attempts.

Here are the results:

Day of the Week

The study found that Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to call to make contact with a lead (with Thursday being the top day).

Wednesdays and Thursdays are also the best days to call to qualify a lead (with Wednesday being the top day).

Time of Day

Between 4PM and 6PM is the best time to call to make contact with a lead.

8-9AM and 4-5PM are the best times to call to qualify a lead (with 8-9AM at a slight advantage).

Response Time After Lead Generation (Hours)

The odds of making contact with a lead drop 10 times after the first hour.

The odds of qualifying a lead drop 6 times after the first hour.

After 20 hours, every additional dial to contact a lead hurts your chances of qualifying that lead.

Response Time After Lead Generation (5 Minute Intervals)

The odds of making contact with a lead decrease by over 10 times in the first hour.

The odds of qualifying a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times. From 5 minutes to 10 minutes, the odds drop 4 times.

What does all of this mean?

Here are the takeaways from the study:

1. Wednesdays and Thursdays will provide the highest response rate when making initial contact with a lead.

2. When qualifying leads to nurture them into the sales process, they’re most receptive on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

3. 4-6PM (end of the work day) is the best time to make initial contact with a lead.

4. 8-9AM and 4-5PM are the best times to nurture leads into the sales process.

5. It’s best to contact a lead within the first 5 minutes after lead generation, regardless of day or time.

6. If you cannot make contact within the first 5 minutes, it’s best to make contact within the first hour.

7. After 20 hours, each additional contact attempt hurts your chances of qualifying that lead.

How to Apply These Results to Your Business

These results are not universal. They come from 3 years of data and 6 companies.

However, it does show that tweaking your response times can have a significant impact on your sales team’s ability to get in contact with leads and nurture them into the sales funnel. (Just look at the discrepancies in the data between different days/times/response times.)

Use these results to test different contact strategies. For example, for one month, have your sales team make contact within the first hour of lead generation. Then analyze your sales.

Change that variable back to its original, and have your sales team attempt to qualify leads between 4-5PM every day for one month. Then analyze your sales.

Continue this process by leaving everything equal except for one variable (so you can determine that variable’s impact). After 6 months, you could have an entirely redefined sales strategy that has grown your sales by a vast percentage.

This is one way you can optimize the exact day, time, and response time for your sales team to engage with leads.

Let’s try another.

Using The Inbound Methodology To Determine Correct Response Time

Inbound marketing typically follows a 4-step process:

1. Attract

2. Convert

3. Close

4. Delight

To use this methodology to determine the right time for sales to engage with leads, focus on Attract, Convert, and Close.

The primary lead generator and nurturer in inbound marketing is content. Content is how you:

1. Introduce prospects to your business in a non-intrusive way.

2. Build your trust and authority in the space.

3. Convert prospects into leads.

Make sure #1 and #2 have been accomplished before sales talks to your leads (the Attract and Convert steps). This is the “warming” process where prospects and leads become accustomed to your business’s presence in their lives.

They’ve already been introduced to your products and services. They know what you offer and the role you play as a provider. Now they just need a small push to become buyers and brand advocates.

That’s when it’s the right time for sales to engage with leads.

To Wrap It Up

We looked at two processes to determine when sales should start working its magic:

1. A lead response management study

2. The inbound marketing methodology

At Inbound Team, we advise combining both processes.

• Test different times, days, and response times after lead generation.

• Analyze your sales after each test and determine which time is best.

• Make sure your leads are primed with valuable content that builds trust and authority before they talk to sales.

This creates a one-two punch marketing and sales strategy that grows your business.

Takeaways

• The exact time for sales to engage with leads is different for every business.

• It’s crucially important to test different response times, to make sure you’re not allowing valuable sales to slip away.

• Before sales talks to leads, make sure your leads have been primed with useful content (by following the inbound methodology).

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