response audit of american association of inside sales professionals (aa-isp) leadership summit

Research shows 55.3% of top companies don’t

respond to web leads

June 2011

response audit of american association of inside

sales professionals (aa-isp) leadership summit

response audit overview

The research and analytics division at InsideSales.com measured response times to inquiries made while on Web sites of 159 companies affiliated with the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP). Inquiries were made on the Web sites through Web-based forms and all responses were tracked for response by email and/or telephone. The “secret shopper” informa-tion that was input included ficinforma-tional email addresses and phone numbers unique to this study.

The inquiries were made in 2011 prior to the annual AA-ISP Summit in Minneapolis in March of 2011. Researchers were instruct-ed never to reply to responses, but merely to gather the exact date and time of each response made as well as whether they were made by email or phone. All inquiries were initiated during normal core business hours.

background

what is lead management?

The term Lead Response Management (LRM) describes the processes and practices of responding to leads. Lead Response Management is a subset of Lead Management which encompasses Demand Generation, Lead Conversion, and Qualification and includes:

» Lead Capture » Lead Scoring » Lead Routing » Lead Distribution » Lead Response » Lead Tracking » Lead Analytics

After capturing a lead, Lead Response Management is the most fundamental element of Lead Management. LRM addresses the pain corporations face when they make a substantial investment to capture leads, only to have the sales team wait nearly 48 hours before a first contact attempt is made, and only 1-2 attempts in total. The end result is that 25-30% of all leads never get contacted.

ResponseAudit research conducted by the InsideSales.com research and analytics division tests and analyzes individual sales team response rates and provides results, benchmark data, industry data, and recommendations. ResponseAudits show that the biggest problems facing sales teams can be resolved via process modifications and technologies that integrate and align with current systems. The ultimate goal of LRM is to optimize sales team lead contact and lead qualification rates leading to increased revenue.

In 2007 InsideSales.com partnered with Dr. James Oldroyd of MIT and the Kellogg School of Management in a ground-breaking Lead Response Management study and found the following:

Two key principles from the study are Speed of response and Persistence of response. The Inside Sales industry has yet to make dramatic improvements in Speed of response or Persistence of response as you will see in this study. Companies that have adopted simple process improvements and integrated technologies are performing much better than their counterparts and banking the positive results.

» The odds of contacting a lead increase by

100x

if attempted

within 5

minutes

versus 30 minutes.

» The odds of qualifying a lead increase by

21x

if attempted

within 5

minutes

versus 30 minutes.

»

Wednesday and Thursday

are the best days to contact and qualify a lead. » 8 to 9 am and 5 to 6 pm are the best times to contact and qualify a lead. » Every attempt to contact made after 20 hours hurts the contact rate more.

“Companies that have

adopted simple process

improvements and

integrated technologies

are performing much

better than their

counterparts and

banking the positive

results.”

objectives, approach, & goals

results

» To have researchers submit inquiries by web-form during normal business hours for each of the 159 companies in the study » Use lead response capture

technology to ensure every response was gathered and measured by email and by phone » Use lead response capture

technology to date and timestamp (to the second), ensuring each response was gathered and measured correctly both by email and by phone

» To demonstrate current lead response times of AA-ISP affiliated companies

• Number of responses per inquiry • Differences in email vs phone » Clearly communicate results,

recommendations, and best practices for each company in the study via a customized report » Challenge and commit companies

to implement the recommendations and document the results

objectives

approach

goals

» To measue the time to first response to Web-based inquiries » To measure the number of

responses to Web-based inquiries » To measure the differences in type

of responses between email and phone responses

The results gathered by the researchers are summarized as follows:

»

55.3% of the 159 companies

never responded.

Of companies that responded:

»

40.4 hour average to initial response time.

» 2.6 average response attempts.

Of companies that responded by phone:

» 49.3% of companies responded to inquiries by phone.

» 65.4 hour average initial phone response time.

» 31.0% responded by phone within 24 hours.

»

1.4% responded by phone within 5 minutes.

Of companies that responded by email:

» 74.6% of companies responded to inquiries on a web form by email.

» 40.1% responded by email within 24 hours.

» 2.8% responded by email within 5 minutes.

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

Calls Without Voicemail

Calls With Voicemail

5

4

3

2

1

Response Attempt Number

Number o

f C

omp

anie

s

Call Responses

18 Companies (11.3%) Responded by Phone 36 Companies (22.6%) Responded by Email 17 Companies (10.7%) Responded by Both Email & Phone

88 Companies (55.3%) Did Not Respond

Response Types

CALL RESPONSES

The chart at the left shows companies by how

many call attempts they made. 35 companies

(22.0%) made at least one attempt. Of those

first-attempt calls, the vast majority (91.4%)

left a voice message. Only 9 companies (5.7%)

made 3 or more attempts and only 1 company

made 5 call attempts.

Companies that didn’t make any call attempts

(which accounts for 78.0% of companies) are

not representated in this graph

RESPONSE TYPES

The chart at the right shows the proportions

of companies that responded via phone and

email. More than half of the comanies (55.3%)

did not respond. Of those that responded,

11.3% responded by phone only, 22.6%

re-sponded by email only, and 10.7% rere-sponded

by both phone and email.

about insidesales.com

InsideSales.com is the leading provider of B2B sales intelligence and productivity software tools for sales teams needing to increase lead generation, lead conversion, and lead process visibility. They were the first company to embed telephony voice technology into a hosted sales and marketing automation solution, usable over the Web as an on-demand subscrip-tion service. These tools include immediate telephony response to Web forms, power dialers, voice broadcasting, lead nurturing solutions, and integration with online SaaS and CRMs solutions like Salesforce.com. InsideSales.com is a Partner on the AppExchange Platform. InsideSales.com’s customers include Act-On Software, Dell, Cisco Systems, Vorsight, and HomeAway.

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Company Response Time (H:MM)

Advanced Wireless Communications 0:02

Doyenz 0:06 ABP Technology 0:07 Level 3 Communications 0:14 Aviat Networks 0:15 Aruba Networks 0:17 Brivo Systems 0:19 Experian QAS 0:23 AlertSite 0:53 8x8 0:59 Linium 1:14 HR Plus 1:15 IMS Health 1:22 LoJack 1:24 Hub International 2:38

American Barcode And RFID 2:39

Bamboo Solution 2:14 Executive Conversation 2:24 Axis Communications 4:30 Ivoclar Vivadent 20:54 Flexera Software 20:21 InsuranceAgents.com 22:16