The Follow Up
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50% of Companies Suck at Following Up

50% of Companies Suck at Following Up

Why aren’t companies following up on inbounds?

Nic
May 11, 2023

Happy National Eat What You Want Day! Reply to this email and we’ll pick one person for a DoorDash gift card.

In today’s Follow Up:

50% of companies are losing revenue because of poor follow up 🤔
Sales in the news 🗞️
Sales weapons of the week ⚔️
Cool jobs at cool companies 💸

Sales Fact of The Day

Over 50 percent of decision-makers prefer to be contacted over the phone.

zendesk.com

Why aren’t companies following up on inbounds?

“A little more than 1 out of 10 companies are properly following up on leads. That's terrible.”

That was Jim Kaskade, the CEO of Conversica, a Conversational AI for revenue teams. It was his response to a report Conversica published on inbound lead follow-up.

Conversica tracked the follow-up performance on inbound leads for 100 b2b and b2c mid-market and enterprise companies. Conversica’s research team tracked inquiry forms on company websites and tested the team’s promptness, persistence, personalization, and performance.

🚨 Spoiler alert: Companies didn’t blow it out of the water.

25% of companies scored an “F” on their follow-up performance and only 17% scored an “A”.

This means 1 in 4 companies didn’t follow up with their inbound leads at all.

Telecommunication companies were the worst culprits with a 40% no follow up rate. 35% of Sports & Media & Entertainment companies didn’t follow up on inbound leads and 25% of tech companies.

Even companies who responded to leads didn’t do a great job of getting in touch. 35% of companies gave up on their leads after 1 or 2 touches, below the research-backed recommendation of 6 to 11 touches.

Inbound leads are like a Tinder match. You still have to put in the work to close them, but you already know they’re interested.

B2B sales teams that spend most of their resources on outbound are leaving money on the table when they don't follow up with their inbound leads.

We know inbound leads are a good revenue source, but how do you get them to convert? One of the most important parts of the inbound sales process is promptness. Prompt companies have a higher success rate.

78% of customers buy from the first responder to their sales inquiry
Companies that contact leads within an hour of inquiry are nearly 7 times more likely to qualify than at two hours and 60 times more likely than companies that wait over 24 hours
Conversation rates increase by 391% when companies call within a minute of receiving a lead

The problem is only half of the companies Conversica tracked responded to inquiries within 24 hours.

Conversica also provided some tips on how to increase response rates:

Include 4 of these 5 personalization elements: Use the lead’s first name, use an individual email account instead of a company account, refer to the lead’s specific inquiry, propose times to schedule a call, and include alternative contact information.
Use a personal subject line (26% more likely to receive a response)
Be persistent. Companies that make more than 5 attempts, increase conversion by 70%

Your inbound sales process could be the difference between hitting your quota and doing your summer shopping in the TJ Maxx clearance section.

Reply to the email with the number of follow-ups you send before you stop contacting a prospect. (Your sales prospects, not dating prospects).

Sales Tip of The Day

Replace your “Buts” with “Ands”

Using And instead of But changes your tone and elicits agreement between you and your prospect. No one likes a disagreeable sales person.

Sales in the News

A Reddit conversation about “How to deal with burnout.”
Should companies stop taking stances on political issues?
EinsteinGPT, the Salesforce generative AI announced in March, will be incorporated into Slack. Employees will be able ask it questions about Salesforce content like the users most likely to churn or the accounts most likely to buy.

Sales Weapons of The Week

Warmly scores your website visitors on intent signals and sends a message to your current SDR working the prospect or assigns the visitor to a new SDR.
PitchMonster is a role-play AI for sales reps to practice customer calls.
DeckLinks enhances your PDFs with video narrations, CTAs, and data rooms.