Speed to Lead – Why Being First Can Earn You the Business

It has been important, but never more so than now, to reply as immediately as possible to inbound leads. If you don’t, your competition will beat you in the game of speed to lead.

Blame it on the need for instant gratification or technological advances that have put 100 times more computing and communication power in the pocket of just about everyone than that which put men on the moon. Either way, it is what it is, and if you’re not responding right away to any and all inbound leads, then those prospects will already have spoken with your competition by the time you do.

Especially in today’s marketplace, there really is a need for speedy lead routing and response. It’s ultra-competitive for homebuyers right now. The power of a true pre-approval is only the beginning. Successful bidders often have to pay up and over asking prices, and they’ll need to know right away what their payments will look like to be comfortable making the kind of bids that will win them the deal.

Yes, it’s a tall order to respond to leads immediately, and that’s true for individual sales reps, sales teams and companies of any size. A busy loan officer can’t interrupt one conversation to initiate another. That would defeat the purpose of making the best impression possible with our prospects and do nothing for our lead conversion or enhancing the customer experience.

Absent the ability to respond in person, the same technology that puts mobile computers in everyone’s hands also allows us to minimize our response time, even if it’s not really us. Outside of immediate answers to their questions, there’s little more satisfying to a prospect to feel like they’re important enough to receive an instant return message after they fill out a form.

It’s not to say that they’re going to believe it was anything other than an autoresponder, yet if the message is right, it will be well received – i.e., I’m working with someone at the moment, here’s some more info regarding your inquiry, I’ll get right back to you again as soon as I’m off this other call or out of my closing. At the least, given the fact that you’re obviously professional and prepared enough to respond immediately, you’ve already achieved the first objectives: A. – they know you’re on the case, and B. – you’re in demand by others.

The Benefit of Speed to Lead

Being first to respond on inbound leads and addressing your prospects’ questions with all the right data points really is being best. You’re the one that answers questions in real time and shares your knowledge first. If you don’t secure the application at that point, you’ve still become the de-facto expert that they’ll be comparing others to.

If your initial lead response conversation is especially true about what the process entails, you’ll compare favorably to those that make it sound overly easy, especially if they took 24 hours or more to respond. This is ever truer as the doc requests begin – and never end – as they’ll remember that you were right up front about what would be needed to service their needs efficiently. This brings us to follow up.

If at first, you don’t succeed…

The extra beauty of speed to lead, regardless of the initial outcome, is that you get your automated follow-up campaign in a short amount of time as well. Engineered to assure repeated contact, your texts or emails filled with the knowledge of and advice about the process will ring true and helpful, casting confidence in your ability your way and doubt in the face of your competition. If you don’t already respond right away, your conversion rate on qualified leads is likely far lower than it could be.

Setting your follow-up campaigns through an automated workflow is easy these days, especially when using the best CRM programs designed for this and much more. Intersperse the human touch with a task set to call or text directly between all the other shared informational and dynamic content, and you’ll be seen as the go-to person even if they didn’t realize that on the first call.

After all, we all know that regardless of how well a call may go, there’s always the “let me discuss it with my spouse” “or “let me think it over” excuse that can prevent or delay a commitment to you at that first interaction. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It gives you more opportunity to let your follow-up shine and further set you apart from anyone else they may speak with.

Want to see exactly how well the right CRM can help you handle speed to lead workflow response to your inbound leads and automated follow-up? Click the demo link here and let Surefire show you how!