Securing clients and sales over the phone is an art form, and calling current or potential clients to secure sales takes time, energy, and know-how. Despite this, there is a common misconception that sales are a simple process. Many people assume that making a sale is as simple as making a single phone call and securing a deal, but these deals often take an investment of time to secure new clients and sell to repeat customers.
Making sales is far from easy, but luckily, there are some good rules to follow in order to find consistent success. Knowing how and when to call sales leads is crucial to following best practices as a business owner and salesperson. In fact, there is plenty of research available that suggests how often, when, and how you should contact potential leads for the highest success rates.
So, how often should you call your sales leads? In this article, we will discuss how often you should call leads when trying to retain clients and grow your client base. Let’s get right into it!
How Often Should You Call Leads?
What is a Lead?
First and foremost, let’s define what a lead is in sales. Investopedia defines a sales lead as “a person or business who may eventually become a client.” These leads can be gathered through a variety of different methods, including advertisement through the mail, social media, or other means, third-party referrals, or organic traffic.
Because you have received the personal information of your leads at this point, sales leads can then be followed up with in a variety of methods, including making sales calls. Sending emails and physical mail are other ways to interact with these potential clients.
When Should You Call Your Leads?
So, when should you call your leads once you obtain their information? A good rule of thumb is to follow up with your leads as soon as possible. Following up within the same business day shows your lead that you are interested in their business and are running a smooth enough operation to address interested prospective clients right away. If you do not find that you are able to call your leads this quickly, you should at least try to contact your leads within the same business week.
If you fail to contact leads quickly, you may be outcompeted by other businesses in your industry or lose your lead’s interest. When people are looking for a product or service, they expect to receive more information as quickly as possible so that they can move forward. They might move on to another provider who responded to them sooner, especially if they are in a rush to complete a purchase.
If you are unable to call your leads within this amount of time, you need to look into outsourcing your follow-up calls to sales leads. A call center can help you acquire clients, retain customers, and grow your business.
How Often is Too Often to Call Leads?
When making calls to leads, there is a level of “too much.” This creates a delicate balance between doing your due diligence to follow up on potential clients and customers and making them feel like you are harassing them. The best part about sales leads is that these are individuals or businesses who have shown some sort of interest in your marketing by reaching out or filling out a form, but it is still possible to make clients feel like your tactics are too aggressive for their comfort level.
You might have seen statistics attributed to a source known as the National Sales Executive Association, which lists out statistics that state that 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact. Unsurprisingly, these statistics are fake and have been debunked by others online. The fact of the matter is that your sales statistics for clients and customers will vary from industry to industry. These numbers will also depend on the effectiveness of your marketing.
In some industries, clients are wary about making their commitments on the first sales call, while other industries are happy to make quick decisions and move forward with you on the first call. You can figure out how often is too often to call leads by finding when your leads are no longer responsive and trying again just a few more times.
However, you should only call three to five more times after a lead has yet to respond to avoid frustrating this potential client. This client may return to your business at another time, and you do not want to annoy them with too many aggressive sales calls.
What is the Sweet Spot for How Many Times to Call Leads?
There is one guaranteed call to your leads, which is the first contact call. As we mentioned, you should always reach out to your leads as soon as possible. This contact is one call. If the client stops responding to you after this first sales call, you should continue to reach out.
As we mentioned, as soon as your leads become cold, you should keep calling them the recommended three to five times after they have stopped responding to you. You should add at least another expected follow-up call for every successful call with your prospective client.
Figuring out how often to call your leads depends on how your lead responds to your initial communications. If you have three successful sales calls and the lead goes cold, you will call this lead six to eight times in total. However, if a lead goes cold after one sales call, you will call them four to six times. Calling until your prospective client says yes or no is another strategy for calling leads.
Depending on how many leads you are looking at, you might need help with properly following up with potential clients to secure sales. You may feel tempted to lower the number of times you follow up with colder leads, but you should still follow up with these clients. At one point in time, they were interested in your products or services, and many circumstances can cause a client to not respond.
How to Manage Follow-up Calls to Leads
Timeliness of the initial sales call and adequate follow-up are the two most important aspects to making sales via phone. The number one reason why leads go cold is because of a lack of timely interaction and lack of follow-up, according to Business.com. Business.com describes consistent and timely follow-up as lead nurturing.
These sales call follow-ups are essential for growing as a business and acquiring new clients. If properly following up with sales leads is out of the capabilities of your current operation, you should consider outsourcing your sales calls to a call center for higher chances of success. Call centers are perfectly outfitted for handling these calls, and outsourcing can help to lower the cost of pursuing lead nurturing.
Efficient and expert call centers are readily available to help pursue and nurture your leads. For instance, Loop Contact Solutions is a call center in the Philippines that provides lead nurturing services, sales services, and customer support through phone, email, and live chat.
How to Choose a Call Center for Lead Follow-Up
Finding a call center to focus on your lead follow-up can be difficult. Trusting another business with the success of your business can be scary, but there are a few trusted options on the market. Loop Contact Solutions is a full-service call center with trusted clients, including Weiss Ratings, Newsmax, and Agora Business.
With the help of a qualified call center, you can trust that your leads are addressed in a timely manner and that an adequate number of follow-up calls are being made to keep your potential clients interested in your products and services. Call centers like Loop have specialized teams for sales, customer support, and customer retention that help to optimize your business for success and revenue building.
Loop also caters to a variety of industries, such as publishing, finance, newspapers, e-commerce, magazines, cosmetics, and more. For more information about Loop Contact Solutions, click here to learn about their mission statement, quality score, and return on investment statistics.
Conclusion
You should call your sales leads as often as possible to secure a deal or do your due diligence after your lead no longer responds to your efforts. Depending on your potential clients’ responsiveness, you may need to make anywhere from four to ten phone calls to secure a single sale via phone. For many businesses, making these phone calls promptly and following up a sufficient amount of times can be strenuous on your resources.
Instead, consider outsourcing these important sales calls to a qualified call center to ensure that your leads do not go cold from lack of contact. Experts from a call center can sufficiently handle these phone calls and take the strain away from your business while securing sales! To get started with outsourcing your sales lead calls, click here to talk to a communications expert for a free 60-minute consultation from Loop Contact Solutions.
