Ken Krogue

If you’ve followed my blog or my company for any length of time, it’s likely you’ve heard me say that immediate response to sales leads is one of the crucial factors for creating new sales prospects (and that a good sales automation tool is about the only way to do it consistently and effectively).

But a few months ago, sales productivity guru Paul Castain had some interesting advice in a blog post entitled, “For Those About to Rock, Show Up First!”

If you haven’t read the article, you might think that the title follows along with what I’m espousing—that we need to “show up first,” be the first person on the scene, be faster than the competition, etc.

In reality the point of Paul’s article wasn’t about being the first person to show up—the point was to show up at all.

Too often we barricade ourselves into a place where we know we can be comfortable.

Comfortable and barely productive.

We tell ourselves stories about how “These prospects aren’t really going anywhere,” “That cold call approach will never work,” or “They’ve never heard of us, why would they listen to me?”

We come up with every reason not to put forth the effort to get ourselves out there. Because it’s risky. There’s a chance we’ll be rejected. A chance that there’s going to be an emotional backlash because some prospect is having a bad day and doesn’t want to talk to us.

As much as I believe in the power of immediate response, a lot of the time in sales, the choice isn’t how quickly we show up, the choice is to show up at all.

Now let’s be clear—given the opportunity with a prospect, the best choice is to “show up first” and be the first one there. Research from MIT shows that immediate response to Web leads within minutes, combined with consistent, proactive follow-up increases contact and qualifying rates over 21x over waiting even a day.

Furthermore, most sales industry studies show that the first respondent to a new inquiry gets the sale between 30 and 40 percent of the time, because they typically create a sense of “loyalty” with the prospect. If there’s one change you could make today that would have immediate impact on your business, it would be to get in front of the prospect first, do it within minutes, and do it over the phone. You’ll have a serious competitive edge in your market.

But before you can “show up first” you have to “first show up”—and if you can’t manage that, all the sales advice and business strategy in the world isn’t going to help.

Sales industry researchers CSOInsights stated recently that after a “flat” budget year in 2009, marketing budgets are increasing in 2010 and beyond, and that the top three items for additional budget allocations were:

1. Web site design/content (65% stated they were increasing budget allocation)
2. Email marketing (54%)
3. Web search optimization (51%)

Great news, right? Good to hear that the economy is picking up, and that smart companies are following current trends in effective Web lead generation.

So why did my “Massive Disconnect” alarm start going off almost immediately?

Here’s why: because indicators show that the majority of companies are terribly, horribly un-optimized to take advantage of the leads their Web marketing activities generate.

Even though the article states that 75% of sales organizations now use a CRM tool of some kind to track and monitor sales activities, MIT research shows that most of them still aren’t following good lead management practices to get the most from their increased marketing spend.

For example, how many of the companies surveyed are currently responding to their incoming, “hot” Web leads in 10 minutes or less? Because if they aren’t, MIT’s research shows they’re potentially losing 20 times the total effectiveness of the leads they generate. Even worse, the research shows that 45% of companies don’t even respond AT ALL to new Web-generated leads—let alone in 10 minutes or less as best practices suggest.

So let me get this straight: the top three increased marketing budget allocations for the next year are all based on Web marketing—yet nearly half of companies don’t respond AT ALL to incoming Web leads.

Hmmmm.

Furthermore, of the companies surveyed, how many call/contact attempts are they making to reach their new Web leads? MIT’s research shows that barely 7 percent of companies make at least 6 total contact attempts by phone and email to incoming Web leads.

Yet according to The Bridge Group, the average number of “touches” needed to convert a new inquiry into a prospect is somewhere between 6 and 7—and dead “touches” like no-answer phone calls don’t even count towards that number.

So tell me again—why are companies increasing Web marketing budgets when statistically only 7 percent of them are even meeting the absolute, barest of bare minimums to get the value they want from their leads?

My “Massive Disconnect” alarm just went into overdrive.

Is it any wonder that in spite of progress, Propelling Brands says that sales and marketing still have a long way to go to align their processes?