This is the feeling potential buyers are getting when visiting many large companies’ websites according to a survey done by Velocify called The Fortune 100 Online Buyer Experience Study. Click here to download the study.
It is unbelievable that in 2014, there are still big brand companies with poor response to people who are looking to buy their products and services.
According to the study, one-third of leads submitted NEVER receive a phone call. You have a potential buyer and you don’t follow up? That’s like trying to win the lottery without ever buying a ticket. You can’t win if you don’t play. As I wrote recently about the power of the telephone - a phone call can get to your buyer faster than anything. Simply by following up with inquiries to your website you will beat the competition.
Next, the study revealed a very slow response for those who were contacted. 67% of the inquiries for this study did receive a phone call – 3-1/2 days later on average! Most of us expect a call within 24 hours, and earlier research has proven that leads coming to your website should be followed up within one minute (yep, that’s right) in order to receive the maximum success. 10% of the companies in the study called potential buyers back one full week later – that is like my retail experience mentioned above – why even bother at that point?
The final step to succeed against your huge industry counterparts is to follow-up more than they do. The study revealed that only 10% of the buyer inquiries in this study received an optimal amount of follow-up, which has been found to be 5-7 calls. This is a professionally persistent number, especially when someone has gone to your website and displayed behavior indicating interest in your products or services.
Bottom line is that 80% of the leads were ignored or they did not get enough follow-up to convert. What that means is that marketing dollars are being wasted, and the big guys are missing out on opportunities literally being handed to them.
There is fantastic news for the little guy – you can do these 3 simple things to compete and win business in a playing field of companies of any size. To review:
If you do these three things, you will be heads above your very large industry counterparts and have a very good chance to win more business.
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