One of the most important aspects of building your business is being available to customers…
March 7, 2019
The Importance of Returning Phone Calls
We get it. You’re busy. You’re doing work for a customer, have 60 unread emails in your inbox, and four more jobs to do before you call it quits. The last thing you have time for is answering the phone when it rings.
However, every time you miss a call, you’re missing a potential sale.
Don’t take our word for it. Studies show that when it comes to making sales, the early bird gets the worm:
- A study by Google found that 61% of mobile users call a business when they’re getting ready to purchase something. The reason why? They’re looking for a quick answer, or they want to talk to a real person.
- Customers expect and demand instant responses to their inquiries. The inbound telephone lead is still the most valuable lead. It’s 10-15 times more likely to generate a successful sale (Harvard Business Review).
- Most businesses waste their leads – in fact, they waste 71% of all leads. Those businesses that do follow up generally take almost two days to respond. 27% of all leads are never followed up on at all (forbes.com).
- Nearly half of all sales from incoming leads go to the vendor who responds first (InsideSales.com)
- The odds of contacting a lead if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 100 times. (leadresponsemanagement.org). But only 10% are responding that quickly (drift.com).
These statistics all point to one thing: to maximize sales and grow your business, you have to take time to respond to sales calls.
Sometimes it’s impossible to call people back within 5 minutes. But try to make a habit of getting back to sales leads as soon as you can. Use hands-free calling if you’re driving, or pull off the road to make the call.
If you have an assistant, forward your calls to that person, who can at least give them general information and take a message for you. If you have a virtual phone system such as Ninja Number, you can just set the mode to call forwarding and enter the cellphone or landline number you want to forward your calls to.
Virtual phone systems can also take voicemails and transcribe them to a text message, so if you’re in a meeting, you can read the message instead of calling in to check your voicemail.
The key here is to not delay too long – don’t wait until the next day to return calls. The clock is ticking, and each minute that passes means that your competitor may squeeze in and steal a sale. Don’t let that happen.
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