How To Close More Marketing Leads Faster

How To Close More Qualified Inbound Marketing Leads, Faster The Essential Guide To Improving Lead Response Time From Web Leads

How To Close More Qualified Inbound Marketing Leads Faster

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Table of Contents The lead response time problem 3

The data tells an interesting story 4

How to fix the lead response problem 6

A look under the hood 7

Next steps 8

About us 9


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The lead response time problem You know the situation well: you find a website, you’re interested in making a purchase, so you fill out the contact form. Perhaps an hour, a day or even a week later you get a call from a sales rep. The problem is, at that point, your time is booked, you’ve found another solution and—most importantly—you’re no longer interested in taking the call. If the sales person had only called you right away, while you were still on that website, you would have made a purchase. At the very least, you would have engaged in a serious sales dialogue. Now let’s turn the story around. How often does an eager buyer fill out a download, a demo request or a contact form on your website, but by the time your sales team responds, the prospect is no longer interested? That window of opportunity closes fast—it takes very little time for a prospect to find a competitor or move on to another project. At that point, your prospect no longer has the time (or interest) to learn about the solution you provide. How do you ensure that your sales team contacts qualified prospects quickly, while they are still actively reading your website thinking about your solution? That’s what this eBook is all about.


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The data tells an interesting story We recently surveyed more than 350 marketers, asking the following question: How often does your sales team speak with a prospect to close a sale?

More than 90% of survey respondents speak to a prospect to close a

sale, but when prospects fill out web forms sales teams aren’t responding quickly enough with a phone call follow-up.

More than 90 percent of businesses surveyed speak with a prospect as part of the sales closing process. Many of the same businesses also ask prospects to complete a form so the sales team can reach out. The hitch? That response goes out when it’s most convenient for the sales person—not the prospect. As a result, sales representatives aren’t connecting with the prospect when the prospect is ready and most eager to speak with sales. See what customers are saying about the importance of easy communication:

• 59% of online shoppers use voice regularly to inquire about a product1

• 82% have wanted help but not been able to get help from a real person2

• 52% say it has affected their purchase decision3 Your customers want to talk to you. Are you making it easier or harder for them to make a purchase?

1 Oracle Cross-Channel Commerce Research Study (March 2011) 2 IMShopping and Harris Interactive Survey (August 2009), 3 InsideSales.com Research &Analytics (June 2011)


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Why does speed matter? While speaking to prospects is clearly important, it’s your response time that’s absolutely critical. These two studies tell you why: Leads convert 22 times more often when you make contact within the first five minutes.4 In addition, according to Harvard Business Review, firms that contacted potential customers within an hour of receiving a query were nearly seven times more likely to qualify the lead as those that contacted the customer an hour later—and more than sixty times as likely as companies that waited 24 hours or longer. Despite these findings, sixty-three percent of companies failed to respond in that golden hour. Twenty-four percent waited more than a day, and twenty-three percent didn’t respond at all. While email alerts or CRM updates are nice, there’s no better—and faster—way to get in touch than by phone. Trigger a phone call between your sales team and your prospect while they’re still browsing your website, eager to learn about your business. The quicker you can make that connected, the more likely you are to close that sale.

4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology study 2007


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How to fix the lead response problem You need to speak to your customers to close a sale, so connections are important. You close more business the faster you speak with your customers, so speed is crucial. If balancing these factors were simple, no one would lose sales on account of slow responses. So how can you leverage speed and communication for better business? Just as you might manage, measure and automate your online marketing processes, you need a tool that can help you manage, measure and automate your voice interactions with customers. For example, Ifbyphone® is a voice-based marketing automation company that created a lead response solution to solve this problem. The Ifbyphone LeadResponder application helps your team close sales faster by instantly connecting sales reps with qualified prospects on your website. LeadResponder eliminates the lag in response time so you can close more qualified inbound marketing leads faster. How does LeadResponder work? LeadResponder leverages Ifbyphone’s advanced voice-based marketing automation platform to instantly find and connect a sales person with the lead. When a prospect submits a web form, the system is designed to immediately call your sales team. LeadResponder reads the lead’s web form info to the company representative in a phone message. The sales person can then say, “yes” into the phone to instantly connect with the prospect. Through this instant connection, the sales person can speak with a prospect within minutes of expressing their interest in a company’s products or services. LeadResponder integrates seamlessly with Hubspot so that you can register, configure and view reports within your existing Hubspot account.


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A look under the hood How does Ifbyphone’s LeadResponder work? You simply add your sales team members to the system, set your business hours and activate the LeadResponder.

Using The Ifbyphone LeadResponder you can turn web form submissions into live phone leads for your sales team in a few easy steps.


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Next steps Want to learn more about how your organization can close more business by improving lead response time?

1. Learn more: http://public.ifbyphone.com/partners/extras/hubspot 2. Download: Find the “Ifbyphone LeadResponder” in the Hubspot App

Marketplace 3. Questions? Call Ifbyphone at 877-295-5100.


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About us

About Ifbyphone Ifbyphone is the leading voice-based marketing automation platform that manages, measures and automates voice interactions in the marketing process — including lead capture, lead nurturing, lead routing, and lead analysis. Learn more at www.ifbyphone.com or find us on Facebook and Twitter.